“Huh? A spa? You mean like hot springs?” She finally snapped back to reality. “B-But what about the change of underwear thing?”
“Well, you don’t want to change back into the same underwear after you get out of the bath, right?”
“What was with the part about leaving your socks on?”
“Any socks you put on are just gonna get dirty again anyways. So I just put the same ones back on. But I guess if you’re a clean freak, you’d probably wanna change into clean socks.”
“You said people were gonna see my underwear!”
“Well, yeah. You’re gonna change in the locker room, right? I’m a guy though, so I don’t really know if girls care what kind of underwear other girls wear.”
“You were confusing me on purpose!” She puffed out her cheeks indignantly. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
“Pfft! Everything I said was still true!”
“Well, yeah, but you led me on like that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Heh heh... I mean, you had the—ha ha—totally wrong idea!” I couldn’t stop laughing. At first she looked mad, but eventually she gave in and started giggling too.
“Honestly, it’s all your fault that I got so nervous!”
“It’s your fault for misunderstanding.”
“But still, what was the deal with cycling before you got here?”
“It feels really nice to take a bath after you’ve worked up a good sweat, right?”
“Jeez...” She finally relented and shrugged. “Anyway, you agreed to teach me how to spend the weekend alone, remember? Won’t they upcharge us since it’s the weekend, like the karaoke place did?”
She was right—a sign nearby said “Entry Fee: 850 yen (Weekends and Holidays: 950 yen),” so it was a bit more expensive on the weekend. That wasn’t a big deal, though.
“That’s why we’re gonna use this.” I took a booklet out of my wallet.
She gave me a puzzled look. “What’s that?”
“A discount book for this place. Buy ten tickets at once for 7,500 yen. You can use them even on weekends.” With one of these babies, you could enter for just 750 yen every day.
However, Hamamizawa-san didn’t seem very impressed. “Huh? So it’s not a spa at all, it’s just like an ordinary bathhouse. Why would a high school student buy a discount book for a public bathhouse anyway? Do you really come here often enough to need a discount on ten tickets?”
“Oh, actually I went in with N— Uh, with my friend for half of the discount book.” So actually I paid 3,750 yen for five tickets. “Anyways, don’t be all uppity about public bathhouses. These places are actually really amazing.”
“H-How?”
“You’ll see when we get inside. C’mon.” I handed her a ticket. To be honest, I didn’t wanna use one of my tickets on her because then I’d be short one later, so I asked my friend to use one of hers. I paid her, of course.
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back the 750 yen later.”
“Gotcha. Let’s go.”
And so Hanamizawa-san and I went inside the Royal Spa Kori.
◊◊◊
“Yaaaaw-aaaawn♪...” I couldn’t help but make that noise. I was bathing outside in one of the several open-air baths to choose from. There were two large ones, one made from rock and another from cypress, but I was in one of three smaller round baths, made for just one person to use. You couldn’t stretch your legs out, just like in a regular Japanese-style bathtub, but it was twice as deep so it didn’t seem cramped at all—it kind of reminded me of a rice cooker.
“Mmm.” I stretched out, pushing my breasts out (which were on the fairly large size, if I do say so myself). I hate to admit it, but this feels amazing.
Before we split up between the women’s and men’s bathing sections, Yashiro-kun had said, “Obviously I’ve never been inside the women’s baths before, but going by what my friend said, it sounds like it’s not much different from the men’s. So in that case, I’d recommend the round baths in the outdoor area. The water’s from a natural hot spring just like the larger ones, so it’s a good choice when those are too crowded.”
“Really? Don’t the individual baths get taken first, though?”
“Not really,” he’d said with a smile. “They’re surprisingly open a lot. I think the main reason is because you can’t stretch out your legs, like the baths at home. That’s probably why most people like going in the bigger ones instead.”
“That makes sense.”
“They’re a little deep, so it’s hard for the elderly to use. And one of them is an electric bath, so the controls are a bit confusing. Basically, there are a lot of reasons.”
“O-Oh...” I was a little freaked out about how much he knew. He really was a regular here, wasn’t he?
I giggled to myself as I thought about our conversation. The way he always wants to explain everything in detail makes him seem like such an otaku, I thought as I moved my right hand from my chest and rubbed my left arm. The orange bathwater felt so nice and made my skin feel so smooth. Ahh, I’m just melting... It feels so good, I’m just spacing out here... I wonder if Yashiro-kun’s enjoying his bath too?
I leaned against the edge of the tub and splashed my feet in the water. He said the men’s baths are pretty much the same as the ones here, so I bet he was also in one of the individual baths...
“Huh?” Wait a second. How did Yashiro-kun know what the women’s baths were like again? I vaguely remember him saying that someone told him. Wait, was the friend he came here with before...
That’s as far as I let my thoughts go before they melted into the warm bathwater.
◊◊◊
It had been about an hour since we got here when I got a message from Hanamizawa-san that said, “Where are you right now?” She’d basically forced me to give her my contact info before we split up to go our separate ways into the baths.
“The lounge,” I texted back.
“Hey, hey! Guys really do take short baths, huh?” Hanamizawa-san suddenly appeared, looking kinda sexy with her wet hair and flushed skin. Seeing my classmate fresh out of the bath like this made me feel a little naughty. It was a nice change to see her in the subdued colors of the bathhouse’s yukata and jinbei. I felt like I was on vacation at a hot springs resort or something.
“You borrowed clothes from the bathhouse? Wasn’t that expensive?” I was sure they charged a rental fee here. Normally people only rented them when they were going to get a body scrub or do hot yoga or aromatherapy—basically, if you were going to be here for a long time. Most people who came here just for the baths didn’t bother.
She stretched out her arms to show off the yukata and giggled. “There was a sign that said since today is their Ladies’ Day special, there’s no rental fee! So I couldn’t resist! Hee hee hee! Well, what do you think? Does it look good on me?”
“Uhh, yeah. Sure.” She did look pretty cute, but I figured she’d get even cockier if I complimented her, so I gave a half-hearted answer instead. She just looked around, not seeming to care either way.
“I didn’t know they had a lounge. Hm? What’s that? It looks really nice!” She pointed to what I was lying on.
“Huh? It’s an afternoon nap mat.” Though I didn’t know what they were actually called, there were several of them folded up around the lounge. I decided to lie down on one while I waited for Hanamizawa-san to finish her bath. I had chosen a manga from the nearly sixty volumes on the shelf in the lounge—this one was about a high school student who was dedicating his youth to bicycle races.
“Wow! I was just thinking about how I’d love to lie down!” Hanamizawa-san grabbed the mat that was next to me and plopped down on it. “Ooh, yeah. This is the stuff. Lazing around right after you get out of the bath is the best.”
“You sound like an old lady.”
“So? It’s the best, and that’s why you’re doing it too, right?”
“Yeah. You can take a nap, or watch that TV up there, or choose whatever manga you want from that shelf.”
“It’s so perfect I feel like I could waste all my time doing this.” She giggled as she rolled over to look at me. “Oh, you took off that cycling jersey and changed into a t-shirt.”
“I’m just gonna go home after this. Plus, I got all sweaty in that thing.”
“Oh, right. And you just got out of the bath.” She smiled, truly looking happy. “It says there’s a restaurant in here, and a sauna, and you can even get a massage!”
“That all costs extra, though.”
“They really thought of everything. It’s like an amusement park or something! But at an actual amusement park there are a lot of things you can’t do by yourself. Here you can enjoy everything by yourself! It’s so great.”