← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl
Volume 3
Chapter 35: The Footsteps of the Approaching Storm
Chapter 35: The Footsteps of the Approaching Storm
Matsurika, who had been fiddling with the TV remote she’d borrowed from Tsutomu, seemed to have concluded that there was nothing worth watching. Without voicing a single complaint, she quickly turned off the television and began poking at the smartphone in her hands.
Tsutomu, sitting beside her, had been unable to stop thinking about Matsurika for some time now. Having a lightly dressed girl in his room was already the height of impropriety, and that the girl happened to be a stunning beauty within arm’s reach only made it worse. He hadn’t cultivated enough mental discipline to stay composed in a situation like this. It wasn’t as if he deserved to be blamed for it.
Whether she noticed the neighbor silently losing his mind behind a sullen expression or not… after a moment, Matsurika let out a groan: “Uwah.”
Thinking something must be wrong, Tsutomu tapped his phone’s display and opened Twitter—only to find it flooded with voices cursing the bad weather. It wasn’t just one or two people. A full chorus was underway across Japan. About half of it was complaints directed at companies that forced employees to come to work on a day like this.
“Ahh, I’m glad I could take shelter somewhere with a roof. Kariya-kun, thank you so much.”
“I didn’t do anything worth thanking me for. Don’t worry about it.”
He tried to act calm by making a conscious effort not to think about it, but he couldn’t stop his voice from going slightly high.
The school idol, having sensed Tsutomu’s agitation, let out a quiet giggle. When Tsutomu glared at her from the corner of his eye, his gaze tangled with Matsurika’s jet-black eyes.
After a brief silence, Tsutomu lowered his gaze back to his phone. He’d been overwhelmed by her pressure.
I didn’t lose. That was a strategic retreat. He told himself, but no matter how he looked at it, he was just being chicken.
“I’m bored.”
“Yeah.”
Even when she handed him an opening to talk, he couldn’t think of a single clever reply.
He idly turned his gaze to the window. Outside, the sounds of rain and wind rang out unchanged. It seemed to be growing more intense. Maybe this was the worst stretch of the storm. Part of him wanted it to hurry up and pass, but he couldn’t deny that he wouldn’t mind it lingering a little longer. …Not that he would ever say that in front of Matsurika.
“Hey, Kariya-kun, what do you usually do at home?”
“‘What do I do,’ huh. Nothing in particular.”
At home, everything he did was limited to chores and studying at most.
The moment he said it, Matsurika’s well-shaped eyebrows shot up. Was there something odd about his answer? He couldn’t quite grasp why she would make such a face.
“You don’t play games or anything?”
“No. I never had that habit growing up.”
They had a TV, but no game console. He’d had no time for games, and no motivation either. It had been that way since he could remember, and he’d never felt any inconvenience from not being able to play. He’d grown up with few friends to begin with, so even when he couldn’t keep up with other kids’ conversations, it posed no problem. That habit was so deeply ingrained that even now he lived a life with no connection to games, but it wasn’t anything he cared about. Shiro, who had been almost his only friend since he entered high school until he’d grown close to Matsurika, never talked much about games, either.
Even so, when he tried to picture himself at home, in an empty room, doing nothing at all… it was vaguely unsettling. That, apparently, was what Matsurika was concerned about. Judging by her expression, she was probably right.
—I’d better say something here.
“…Saying I do nothing was an overstatement.”
“No games, no TV… so, reading?”
Matsurika raised a finger as slender and pale as a whitebait and asked.
“Yeah. The city library and the school library have been a big help to me.”
Hobby: Reading.
It had come out sounding like a self-introduction from a person with no interesting traits. He made an internal excuse that it couldn’t be helped because it was the truth. Of course, no one was listening to Tsutomu’s excuses. Matsurika was good at sensing other people’s feelings, but she was certainly not a psychic.
“Wow, that’s exactly how I’d picture you, honestly.”
“Let me ask you the same, then. Tachibana, do you play games?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Matsurika listed a few game titles. None of them rang a bell, and he felt no particular interest.
“I’m going to ask something a bit personal… was your family strict, Kariya-kun?”
In Matsurika’s dark eyes, which peered into his, a quiet unease trembled. To the girl before him, Tsutomu’s lifestyle seemed beyond imagining.
He averted his gaze, let it wander through midair, then crossed his arms and rested his chin in his hand.
“No, I don’t think so. Not that I have anything to compare it to.”
“But it feels kind of rare these days. Never playing games at all.”
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“Hmm…”
When she asserted it so firmly, he lost his confidence. He looked back over his life, but he didn’t think there had been anything particularly strange about it. Seeing Tsutomu furrow his brow and sink into thought, Matsurika hastily spoke up. Her tone was light, her voice tinged with dryness.
“I-I mean, you don’t have to think about it so hard, right? Maybe?”
“Yeah. ‘Their house is their house, my house is mine’ is good enough.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s it, that’s it… Oh, that’s right.”
Visibly relieved, Matsurika seemed to have hit upon an idea and began sliding her fingers across her smartphone. Her free hand held a mug, which she occasionally lifted to her lips. Her coffee had milk in it. She’d said she skipped the sugar.
“What is it?”
“Yeah, I was wondering how this one’s doing.”
“This one?”
“The RIKA one.”
“Oh, that.”
At Tsutomu’s exasperated voice, Matsurika nodded seriously.
The other face of the school idol, Tachibana Matsurika. She was RIKA, a popular secret account that posted erotic images. It was also the account that had first brought Tsutomu and Matsurika together.
“Mmm, everyone’s worried about me, huh.”
“……”
While Matsurika smiled warmly as she stared at her phone, Tsutomu glanced at her from the corner of his eye and operated his own device. He opened Twitter and checked the RIKA account from his secret account. Most of the replies attached to the latest tweet were concerned voices linking the bad weather to RIKA, but here and there he also spotted complaints about how her posting frequency had dropped lately. Is this the time to say something like that? he thought, irritated… but when he glanced beside him, Matsurika’s expression had changed completely from the warm mood of a moment ago, hardened into something sharp and severe.
He couldn’t find a word to say to the girl wrapped in that dead-serious aura. In front of Tsutomu’s frozen gaze, Matsurika set her mug down on the table with a clink. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then—her eyelids opened, and she stood up with a burst of energy. The heavy breasts wrapped in a thin dress shirt jiggled.
“Okay!”
“…Tachibana?”
What exactly was “okay” about? He had no idea what was going on. But… at times like this, Matsurika always said something completely beyond the realm of his imagination. To Tsutomu, who was bracing himself based on past experience, Matsurika declared:
“I’m taking a photo! No—take it, Kariya-kun!”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to post it on Twitter right now! Come on, please!”
She shoved her smartphone at him as she said it. Then she pressed her hands together and bowed her head.
His eyes were drawn to Matsurika’s chest. It was a good angle. The alluring, deep valley peeking through her shirt was vivid at close range. It was a sight that could make a man swallow his saliva, but… this was hardly the time for that.
“Wh-why?”
Overwhelmed by the visual information, his brain was in a state of chaos. Worldly desires and lust danced hand in hand. His thoughts couldn’t keep up with the situation. Without managing to say a single word with any proper meaning, he took the phone.
What was happening? What was about to happen? He wanted to know. He didn’t want to know. He wanted to ask; he didn’t want to ask. He wished he could close his eyes, plug his ears, and shut his mouth too, for that matter… but he didn’t seem to be getting away with any of that.
“Why, you ask? …Look, I’m in demand right now. As an entertainer, I have to live up to expectations!”
“I’ll lose followers, and it’s a chance to gain more, too.” Those unglamorous words slipped out from between her glossy lips. She tapped the phone’s display with a slender white fingertip. On the screen were displayed the expectations and anxieties directed at RIKA. From Matsurika’s point of view, this was apparently a situation where she’d bare some skin for her followers, who were feeling mentally down after being caught in the storm. It was a mindset that Tsutomu—no entertainer (provisional) himself—found impossible to comprehend.
Even if she said “bare some skin,” in Matsurika’s case that meant taking off her clothes. What in the world would come after the nothing-but-a-shirt state?
“I’m gonna hit them with one perfect RIKA-style shot, so… don’t just stare at my chest, Kariya-kun.”
She pressed her breasts together with both hands, lifted them, and gave him a wink right in front of his face.
The charm attack launched by the school’s idol struck Tsutomu’s heart dead-on. Shocked, his glasses slipped down his nose and his vision blurred.
Pushed along by his oshi, he ended up nodding. Desires rooted in instinct easily transcend reason.
It couldn’t be helped. Tsutomu was, after all, a perfectly healthy male high school student.