A Good-Smelling Squid

Motion sickness varies greatly from person to person, but I never expected her body to be that tightly knotted.

Of course, there was no direct connection between motion sickness and stiff muscles.

The primary cause was the mismatch between the information received by the eyes and the vestibular system.

The principle was that holding back nausea caused her to tense her neck and shoulders and hunch her abdomen for so long that her breathing became shallow, making the nausea even worse.

Therefore, before treating the actual cause—the confusion in the vestibular system—we first needed to loosen the muscles that had hardened like iron.

“Just how tense were you…?”

The sensation beneath my fingertips was so hard that it felt as though I were gripping a lump of iron.

So I moved my hands along the knotted areas and used all my strength to knead, press, and pound that iron-hard body.

How long had I been absorbed in relieving Ms. Hayashi’s tension?

I must have been so focused on my work that I failed to properly notice my surroundings...