...it was already too late. Sayumi was frozen solid, her eyes glued to my computer’s monitor. I hadn’t bothered shutting it down last night, and it had gone into sleep mode with my research still pulled up—meaning it was now on full display, front and center. Specifically, the screen displayed a web page—an internet search engine—with the results of a single-sentence query still pulled up.
girlfriend boobs how long until touch
“U-Umm... M-My apologies, Andou,” said Sayumi.
Please, no. Stop. No apologizing. This would be so much easier if you’d just punch me out.
Agggh... I wish I could just drop dead. That’d be so much easier than dealing with this shame! Even her finding porn or an eroge or something would’ve been better than this! The most pathetically delicate part of my male mind had been put on full display, and pure, overwhelming humiliation was tearing my heart to pieces.
“I-It’s all right, Andou. I’ll pretend I never saw anything,” Sayumi said in a painfully kind, consoling voice. It seemed she couldn’t stand to watch me plummet into the pits of despair.
Unfortunately, having her comfort me in such a mature sort of way just made me more depressed than ever. “L-Leave me alone...” I muttered.
Ugh. This is the worst. She’s definitely super grossed out now. Sayumi had dedicated an incredible amount of her free time to helping me with my studies, and there I was, spending all that time acting like a leering creeper. And of all the ways for her to find out...
“I’m...glad,” said Sayumi, her voice so faint, it seemed she’d had to battle her own shyness to say the words at all.
“Huh...?”
“W-Well, perhaps that isn’t quite the right way of putting it, but in any case, I’m not bothered. It’s a perfectly natural desire for an adolescent boy, I suppose you could say... And I, umm...I won’t deny that I have some interest in the area myself... Wh-Which is to say that you can rest assured you aren’t the only one who’s been thinking along those lines.”
“Sayumi...”
“Please...don’t make me elaborate.”
Sayumi turned her back to me, though not before I noticed how brightly she was blushing. It was such a cute gesture, I could barely stand it.
“Andou...do you want to touch me?”
“Huh? I, uh...”
“He he he!” Sayumi chuckled as she watched me stammer incoherently. “Well then, after you’ve passed your exams with flying colors, I’ll be happy to oblige.”
“Wait...really? You’re okay with that? That’s like a promise straight out of a hentai, you know?”
“It’s the least I can do. If offering up my body provides you with the motivation you need, then I see no reason to hesitate,” Sayumi replied. Her expression was perfectly deadpan, but there was a very slight waver to her voice that told me she was desperately holding back an awful lot of embarrassment.
“Ha ha... Well, I don’t think any guy would ever fail to rise to the challenge after hearing something like that from his girlfriend,” I said. My own laugh had come out a little strained as well. “Okay then, Sayumi—seeing as I’ve already humiliated myself, I figure I may as well make a request while I’m at it.”
“A request?” Sayumi repeated.
“Right—one that’ll help keep me motivated through my studies.”
“W-Well...as long as it’s nothing too perverse.”
“It actually isn’t at all,” I said truthfully.
I wasn’t planning on asking her for anything dirty. That sort of thing could wait...well, until my tests were over, anyway.
“Isn’t it about time you started calling me by my first name?” I said. “I mean...we’re dating now, right? It feels kinda weirdly formal for you to keep calling me ‘Andou’ all the time.”
“Oh...” said Sayumi. “Y-Yes, I suppose that’s fair. I’ve thought that I should reassess what I call you on a number of occasions as well, but I haven’t been able to find the right timing to make the change.”
“In that case, why not do it today? In fact, why not right now?”
“Th-That’s rather abrupt, isn’t it? This is something I’ll have to prepare myself for, in a mental sense... A-And besides, Andou, you’re hardly one to criticize when it comes to being affectionate. You never stopped speaking to me like I’m your club president even after I became your girlfriend.”
“Huh? W-Well, what am I supposed to do? You’ve always been someone I look up to... I don’t want you to think I’m taking you for granted by cutting too loose.”
“Oh, honestly—what on earth are you talking about? You’re supposed to be my boyfriend, so you needn’t act so demure. I wouldn’t mind in the least if you were more intimate. There’s absolutely no need for you to concern yourself with respect or formality with me.”
“Oh, like you aren’t minding your manners literally all the time.”
“That’s just a facet of my personality.”
At the end of our bickering, we took a moment to collect ourselves, then faced each other once more. Both of us had ended up sitting in a stiff, formal posture on the ground—it just felt like the right thing to do, somehow. The air was weirdly tense, but finally, we managed to speak up.
“I love you, Ju...Jurai.”
“I...I love you too, Sayumi...”
The moment the names left each of our mouths, intense, burning shame overwhelmed us, and we broke eye contact in unison. A few seconds later, however, we burst into spontaneous laughter.
“I think we’ll both need a little more practice,” Sayumi—my beloved girlfriend—bashfully admitted.
“Y-Yeah... True enough,” I replied. It seemed it’d be a while longer before our relationship could exit its awkward phase.
Honestly...is it really okay for me to be this happy? I wondered, saying a silent prayer that this wouldn’t all turn out to be just a dream.
Colorful Bow Route: The End
About a year had passed since we’d fought our final battle. It was the decisive clash between me and Kiryuu—the ultimate showdown between Guiltia Sin Jurai and Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First. That battle was truly the culmination of everything that had happened in our story up to that point...and it was a climax that defied description, no matter how hard I tried.
Words could not do it justice. Prose could never depict it. It was such an outlandishly over-the-top battle that your only choice would be to describe it in a brief, vague summary form, or otherwise to cut the scene entirely and only discuss it in retrospect. It was a battle the likes of which had never been seen before and would likely never be seen again. The chances of another conflict even remotely living up to it were simply nonexistent.
Seriously, though, what a fight! Looking back now that it was all over, it almost felt like the whole thing—my battle with Kiryuu, the Spirit War’s existence on the whole, the fact that we had ever possessed absurdly potent supernatural powers, all of it—had been a dream.
Anyway, that was all over now, and another year had come and gone. All sorts of stuff had happened during that year...and over the course of it, I’d started going out with a certain girl.
“Uggggggggh, I’m never, ever, ever, ever, ever getting this dooooooooone!”
Tomoyo let out a bizarre half scream, half moan as she kicked and flailed ineffectually atop her bed. The setting of this spectacle was Tomoyo’s room, and as I watched the locale’s primary resident writhe in agony, clutching her well-used hug pillow all throughout her miserable tantrum, all I could do was heave a sigh. I’d been stopping by Tomoyo’s place just about every day since summer vacation had begun, and while I would’ve loved to say that I’d been doing so for the sake of at-home dates...the truth was a little more complicated than that.
“It’s never-ending... Never, ever ending... I keep working and working, but it’s still not doooooone...” Tomoyo moaned as she crawled all the way under her covers. It sounded like she was reciting some sort of ancient curse.
You’d think that she was talking about her summer homework being never-ending...and you’d be wrong. I mean, partially wrong—she hadn’t so much as touched it, in fact—but that wasn’t the point at this particular moment. Rather, my girlfriend was agonizing over a looming deadline.
“I’m never finishing the manuscript for volume two! I’m so, so screwed... I’ve only got a week before it’s due, and I’m not even halfway dooone!”
Were these the wails of an aspiring author who’d self-imposed a deadline and was too proud to let herself fail to meet it? Not this time, no. They were, in fact, the wails of a newbie author suffering under the curse of her very first actual, genuine, set-by-someone-else deadline.
It all started just a little while after our final battle had reached its conclusion. One day, Tomoyo had gotten a phone call from a publisher that ran a rookie-author-of-the-year competition she’d submitted a story to. They had not, unfortunately, called to tell her that she’d won...but they did inform her that one of their editors had really taken a shine to her submission, and they were hoping she’d be willing to send them a revised version with the intent of getting it published in the long term. In short, she’d been picked up for publication out of the loser’s bracket.
And so, the debut of Kanzaki Tomoyo—pen name: Yugami Hizumi—was confirmed. The contest entry that would become her series’ first volume had already been revised, she’d already finished proofreading the final draft, and an illustrator had already been picked out. All she’d had left to do was wait until the book was published.
Now, however, there was something else for her to take care of: writing the second volume that would continue her story. That, unfortunately, had proven to be much harder than Tomoyo had been counting on.
“Oh, get a grip,” I said as I pulled the covers right back off her. Somebody needed to deliver some harsh truths to her, and apparently, that someone would have to be me. “Throwing a fit’s not gonna get your manuscript done, is it? Write! Get over there and get to work already!”
“Ugggh... You’re such a meanie, Juujuu...” Tomoyo moaned, glaring at me and on the verge of tears.
Incidentally, “Juujuu” was the nickname Tomoyo had taken to calling me recently. As to why she’d started calling me that, well...frankly, I’d rather not talk about it.
“Juujuu... It’s over for me. I’m so tiiired. I don’t wanna wriiite. I don’t wanna have to wooork. Write it for me, Juujuu, pleeease.”
“I’m already busy doing your summer homework, in case you’ve forgotten,” I replied.