It was June, and the morning was hot and humid. I hated getting up in the mornings to find my sweat-soaked pajamas clinging to me. Today, however, was different. I was greeted by a sweet, milky scent, and the feeling of my body being rocked gently.
"...up. Wake up..."
A soft, motherly voice was calling to me. It pulled my consciousness to the surface ever so gently.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake."
I opened my eyes to find a girl smiling at me sweetly. Her hair was short and silvery, and at first I mistook her for a beautiful fairy. She wore an apron with cute starfish embroidered on it. I recognized her.
"Mashiro?"
Tsukinomori Mashiro. My cousin, and my fake girlfriend. Acting as her boyfriend was a task given to me by her father, Tsukinomori Makoto, as a condition for hiring the 05th Floor Alliance at his company, Honeyplace Works.
Except she wasn't my fake girlfriend anymore.
"I love you. More than anyone else in the world."
Ever since she sent that embarrassingly straightforward confession over
LIME, our relationship changed.
She used to spit venom whenever I was within a certain distance of her.
She used to hide in her shell, never daring to venture out into the light of day. But now, she was...she was...
Something pressed against my cheek, interrupting my thoughts. It was a porcelain bowl, cool against my skin. A bowl of rice and fish.
"Here you go."
"What's this?"
"Breakfast. It's delicious!" Mashiro gave her answer without a hint of
malice, pushing the bowl against my cheek.
I looked at the contents. Eel, roe, and rice, all wobbling about inside the
bowl. It looked so good and fancy that I had to stop myself from drooling. "Wait. What is this?" I asked again.
"A purine-rich bowl of rice."
"A purine-rich bowl of rice," I found myself repeating.
"A purine-rich bowl of rice. It's good."
"And this is what you call...breakfast?"
It looked delicious, but for the first meal of the day, it was a little much.
Mashiro froze, her face crumpling into a frown.
Shoot. Did I upset her?
I always had trouble deciding how I was supposed to treat the girls around me, but Mashiro was especially difficult. I upset her countless times since we met, and got her into all sorts of trouble. She went out of her way to cook this breakfast for me, and all I did was complain. I braced myself for the oncoming storm of abuse. I watched like a frightened deer in the headlights as she slowly opened her mouth and spoke.
"I'm sorry. I only know how to cook seafood..." she said meekly.
Wait. So she wasn't going to abuse me? I made a mental note to check in with the devil later to see what kind of temperatures they were getting down there.
"Did you hit your head or something? You're being kinda...not yourself." "No, not my head... My heart..."
"Poetry, huh? Well—Hold on a second..."
Mashiro woke me up this morning, and even made breakfast for me.
Presumably, that meant I had accepted her confession and we had started dating. Otherwise, I'd have some serious questions about this situation.
The only problem was, I couldn't remember any of it. All I remembered was getting that message from her on LIME.
"You're thinking too much again. Just keep dreaming, okay?" "Dreaming. Right. H-Hey, whaddya doing?!"
Mashiro put the bowl of food down at her feet and removed her apron
before slowly undoing the buttons of her uniform underneath. Her blouse slipped down over one shoulder, leaving it exposed. She leapt up onto the bed like a touch-starved kitten, then placed her paws on my shoulders and pushed me down as her sweet lips came ever closer.
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"We're lovers, right? So why don't we act like it?"
"H-Hey, w-wait—"
Her lips touched mine. I hadn't expected my first kiss to feel so cold. I
guess that was all I could expect from Snow White, and one who liked to hide away in her cave, no less.
"Mwah!"
But why was she kissing me so passionately? Her tongue found its way between my lips and pushed forcefully into my mouth, making it hard to breathe.
I felt like I was about to faint. I could barely gasp for breath anymore, and she was so cold. In fact, if I didn't push her off soon, I would probably die...
***
I narrowed them against the sunlight streaming in between the curtains, and the bed squeaked underneath me. It was only June, but the cicadas were already screeching outside. I could feel something cold being pressed against my lips—but it wasn't Mashiro's kiss.
"Omigod, Senpai, you look like a total octopus when you sleep! What's with your mouth?! Ha ha ha! Oh, but you want this, right? C'mon then! Let's kiss! Mwah! C'mon, if you don't get up, I'll eat it instead!"
"What the hell are you doing, Iroha?"
"Ooh! So you're awake now, huh?"
I glared at the owner of the annoying voice that had kicked me out of my
sleep and to the curb of reality.
Her bright golden hair was perfectly brushed, and she was wearing her
short-sleeved summer uniform. She had a blue scrunchie wrapped around her wrist. A typical high school girl, and one who somehow managed to follow the trends without being preppy.
This was Kohinata Iroha, my friend's little sister.
Since I lived alone, I entrusted a spare key to my neighbor and friend, Ozu. Iroha took it as an invitation to use the key so she could come and go as she pleased. For better or worse, I was used to her being here. At this time in the morning, though?
"I was trying to sleep, you dumbass! What even is that, anyway?"
"Gah!" My eyes flew open.
"It's a popsicle!"
"So trying to suffocate sleeping people with popsicles is a thing now?" "Hey, I was tryin' to help! You looked like you were having a nightmare,
so I decided to cool you off! Duh!" Again she pushed the popsicle against my lips.
Give me strength...
At least I knew why my lips felt so cold. Not that it was any consolation. "Did you even think to use the classic shoulder-shake to wake me up?" "Classic? More like boring!"
"So waking me up is a game to you, huh?"
"You get woken up, and I get to have fun! It's win-win, right? Now do you want this popsicle or not? I'll even feed you mouth-to-mouth if you beg me for it!"
"It's not win-win, it's borderline abusive. And I don't want your stupid popsicle." I pushed it away.
Iroha pouted. "You'd think you could be happier about such a cute girl comin' to wake you, huh?"
"Only a masochist would be happy about getting such shoddy treatment."
"Oh, really? What would make you happy, then?" Iroha grinned, leaning over me slightly.
With her second button undone, I caught a full view of her cleavage. I quickly averted my gaze, which didn't fail to escape Iroha's notice.
"What's the matter, Senpai? It's rude not to look at people when they're talkin' to you, y'know!"
"Have some decency, dumbass."
"Oh? So you were looking?"
I decided not to answer.
"C'mon, no need to look so grumpy about it! They're great, right, so of
course you'd like 'em! It's only natural your other head's in charge right now!"
If this was how she bullied men, she was going to get in real trouble one of these days. I'd just woken up, and so my patience was woefully thin. I could just feel the rage boiling inside me.
"Do you even know what time it is? Since when did you start coming here in the mornings, anyway?"
"Today's an exception. You didn't notice? You should be thanking me,
y'know." Iroha grabbed the alarm clock beside my pillow, and held it out in front of her chest. This digital-display alarm clock suffered morning-after- morning of abusive punches from me as I tried to shut it up. I only realized what was wrong when I noticed that the usual "7" I was used to waking up to was an "8." And the two numbers next to it were definitely not zeroes...
"Wh-What?!"
"You always get up at seven, right? But you left our LIME messages unread. So, Ozuma sent me to check up on you!"
"No way. There's no way it's past eight! You messed with the clock, right?"
"Even I'm not that mean! Quit freaking out. You just overslept, that's all." "I lost an entire hour?! No way! N-No way!"
There was nothing more valuable to me than efficiency. Every last second
of my life was under my complete control. My study time, working with the Alliance, deepening my bonds with those around me, my eating times, my commuting time and, of course, my sleeping time. Five minutes wasted here and there was fine; I was only human. But an entire hour?!
My head, its movements robotic with shock, turned to look up at Iroha. I asked her my final question, and hung all my hopes on her response.
"I-It's a holiday, right? A day off?"
"Nope! Regular school day!"
"Right, I'm gonna go to the hospital. I gotta be sick or something..."
"If you go to the doctor 'cause you overslept, they're just gonna send you
to a psych ward."
She could be frustratingly logical at times. I guess even the most punctual
person in the world was bound to oversleep at least once. But that I was considering going to the hospital should show you just how much of a shock this was to me. Why the heck did I oversleep?
"We'll worry about the whys later, yeah? You better hurry up, or you'll be late!" Iroha said.
"Shit! Why didn't you tell me I overslept instead of all that popsicle nonsense?!"
"Where's the fun in that?" Iroha said, but I jumped out of bed and rushed past her, paying her words no mind.
There was no way I could be late just because I overslept. I heard Iroha wishing me "good luck" moments before I launched myself into the bathroom.
"Seriously, Iroha, if you're gonna come and wake me up, don't keep me lying around for ages like that!" I grumbled as I splashed my face with water and wiped it down with a towel.
Today wasn't looking good. I had a super weird dream, woke up to Iroha playing her usual tricks, and now I was running late. At least with the cold water on my face, I was regaining some of my sanity. I thought back to my dream.
If I remembered correctly, Mashiro and I were living together as a young couple. Right now, I couldn't remember how much of it was true. I knew for sure that she confessed to me, but I couldn't remember how I'd responded or what our relationship was now. I took my phone out as I brushed my teeth, and checked LIME.
Mashiro: I love you. More than anyone else in the world. Aki: What do you mean?
Mashiro: I mean what I said.
Aki: You mean love love, right?
Mashiro: Yeah. Love love. I want you to be my boyfriend
Aki: Got it. Lemme think about it.
Mashiro: Sure Just let me know when you've made up your mind
"I still can't believe it."
I couldn't imagine Mashiro saying any of the words on the screen. Not to mention all those hearts. But I couldn't deny the truth that she was confessing to me. At least I knew where I stood right now: I was still "thinking about it."
What else was I supposed to do? I'd devoted my whole life so far to getting a spot at Honeyplace Works and never imagined anything so cliché and romantic could ever happen to me. It was no wonder I couldn't answer right away.
I rinsed out my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror, steadying my breathing. Look what you've done now, Tsukinomori-san. Thanks to your fake-relationship set up, your daughter's ended up confessing to me. Hadn't this dude ever watched a romantic comedy movie?
Was Mashiro even in love with me? I mean, her messages were totally out of character, right?
No, I needed to stop. It wasn't fair to second-guess her. If it was a mistake or some sort of prank, then I should be the one to take the fall. But if she
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really did love me, it would be cruel to ignore those feelings of hers. I had to face her head-on.
"Okay." Satisfied I was presentable, I took a deep breath.
Today, I would meet Mashiro and confirm that her feelings for me were real. And then, I would give her my answer.
***
"It's really admirable that you're willing to confront it directly, Aki. Though I guess that's just like you."
"Yeah. It's not in my nature to beat around the bush."
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