After loosening the crusted blood on my arm with rubbing alcohol, Deen wiped it with a different towel she had wet with water from the jug. It was lucky that she brought a ton of towels, which were very fluffy and probably expensive. Too bad we'd have to burn them all later.

I sense that Deen will drag me along to buy new towels.

The rubbing alcohol felt cool, minty, and fresh on my skin. It replaced the disgusting ickiness of the blood. And it was also fighting back the metallic smell with its strong scent.

I intensely concentrated on keeping my left arm limp as Deen wiped it. The urge was strong to ball my hand into a fist and bring it up to Deen's chin. Then I noticed her concerned expression as she wiped me. I wasn't going to punch her, but I resolved to stop bitching in my head in return for her being such a lovely friend.

Deen thoroughly cleaned my skin, steadily going up until she reached my underarm.

I involuntarily recoiled.  "No way blood got there."

She giggled as she raised a brow at me. "Are you ticklish here?"

"No, I'm not." I tried to pull away, but she held onto my wrist. I felt like we'd been through this before. "Hey, you're using your super strength. That's against the rules."

"You're just imagining things," Deen said as she wiped my underarm with the towel. She did it forcefully while she had a half-smirk on her face. "If we didn't have superhuman bodies, I'd be physically stronger than you, right? Proceeding from that premise, if you managed to overpower me, you're the one using super strength."

"That...that sounds logical," I conceded with a frown. "But that leaves me on the losing end each time."

Should I then assert that we were both free to use super strength? Could Deen turn that on its head and somehow put me at a disadvantage? I bet she’d play the victim and try to guilt-trip me—or my ‘Erind best-friend face’, to be more accurate. While pondering the better choice, I pressed my arm close to my body to stop her from wiping me.

But Deen, the ever-persistent bitch, wiggled her fingers between the gap and tickled me!

"Deen! Stop that!" Or I'll separate your blonde head from your body! We were both twenty-plus-year-old women, and she decided to tickle my armpit. How childish could she be? I swung my arm as I forcefully yanked it from her grip. Part of me wanted to break a bone of hers or two.

She backed a couple of steps away, no doubt warned by her Guardian Angel, laughing her head off. Just all-out laughter, like it was the funniest shit she had done in forever. She was crying as she held her stomach.

When people laughed this hard, they typically looked very stupid, maybe even ugly. No one could maintain their poise in this situation—except Deen.

Even with spots of blood on her face and hair, and atrocious lighting solely coming from her phone, she still looked like a goddess as she laughed like an absolute idiot. This was another ability granted by the artificial Core on her chest; no one could convince me otherwise.

"If you really want to help me clean up," I said, my brows indignantly furrowed, "then focus on my face. I can wipe my body, thank you very much."

"Oh, that's right," Deen said as she wiped away the tears in her eyes with the same towel she had used on me. "We should use our clean towels on our faces first." She then proceeded to scrub both of my cheeks.

I grimaced as the strong scent of the alcohol went up my nose. "You're treating me like a child," I said.

“No, I’m not.” She chuckled as she squeezed my cheeks.

"And you're acting like a proper mom, bringing towels, water, and stuff like that."

"Oh, shush," Deen replied as she wiped my nose. "I'm your best friend, so I'm helping you—"

"Helping me remove the evidence of our crimes?"

She pinched my nose. "Helping you clean dirty spots that you might miss if you did it on your own. Do you know that in Japan, they'll scrub each other's naked backs as a bonding thing? Like to show trust? It can be between a couple or friends...or a couple of friends." She laughed as she moved on to cleaning my forehead.

"We're not Japanese..." I began to say, ready to counter everything she had just told me. However, I mulled things over for a couple of seconds and decided to let her have this one. "But...um...thank you."

"Huh?" Deen raised her brows, surprised that I didn't continue arguing with her.

"Thank you," I said, a bit louder and clearer. "You mentioned that cleaning each other’s backs thing—well, face, in our case—was a sign of trust. So, uh, thank you for that. And for everything else too."

As Deen's best friend, I hadn't expressed much gratitude commensurate to everything she had done for me, not even including this night—or day.

I was a free-loading leech at her house. I did try to pay her, but she expectedly refused. In some ways, she was taking care of me like I was her pet—wait, that sounds wrong. Let's go with 'like her child', instead. Like legit, I should just let her hug me twenty-four seven in return for just basically everything.

Factoring in her willful participation as an accomplice to the murders I had just committed, and doing some killing of her own, I owed her big time.

On top of maintaining the face of being Deen's bestest friend ever by showing the appropriate level of gratitude, showing my appreciation would also ensure her continued loyalty. Indulging her bullshit emotional moments and disgusting touchy-feeliness would pay dividends when I’d need her help. More specifically, her Guardian Angel’s help.

That stupid pet had helped me big time when I infiltrated Eve’s underground arena. I was sure all my suffering was going to pay off someday.

For now, just for this night, I was going to be on my best behavior and be the friendliest I had ever been. This is going to suck so much.

Deen choked up a bit at my profession of gratitude. “You’re going to make me cry again,” she said. “And I look ugly when I cry."

"Wow, such blatant falsehoods," I said, pinching her sides. There, I'm trying my hand at skinship.

"Geez, Erind. Don't bother me while I clean you up." Deen picked up her phone and shone the light on me like I was getting interrogated while she looked for more dirty spots. I squinted when the bright light passed my eyes. "Oops, sorry," she said. "Parts of your hair are matted. Not that bad or anything. We can leave it later and try to wash it with the water we'll have left."

"Can we just cut it?"

"Hmm, better not," Deen said. "I don't want to mess up your hair."

"Oh well," I said, shrugging. "Too bad we don't regenerate our hair or nails if we cut it ourselves."

She made a face. "Imagine if we did." She picked up the dirty shirt that I had taken off earlier. "I'm going to tie your hair up while I clean the rest of your body."

"Rest of my body?" I watched Deen choose a part of my shirt that wasn't bloodied and tear a long strip from it. Then she grabbed my shoulders and turned me around. "I thought you were going to clean only my face? I mean, you don't need to do the rest of me. Like seriously, Deen. I'm not a kid."

"At least let me wipe your back," she said as she gathered my wavy black hair and coiled it into a bun. "You can't see your back or reach some parts of it. That's why, in Japan, they wash a friend's back, a sign that someone you trust is doing something that you may find difficult to do yourself."

"And because cleaning the front would be weird," I pointed out. But I didn't resist as she tied my hair up. It felt even colder now without my hair protecting my bare skin. Goosebumps were growing; I could feel them. Would Deen feel them too?

I expected the cool towel to start scrubbing my skin.

Instead, I heard a snap, and my bra loosened. I held the cups to my chest to stop them from falling as I looked over my shoulder. Is this bitch pranking me now? Was this like bullies giving smaller kids wedgies in school? I had seen that all the time on TV but hadn't actually witnessed something like that in my school.

"Deen, what are you doing?"

"There's blood on your bra too."

"I'm just going to take it off later."

"And I can't clean your skin well with the straps in the way."

"Oh, okay," I replied. False alarm. I must commend her for unlatching the hook in one motion. That might be another superpower of hers. "Um...thanks for scrubbing my back." I'm such an appreciative friend.

She started from my lower back, just above the hem of my shorts, and slowly worked her way up. I got a bit conscious that she'd feel my bony spine; I was just thin no matter how much I ate.

"Erind, I can help you choose lingerie," Deen said. "I'm going to buy new towels, so we might as well go to the lingerie store and—"

"Please just focus on wiping!"