Tachibana Hina stared thoughtfully at Sato Ruri's back, and only after the younger girl's figure vanished around the corner did she turn and return home.
Natsuo Fuji was sitting on the sofa. Seeing her return, he looked mildly surprised. "Shō-Kun still hasn't gotten up?"
Tachibana Hina said calmly, "The girl Shō-Kun secretly likes came over to see him. I can't exactly barge in and disturb them."
"Looks like you won't be reaching him for a while." Natsuo Fuji sighed with theatrical regret, then offered what passed for comfort. "No rush. With your charm, no one can resist you."
Tachibana Hina said nothing.
Then Natsuo Fuji stood up. "I've already made plans to meet someone. I'm heading out first. You stay home and reach out to Shō-Kun whenever the opening comes."
Tachibana Hina nodded.
…
After watching him leave, she returned to her room. It was small—closet-sized, really—but it had everything she needed, including a private bathroom, so she didn't have to share the one down the hall with Natsuo Fuji. Without that small mercy, she genuinely couldn't have endured this kind of life.
Only here could she feel a trace of peace.
She recalled the girl she'd glimpsed moments ago, the one who'd shown up at Yūto Shō's apartment alone. Clearly their relationship was something special—maybe they'd already crossed the line from crush to confession, the kind of soft, slow-burn romance you'd see in a slice-of-life anime.
A spike of guilt hit her. To deal with Natsuo Fuji, she'd dragged Yūto Shō into her arrangement. Even if it was all just acting, selling the performance to Natsuo Fuji meant a certain amount of ambiguous closeness between them was unavoidable. If that girl ever caught wind of it, she'd be furious. She might even break things off.
Tachibana Hina couldn't help but second-guess her own decisions. Was it really worth making Yūto Shō gamble his relationship with the girl he loved, all so he could cooperate in her private mess?
She hesitated.
...
After finishing his meal, Yūto Shō started washing the dishes. To avoid pushing the girl too hard, he'd let her head out, which meant dish duty fell squarely on him.
Once the kitchen was clean, he returned to the living room and dropped onto the couch. Yūto Shō began thinking about the day's plan. Right now, all he wanted was to farm more scumbag points so he wouldn't miss out on the items rotating through the exchange shop. And if he was going to farm scumbag points, naturally he needed someone to bully.
Three names came to mind: Sato Ruri, Egawa Mitsuki, and Tachibana Hina—the three women who had fallen into his orbit.
Sato Ruri, he decided to shelve for now. She'd just left, and training had to be paced like any good arc—tension and release, not a constant grind. Push too hard and you break the rhythm.
On top of that, Yūto Shō had already used the sexual desire marker to leave signatures on Sato Ruri's thigh and lower abdomen, and the effects of those two signatures would take time to bloom.
After ruling her out, his thoughts drifted to Egawa Mitsuki. The sexual desire marker came with three uses, so Egawa Mitsuki was a viable next target.
In fact, she fit perfectly.
Yūto Shō had always worried she might pull herself together and weaponize her family's influence against him—the kind of plot twist that could end his run before it really started. If he could plant a signature on Egawa Mitsuki, he could keep that leash short.
The problem was, ever since the principal's office incident, Egawa Mitsuki had become a ghost. Drawing her out wouldn't be easy.
By Yūto Shō's read of her, Egawa Mitsuki had never gotten close to a single classmate. Not even the other girls.
The girls in class would sometimes hang out on weekends, and a few had even invited Egawa Mitsuki along, but she never showed. Always the same polite excuse about weekend tutoring.
After learning the truth about Egawa Mitsuki's background, Yūto Shō stopped reading it as an excuse. For a girl of her social tier, her parents would treat her education like a final exam route in a JRPG—every weekend slot packed with cram sessions, etiquette lessons, the works. Compared to ordinary girls like Sato Ruri, Egawa Mitsuki didn't have the luxury of free time.
So Yūto Shō let the Egawa Mitsuki idea go too. Her phone was probably parked in her parents' hands on the weekend, and firing off a message right now would be the equivalent of speedrunning his own funeral.
With those two off the table, the only remaining target was their neighbor Tachibana Hina. But the persona he'd built around Tachibana Hina was the shy, sincere boy who'd only recently worked up the nerve to confess. Actively chasing her would shatter that image overnight.
Still, not a huge problem. He could just wait for Tachibana Hina to come to him. Her husband was a card-carrying cuckold, so she had no real options. If she didn't come to Yūto Shō, she'd be forced to find someone else.
…
While waiting on Tachibana Hina, Yūto Shō sprawled across the sofa and burned hours on his phone. He scrolled and tapped clear through to evening, and Tachibana Hina still hadn't come over.
"Maybe she has to work weekends too. 996 grind life, real endgame stuff."
Yūto Shō shrugged it off, ordered takeout, and went right back to his phone.
….
It was late at night.
After leaving Yūto Shō's apartment, Sato Ruri had taken the chance to meet up with her friends, killing the afternoon with them and not getting home until evening. Somewhere along the way, the matter of the signature had slipped her mind completely.
After dinner, her mother nagged her into doing homework, and by the time she finished, it was already ten o'clock. She stretched, grabbed her pajamas, and headed for the bathroom, planning to scrub off the signature in the shower.
She peeled off her clothes, revealing the fair, tender lines of her body. Standing in front of the mirror, Sato Ruri spotted not only Yūto Shō's signature on her thighs, but a second one on her lower abdomen, just below her navel.
When had he signed that one?
The girl froze, staring at the ink riding low on her belly, her face flushing red as she scrambled to remember.
A scene surfaced like a flashback episode: Yūto Shō kneeling beside her, one hand kneading her leg, the other tugging her zipper down, exposing the flat plane of her belly before drawing his name across it.
She'd been so dizzy with that warm, dazed feeling at the time that she hadn't even registered it.
Sato Ruri pressed a hand over her lower abdomen, equal parts embarrassed and furious, cursing Yūto Shō as a total pervert before twisting the showerhead on full blast.
To erase his name, she squeezed out a generous mound of body wash, drenched her skin in hot water, and started scrubbing her palm hard against her lower belly.
"Nnh—!"
The instant her palm dragged across her skin, a current of sensation jolted through her like a Pikachu thundershock straight to the nerve endings. The girl couldn't help the small moan that escaped, gritting her teeth and freezing in place, staring down at her belly in confusion. After a hesitant breath, she tried a few more strokes.
Because she'd pressed harder this time, the jolts came back sharper—tingling, prickling, sparking up her spine and making her slender body tremble in tiny involuntary shudders. Her breath went ragged.
"Ugh, my body's way too sensitive—what's going on?" the girl cried out, snatching her hand away from her stomach, cheeks burning, a giant question mark practically floating over her head like a confused chibi sticker.
The reaction was identical to the one Yūto Shō had coaxed out of her earlier that day with his hands on her thighs. The shame burned hot enough that she didn't dare keep scrubbing.
Is it because I'm too close to… that place?
Sato Ruri's blush deepened as the thought slipped through. She hurried through the rest of her shower, scampered back to her room, and dove under the covers, telling herself that if she just slept, everything would reset by morning like a fresh save file. But her head was inexplicably wired, her body lit up like a controller stuck on rumble, and she realized she didn't actually want to sleep at all.
The faint itch on her lower abdomen and thighs refused to fade into the background, and her mind kept replaying the warmth of Yūto Shō's hands gliding across her legs earlier.
The more she replayed it, the more her belly and thighs throbbed with that maddening, itchy ache.
After gritting her teeth and toughing it out for a while, the girl felt heat blooming across every inch of her, like her body was calling out to her in this restless, traitorous language.
Helplessly, she let her hand drift downward, dragging the back of her knuckles over her lower abdomen through her pajama pants.
"Mm..."