“We’re going to Tsuki-chan’s place.”

“School?”

“Come on. Obviously school isn’t the issue right now.”

“No, but—”

“Ren-chan’s precious panties might end up in the hands of some total stranger. They’re still up for auction, you know? Are you really fine with that?”

“Well... no, not really...”

I was having trouble figuring out how to respond, so I glanced over at Usotsuki-chan.

She gave me a strained smile.

“Don’t worry. I’m not actually going to sell them in a situation like this~”

Yuu reacted to every word she said like she was setting off landmines, and unlike usual, she looked genuinely pissed.

“We’re coming in either way.”

“Sure~”

And just like that, the three of us ended up heading to the home of the root cause of all this bullshit: Usotsuki-chan.

We considered taking the bus, but her apartment wasn’t so far that we couldn’t walk, so in the end we went on foot.

The three of us walked side by side, talking the whole way.

“So that message you sent yesterday was about this?”

“Yep~ I was gonna talk to you about it, but Ren-kun ignored me.”

“I didn’t ignore you. I was asleep. I told you that.”

“Were you really~? If you’d replied properly back then, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”

“Hold on, so my panties getting auctioned off is somehow my fault?”

“About half.”

“Half, huh...”

Usotsuki-chan walked beside me, her blonde twin-up hair swaying back and forth.

The fact that she could shove the blame onto someone else that hard and still act unapologetic was almost impressive. If she’d just given me one honest “sorry,” there was a real chance I would’ve turned around and gone straight to school.

“Tsuki-chan.”

Yuu, walking on my other side, kept staring at her with her head tilted a little, her eyes cold as hell.

“You’re not reflecting on this at all, are you?”

“I-I am~. I mean, okay, maybe this time I went a little too far...”

Whether that regret was real or not was questionable at best.

Yuu finally gave up on glaring and let out a sigh, then ran her fingers through the single braid hanging over her left shoulder before puffing out her cheeks and shooting me a look that clearly said, Say something to her already.

But honestly...

“We’re just getting my panties back from Usotsuki-chan. You don’t need to get that worked up.”

“What the hell... you really don’t get it...”

This time Yuu sighed at me.

Then she raised one finger and launched into a serious lecture.

“Think about it the other way around, okay, Ren-chan? If your precious, precious girlfriend’s underwear ended up in the hands of some creep, how would you feel?”

I hesitated.

It was weirdly hard to imagine. I’d never actually seen anyone in real life get turned on by somebody else’s stuff, so people like that almost felt fake to me, like they only existed in fiction. Sure, in stories you get criminals or pervert characters doing shit like that, but that was still fiction. It didn’t feel real.

“I mean, it’s just underwear—”

“.........”

“—No. Yeah. That wouldn’t be okay.”

I corrected myself fast when I saw the look Yuu gave me, a look so sharp it felt like she could’ve shot a bear dead with it.

“I’m not saying, ‘It’s just underwear, so who cares.’ Of course not. Even if it’s just underwear, if it belongs to someone you like, it’s still disgusting knowing it’s ended up in the hands of some stranger.”

Yuu immediately brightened.

“Correct!”

Seeing the satisfied look on her face, I let out a quiet breath inside.

Okay. Good. That was the right answer.

“Something that belongs to the person you like is basically part of that person too. If stuff like that gets leaked out where you can’t see it, of course you’re gonna be on guard, right?”

“Y-Yeah, that’s true.”

The idea that people naturally feel at least a little possessive toward the person they like was common enough. Yuu clearly agreed with that part hard, but in her case that possessiveness seemed to extend to their belongings too.

Was that... normal?

“You’re my boyfriend, Ren-chan. There’s no way I can just ignore it.”

Yuu snorted through her nose a little, still angry.

Even if we were only a fake couple, the fact that she cared this much about me in my role as her fake boyfriend probably came from how genuinely kind she was. I gave a crooked smile, half impressed, half exasperated, and Yuu smiled lightly back.

But she didn’t forget to glare at Usotsuki-chan either.

“Tsuki-chan, seriously, reflect on what you did.”

Usotsuki-chan tried to whistle, except it came out as a pathetic little burst of air that didn’t sound like a whistle at all, and she quickly looked away.

Usotsuki-chan lived in one unit of an eight-story apartment building. We passed through the auto-lock front entrance, took the elevator up to the fourth floor, and headed to her place at the far end.

After letting us into the living room, she started toward the kitchen.

“Tea~?”

“Don’t need it.”

“Snacks?”

“Don’t need those either!”

Yuu snapped back, clearly irritated.

Her eyes were already darting all over the place. Full panty-retrieval mode had been activated. I got it. I needed to wrap this up and get to school too.

Yuu strode straight toward the back room without hesitation.

She opened the door with zero pause, and behind it was exactly what you’d expect from a girl’s room, the curtains drawn shut and the whole place dim. There was no doubt at all that this was Usotsuki-chan’s room.

The moment Yuu spotted a single piece of underwear lying carelessly on the floor in the middle of it, she let out a visible breath of relief.

“There it is...”

She dropped to her knees and picked up my panties with both hands.

I still had endless questions about why she was handling them with the kind of tenderness people usually reserve for holding a child, but whatever. At least the immediate problem was basically solved.

“We’ve got the actual item. Now all that’s left is for Usotsuki-chan to cancel the listing.”

When I looked over at her, Usotsuki-chan twisted awkwardly and held up her phone to show us the flea market app’s login screen.

“I think... the paper with my password written on it is probably somewhere in this room...”

“I see.”

So she’d apparently lost the paper with her password on it somewhere in her own room.

At that point, even I could start seeing what had happened here. Normally, when you use one of those apps, your info is already saved and all you have to do is tap the login button. Or if you really do type your password every time, then usually you just remember the damn thing. Which meant Usotsuki-chan probably didn’t use this app often.

The whole problem had likely started because she tried to pull a prank using something she wasn’t used to using. The fact that she’d written the password down at all was probably lucky. At least this wasn’t a complete dead end. That alone made me feel a little relieved inside. Once we found that paper, everything should be fixed.

“We’re looking for it.”

“O-Okay.”

Usotsuki-chan flinched for a second at the force behind Yuu’s voice, but then stepped into her own room and started searching too.

Watching the room turn into something that looked like a police raid, I stayed near the doorway with nowhere to put myself. Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether it was okay for me to just barge into a girl’s room like that. Still, I didn’t close the door. I kept my eyes on the two of them almost obnoxiously hard and waited until one of them finally noticed.

“Ah, Ren-chan, don’t come in.”

“Got it.”

Yuu was the first to catch my stare and shut me down.

The way she said it sounded like she had the right to decide, not the actual owner of the room. It was so casual I almost accepted it without thinking.

“You can come in, though.”

“Hey, Tsuki-chan—”

“Ren-kun, help us look. It’ll go faster that way.”

“All right.”

Since the room’s owner had given me permission directly, I stepped inside.

A large pale green rug covered most of the wood floor, and the soft, fluffy feel under my feet was weirdly ticklish.

“So you listen to Tsuki-chan, not your girlfriend?”

Yuu muttered, clearly unhappy, cheeks puffed out again.

I ignored the look she threw my way and got to work.

“Come on. The best way to find something is brute force. One person is good, two is better, three is better than that.”

Yuu had already torn through half the place, so I focused on the parts neither of them had touched yet.

“I know I asked for help, but don’t stare too much...”

Usotsuki-chan said.

“A little late for that, isn’t it?”

I said, baffled by the sudden modesty.

Then, following Yuu’s lead, I checked under the desk, under the chair, in the gaps beside the shelves, and anywhere else the paper could’ve slipped.

For Usotsuki-chan, or maybe just in general, the room was surprisingly clean. But that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of places to search. Since I was a guy, opening her closet or drawers was off-limits, but even checking under the bed took some effort—mainly because there was a low chest shoved partway underneath it, with drawers I obviously couldn’t open.

Still, in the gap beside it, I found something that was... kind of a big fucking deal.

I immediately watched Usotsuki-chan’s face and movements, trying to figure out what exactly I was looking at.

But there was no obvious reaction. No weird shift in expression, nothing strange in how she moved. Right then she was just seriously searching for the paper with the password on it, same as the rest of us. If she looked a little gloomy, that could’ve been because of the whole situation, so it didn’t narrow anything down. I couldn’t see any visible injuries on her body either, and nothing about the way she was moving suggested she was hurt somewhere.

So I turned my back to the girls, quietly picked up the thing in question, and flipped through it.

Two textbooks. Three notebooks.

From what was written inside, the notebooks clearly weren’t doodle books or random scraps. They were used to copy notes from class. No question, they were study materials. Every single one of them had covers that were ripped to hell and falling apart, with all kinds of stains splashed across them.

Reddish-brown stains. Pitch black stains. Faded yellow stains.

And it wasn’t like a drop or two had gotten on them by accident. No, they’d been deliberately, viciously messed up. The ugly blotches looked almost patterned. There was no way anyone could’ve used them at school in that condition. Since the notebooks had only been used up to around half their pages, the most reasonable conclusion was that they’d gotten ruined midway through and she’d had to stop using them.

The damage itself was nasty. The torn covers were bad enough, but there were also dark puncture marks on both the front and back, like somebody had repeatedly stabbed them with a pencil or mechanical pencil. Some spots had unnatural dents and warped sections that looked like someone had jammed scissors into them. The whole thing looked so wrecked it almost felt cursed.

This wasn’t the time to start questioning whether Usotsuki-chan herself had done it. If there’d been obvious insults or mean graffiti all over them, that would’ve been one thing. But the damage had been kept just vague enough that it was hard to point to it cleanly and say what it was. I couldn’t say for sure whether this qualified as evidence of bullying, but at the very least it was definitely something bad for Usotsuki-chan.

The other question was why she’d kept them. Since I was the one casually finding them now, maybe even she’d forgotten they were there.

The contents of the notebooks and textbooks included material from recent classes too.

Which meant the traces of bullying themselves were recent.

“No luck...”

Yuu finally said, then looked over at me.

“What about you, Ren-chan?”

“Nothing on my side either. Just to be safe, can you check the drawers under the bed too?”

“Yeah.”

I hid the damaged books and notebooks farther back where they were less obvious, then had the girls check the chest under the bed.

In the end, we found nothing at Usotsuki-chan’s place. No new evidence, and no key to getting my panties off that auction listing either.

“It’s already lunchtime.”

“Yeah.”

The search at Usotsuki-chan’s place had felt urgent enough that I couldn’t exactly say we shouldn’t have done it, but coming away with absolutely nothing was still unexpected. At that point, even the story about her losing the paper with the password in her room was starting to feel sketchy.

Usotsuki-chan had said she was taking the day off, so unlike Yuu and me, she wasn’t planning to go to school at all. Since it didn’t seem smart to spend any more time on this right then, I suggested that for now we put the whole panty issue on hold, actual panties included. I appreciated how much Yuu cared, but if we were talking about who was actually involved here, it was me and Usotsuki-chan. The victim was me—or maybe my panties, technically—and dragging my childhood friend from class deeper into it was starting to feel like a waste.

On the way to school, we decided to eat lunch on the familiar riverbank slope.

I pulled the raincoat I’d stuffed into my bag and spread it on the ground like a sheet so the two of them could sit on it.

“And with that, here you go♥”

Yuu said, handing me one wrapped bundle.

“Thanks.”

I took it from her and opened the lid right away.

“Oh, damn. This looks good again.”

“Ehehehe♥”

Yuu’s cheeks loosened into a sloppy grin at my reaction.

“Ah, I packed the chopsticks together. Here, these are yours, Ren-chan.”

“Thanks.”

That warm, fragrant smell floating up from the lunchbox hit me every time. Even though the ingredients changed from day to day, the scent somehow always gave me the same strange feeling, like nostalgia I couldn’t quite place. I didn’t understand it, but for some reason I really liked it.

“‘Let’s eat.’”

As usual, we put our hands together before picking up our chopsticks and starting in on the carefully made lunch. One foil-lined section held mini hamburg steaks. Between that and the vegetables—broccoli and cherry tomatoes—sat a scoop of potato salad. In the biggest section was a tightly packed bed of rice, shining like pearls, and right in the center of it sat a pickled plum glowing red like a ruby.

It was one of those perfectly balanced lunches that looked good before you even took a bite.

And the taste didn’t let the appearance down either. It was perfectly seasoned, like always.

“I always feel bad about this. Especially on weekdays.”

“It’s really not that much work, okay? I’m already making food for my family anyway.”

Naturally, Yuu’s own lunch was built exactly the same as mine. The only difference was that the container was a different color and size. Mine being a good bit larger was honestly a blessing.

“I couldn’t do it. Making breakfast and lunch every morning has to be rough.”

“It seriously isn’t.”

“Nah, it is. Now that I’m actually the one cooking, I finally get how much work lunchboxes are.”

“It really doesn’t bother me, though.”

At my words, Yuu made a conflicted face, like she was happy I understood but also kind of felt sorry for me. She kept saying she made these happily, and I believed her, but that didn’t mean I could ignore how much effort it took.

“...Right, you cook for your little sister too, don’t you?”

“Mostly simple stuff.”

Yuu already knew my younger sister was a shut-in.

“Looks like she feeds herself lunch, though. So at least I don’t have to make a lunchbox for her.”

“What does she eat?”

“No clue.”

“What do you mean, ‘no clue’...?”

She narrowed her big, long-lashed eyes and laughed softly.

“Her habits are still a mystery. Stuff in the fridge tends to disappear little by little, and every now and then there are traces that she cooked something.”

“What the hell.”

“I’ve at least confirmed that reheating premade food is her favorite option, because it’s easy.”

“You’re making it sound like a documentary.”

“Not wrong.”

The truth was, even I didn’t fully know everything my sister got up to, which made it feel more real, not less.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I understand at least a little of how much work you put in. And I appreciate it.”

“Hmm, I seeee.”

Yuu nodded, then turned her face away.

“What?”

“Nothing♥”

When she turned back, she was wearing a huge smile.

“Then appreciate me more and more♥”

“I do. I really do. Seriously, thanks for this. Always.”

“Ehehe♥ More, more♥”

She sat there all proud of herself, and eating her lunch while looking at that goofy, adorable expression of hers—with the riverbank view on top of it—made the whole thing feel almost like a picnic. It wasn’t bad at all.

We messed around like some stupidly lovey-dovey couple while we ate, and by the time I finished, I was full.

“Thanks for the meal.”

“You’re welcome.”

We stayed seated and rested for a bit. We still had around ten minutes before we really needed to get moving if we wanted to make it to school and sit through the afternoon classes, so we just relaxed and traded meaningless conversation.

“Come to think of it, there are already plenty of couples in our year, but I wonder how many of them bring lunch for each other like this.”

“On school days, we always do bento, but girls making lunch for the guy they’re dating? That’s probably pretty rare. Most people are probably still having their moms make theirs.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

I murmured that with genuine feeling, and Yuu tilted her head.

“Why?”

“I was just thinking how lucky I am. Thanks, Yuu.”

“Why are you saying that all of a sudden... ehehehe♥”

She tried to hold it in, failed, and ended up grinning all over again.

“You don’t have to thank me. I do it because I want to♥”

“It was really good today too.”

“That’s why—... ehehehe♥ ...Jeez! Compliment me that much and nothing extra’s gonna come out!”

She sounded flustered, almost annoyed, but she was obviously happy.

Then she let out a long, dreamy sigh.

“...Haaah... This feels like a dream...♥”

“What does?”

“Noooothing~♥”

Yuu was smiling like an idiot again, but I knew why. According to her, she liked this kind of “married-couple stuff.” That was a hell of a thing to say when we were supposedly still just at the boyfriend-girlfriend stage, but honestly, if I thought about it, eating a homemade lunch from my girlfriend every day really did feel less like dating and more like some weird married life.

Salarymen bringing lunch to work was the obvious example, and in general, regular high school couples probably didn’t manage each other’s meals to this extent. While actually living this whole “life with a devoted childhood friend” setup you usually only see in games, I ended up thinking about a lot more than I’d expected.

“Let me buy you a meal sometime.”

“You don’t have to~♥ ...Ah.”

Something seemed to click in her head mid-smile, and Yuu’s face suddenly went serious.

“When you say ‘sometime,’ when exactly?”

“Could be today. Tomorrow. The weekend. Doesn’t matter.”

Once I made it clear I was just offering casually, Yuu answered in that same casual tone.

“Ren-chan, do you ever want to eat at the school cafeteria once in a while?”

“Not really. I mean, I’ve got food. Good food. That alone already makes me happy.”

I pointed at the now-empty lunchbox beside me.

Yuu’s face softened right away.

“Then how about this? How about I make food for you on Saturdays and Sundays too♥”

“Huh?”

That one actually made my body stiffen.

Lunch on this level... even on weekends? If she did that, then together with weekdays, I’d basically be eating like this every day. It would save me time and effort, and if I wasn’t careful it might even be good financially too—well, no, at that point I’d at least pay for ingredients.

...That line of thought hit me hard enough that I had to force it out of my head.

This had started because I wanted to treat her to a meal as a small way of paying her back, and somehow it had turned into Yuu offering to make food for me on weekends too.

“No, no. That’s too much. You really don’t need to adjust your whole life around me like that.”

“Ehh. I was actually serious...”

If she truly meant it, then that was even more reason I couldn’t just accept. Looking at it normally, my situation was already kind of unusual, and making Yuu keep catering to it nonstop would be a huge burden. Time and energy weren’t infinite. And teenage years, especially in high school, were priceless. Even if you got rich as an adult, there were some things you’d never be able to buy back.

“I’m really happy you’d even offer, though.”

I laughed dryly, even if a part of me did feel like I was turning down something ridiculously nice.

“Then can I come hang out this weekend?”

“Huh?”

Again with the unexpected turn. Between that and what she’d just offered, I started wondering if Yuu had some reason she needed to see me. But unlike before, this one was just an invitation to hang out.

“Or do you already have plans?”

“No, not really.”

“Then is that a no?”

“No, of course it’s fine.”

“Then it’s decided.”

It felt a little pushy, but I didn’t have anything going on this weekend, so I agreed.

“Oy, Hoshimiya! You show up late with your girlfriend first thing on a Monday and expect us not to ask what kind of sweet shit you got up to?”

“Oy, Hoshimiya! Do you have any idea what it’s like having a top-tier school beauty shove lovey-dovey couple crap in your face?”

Waiting for me when I got to the classroom near the end of lunch break were Machida and Masunaga, the “Machi-Masu” combo. Machida kept his hair long because he was in the baseball club, and Masunaga had a shaved head because he was in table tennis. How exactly either of those things logically led to those hairstyles was beyond me, but they were good friends I’d picked up almost as soon as school started.

“Oy, Hoshimiya! Don’t ignore us, answer! And why are you half smiling like that?”

“Oy, Hoshimiya! Why do you look weirdly drained after showing up late with your girlfriend? Don’t tell me you actually—!?”

“Quit it with the horny otaku improv.”

I cut them off.

That was enough to make them stop clinging to me with their nonsense.

My little sister being a shut-in and me taking care of her, or my panties currently being held hostage by someone else and me getting dragged into a mess over that—none of that was something I needed to tell them. And even if they asked, I probably still wouldn’t.

“I was suffering from hemorrhoids this morning. Yuu was escort duty.”

“Ah...”

“Damn... you do have hemorrhoids...”

They both looked at me with genuine pity.

The fact that these idiots, who were still in high school, understood the suffering of hemorrhoids well enough to react like that was honestly kind of impressive.

Of course, that whole hemorrhoid story was a total lie. I had no clue what hemorrhoids even felt like.

“You okay now?”

“Maybe the ointment worked. Or maybe walking fixed it.”

“What the hell is that? That stuff’s amazing.”

“You’re as random as ever.”

After that, they quickly lost interest in why I’d been late, and the three of us wasted time talking until fifth period started. Trendy YouTubers, VTubers, games, mobile games, all the usual useless crap. Apparently lately the characters who really sell are the ones with weirdly specific talents for certain game genres. I vaguely remembered seeing something like that online this morning too, but instead of pretending I knew what they meant, I just reacted enough to keep the conversation going.

Then our modern Japanese teacher walked in, and lunch break was over.

School ended.

The day itself had been completely ordinary—nothing worth mentioning. The only mildly annoying part was homeroom teacher trying to casually fish for the real reason I’d been late. Other than that, it was uneventful. Once class ended and we exchanged the usual goodbyes, my friends ran off to their clubs right away. It wasn’t my turn to clean this week, so all I had to do was quietly pack up and get ready to leave.

Around me, my classmates did the same, and the room emptied fast.

Thank God today hadn’t turned into another pain in the ass. I’d swing by Usotsuki-chan’s place, get my panties back, and then head home.

“Ren-chan, let’s go.”

“Yeah.”

Yuu poked her head in through the back classroom door, and I fell into step beside her out in the hallway. Since neither of us belonged to a club, this was pretty normal for us.

For a second, I felt eyes on us from the classmates still hanging around—late-start cultural club kids and the go-home club loafers still chatting in the room—but I stopped caring almost immediately. Even students from other classes didn’t really make a fuss anymore. Most of them only gave us one glance in passing before losing interest and looking away.

Just like Yuu had planned, the idea of the two of us being together was steadily settling into the people around us. Even that made me think she was really damn good at this.

Her fake-couple plan was honestly flawless.

As for that fake relationship, it had started a little while after school began, when Yuu came to me looking tense as hell and proposed that we pretend to be a couple. A girl asking me out—and Yuu of all people—behind the gym? Of course my heart pounded. But then it turned out she’d noticed the same thing I had: a fake relationship could solve the problem she was dealing with. Realizing that she had been thinking along those same lines was a little disappointing, but whatever. That’s how it goes.

At first, I wasn’t interested in the whole fake-dating arrangement at all, so I hesitated. But then she threw out the unbeatable condition of “delicious homemade lunches like the one you ate today,” and I caved. Reluctantly.

Man, I’m pathetic.

To be honest, I got baited by good food.

Even so, weirdly enough, I didn’t regret it. Maybe because school life had been going suspiciously well since the start. Once our fake relationship became official, I’d expected the usual resentment—“Why is a totally average guy like him dating Yuu?”—but there had barely been any of that. If anything, there hadn’t really been much from the beginning.

Part of that was probably because right after starting high school, I’d managed to establish myself in class as neither one of the flashy popular guys nor one of the total loners—just more on the quiet side. I talked with every group in class, but I also had my own regular circle. Personality-wise, I wasn’t gloomy, but I wasn’t loud either. That kind of plain, normal person was easy to talk to. By staying the kind of guy who didn’t make enemies, I’d managed to narrow down the reasons people could have for screwing with me to basically one thing: being Yuu’s boyfriend.

There were also a decent number of classmates from middle school here, and plenty of them had seen the way Yuu and I used to interact back then, so if anything, us being together probably didn’t feel that strange.

And apparently Yuu had done her own work on the girls’ side through her friends too. That probably helped reinforce the outside image of our relationship. This part was just my guess, but the fact that several other couples—real ones, not fake ones—had started dating almost as soon as school began was probably thanks to that same network of girls Yuu was part of. What impressed me most was that while I had definitely adjusted myself a little as part of my own high school reinvention, Yuu moved like she’d anticipated all of that from the very beginning.

Seriously, she’d had every damn thing locked down from the start. It was almost scary.

“We’re stopping by Tsuki-chan’s place today, right?”

Yuu asked after we switched into our outdoor shoes at the entrance and started walking again.

“Yeah. I’m taking back my panties before I go home.”

“You’ll have to wash them when you get back.”

“Obviously...”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t really considered what state my panties had been in when they ended up in Usotsuki-chan’s hands. Earlier, Yuu had grabbed the pair sitting in Usotsuki-chan’s room without even hesitating, so did that mean she’d known they were washed? No, more importantly, how the hell had my panties gotten into Usotsuki-chan’s hands in the first place?

That part was still a complete mystery. It was the kind of mystery I both wanted to solve and absolutely didn’t want to know the answer to.

Either way, Yuu clearly couldn’t relax while my panties were still with Usotsuki-chan, so we were heading back there.

“So Usotsuki-chan really did skip school today.”

“Yeah. It didn’t look like she came in at all after that.”

Since Yuu was in the same class and hadn’t seen her once all afternoon, it was safe to assume she’d been out all day. I’d intentionally avoided asking in the morning why she was skipping, and Yuu didn’t seem interested in that either. She’d been fidgety for a while now, like she had something else on her mind entirely.

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah.”

I let Yuu rush me out of the school grounds.

At the apartment entrance, we punched in the room number for Usotsuki-chan’s place and pressed the call button.

“Tsuki-chan.”

The moment Yuu called out, the auto door unlocked with Usotsuki-chan’s loose, sleepy voice coming through the speaker.

“You can come in~”

We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and headed to her door.

When Yuu rang the bell beside it, the door opened a crack before anyone even bothered checking the camera.

“Tsuki-cha— ...No, what the hell are you wearing?”

That was Yuu’s first response, and she sounded completely thrown off. From where I stood, I couldn’t see inside properly, but from Yuu’s angle at the center of the doorway, she must have gotten a full look at whatever Usotsuki-chan was wearing.

“I was taking a bath.”

Usotsuki-chan answered flatly.

Her voice sounded tired somehow, maybe because she’d been bathing, or maybe because she’d just woken up.

“You came for the panties, right? Here.”

Without waiting for us to explain anything, she held them out through the crack in the door. I couldn’t see any sleeves on the arm reaching out, and the skin I could see had droplets of water still clinging to it. Warm, damp air rolled out from inside together with a nice scent that was probably shampoo. So yeah, she really had been in the bath.

“Thanks— ...They’re still damp, though.”

Yuu said after taking them and checking the feel.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. They didn’t dry.”

At that lazy excuse, Yuu’s profile tightened with visible irritation.

“...You didn’t do anything to them, right?”

“Anything like what?”

“...Never mind.”

“I should’ve thrown them in the dryer.”

Yuu’s face kept changing every few seconds, but Usotsuki-chan stayed flat and detached the whole time. Maybe she really was exhausted. And if she’d been in the bath, then hanging around too long would just be annoying.

“It’s fine. I mean, I got them back.”

I reached to take the panties from Yuu.

“—Ah, wait.”

She stopped me in a panic.

“What?”

“Just... hang on.”

Still clutching the panties, Yuu turned her back to me for a second.

Then she faced me again and held them out.

“Here.”

“...? Oh. Right...”

I took them from her.

Her behavior was a little weird, but whatever. My panties were back, so at least half of our business here was done.

“Anyway, I’m just glad they’re back.”

“...It would’ve been better if we could’ve canceled the auction too...”

Yuu let out a long, exhausted sigh.

“Well, if she really forgot the password, there’s not much we can do.”

If it really came down to it, we’d have to cling to whatever tiny hope was left and try contacting the platform.

“Sorry for bothering you while you were in the bath. We’re heading out.”

“Yaaawn... I’ll... look for the password...”

“Count on you.”

“Mm...”

Usotsuki-chan gave a short yawn, then stuck only her hand through the half-open door and waved.

“See you.”

I turned to leave.

Then—

There was a heavy thud, and the front door suddenly swung wide open.

“...!?”

“Tsuki-chan!?”

For a second, I couldn’t process what I was seeing.

But my brain, being a piece of shit at times like this, slowed everything down for me like a dirty little slow-motion replay. At first, I thought Usotsuki-chan had just missed the door handle. And yeah, technically she had—but that wasn’t the real problem. Her eyelids were almost fully shut as she toppled forward, pushing the door open and falling straight into my chest.

Right before the top of her head dropped into view, I caught a glimpse of her modest breasts, the small bud-like peaks at their tips, and the hairless place between her legs—no, wait, not the time for that.

“Wh—!?”

While Yuu let out a short scream beside me, I finally understood what was happening. Shampoo clung to the blonde head pressed into my chest. Cool water dripping from her soft, freshly bathed body soaked into my school uniform. I caught her naked body from the front, and it felt like every drop of blood that should’ve gone to my brain had gone somewhere else instead.

My thoughts flatlined.

“Usotsuki...-chan...?”

Usotsuki-chan had gone deathly pale and collapsed.

Chapter 2: When I Was Just Living My Usual Life, Somehow I Ended Up Having to Get My Underwear Back (2)