Next came his shots with Kotobuki, but...
“...Aren’t you a bit close, Hestia?”
“Nonsense, Welf. I’m a goddess who treasures her Familia, so this distance is just showing my affection!”
“You’ve got the tone down, but Hestia would never say that...”
“M-My Hestia would!”
“Yeah, a fake Hestia!”
“C’mon, Welf, you’re gonna say no to me when you’re so close with that elf?”
“Hey, don’t make Welf sound like a womanizer!”
Jun found their bickering over Kotobuki’s clinginess entertaining and snapped a ton of photos, producing some truly nightmarish cosplay photos. Kai wouldn’t dare use these to promote anything either due to the fear of fan backlash.
Last, they all decided to take a sort-of commemorative photo together. To get all three of them to fit in the frame of the selfie camera, the two girls had to stick close to either side of Kai. He was aware they didn’t have a choice, but being conscious of it would have made his heart beat out of his chest, so he tried his best to empty his mind.
Sadly, the photo that came out took him aback as he came face-to-face with objective reality. Jun’s Ryuu probably wasn’t doing it intentionally, but the way she leaned into Kai, well...meant that her boobs were touching him. That seemed to piss off Kotobuki’s Hestia, who responded by clinging to Kai’s arm with both of hers while nobody was looking.
This could’ve worked if I was cosplaying Bell, thought Kai, but the reality was that he was Welf, making this cosplay photo go right past nightmarish and into NTR territory. Yet another photo Kai wouldn’t dare use to promote anything due to the fear of fan backlash. And backlash from the author, Fujino Omori.
After a change of outfits, the three got together for round two: the Date A Live group cosplay. And when Kai saw the Kaguya costume Jun wore, he was shocked. He knew going in that Kaguya had a very, uh, bondage-inspired costume...by which he meant it was ridiculously revealing, with the naughty bits above the waist covered by just a few belts. But when he saw what he was faced with...
“Jun, we agreed that you’d wear a flesh-colored undershirt under that! You can’t get away with that if you actually show the skin!”
“Aww, it’s no biggie.”
It was, in fact, a massive biggie. He saw two biggies right there, with little left to the imagination.
“It’s not like anyone’s watching, and wearing an undershirt feels so trashy, you know?”
“A dude is right here!”
“It’s like a swimsuit, isn’t it? We’ve been friends long enough that you’ve seen that plenty.”
Yes, it was true that Kai had basked in the glory of Jun’s magnificent swimsuit figure last summer. But!
“If we took photos of you in that outfit, Royalteach would murder me!”
“He won’t notice a thing, trust me.”
“Smartphone cameras are high-res these days!”
Kai’s other pressing concern was the absolute inferno raging in Kotobuki’s eyes, so it wasn’t happening!
Round three was the Fate/Apocrypha cosplay. For this one, Kotobuki challenged herself to crossplay. She wore some fake glasses, put on a white top with gold details, and dressed up as her favorite character, Caules.
All she has to do is wear some shoulder pads and she can get away with not binding her chest, noticed Kai. That’s impressive; flat chests really are a status symbol in the world of cosplay.
Not that Kai would dare let an iota of that thought show in his attitude.
Kotobuki tested out some expressions and poses to demonstrate Caules’s character, a vaguely unreliable boy with glasses. Unfortunately, she still wasn’t too used to acting so they didn’t come off well. She looked less like an unreliable boy and more like...a femboy. Jun was absolutely into it.
“Omigossssh!!! I think I’m getting a new fetish omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh omigosh OMIGOSH...”
The poor thing seemed to have broken the part of her brain that handled speech. Once Jun got her turn to photograph Kotobuki with Kai in his Shirou Kotomine costume...
“I’m no fujoshi, but I could go for this! My new OTP! Omigosh omigosh omigosh!”
“Please stop! A pairing between Caules and Shirou would be ridiculous!” Kotobuki, who had a bit of a taste for BL, gave a fiery argument. “Caules’s OTP is obviously with Lord El-Melloi II!”
She clearly had strong opinions on the subject, so out of fear for his life, Kai decided not to touch that one.
When they finished round four of their group cosplay marathon, they noticed it was already past 2 p.m. They decided to take a lunch break, so they all brought out packed lunches and shared their sides amongst themselves. The three were itching to go back to cosplaying, so they scarfed their meals down at record pace.
Next was round five, the Demon Slayer cosplay. Kai split up from the girls to dress up as Tanjiro. He put on his button-up shirt, pulled up his hakama, and donned his green checkered coat. His prop sword was a cheap toy sold just about anywhere, so the Hotei company was able to easily get him one. Sadly, recreating Tanjiro’s trademark burn scar on his forehead required very specific makeup expertise, so they’d have to make do without it. He planned to try editing the images later to see if he could add the scar digitally without it looking too unnatural, though.
“Man,” grumbled Kai as he looked at the cool outfit he was wearing in the mirror. “I still look like I’m dressed for a shrine visit.”
Was that something you could fix in image editing programs too? Was there a manliness slider he could crank up or something?
With such nonsense on his mind, Kai made his way toward the meeting spot. To match the setting of the series, they chose one of the Japanese-style rooms that had a patio facing the garden out back. Kai was the first to arrive, so he opened the shutters and waited for the others. Since nobody was looking, he got lost in practicing his Water Breathing, but he halted as soon as he felt a presence nearby.