Tashiro Kurenai took the initiative to pull Kuroha Akira back into her arms, her hands gently stroking through his hair with a tenderness that felt almost maternal.
"Hmm... just as I thought, a man's body temperature really is a bit higher than a woman's." She mused softly, her fingers continuing their slow, rhythmic motion. "Or maybe adolescent boys are just more energetic? How does it feel?"
"No man would hate this feeling." His voice was slightly muffled against her chest. "Do I really need to elaborate?"
"Hehe." A warm laugh vibrated through her. "I'm glad you like it."
Compared to their previous embrace, this one held more intimacy. The degree of deformation against her chest made it clear that Toshiro-san had closed the distance between them significantly.
Very nice...
Was this the feeling of having an older sister?
His current light novel project centered on a little sister character, but Kuroha Akira suddenly realized that the "older sister" archetype might be an equally unexplored blue ocean. Both had their appeals.
In his previous life, Kuroha Akira had no siblings. There were no lustful older sisters in his neighborhood, no childhood sweethearts with lifelong promises waiting for him. He'd never experienced this particular flavor of reassurance—the warm, heart-settling comfort that came from an older woman's embrace.
After they'd held the position for a while, Tashiro Kurenai seemed to feel that simple hugging wasn't enough repayment. A thoughtful expression crossed her face.
"But just hugging feels a bit perfunctory for everything you did for me... hmm..."
Her gaze swept across the room—that chaotic disaster zone that resembled a garbage dump more than a living space—and landed on exactly what she was looking for.
She reached out and retrieved a pair of red panties from the debris, a faint white mark visible in the center. Even she seemed slightly disgusted by them, holding them with just two fingers in an "O" shape.
"How about... I give you these, Akira-kun? You can make do with them?"
"..."
Why did everyone keep trying to hand him their underwear?
He wasn't a panty collector! That was some other protagonist's gimmick!
But this presented an opportunity. Kuroha Akira redirected the conversation.
"I don't need the panties. But could I see your hand instead?"
He wanted to confirm whether Toshiro-san possessed any talents and check her related proficiencies. That might reveal what industry she worked in. Also, by mentioning the key word "hand," he could observe her reaction—see if she had the same "grace" as him.
"My hand?" Tashiro Kurenai looked down at her palm, tilting her head in confusion.
That reaction... she didn't have a cheat.
If she was acting, it was too natural. She genuinely couldn't see anything on her hand.
Not every transmigrator had a system, then. Or maybe everyone's cheats manifested differently. Perhaps his was unique.
He couldn't determine anything definitive yet.
"I'd like to read your palm," he said smoothly.
"Wow!" Her eyes lit up. "Akira-kun, you can read palms?"
"I learned from an old man back home before."
Attributing palmistry to the elderly made sense—it was the kind of quasi-mystical skill that seemed more convincing when passed down from an older generation.
Toshiro-san was immediately intrigued. She released him from the hug and spread her hands in front of him, anticipation written across her features.
"Okay, then take a look! I remember palm reading covers lifelines, marriage lines, career lines, right?" She grinned. "I hope my second half shows me becoming a wealthy woman!"
"Well... let me see."
He'd set aside life and marriage for now, but career he could definitely assess.
First, the right hand.
Words appeared.
Makeup C
The talent grade wasn't exceptionally high, but it was respectable. With this level, Toshiro-san shouldn't be struggling so badly. She didn't seem like someone with zero EQ—surely she could manage upward and maintain decent colleague relationships. So why was she drowning her sorrows in alcohol?
Maybe she hadn't discovered her talent yet?
He moved to her left hand.
And immediately realized his guess was completely wrong.
The truly remarkable thing wasn't her talent—it was her proficiencies. Two of them in particular nearly blinded Kuroha Akira with their intensity.
Makeup Lv4
Massage Lv4
Level 4 proficiency. Two of them.
The higher the proficiency level, the more exponentially difficult it became to raise. Practicing ten different skills to Lv1 took less time than mastering a single skill to Lv3. And Lv4? That was master territory. The kind of level achieved only by people who'd done the same work for decades, treating each day as another step toward perfection.
There was no way Miss Toshiro—outwardly twenty-four—had accumulated this much proficiency naturally. Even if makeup skills could be accelerated by talent, massage had nothing to do with cosmetic ability.
This confirmed his suspicion: her mental age was significantly older than her physical appearance. Just as Kuroha Akira had suspected.
Perhaps Miss Toshiro in her previous life had been forty or fifty years old.
Which meant her mature charm wasn't actually "older sister vibes"—it was "MILF vibes."
An older sister with a MILF's essence... that created a strange attribute combination. Somehow more alluring. More distinctive.
From these two proficiencies alone, he could roughly guess her workplace. Someone skilled in both makeup and massage most likely worked at a beauty salon.
But the working conditions must have been brutal. Either an extremely demanding boss, or customers who constantly complained.
Yet with Lv4 proficiency in both areas, she was already superior to veteran technicians. Would customers really be dissatisfied?
Maybe rival shops hired people specifically to cause trouble?
And any salon owner with half a brain would treasure a top-tier technician capable of supporting an entire establishment. They'd bend over backwards to keep her happy. Only a complete idiot would target such an industry-leading master.
Something didn't add up. Everything felt incongruous.
Kuroha Akira suspected his current speculation had gone wrong somewhere, but he couldn't identify the source of the error.
He set the question aside and continued examining her proficiencies. Then he found something else—something very unusual.
Braille Lv2
Miss Toshiro knew Braille?
Level 2 wasn't casual hobby territory. This was practiced regularly, used frequently enough in daily life to reach this standard.
He kept looking. More unusual proficiencies appeared:
Sound Localization Lv2
Spatial Perception Lv2
Combined with the Braille, these could only mean one thing.
Miss Toshiro was blind.
Or rather, she had been blind in her previous life.
She could see now, clearly. But injuries and scars from previous lives carried over—the scar near Kuroha Akira's eye proved that.
Which meant Miss Toshiro hadn't yet experienced whatever event would cause her to lose her sight.
Would she encounter it later? Was it inevitable?
Damn it. Was there really such a thing as "fate"?
Kuroha Akira, who'd only wanted to check talents and proficiencies, suddenly found himself drowning in existential dread.
From one small detail, he felt like he'd glimpsed something he wasn't meant to know. Some uncomfortable truth hiding beneath the surface of this new world.
Was fate... unchangeable?
No matter how hard he struggled, would he still end up like his previous life? A corporate slave working himself to death, collapsing one day and never getting up?
No way. It couldn't be like that.
What was the point of transmigration, then? Just to make people despair a second time? To give them hope, let them build something new, then crush it all over again?
What kind of cruel joke was this?
Kuroha Akira's thoughts churned violently, his carefully constructed calm shattering in an instant. His hands trembled slightly as he stared at Toshiro's palm, seeing not lines of fate but chains of inevitability.
At that moment, every rebellious instinct in his body screamed the same words—that particularly chuunibyou line that felt less like anime posturing and more like genuine defiance.
My fate is mine to command, not heaven's!