Inside the school, a certain Uma Musume woke up one morning to find her roommate missing. The roommate's bedding was dragged out onto the hallway floor, and their room door was left wide open.
Panicked, she immediately went to find the dorm head of the Ritto dormitory and reported the situation.
Such a bizarre occurrence naturally caught the dorm head's full attention.
If it were just a normal outing, why would someone drag their own bedding outside and leave the door open? It was unthinkable!
This clearly pointed to a major incident. The dorm head promptly mobilized all the members of the dormitory to begin a search.
When they finally found the missing student, it turned out there was no dramatic scenario of someone being gagged and forcibly kidnapped.
Instead, the student, named Admire Vega, had gotten confused in the middle of the night while half-asleep, wandered out of her room in a daze, made her way to the Miho dormitory, climbed into Manhattan Cafe's bed, and spent the night sleeping with her.
'Oh, I see. She was just sleepwalking. That explains it.'
Everyone exchanged looks of understanding and then started sharing their own various bizarre experiences with sleepwalking or being half-asleep, easily accepting her story.
Yes, easily accepted...
If only things could have ended that simply.
Sitting in the seat with her head bowed, being lectured by the dorm head, Admire Vega thought to herself.
"Even if you were sleepwalking, it's hardly possible to get all the way from Ritto to Miho. There's quite a distance between those two buildings," said the girl standing before her.
The girl had neat, handsome black short hair, blue eyes, and a clear, refreshingly pretty face, but her voice held a rare seriousness.
"I can understand needing to go out for a simple walk to clear your head, even after curfew. But no matter how you look at it, going into someone else's room, especially without Manhattan Cafe seeming to be aware of it, is going too far."
Hearing this, Admire Vega's face flushed bright red.
The sleepwalking story was indeed an excuse Admire Vega had concocted, but she wasn't entirely lying.
She had no memory of leaving her room, nor any memory of entering Cafe's room.
The last thing she remembered was being in her own bed. When she opened her eyes, she was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Not only that, but there was a small damp patch on Cafe's pajama collar, and a bit of drool was still at the corner of her own mouth.
In other words, she had been sleeping with her head nestled against Cafe's chest!
The thought nearly made Admire Vega faint on the spot.
Sleepwalking. She couldn't think of any other explanation.
What kind of dream must she have had to do something like that?!
Every time she remembered, she felt so embarrassed she wanted to crawl into a crack in the floor.
Especially when Cafe, sitting beside her, lightly touched the noticeably darker spot on her own pajamas. Cafe's slender eyebrows twitched rapidly a few times before she said,
"I'll... take care of this myself..."
'It's over. It's really over. I just want to die—'
She, who had always preferred to be alone, had never been so mortified in her life.
She had ended up sleeping with her classmate, clinging to her like a child!
"Have you apologized to Cafe yet?" asked the Ritto dorm head, Fuji Kiseki.
"N-not yet..."
After realizing what she had done, her body had gone completely stiff, every joint feeling like it was fighting the others as she climbed out of the bed and walked out of the room, rigid as a board.
She hadn't managed to utter a single word the entire time.
By the time her frozen mind started working again, she was already being found by students from the Ritto dormitory.
"That won't do. When you cause trouble for someone, you need to apologize properly," Fuji Kiseki said.
Even so, given the current situation, the idea of apologizing to Manhattan Cafe...
'I'm so sorry, Cafe. I accidentally got into your bed, and then accidentally ended up cuddling you while I slept. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the truth is, it was all unconscious, completely beyond my control. I'm very sorry for the trouble. What? Why you and not someone else? I don't know either!'
'Sigh... Maybe I should just graduate now.'
It truly felt like her life had reached its end.
"It's best to resolve conflicts right away. If you leave them for later, they can snowball into something much worse," Fuji Kiseki advised.
Besides, she didn't want the dorm head of Miho using this incident to tease her later about lax management.
Just thinking about Hishi Amazon's loud, unreserved laughter at her expense made a flame of frustration rise in Fuji Kiseki's chest.
She was determined to squash this problem here and now, once and for all.
"I... understand," Admire Vega said, gritting her teeth.
"If anything happens to me, please take care of my remains, Dorm Head Fuji Kiseki."
"Hey, it really shouldn't come to that—"
Before Fuji Kiseki could finish, Admire Vega, wearing the expression of someone marching to her doom, staggered out of the room.
The moment she stepped out of the dormitory building, Admire Vega almost collided with a dark figure, but the person quickly sidestepped before any contact was made.
Once Admire Vega steadied herself, she got a clear look at the girl in front of her.
Long black hair, golden eyes.
It was Manhattan Cafe.
'Why are you here…?'
Her mood instantly plunged into gloom. But quickly, Admire Vega forced her head up, her purple eyes burning as she stared at Cafe.
"Wh-what is it?" Manhattan Cafe asked, unconsciously taking half a step back as Admire Vega seemed to lean forward.
"Admire Vega, are you okay?"
"Cafe!" Admire Vega blurted out, mustering all her strength. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to get into your bed!"
"Gah..."
Cafe's jaw dropped.
"I swear, I don't have any improper thoughts about you, Cafe! You might not believe me, but last night really was an accident!"
"???"
"So, um... if there's anything I need to do to make it up to you, I'll do it."
Her eyes darted around nervously. When Admire Vega's gaze finally met Manhattan Cafe's again, she saw in Cafe's eyes an emotion even more shocked and unsettled than her own.
"I-I see. Well, first, please calm down," Manhattan Cafe said, though her voice seemed slightly directed to a spot next to Admire Vega.
"You two didn't do anything... improper, did you?"
"You two?"
"Ah, no, I mean, 'we' two."
"No, no! It was very simple, just sleeping together. We didn't do anything improper at all... I think."
"Then it's fine. It's just normal behavior between friends. Yes, perfectly fine. You think so too, right?"
She sounded like she was trying to convince herself, or perhaps someone else.
"I think so too! It was just a simple misunderstanding!" Admire Vega nodded repeatedly, finally letting out a sigh of relief.
'Thank goodness. Cafe doesn't seem too angry.'
Just as Admire Vega was ready to put the whole incident behind her, her body involuntarily leaned forward again.
A sudden impulse surged within her—a desire to reach out and hug the black-haired girl in front of her.
"Huh?"
Manhattan Cafe took another half-step back, avoiding Admire Vega's outstretched hand.
"That's strange, Cafe. I didn't mean to do that."
Abruptly, a wave of loneliness washed over Admire Vega's heart, an urgent need to grab hold of the black-haired girl's clothes, to keep her from leaving.
'What in the world is happening to me?!'
--+--
T/N: While I am an inexperienced Translator, I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 3 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
[email protected]/AspenTL
If you guys wanna check it out.