Chapter 43
.
Kihased. Kihased.
Even after repeating “Kihased” to myself several times, I still couldn’t recall ever hearing a similar name.
I mean, of course I wouldn’t know it as a witch, but I’d never heard of it even in the context of the “idol” I’d only heard about in passing.
…Ah, of course, I can’t say that with any confidence when I don’t know that much about idols.
I was too busy studying, gaming, having sex, and jerking off.
Still, I do know a few famous idols.
Some become a hot topic online because of their looks,
while others are names I happened to learn while making small talk with friends.
So I wasn’t completely ignorant, but….
Even so, the name Kihased was still utterly unfamiliar.
An apprentice witch who was active as an idol, huh.
Considering Neria’s case, even if her singing and dancing were a mess, her looks alone should have been enough to make her famous.
She was definitely using a stage name.
―Ding-dong
By the time I hurried along, worrying over it, I had already arrived in front of Neria’s house.
After confirming that I was exactly twenty-six minutes later than usual, I pressed the doorbell while praying to all sorts of gods I didn’t particularly believe in.
…Fortunately, instead of a sulky response, a voice seeped out from inside saying, “I’ll open it after this round!” so the door didn’t open until I had reached a full thirty minutes late.
“Why are you so late today of all days? Was the subway delayed or something?”
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t hear my alarm….”
The first stage in a working adult’s evolution.
A stiff back becoming much more flexible than it had been when I was a student.
As if to test this theory of evolution, I had bent at the waist before she had even opened the door, and at the edge of my lowered gaze appeared a sight I hadn’t seen once since taking charge of Neria.
In other words, Neria was wearing socks.
The girl who always wandered around the house barefoot had pulled pristine white socks over her feet.
And that wasn’t all.
Instead of the cuffs of the sweatpants I always saw, the edge of my vision caught Neria’s straight ankles and calves.
…Maybe she was even wearing a skirt.
Perhaps she had somewhere to go.
With that obvious question in mind, I raised my gaze.
“Really? Hmm…. Maybe it was because I sent you home a little late yesterday.”
…….
The outfit I usually called her full-NEET look.
The jersey and sweatpants I always associated with Neria were nowhere to be seen.
Nor was the pitch-black pleated skirt that came into view as soon as I raised my head.
Nor the thick sky-blue knit sweater resembling Neria’s hair.
Nor the short ash-gray coat that comfortably wrapped around both of them.
I was definitely seeing them for the first time; she must have kept them buried in her closet until now.
“Anyway, come in. Whether you’re late or not, you have something to do today.”
“Something to do?”
“You’ll know when you get there.”
I’d arrived prepared to bend my back like a reed, so what on earth was this?
Neria, who had coolly forgiven me for yesterday’s overtime, grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the house.
The suddenness of it left me no chance to ask so much as, “Are we going out somewhere today?”; the shoes I’d hurriedly removed were left strewn around the entrance.
“You remember what you promised yesterday, right? When I beat the crap out of you.”
“If you mean that…. Didn’t I recite some strange lines as the price for losing the game?”
“No. That was just an example. How can you count that?”
“…? What does that mean….”
“What? You were serious? You can’t even remember something from just yesterday? Humans sure are inconvenient. Tsk.”
…….
“I said, ‘Next time we do it, I’m going to make you say dirty things to me instead,’ and what you did yesterday was just a light experiment. Got it?”
At first I was puzzled, but after hearing Neria out, it did seem to have been that way.
There was even a chance I’d fallen for Neria’s sly little scheme, but as a powerless ninth-grade civil servant, it was a subject too dangerous to voice, so I soon forgot it.
…It was probably best to simply go along with whatever Neria wanted to do, so I decided to do that.
As I reached that simple conclusion, she said,
“There’s something I saw before going to sleep last night. I’m going to make you do that.”
“…It’s a little belated, but witches need sleep too, apparently.”
“Unless they’re witches obsessed with magic research, everyone sleeps at least a little. If you’re awake for twenty-four hours, time passes fucking slowly, you know?”
That made sense.
As I was quietly sympathizing, Neria came toddling over to the computer desk and picked up her smartphone.
For the record, “pitter-patter” was literally the sound coming from beneath her feet.
At some point, an empty snack bag had been left on the floor.
While we were heading toward the desk together, I briefly cleared away the snack bag she had stepped on.
By then, Neria had already come in front of me and was showing me the cover of a novel, just as she had yesterday.
“Here. Today, I’m going to make you do this.”
Unlike yesterday, the title had become fairly tame, but… …the problem was the cover.
A Doberman-like man was gripping a woman’s wrist with a faint smile.
Even though the artwork and faces were different, it was a cover with a composition that gave me an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
…But in the end, I figured all female-oriented novels were probably like that, so I kept quiet.
Male-oriented novels were the same, weren’t they?
A pretty heroine.
Strip her down a little, and that’s it.
In that sense, both sides were remarkably honest about their desires.
“You mean the lines from this novel?”
“Yeah. And since I’m making you do that, I’m going to try to imitate the events? Incidents? that happen in it too.”
“Imitate…? Ah.”
Then I supposed the event must involve going out.
Or perhaps a date.
Along with that simple guess, Neria smiled.
“For today only, I’ll allow you to treat me like your girlfriend. Feel honored, okay?”
A girlfriend for just today.
Along with those words, I was reminded of a manga from the neighboring country about paying money to have someone act as your lover.
“Shutting up and spreading your pu…ssy like yesterday doesn’t seem right either. I found something decent among the pure-love erotic novels you might like.”
“I see….”
“So I thought that if we followed it, maybe we could have even more enjoyable sex than last time.”
…….
“…Hmm? What’s with that annoyed look?”
“Nothing.”
I don’t actually like pure-love stuff all that much.
Even setting that aside, what you showed me last time was, strictly speaking, an erotic novel about captive pure love, wasn’t it?
There were plenty of points I could nitpick like that, but for now I kept quiet.
In any case, Neria was trying to imitate the story from an erotic novel, which ultimately meant good things for me.
No one would stop a chicken that had seasoned itself, donned batter, and was about to be fried crisp.
Of course, it might still be strange and frightening to see someone doing that of their own accord.
“By the way, Lady Neria.”
“Yeah?”
But when I thought about it carefully, there was a separate problem unrelated to Neria.
I raised one hand awkwardly and asked,
“If I really treated you like my girlfriend, I feel like we’d just spend all day having sex at home….”
“…Huh? If we’re dating, shouldn’t we go on a date first?”
“I suppose….”
Thinking about it now, I guess I’d only gone on dates right before starting a relationship, not while I was in one.
Rather than explicitly calling it a “date,” those meetings usually started with something like, “Hey, what are you doing right now?” but whatever we called them, the behavior was basically the same.
Eating together because one of us was hungry. Chatting because one of us was bored. Dragging the other along to a movie because there was no one else to go with. Things like that.
…But once we actually started dating, instead of going on dates, we’d usually spend our days buried in sex until we got sick of it, then gradually drift apart.
“I only remember having sex day and night whenever I was dating someone.”
“Day and night…? Isn’t that just some sex-starved fucking animal? How long were you at it, anyway?”
“Ahaha….”
As I let out a wry smile at Neria’s insult, which had summed it up exactly, she added a new condition.
“We’d better make it this way. Sex, the DLC content, will be unavailable unless you first clear the prerequisite of going on a date with your girlfriend.”
As much as I wanted to hold Neria down and pound my cock into her, with her taking it this far, there was no way I could object.
It was both something I wanted and something I absolutely had to do.
I’d save pinning Neria down and ejaculating inside her until after I had fulfilled her requirements.
I nodded and moved a little to the side.
Neria had approached me as if she were about to leave the bedroom.
“What are you doing?”
But instead of passing by me after I had moved aside, Neria walked straight toward me.
She looked me over, alternating her gaze between my face and body, then let out one audible breath before—
“…Hup.”
She sprang up as if jumping and hugged me.
…Actually, perhaps because we differed slightly in build, it looked less like a hug and more like Neria restraining me as though arresting me.
Anyway.
“Hey, Nam Dowon. Try stroking my head just like that.”
“Uh… like this?”
“Mmm…. Hmm….”
…….
“Ha, shit…. This doesn’t seem right….”
I stroked her head to play along with Neria, who seemed to be saying, “This is how couples should do it,” but she couldn’t stand it for even a few seconds before smacking my hand away and backing off.
As a bonus, she was brushing through her light-blue hair with her own hand, apparently bothered that it had been messed up.
Honestly, I wanted to ask what difference there was between that and what I had just done, but Neria’s next words came first.
“Because I don’t feel any excitement, and it just makes me cringe. We’d better not do this.”
“…Maybe it’ll get better than you expect if you keep doing it?”
“Ah, no. Sex is enough. Didn’t you just like having my breasts pressed against you when I hugged you?”
“…I can’t say that’s not true.”
“…Sigh. Yeah. It’s nice that you’re honest. Very nice. I wonder if you’ll get seduced by your big-breasted mentor….”
Apparently, hugging like a man and woman in love was a deferment rather than a pass.
Neria, who briefly rubbed the area around her breasts too, as if it bothered her, stepped out of the bedroom and said,
“…By any chance, do you really have a thing for breasts like Master’s?”
“No. Compared to Lady Erzel, I prefer a moderately large pair, like yours….”
“Ah, got it! I got it, so shut up…! You sound like a total pervert!”
…….
“…Yeah. Now keep your mouth shut and call a taxi. Let’s try this thing called a date that I saw in the novel.”