“Hee! What are you…? I’ve never felt this before… It kinda hurts but also…feels good?”
Shiika’s face went lax, though her body jerked beneath Ootsuka’s skilled hands.
Her forehead, visible through strands of her long bangs, was soaked with sweat, and her cheeks were glowing red, perhaps because her blood circulation had improved.
It was odd. This was ostensibly a sports massage. Why was the atmosphere in here so…charged?
“Can you two maybe try to sound a bit less…well, you know?”
Maybe this was why…
As her older brother, I couldn’t just stand by and let my sister say X-rated dialogue like this.
“Hmm? What?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Gak.”
Ootsuka, who was pushing Shiika’s shoulder blades with her fists, and Shiika, who was lying on her stomach and allowing herself to be abused, both looked at me, speaking in unison.
Yes, what they were doing was completely innocent and wholesome. Only a deranged pervert would find the things they’d been saying to each other inappropriate. I mean, I am a pervert. And it made me wanna drop dead. Someone, please kill me.
I looked away, making a noise of disgust like a guilty knight, and someone tapped my shoulder.
When I turned around, Akiba was giving me a thumbs-up.
“I know how you feel.”
“You understand, my fellow comrade?”
Ah yes, one-of-the-guys-type female friends—they were the best.
“I’ve never heard Shiika moan before… It looks like this one’s got a secret trick.”
“Hey! That’s my little sister you’re talking about!”
It bothered me especially that she’d been looking at my sister that way.
“Hey, boys. Enough of this dumb talk, okay?” Shibuya said.
“I’m a girl, though?!”
“It’s all the same if you’re looking at her with dirty thoughts. Anyway, Ootsuka explained what she’s doing from the start, right? She’s just figuring out the characteristics of Shiika’s body.”
Shibuya was right.
“I’ll check her range of motion,” Ootsuka had said before she started generating all this weird, sexually charged tension.
Few people are aware of how far their arms, legs, and joints can move.
Even if you try to bend your body, you’ll unconsciously stop just before it feels painful. You might not even be able to predict exactly where that limit is yourself, either.
A prime example of this is the scapula.
Most people don’t know that the shoulder blades can be moved independently, so it’s only by having someone else move them for you that the true range of motion can be understood.
…At least that’s what Ootsuka said. Luckily, I’d learned about the importance of shoulder blades in the process of studying martial arts, so I was able to easily understand her explanation. It just never occurred to me that it would also be an important element when it came to dancing.
“All right. I think I’ve got a good idea of Shi’s range of motion now.”
“…How’d I do?”
“Shi, to be brutally frank… You’re totally hunchbacked!”
Yeah, I knew that.
Ootsuka’s public declaration was merely a reaffirmation of that fact.
“Hunchback…like Quasimodo?”
“Incidentally, when it comes to making dancing look beautiful, it’s the worst possible posture to have!”
“Oh, nuts…”
“Ootsuka. What are you thinking, destroying my sister’s confidence like this?”
“Oh, I’m not trying to destroy her confidence. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t be holding back.”
Her smile was so bright, it was hard to tell if she was joking or being serious. Ootsuka once again ran her fingers over Shiika’s shoulder blades.
Shiika jerked and trembled with excitement.
“But Shi’s hunchback can be corrected. Due to the lack of exercise, she doesn’t have a ton of muscle that might restrict her range of motion, and it doesn’t seem like her bones are weirdly misaligned as a result. If she works on correcting her posture every day, she’ll be fine. She might even get a really sexy body!”
“Whoa! That’s my Shiika! I knew you had the potential!” I was impressed.
“Gakuto, could you be any more obsessed with your sister? By the way, though, how are we supposed to correct our postures?”
“That’s a good question, ManaMana. Hee-hee-hee. Watch this! Tatsuki’s god-hand technique!”
With her arms crossed in front of her body, Ootsuka struck a pose that made her look like the main character of a movie.
“I think I’ll just…”
“Don’t run away.”
“Ugh!”
Ootsuka must have predicted that Shiika was about to run away. She grabbed Shiika’s collar as she attempted to slink out of the studio.
I mean, I was as worried as Shiika was.
Ootsuka, please. I beg you. Be gentle with her…