“—! Ruchika…”
“Will you please hold my hand? I’m just a little kid, after all.”
When I said this to her with a smile, Leonie seemed unsure of what she should do at first. But finally, she seemed to give in, smile, and say…
“If you insist.”
She grasped my hand and squeezed it back.
“All right, get under the blanket!”
“Okay.”
“Sure!”
We were back in our room at the dorm. For some reason, though, there weren’t two of us but three: Leonie, Nor, and me. This had all started the night Leonie and I had gotten back from our shopping trip.
“It’s not fair. I can’t believe the two of you went out without me!”
That was the first thing Nor had said to us upon seeing us come back from our outing. She’d been puffing her cheeks in a pout and whining about how unfair it was.
“You two have been awfully close lately. I feel so lonely being left out…”
“Come on, you know that’s not true…unless…?” I’d said.
“Grrr!”
“That’s not true, Nor. You’re imagining things,” Leonie had said.
Aw, what?
“I would never want to leave you out, Nor. You’re one of my closest friends. You know, sometimes, you can be really scatterbrained.”
“‘Scatterbrained’…?”
“Leonie, do you realize how casually you say some really mean stuff?”
Still, just as Leonie had said, Nor was a close friend of hers. And it was a shame we had made Nor feel left out. But I had just the idea on how to make it right.
“Then why don’t we have ourselves a pajama party to deepen the ties of our friendship?”
“‘Pajama party’?”
“Is this another one of your indecent schemes?”
The two of them regarded me with suspicion.
“What do you mean, ‘another’?! I’m always keeping it family-friendly! I just mean, like, we’d get together, eat snacks, and stay up late chatting.”
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
“Well, if that’s all it is.”
And so, we decided to throw ourselves an impromptu pajama party as soon as possible. Since the rules and regulations at the Hero Institute were so strict, Nor really wasn’t supposed to be allowed in our room. She had to show up for the evening roll call, after all. But Nor had reached an agreement with her roommate to overlook her sneaking out of their room. Apparently, she had convinced her roommate by promising she would make it up to her later and help her with her homework.
The three of us were in our pajamas. Mine were a simple, classic design in white and light blue, and Leonie’s were thick and red. But Nor’s…
“I didn’t expect your sleepwear to be so…sexy, Nor.”
“You can’t even call those pajamas. It’s basically a negligee.”
“Please, don’t stare like that… I just can’t sleep unless I wear something as light as possible!”
Nor had on a cream-colored negligee that was more like a super thin piece of cloth draped over her. It was revealing enough that even someone of the same sex wouldn’t know where to look at her. And the fact someone as introverted as Nor was wearing such a bold piece of sleepwear was enough to make my heart pound.
—Are you perhaps having some unfaithful thoughts?
Nuh-uh, you know Leonie’s the only one for me.
Still, seeing her like this, I could tell Nor had a nice figure. I myself had a pretty big chest and butt, but I was short. Nor’s body, on the other hand, stuck out in all the right places and had curves where all the right curves should be. Then there was Leonie—even though her figure wasn’t quite as glamorous, she was tall, and her body was well-proportioned. Jealous.
“It must be nice to have such good figures.”
Munching away at some snacks, I delivered this comment to them with a sigh. Out of all the snacks, the cheap ones I had brought were the most popular. Leonie and Nor had gotten some kinds of biscuits and cookies, but they were hard, not very sweet, and overall not that tasty. The snacks people ate in this kingdom reminded me of emergency provisions. I would have to introduce them to a few of my favorite shops later.
“That’s my line. Nor goes without saying, but even you, Ruchika, are rather well-endowed in your bust and hips.”
Whereas I’m flat as a pancake, complained Leonie.
“I-if we’re comparing figures, I think yours is really the best out of all of us, Leonie,” Nor responded. “Plus, when your chest or butt is large, it draws too much weird attention from men…”
“Oh, I get that. They think they’re being so sly when they take a peek, but it’s always super obvious.”
“Yeah.”
Though, I couldn’t really blame them; even I couldn’t help but try to steal a glance when I saw an attractive girl.
“You should be glad you’re even getting looked at. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that kind of gaze directed at me—”
“Leonie, you’re so dense!”
“Huh?”
“I’m with Ruchika on this one.”
Like Proto had said, Leonie had already received confessions of love from a number of suitors since enrolling. It was obvious that boys were noticing her.
“There’s no way a cute girl like you is getting overlooked,” said Nor.
Though, on the surface, she was being treated like an underachiever or some kind of malignant tumor by the school, she was still super popular with the opposite sex.
“I wonder… I don’t have a voluptuous figure like Ruchika’s or a well-proportioned, beautiful body like Nor’s. Who would be interested in such boring looks as mine—?”
—Ruchika.
Hmm? What is it, Proto?
—I believe it would be beneficial for you to refer to the Gear’s secret data.
“Secret data”?
—We Gear automatically collect a variety of data, one of which happens to be a count of how many times the wearer is subject to the gaze of the opposite sex. Perhaps you should compare the data we’ve collected on the three of you since you enrolled at the Hero Institute.
What the hell are you Gear doing all day anyway?
—Now, now, why don’t you just go ahead and tell Leonie and Nor? In order to view the numerical values, you simply…
I told Leonie and Nor how to view the data, as Proto had instructed me.
“What the…?”
“Wh-whaaat?”
“Well? What’s it say?”
Once the exact numbers were displayed to the two of them, they started to blush.
“Mine says eight hundred ninety-seven times. To think I’m being looked at so much…”
Nor wrapped her arms around her body as if to hide it. But honestly, that number sounded low after seeing her figure in that negligee.