Chapter 14: Pajamas and a Thank You Bento

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Translator: Soafp

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The next morning.

I woke up even earlier than yesterday.

At dinner last night, Komori-san had suddenly said she'd treat me to breakfast today as well.

(Man… that was seriously delicious.)

Komori-san could honestly aim to become a chef.

Putting everything else aside, when it came to cooking skill, no one in the entire school could probably match her.

It tasted way better than food from most restaurants.

(Still, no messages today like yesterday.)

Those message bombs that forced me to walk while staring at my phone.

Maybe she reflected on it.

Or maybe, like that wall-slam incident, she was regretting adding yet another entry to her personal collection of embarrassing memories.

So this morning I walked down the road in peace.

Of course, I safely passed the problematic three-way intersection too.

(Hm? She's not here today.)

Yesterday she was waiting in front of the entrance.

Since I've already been inside her house once, maybe she expects me to ring the intercom.

Should I call her? Or press the doorbell?

Just as I was hesitating—

“Oji-san…”

Suddenly, the front door opened slightly, and Anna-chan peeked out from the gap.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“Where's your sister?”

“Well… she's still asleep.”

“Huh? Still asleep?”

“Yes… no matter how much I try to wake her, she won't get up.”

Ah, I had a pretty good idea what was going on.

She was probably watching the anime I recommended on Line all night.

Sighing inwardly, I said,

“Sorry, Anna-chan. It's probably half my fault.”

“I-is that so…? Then please go wake her up instead, Oji-san.”

“Huh? Me?”

“Yes. My voice is small, so I'm not good at waking people up. You're a man, so your voice must be loud, right? My sister's room is at the back of the second floor.”

No matter how you look at it, entering a teenage girl's room without permission seemed questionable…

But I couldn't just leave things like this either.

Just to be safe, I tried calling her, but as expected, she didn't answer.

I quietly stepped into Komori-san's room that Anna-chan had pointed out.

Komori-san was fast asleep, drooling slightly onto her pillow.

“Komori-san, wake up. If you don't wake up, I'm going to play a prank on you.”

“Mmm… just thirty more minutes…”

“That's long!”

Usually people say five or ten minutes.

“Wake up already!”

I pinched her nose with my fingers and shouted loudly next to her ear.

That should wake her up immediately.

“Mmm—nooo!”

But instead, she whined like a child.

She flailed her arms for a moment—and then suddenly hugged me.

“H-hey? K-Komori-san!?”

Before I could react, she dragged my body down beside her on the bed.

Before I knew it, our faces were only inches apart.

Her translucent skin.

Her neatly closed eyelashes trembling slightly with each breath.

Her faintly flushed cheeks resting on the pillow.

Her lips slightly parted in complete defenselessness.

I instinctively swallowed.

“Anna, sleep with me too!”

Ah, she's half-asleep and mistaken me.

Or maybe she usually uses her little sister as a body pillow.

(…What do I do now?)

One wrong move and I might get slapped—or worse, reported to the police.

This might have been the biggest crisis of my life.

My heart was pounding in all the wrong ways when—

“…Huh?”

“Ah.”

Komori-san woke up.

“Kyaaaaah!!”

A scream loud enough to rupture eardrums echoed through the small room.

It was so loud it felt like even the neighbors could hear it.

“Why are you here!?”

Komori-san grabbed a pillow and raised it high.

Clearly planning to throw it at me.

“Don't throw a drool-covered pillow at me!”

“It's not drool-covered!?”

She froze at my words and slowly put the pillow back on the bed.

Now then… how should I deal with this situation?

From her perspective, her shock was completely understandable.

Honestly, if I woke up and suddenly saw a girl's face right in front of me, I'd probably be terrified too.

“Um… sorry, Onee-san.”

Anna-chan, who had been watching from outside the room, finally stepped in to help.

“I was the one who asked Oji-san to wake you up. You just wouldn't get up, so I asked him to help…”

“Huh? O-oh, really?”

Komori-san looked back and forth between my face and Anna-chan's.

Then she quickly looked away and muttered,

“…Sorry, Fukagawa. I caused you trouble.”

“Don't worry about it. Though if you had actually thrown that drool-covered pillow, I might've gotten a little mad.”

“I said it's not drool-covered!”

Well, honestly, Komori-san's sleeping face had been cute, so it felt like I came out ahead anyway.

“More importantly, your pajamas are cute.”

“Huh?”

She looked down at herself after hearing that.

She was wearing light pink cotton pajamas with little rabbit ears attached.

“Kyaaaaah!!”

Her scream echoed again.

Her face turned bright red as she grabbed the rabbit ears and crouched in the corner of the room.

She looked exactly like a real rabbit hiding in fear from a predator.

“I can never get married now…”

“It's just pajamas…”

“But gyarus are supposed to be cool…”

“Everyone already knows you're a fake gyaru, so what are you talking about now?”

“Don't call me a fake gyaru! I still have 25% gyaru content!”

There it was—the 25% gyaru theory again.

“I think you misunderstand what being a gyaru means.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“A gyaru's ‘coolness' comes from doing things your own way. Not caring about what others think—that's what being a gyaru is about.”

“I-is that so?”

“So if you think those pajamas are cute, then they're perfectly gyaru-like.”

“Y-you might be right!”

Komori-san's expression suddenly brightened.

Then she straightened her back and proudly displayed the rabbit pajamas like she was showing them off.

Anna-chan, who had been watching everything from the side, quietly muttered,

“Uwa… Onee-san is so easy to manipulate…”

---

After that, the three of us ate the breakfast Komori-san prepared and then went to school together.

We safely passed the problematic three-way intersection again.

Some classmates started whispering suspiciously about me and Komori-san walking to school together two days in a row, but Takagi managed to smooth things over.

(Is everything just going to pass by without incident?)

Come to think of it, I had only seen the “nightmare” of Komori-san's traffic accident once.

If it were something strongly bound by causality—something close to “fate”—then I would've seen it repeatedly like I did with Yuzuki.

Maybe I had already avoided it somehow without realizing, even if it had nothing to do with that orange nail polish incident.

(Even so, I can't let my guard down yet.)

Today was the last day of May.

Starting tomorrow, we would switch to summer uniforms.

Our school didn't have a transition period—everyone switched at once—so if the accident was going to happen, it would likely be on the way home today.

Meanwhile, the person in question—Komori-san—

“You seem kind of tired today, Nodoka.”

“Hm? Oh… I stayed up late watching something last night.”

“What were you watching? Wait—was it AV?”

“N-no! It was just… a normal… movie! It was just a little… suggestive.”

“Seriously? Even a slightly dirty topic makes you turn bright red, Nodoka.”

She was chatting casually with Yuzuki.

…Meanwhile, her life was technically on the line.

“Another friend recommended it to me.”

“Huh. You have other friends now, Nodoka…”

“Yeah! I made one recently.”

“It's not Ren, is it?”

Yuzuki's eyes suddenly sharpened.

Komori-san looked slightly flustered.

“I-it's Fukagawa, but it's not the kind of relationship you're worried about, Yuzuki! We're really just friends!”

“You're telling the truth, right? I can trust you, right?”

“O-of course! Think about it—Fukagawa's a hardcore otaku, right? There's no way we'd match!”

Hey, I told you I was a closet otaku.

I'm going to file a strong complaint later.

“So you even know Ren is an otaku. Ren doesn't usually tell people that unless he's really close with them…”

“Huh? I-is that so?”

Yuzuki glared at Komori-san and said,

“Nodoka, I'm trusting you.”

“Y-yeah…”

It was such an obvious warning.

Even though she herself had betrayed me and gone to Nagasawa-senpai.

Every word and action from Yuzuki irritated me, and I started feeling really sorry for Komori-san.

(I should stop worrying about Yuzuki.)

Right now, Komori-san was what mattered.

Thinking that, I went through the morning classes.

When lunchtime came and I was about to stand up to head to the cafeteria—

“Fukagawa.”

Komori-san walked over to my desk and called out to me.

“What's up?”

“Let's eat lunch together.”

“Hm? What about Kitayama-san?”

Ever since splitting from Yuzuki, the two of them usually ate their lunch together in the classroom.

When I looked around, though, Yuzuki was nowhere to be seen.

“Well… apparently she forgot her lunch today.”

“Oh, so Kitayama went to the cafeteria.”

“Yeah. I was planning to give this to her and eat together, but…”

Give what?

As I tilted my head, Komori-san held out a lunchbox.

“This is for you, Fukagawa.”

“Huh? You made me a lunch?”

“Y-yeah… as a thank-you.”

Apparently she prepared it last night.

Maybe my praise of her cooking had an effect—her homemade food as thanks was becoming a regular thing.

“So… want to eat together? Or did you already promise someone else?”

“…No, it's not that, but…”

This was bad.

It wasn't that I didn't want to eat with Komori-san.

If anything, just seeing the lunch she made for me had already made me swallow my saliva.

But—

“Wait, what? Komori-san made a lunch for Fukagawa-kun!?”

“They say they're not dating, but they're already that close?”

“Isn't that the ‘more than friends, less than lovers' kind of relationship? And Komori-san's the one making the move!”

The murmurs in the classroom began spreading little by little.