Yūto Shō's mood was in the gutter. For as long as he could remember, he'd bullied Sato Ruri however he damn well pleased — full protagonist-privilege mode, cheat-code activated — but the way she'd just handled him back there had left him feeling like the final boss had suddenly leveled up mid-fight.
The two of them had already crossed that line together, so of course he didn't actually want the girl making a public spectacle of herself. Especially not that face she made — the one where her lashes fluttered and her breath hitched into those tiny, honeyed moans. That expression belonged to him. The thought of any other man catching even a frame of it made something ugly and territorial coil in his gut.
It was his possessiveness talking, plain and simple. He'd filed her away as his personal forbidden fruit, his own private Rei Ayanami behind glass, and the idea of sharing even a crumb of her with anyone else made his teeth itch. And the girl — whether by design or dumb luck — had zeroed in on exactly that weak point like she'd read his character sheet. It left him thoroughly sulky.
He turned his head. Sato Ruri was facing the window, her profile carrying a soft dusting of pink along her cheekbone, like watercolor bleeding through rice paper.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out — Kirei Ryu again. This girl's persistence rivals a shounen protagonist, he thought.
"Are you two on a date?"
Reading her message, still stinging from being outplayed by Sato Ruri, Yūto Shō figured he could recoup his losses on Kirei Ryu instead. The bus ride had left him unable to properly torment the girl beside him anyway. Might as well kill the boredom.
He typed back lazily: "Yeah."
"And you still have time to answer me?"
"Kinda bored right now."
"Then don't stay with her. She's boring, no sense of fun, and has a temper. Not girlfriend material at all."
Yūto Shō almost laughed out loud. Damn, you really said the quiet part into the megaphone. He wondered what Sato Ruri's face would do if she ever discovered her supposed best friend was throwing her under the bus this thoroughly behind her back.
He glanced sideways at Sato Ruri again, corner of his mouth tugging up, and kept typing.
"I actually like her a lot," he wrote, deliberately baiting the hook to see if Kirei Ryu would take it.
Kirei Ryu: "..."
Kirei Ryu: "Where are you two going for your date?"
When she dodged his provocation, Yūto Shō didn't push. He tapped back: "Why? You wanna crash it?"
"Can I not?"
Yūto Shō: "I'm with her. It'd be a little awkward for you to show up."
Kirei Ryu: "I want to see you. You can just make up an excuse to slip away for a bit. Even a few minutes would be fine. Please?"
Something hot and low pulled tight in Yūto Shō's stomach. This girl's shameless as hell. At that exact moment, subtitles shimmered into being before his eyes like a dating-sim overlay:
"Route One: Accept her offer. During the course of this date, successfully carry out one act of cheating."
"Route Two: Reject her. Humiliate her by pointing out she's flat-chested, tell her you don't have any interest in a washboard, and to stop bothering you."
Looking at the two branching paths, Yūto Shō didn't even hesitate long enough for the cursor to blink twice before locking in Route One. He fired off the location to Kirei Ryu.
The bus rolled up to their stop soon after. Yūto Shō and Sato Ruri disembarked and stepped into Central Park.
It was just past seven. Plenty of strollers threaded the paths, but the park sprawled wide and the foliage grew thick — finding a hidden corner would be about as difficult as finding an ecchi scene in a harem anime.
Turning over the coming rendezvous with Kirei Ryu in his mind, Yūto Shō trailed after Sato Ruri through the winding paths.
The girl walked ahead in noticeably good spirits, a barely-there smile playing at the corner of her lips, glancing back at him every so often like she'd finally beaten the fear boss and unlocked a new attitude. She wasn't scared of him anymore. Not even a little.
Yūto Shō scanned the surroundings. No one nearby. Opportunity spotted, threat assessed, plan executed — he closed the gap behind her and slipped a hand down, fingers pinching the back hem of her skirt, working them upward, wanting to explore deeper.
"Mn-haah…" Her nose let out a stifled little whimper, and she immediately said, "Don't pinch, it feels awful, I'm gonna moan."
The tone of her voice really did land somewhere between complaint and full-on breathy gasp. Yūto Shō sheepishly retracted his hand. In a public space, with her responding like that, he genuinely couldn't tell whether she was bluffing or dead serious about crying out. And that ambiguity was more effective than any actual resistance.
He sulked internally, which only sharpened his anticipation for meeting Kirei Ryu.
They walked a while longer and arrived beside an artificial lake.
A massive banyan tree sprawled over the grass at the water's edge, its aerial roots draping down like torn curtains. The view genuinely was pretty — evening light bruising the water indigo, ripples fracturing the reflection of distant lanterns.
Sato Ruri settled down on the grass beneath the banyan. Across the lake sat a pavilion where a fair number of people were resting. The sky had dimmed enough that faces blurred, but if Yūto Shō pulled anything with her here, silhouettes tangling together would absolutely register on the far bank as those two are up to something.
She had, however, underestimated the sheer wattage of Yūto Shō's shamelessness. The second she sat, he plopped down and glued himself to her side, and under cover of dusk, his hand slid across her lower belly and started kneading in slow, deliberate circles.
"Mn…" She felt the burning heat of his palm working over her stomach and, against her will, found it strangely, treacherously good. She bit down on the moan trying to escape and frowned. "There are so many people across the lake. Aren't you afraid I'll cry out?"
"Would you actually cry out loud?" Yūto Shō asked, genuinely curious. The far bank was easily sixty, seventy meters off. Anything short of a full scream wouldn't carry.
"If you don't… believe me… you can… try, mn." Sato Ruri's speech went halting, syllables melting between breaths.
Yūto Shō huffed coldly and pressed down harder on the signature spot along her lower belly, dragging his fingers in a firm circle. The girl let out an unbearably cute, involuntary whimper — a sound like silk snagging on a nail — and only then did he reluctantly withdraw his hand.
Sato Ruri let out a small breath of relief. She'd successfully scared him off a second time. Note to self, she thought — from here on out, stick to crowded venues when dealing with this guy. Public exposure was the only leash that seemed to work on him.
But scaring him off came at a cost, and it wasn't cheap. Her lower belly — that specific spot where he'd branded his name — was already hypersensitive. Having its owner touch it directly might as well have been him fingering her outright. The reaction rippling through her body was the kind that turned cheeks red and heart rate into a war drum.
She could feel herself soaking through, embarrassingly slick, the fabric of her panties clinging in a warm, sticky ring. And beneath that, a faint, insistent pressure — the beginning of needing to pee.
Sato Ruri exhaled slowly and stood. "Wait here. I'm going to the restroom. Do not follow me, understand?"
Terrified his pervert-mode would reactivate mid-errand, she leveled that warning at him before turning and heading toward the restrooms.
Yūto Shō watched her retreating figure until it disappeared behind a hedge, then glanced down at his phone. He'd been messaging Kirei Ryu the whole while — she'd already made it to the park.
"I'm here. You coming to find me?"
"Kind of hard to slip away."
"Just leave her, okay? Ditch her. Come find me instead. I'll keep you company."
"Give it a bit longer."
Sato Ruri was in the bathroom now. Yūto Shō was just about to ask Kirei Ryu where exactly she'd stationed herself when — without warning — two slim arms locked around him from behind.
"Found you!"
Kirei Ryu had materialized behind him like a stealth character rolling a nat twenty. She crouched down, wrapped both arms around him in a tight, greedy squeeze, and pressed her lips against the shell of his ear, her breath spilling warm and sweet across his skin like she'd stepped straight out of a dakimakura cover. "Yūto Shō. I found you."
He instinctively started to turn his head to look at her — but the instant his face rotated, her lips were already crashing onto his, kiss initiated without preamble. She licked at his mouth clumsily, inexperience obvious in the too-eager press, tongue searching like she was greedily hunting for something she'd been starving for.
Then, without breaking the kiss, Kirei Ryu shifted her body around to the front of him, ending up standing and bent forward at the waist, cradling his face in both hands as she kept devouring his mouth. It was the pose of a girl who'd watched way too many shoujo climaxes and decided tonight was her episode.
Because of the angle, her neckline yawned open. She caught one of Yūto Shō's hands and pressed it flat against her chest, over the fabric of her top.
Yūto Shō's blood surged at the sheer forwardness of her combo attack. He started kneading through her shirt. Before, he'd dismissed her as too flat to bother with — nothing to work with, next unit please — but now, actually playing with the modest little swells under his palm, he found the smallness strangely, filthily exciting. Compact, pert, the kind of body that made you want to leave marks.
He couldn't resist. He slid his hand down into the open collar and made zero-distance contact with that patch of softness — warm, delicate skin, the small mound of her breast fitting neatly into the cup of his palm, a stiff nipple already peaked hard against his fingers.
Being touched like that, skin to skin under her own shirt, made her knees quake. Her legs gave out from under her and she sank down onto them, kneeling on the grass in front of him as if the raw contact had shorted every nerve in her spine.
Yūto Shō's hand stayed lodged inside her shirt. Through his palm, he could feel it clearly — beneath that small, unassuming layer of flesh, her heart was hammering with the frantic tempo of a taiko drum solo, thudding wild against his skin, pounding out a rhythm that said I've wanted this, I've wanted this, I've wanted this.