“Hi, Mya. You’re home a little early today.”
It was past seven thirty in the evening. After returning early at Shirogamine’s suggestion, Miyako was greeted by Nayuta, wearing a smile and nothing else.
“Hey, Nayu.”
“I’m about to have dinner, so I’ll make some for you, too.”
Lately, when Miyako was late coming back, Nayuta cooked dinner. “Cooking,” for her, mainly meant turning on a rice cooker, so she was just buying stuff from the grocery or convenience store, but Miyako appreciated it nonetheless.
But not tonight.
“Sorry, I had a lot of cake at this meeting, so I’m not hungry. I’m gonna use the bath for a bit.”
“Oh, really? I’ll take a bath, too, then.”
So Nayuta padded into the bathroom and flipped the switch on the hot-water heater. Miyako removed her clothes as well, and the two of them took turns washing each other until the tub was filled with warm water.
“Did today burn you out, Mya?” Nayuta asked, covered in bubbles as she rubbed her soft body against Miyako’s back.
“Huh?” Miyako asked, worried. “What makes you say that?”
“It felt like you were moaning less than usual when I rubbed your boobs.”
“I never moan at all!”
“Oh, right. Even if you’re feeling it, you hold back from making any sound, don’t you?”
With that rejoinder, Nayuta softly began working Miyako’s breasts from behind. Miyako protested, holding herself back from moaning.
“W-wait, Nayu…! You’re acting so dirty with them…”
“Nya-ha-ha… I love it when you make dirty faces, Mya! ”
She gave a quick lick to Miyako’s ear. “Hyanh?!” she shrilly replied, unable to hold back.
Ever since her breakup with Itsuki last December, Nayuta had grown extremely close with Miyako—but even after they got back together, Nayuta’s excessively touchy-feely ways with her showed no signs of subsiding. Itsuki was probably devoting much more time to writing and his new sister these days, which meant less time spent with Nayuta compared to their pre-breakup days.
Miyako didn’t exactly want to be an outlet for her sexual desires, but going skin-to-skin with Nayuta naked like this didn’t feel bad to her. It felt really good, in fact. By now, usually, she’d be getting her revenge by squeezing Nayuta’s breasts and listening to her pant and beg for more—she was always weak whenever Miyako went on the attack. But:
“Look, the tub’s full. I’m going in!”
Briskly rinsing off, Miyako entered the bathtub.
“…You really are burned out, aren’t you, Mya?”
Nayuta, joining her, sounded concerned. Miyako grinned back at her.
“Mm, kind of… Work’s been tough lately. Everything’s coming to a head really fast with the new label.”
“Oh, really?” Nayuta replied, not digging any further. “By the way, Prince Manwhore was worried about you earlier. He was afraid some handsome writer would whisk you away.”
“Fuwa said that? Wait, was he talking about my assignment, Izumi?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
Certainly, Izumi was attractive. But he was still in high school—and most of all, he was her business partner. She hadn’t considered him as a personal love interest for even a moment.
“I swear…”
Haruto could be a handful, too, sometimes. But something about that made Miyako a little happy, she had to admit.
“He seemed pretty keen on the idea of asking you out on a date, too, but did anything happen there?”
“Huh?”
Miyako froze, not comprehending this. It made Nayuta even more curious.
“Oh? Didn’t you get a message from him? Itsuki and I were with him then. He spent, like, half an hour typing and deleting messages, and it was getting to be a downer, so Itsuki swiped the phone away and just sent something out real quick.”
“…!”
She remembered, all right.
Hey, if you’re free the next few days, wanna grab something to eat together?
The message had come a week ago, while she was all worked up answering e-mails from Izumi. She immediately replied, Busy now. I’ll touch base later but never followed up.
“I forgot… Wait, Itsuki wrote that?!”
Come to think of it, it was a pretty straightforward message by Haruto standards. He usually beat around the bush a lot more, and he liked listing reasons why they should hang out, such as a birthday or a new volume of his getting published.
“After all that work, you forgot Prince Manwhore’s invite? Now I feel sorry for him. Guess he doesn’t stand a chance after all…”
Nayuta looked weirdly joyful about that.
Uggghhh… I’m sorry, Fuwa… Better reply to him at once after the bath…
Internally apologizing to Haruto, Miyako found herself getting more and more depressed. She had just come back from being reminded of just how immature she was, and this was yet another heavy blow.
Sorry I’m so late replying. What do you think about eating Saturday night?
“Whoa?!”
Haruto yelped out loud upon receiving the reply to a message he’d sent to Miyako a week ago—technically Itsuki sent it, but still.
He had been on tenterhooks for the entire week she hadn’t answered him. By day three, his mindset was, Maybe she forgot to reply, so should I maybe check? But they said she’s busy at work, so I don’t want to bother her. And if I prod her for a response, maybe she’ll think I’m desperate and stuff, but ohhhhh, I don’t know, and it deflated any enthusiasm he had for writing work.
But now the reply was here. And…she said yes.
…That’s really a yes, right? Not some kind of detective-story fakeout? Like, this is actually implying she wants to go and not just literally asking my opinion?
He perused the short message over and over again, uneasy as ever, before concluding that it probably meant what he thought it did.
“Y-yessssssssssssssssssss!”
“Shut up, bro!”
The moment he shouted out, his sister yelled at him from the adjacent room. This would normally enrage him, but right now, he didn’t care.
He had dined with Miyako several times before, but this would be the first time they were going out just to spend time together, rather than stopping for dinner after running into each other at the publisher or whatnot. There was no reason why anyone shouldn’t call this a date.
A date…with Miyako… My first one…!
“Ah… Ahhhhhh…! Ahhh, what now, what now?!”