Maki removed her thoroughly soaked clothes and pulled down the zipper on the side of her skirt.
She reached out, lifted the white socks on her feet, and gently slipped them off.
Finally came the clothes she absolutely could not let him see. If a guy saw something like pink underwear, it really wouldn't feel appropriate at all.
After neatly placing her clothes aside, she turned on the shower and reached out to test the water temperature.
Only when she confirmed it was about right did she carefully step under the shower, letting the warm water run over her body.
"What am I even doing…?"
Maki closed her eyes, lowered her head, and muttered softly.
He was clearly just a guy she had only known for four days.
And yet here she was, actually staying in his home, using his bathroom, as if something very inappropriate were about to happen soon.
'N-no way.'
Normally, that kind of thing should only happen after marriage, right?
Besides—wait, hold on—they had only just reached the "first kiss" stage… no, not even. Their first kiss had already been reset. When she thought about it, nothing had actually happened between them yet. They were still in a perfectly clean, normal friend relationship, weren't they?
Standing under the showerhead, Maki felt her mind becoming more and more chaotic, unable to think straight.
And then, from outside the bathroom, a voice reached her.
"Maki, I put some clean towels outside the bathroom."
"Ah?! O-oh, I got it, thank you…"
The moment Takumi's calm voice sounded, Maki instinctively let out a small scream, reflexively covering her chest with both hands and curling up. Only after a moment did she recover and softly respond to him from inside the bathroom.
"I've got a dryer at home. Should I take your wet clothes to dry them now? Or do you want to get them yourself after you come out?"
Takumi's voice outside the door carried no hint of anything unusual—he simply asked again.
"I-I can do it myself."
Maki felt her heartbeat speeding up even more, but she still tried her best to keep her voice steady as she spoke to him.
"All right. I left my clothes here. Later you can make do with wearing them for now."
She heard Takumi's footsteps slowly moving away, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing.
"…Thank you."
Only after he had fully left did Maki whisper those words, then she couldn't help covering her cheeks and squatting down on the floor.
'What is wrong with me?!'
The girl couldn't help but question herself in her heart.
Was it because of that nightmare-like experience in the Shirakawa Apartments?
She felt like she wasn't quite herself anymore.
Her emotions grew even more tangled at this moment.
The dampness from the rain had long been washed away by the hot water.
Maki turned off the showerhead, opened the bathroom door, picked up the towel Takumi had left at the entrance, dried the water from her body, and then carefully stepped out of the bathroom. She even glanced around first to make sure Takumi wasn't hiding somewhere in the small room outside the bathroom, secretly peeking at her.
'No—he isn't the type to peek, so why am I doubting him like this?'
Shaking her head, Maki shifted her gaze to her wet clothes folded and placed on one side of the room. Mm, it looked like they hadn't been touched.
Then she looked at the set of clothes on the platform beside the bathroom door—the ones that belonged to Takumi.
So these are his clothes…
She reached out and picked them up.
For Maki, who was only around one meter fifty tall, the shirt was obviously far too big. When she put it on and buttoned it up, she found that her hands couldn't even reach out from the sleeves. The shirttail also covered most of her thighs. One could say that just wearing this shirt alone meant she didn't need to worry about anything accidentally showing.
Wearing clothes like this gave her a strange feeling of reassurance. Hmm… she couldn't make sense of it.
Maki picked up her rain-soaked clothes again, opened the door, walked into the hallway, and headed toward the living room.
The two-story building felt very quiet at this moment. She knew that right now, Takumi was the only person living in this house that was a bit too large for him. Thinking again of his mysterious personal information—parents passing away, shutting himself off from society and living in seclusion—Maki couldn't help feeling even more curious deep inside. She couldn't understand why someone who had been so brave and exceptional in the Shirakawa Apartments would choose such a bleak and closed-off life in reality.
'With talent like yours, if you wanted to, you could definitely live a much better life, couldn't you?'
'Or… does this world's noise and chaos simply have no appeal to you?'
Troubled thoughts rose and fell in the girl's heart.
And her steps carried her to the end of the hallway, where she saw Takumi sitting in the living room, deep in thought.
"Takumi-kun, I'm done. Where's the dryer?"
Maki peeked her head out from the doorway and asked Takumi inside the room.
"Ah, you're done showering? I'll take you there."
Hearing her voice, Takumi snapped out of his daze, lifted his head, then stood up and walked to where Maki was.
The girl instinctively took a step back. One hand held her clothes, and the other tugged lightly at the hem of the shirt she was wearing, suddenly growing nervous.
However, the situation she had imagined—Takumi teasing her with ill intent—did not happen. He simply walked past her with an expressionless face, took the lead, and guided her toward the room with the dryer.
He didn't even say a single teasing line; he just quietly showed the way.
What the heck?
The teasing and bullying she had been worried about never came. While Maki felt slightly relieved deep down, she also became a little annoyed.
He had pulled all sorts of tricks when teasing her before, but now that the atmosphere was actually tense, he suddenly went quiet. Is he trying to play some kind of push-and-pull game with me?
Isn't that way too awful!?
Feeling as though she was being looked down on, Maki's mood became increasingly sour.
What she didn't know was that the calm expression on Takumi's face, as he walked ahead of her, was actually twitching slightly.
The hot-blooded young man was desperately trying to recite the Great Compassion Mantra in his heart to calm himself down.
Calm down.
You must stay calm.
You're the man who achieved an S-rank perfect clear on your very first game.
And you're also the man carrying a mysterious black watch that clearly hides some huge secret.
In other words, you're basically getting the treatment of a novel's protagonist—how can someone like you lose composure at a time like this?
Calm down, hurry up and calm down!
Maki is the kind of girl who gets scared easily. You absolutely can't lay a hand on her right now!
Although her legs really were quite fair.
Although her feet looked so soft and white that one would really want to squeeze them.
Although her smooth little legs gave the sense that if one touched them, they would definitely feel especially silky.
Although her wearing my shirt felt especially amazing.
And the glimpse of skin visible through the gaps between the shirt buttons was even more perfect.
Her thighs faintly showed beneath the hem of the shirt; even though not much could be seen, it instead gave an endless sense of possibility for one's imagination.
Matched with her own shy, rosy face, she looked even more irresistible.
And then, thinking carefully—other than this one shirt, she wasn't wearing anything else right now, was she?
Wow, wasn't that downright incredible?
Wow, what was there even to wait for?
If one did nothing in this situation, could one still call oneself a man? A beautiful girl like this right in front of you—and she even followed you straight back home. Even if she was a bit tsundere and not very honest with her feelings, in this situation she was absolutely interested, right? A normal girl wouldn't go to a boy's home to shower and then wear his clothes—who would believe that? So what are you still waiting for? Hurry up and take action. If you don't act now, can you still call yourself a man?!
"Hss—"
Takumi took a deep breath, then suddenly stopped and leaned his face against the wall, knocking his forehead against it twice with a dull "thunk, thunk."
"What are you doing?"
Caught off guard by his sudden behavior, Maki jumped in fright and instinctively took a step back as she asked.
"I am sinking into the quagmire of the struggle between the self, the ego, and the superego—hesitating between being a beast and being worse than a beast. I feel like a bystander holding a toilet plunger standing beside a split in the tracks, and suddenly I have to use this toilet plunger to decide which person on which track the incoming train is going to hit…"
Still facing the wall, Takumi muttered, his voice sounding as though it carried some profound and unfathomable meaning.
"No—even if you say it in such a serious tone, I still can't understand what you're trying to say at all."
Maki stood frozen for a moment before finally speaking quietly to Takumi.
"What I mean is, the dryer is in this room. You should know how to use it, right? I have something I need to take care of for a bit. It's still raining outside, so just stay on the first floor for now. If anything comes up, just come find me on the second floor…"
Although he spoke as if asking for Maki's opinion, Takumi himself kept his forehead pressed against the wall and walked sideways past her like a crab. Along the way, Maki could even hear the clear sound of Takumi's forehead rubbing against the wall—so clear that she began to suspect he was using his own head like a rag to wipe the wall.
"Ah, okay…"
By the time she replied, Takumi had already walked straight to the stairs, then, still keeping his back turned to Maki, went upstairs just like that.
This guy… what was with him now?
Earlier, during their date—no, during their shopping trip—he had been touching her so casually, yet now that the two of them were alone in a room, he was suddenly acting all restrained.
Maki frowned in thought, lowered her head, and looked at the front armor on her chest that only had a very small curve.
Could it be… because she changed clothes, he started disliking her for being too short and too small?!
Once such a thought appeared, it became hard to erase.
Downstairs, Maki hugged the clothes and pressed a hand to her chest, showing a deeply hurt expression; upstairs, Takumi leaned against the wall, muttering to himself in a self-imposed isolation, looking as if life had lost all meaning.
The gloomy downpour outside still did not stop.
It looked like this rain might continue for a while.
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I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
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