“I’m home,” Kyouhei Nanbu said as he lifted a plastic shopping bag with a spring onion poking out of the top.
After undoing the almost military-level security, he stepped into his home. His voice echoed through the excessively large space. Though he called it home, it was by no means a house as far as most interpretations of the word went. The rooms had no locks, and in fact, they were barely separated, meaning it was fundamentally just a single room under the one roof. It might sound nice to call it a studio apartment, but the place was too open, as if it were asking: “Privacy? What’s that? Can you eat it?”
That being said, the floor was strewn with goods from Kyouhei’s father’s job: cardboard boxes, shipping containers, wooden boxes, and so on. As a result, there were plenty of things to hide behind.
And well, all of that was to be expected; it was one warehouse among many in the warehouse district. All they had done was bring household items in... Frankly, calling that a house publicly would bring tears to housebuilders everywhere.
Leaving all that aside...
“Welcome back, Kyouhei,” called a girl, sticking her head out from around one of the towers of goods. Then, she rushed towards him like a puppy when its owner came home.
Pamil Terrill Karl Bergmann, a mysterious foreigner who whole-heartedly claimed to be an android body double of another country’s princess. Indeed, it was a claim that seemed to be nothing more than the delusions of someone with a screw loose.
There should have been no way for modern technology to create an android indistinguishable from a human—that much was clear. However, the girl in question performed feats impossible for humans: she fired destructive blasts of light, lightning, and fire. And so... things were getting all the more puzzling.
Regardless, whether she had cogs and gears inside her or not, her beauty was unquestionable. As one might expect of a princess’ body double, she was lovely and refined. If she stood there silently, you could see the refinement emanating from her.
Her hair flowed like golden threads, her eyes sparkled like sapphires, and her skin was unblemished and porcelain-like. Her features still expressed her youth, so she was more adorable than alluring, but the contours of her body still did their duty. The line from her arm to her waist drew a smooth curve, and her legs were dainty and delicate like a fawn’s. Overall, there was still room for growth, but the areas that should protrude did so, the areas that should be slim were likewise, and the area around her taut thighs was...
“...Wait right there,” Kyouhei groaned weakly.
He was lost for five seconds, scrubbing at his eyes three times.
He’d now taken in what was in front of him.
He took in a lungful of air, and... “What the hell are you playing at?!” he roared.
Pamil, for her part, just looked at him in confusion. “Hmm?”
“What’s with that get-up?!” Kyouhei yelled, looking into the distance at her lack of understanding.
“Hm? It’s an apron,” she declared.
“It’s just an apron!” he protested.
She was simply wearing an apron—absolutely nothing else. In other words... a naked apron! An outfit that represented a man’s hopes and dreams... or something like that. The apron was even white! And then, the fanciness of it, the frill and lace decorations, made it all the more clear that she wore nothing beneath it.
“Is there something strange about that?” Pamil asked, tilting her head.
The word ‘adorable’ didn’t do the action justice. The soft movement of her golden hair across her pale shoulder was more seductive than one might think.
There were multiple problems here.
And they mainly concerned the nethers of a healthy teen boy.
“Obviously!” Kyouhei cried, suppressing his own worldly thoughts.
She remained confused for a few moments before punching her hand in realization. “Right, sorry,” she apologized to him.
“So you get it.”
“I do,” Pamil nodded. “I went for the looks, but even if I had the looks, it’s meaningless without the heart behind it.”
“...What?”
“I forgot an important line,” she said with another deep nod. “Welcome home, Onii-chan ♪” she continued, twisting as she put her fist to her lips, but with a lack of expression, like a Vulcan. “Do you want a bath? Dinner? Or perhaps—”
“Shut up! Don’t say that! You say any more and I’ll really get angry! How’d you even connect those things?!” Kyouhei yelled, his face red.
“Ngh... What’s wrong, Kyouhei? I’m following the instructions properly,” Pamil pouted.
“The hell kind of instructions are they?!” Kyouhei demanded, hiding his energetic Johnson (so to speak) with the plastic bag in his hand. “Anyway, put some clothes on, then you can learn how to cook!”
● ● ●
Things started roughly half an hour prior, on the way home from school.
“A cooking practical?” Kyouhei asked, the pitch of his voice rising with the final word.
His question prompted an oddly eager and excited nod from the girl he was addressing. “We’ve got... a cooking lesson... it’s across the third and fourth period, and we’ll make a lot... like Hamburg steak, and soup...”
Her anachronistic bobbed hairstyle and the very round glasses on her face were her most distinguishing features. Consequently, she seemed rather plain and unfashionable, despite her generally good-looking features. Her behavior was gloomy too, so that hurt her impression all the more. This was Sanae Murata, Kyouhei’s junior and Pamil’s classmate.
Their routes home started the same, so she and her friend Youko Minebe had recently become common companions for the siblings on their way home. Together, they were having a conversation after they’d just stopped at a postbox, where they usually parted ways, in the fourth block. Youko had already left.
“And... we’ll eat what we make tomorrow... for lunch, so you don’t need to prepare a lunchbox.”
“Yup, Kyouhei, you don’t need to make a lunchbox,” Pamil parroted. “you can have a nice lie-in.”
“Don’t know why you’re so proud of it, seeing as you’re the reason I’m making them,” Kyouhei said with a half-smile.