← The Studious Boy and the Secret Account Girl

Volume 3

Chapter 38: At the End of the Limit

Chapter 38: At the End of the Limit

With a resolve born of desperation, he opened his eyelids. Released from the darkness, what spread before Tsutomu’s eyes was white. White reminiscent of fresh snow with not a single footprint. Smooth skin without a single blemish—and underwear so plain it was almost ridiculously pure white.

The class idol “Tachibana Matsurika,” who had only just become his friend the other day, was showing off her stomach and her underwear. In Tsutomu’s room. Just the two of them. At a distance where they could feel each other’s breathing. At that fact, his consciousness began to fade. Every emotion was being bleached away.

“Too ba~d! Were you hoping for something? Huh? Were you hoping?”

From above Tsutomu, whose eyes were seared by the sight before him, Matsurika jeered triumphantly. When he looked up, there were sparkling jet-black eyes that seemed to say “mischief successful.” A beaming smile filled her face. She looked like she was having the time of her life.

“Ah… no, well, that is…”

Tsutomu, for his part, didn’t even have the composure to fix his slipping glasses, and his tongue wouldn’t move properly either. Even if it wasn’t what he had imagined, this was still a shocking vision in its own way. Either way, he couldn’t keep up with Matsurika’s energy.

“You were thinking ‘Why is she wearing underwear?’ weren’t you?”

“Well, I mean, yeah, that’s… true…”

That was a genuinely honest question. He had come home with Matsurika, who was soaked to the bone. Tsutomu’s underwear was drenched through with the rainwater that had seeped in. If that was the case, then Matsurika should have been in the same situation.

—Could she have brought a change of clothes to school?

That thought crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed it. The girl before him had forgotten her umbrella. He couldn’t imagine a high school girl who forgot her umbrella but brought spare underwear instead. That had to be unlikely. The possibility that she kept some on hand wasn’t zero… was it? No, probably not.

“We stopped by the convenience store on the way here, right? I bought them there.”

“Ah, I see.”

“What did you think I was buying, Kariya-kun?”

“What do you mean, what…”

Tsutomu’s thoughts, thrown into a crucible of confusion, refused to function properly. As his brain continued its internal sabotage, only strange simulations advanced dispassionately. A situation with a man and a woman alone together, and shopping at a convenience store. If one were to connect these two points with a line, the answer was… only one thing.

“Wait, no, that’s wrong. I wasn’t thinking that!”

“What is ‘that’?”

He tried to hastily dispel her suspicion, but she pressed the attack further.

—She definitely knows exactly what she’s doing!

His chest filled with frustration, but that resentment vanished into thin air in an instant. That was how much—“Tachibana Matsurika” was too magnificent a sight. Her white shirt, slightly translucent under the light, and her faintly flushed white skin. An angle where you could see not just the southern hemisphere but even the northern hemisphere depending on the angle. He was both disappointed and relieved that the very tips were exquisitely hidden. His head was still a mess, but he seared the image into his eyes. He would never forget it for the rest of his life. Beyond her chest, which sagged under the influence of gravity, his gaze met those jet-black eyes. Tsutomu’s entire body was swallowed by a strange excitement. But he didn’t try to look away.

“…”

“…”

For a while, the two gazed at each other—and then Matsurika’s cheeks burned. She hurriedly tried to hide her front and put distance between them, but her feet tangled and she fell backwards. Her butt was fully exposed. Not a lucky pervert moment, but a complete self-destruct.

“Ow ow… w-wait. Forget that, that never happened.”

—She’s finally come back to her senses.

At last, a voice of restraint came from Matsurika, whose eyes were teary from the pain. Tsutomu felt sorrow at his own cowardice for feeling relieved.

“Showing off underwear this uncool, I’d look like an idiot, wouldn’t I?”

“No, that’s not it.”

Uncool or not, the strange part was showing her underwear to a boy in the first place. He had absolutely no idea where her sense of shame was pointing.

“I’ll say this now so you don’t get the wrong idea.”

“…Yeah.”

“I do have properly sexy underwear too, you know.”

“…How am I supposed to respond to that?”

“…”

“…”

“Um… do you want to see?”

“Cut it out already!”

That was the limit of his patience. It wasn’t that he wanted to scare Matsurika, but he had lost his composure and ended up raising his voice. When he stood up sharply and glared at her through his fogged-up lenses, the girl—whose cheeks had flushed red with embarrassment (belatedly)—stared back at him with wide, startled eyes. She clearly couldn’t hide her surprise at Tsutomu’s unusual behavior. He thought, as if it were someone else’s business, that it was understandable.

The train had stopped due to the rainy season and a typhoon, so she couldn’t get home. She was soaked through and looked likely to catch colds. She had nowhere to go. It was precisely because she was utterly stuck that he reluctantly—yes, reluctantly—invited Matsurika to his home. He had held back even while she was in the shower. He had held back the entire time. He had maintained the restraint befitting a friend, and nothing more.

—And yet…!

But… Tsutomu was still a man. A teenage boy. He was an ordinary high schooler who loved lewd things—even if Matsurika had seen through him. With provocation this blatant, there was no way he could keep his reason.

He stepped forward, driven by the surging impulse. Matsurika, for her part, backed away while still sitting on the floor. She put the hand that had been covering her front down to the floor, trying to slowly create distance between them. It was futile. Tsutomu had a longer stride. The gap between them shrank before his eyes, and in no time they were nose to nose. When Tsutomu knelt down and brought his face close, he heard Matsurika gulp.

“K-Kariya-kun… you’re too close.”

“And whose fault do you think that is?”

His voice trembled. Not from anger. His excitement was uncontrollable. His lower body was throbbing painfully.

He felt a sense of wrongness in the scent that tickled his nose. It wasn’t the smell Matsurika usually wore.

—She smells like me.

As a girl of that age, she probably couldn’t just take a shower and soak in the bath and call it done. It wasn’t hard to imagine her reaching for the shampoo and body soap in the bathroom to freshen herself up. Both were things Tsutomu used every day. So she smelled the same as him. No, strictly speaking, it wasn’t the same smell. The scent Matsurika was giving off now was a blend of her own scent and Tsutomu’s. A new smell, mixing the usual Matsurika scent with the usual Tsutomu scent. A smell that resembled both, yet was different from either. A smell that connected the two of them.

Her shirt buttons were still undone, the front hanging open. Her faintly cherry-blossom-pink skin was boldly exposed, and the fragrance grew stronger by the moment. That fragrant scent relentlessly scorched Tsutomu’s reason.

When he pressed his body even closer, Matsurika finally lay down flat on her back. Her beautiful black hair spread across the floor, and Tsutomu’s body loomed over her on top of it. He barely understood what he was doing with himself.

Driven by instinct without understanding. He could feel the body heat from the limbs before him. Even though he hadn’t touched her yet. He could feel the breath slipping from the girl’s lips. It smelled sweet. His head was spinning.

“I’m sorry, Tachibana. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I can’t stop.”

“Kariya-kun… you can’t.”

Matsurika’s voice was hoarse. Her usual boldness had receded, leaving her weak and fragile. He instinctively wanted to embrace her. The white hand Matsurika had pressed against his chest to stop him held no strength. Her eyes were wet and gleaming bewitchingly, and he was drawn to her slightly parted lips and the tongue peeking through.

Was she rejecting him, or inviting him? The reason to judge that was no longer in Tsutomu’s mind. The distance between them became zero… and shadows, and then skin, overlapped—

brrrr, brrrr

The smartphone left on the desk vibrated. The sound of a hard object rattling and knocking against the surface rang through the room, and Tsutomu gasped, jerking his body up. He stared at Matsurika below him for a moment. She too was looking up at Tsutomu, dazed. The two nodded at each other and slowly, slowly pulled apart.

“Haah… haah.”

Matsurika’s breathing was rough. Tsutomu’s breathing was rough too. Just hearing Matsurika’s voice shook Tsutomu’s brain violently. Even so, the heat that had been burning fiercely drained away from his body.

—What on earth was I…

As he re-processed the situation, a wave of guilt crashed over him. Relief at having stopped himself, and a sense of regret, mixed together. The contradictory emotions tangled together in complex ways, far too much for Tsutomu to handle.

He glanced at Matsurika, and she quietly averted her eyes. She was red all the way to her ears. Her fingers were trying to do up the buttons of her shirt, but they were trembling too much to move properly. Eventually, she seemed to give up, and simply held her front closed with both hands. Her white palms sank into her chest, which swelled with a deliberately exaggerated deep breath.

“…Aren’t you going to get that?”

“Ah, yeah…”

Prompted by Matsurika, he reached for the still-vibrating smartphone. What appeared on the display was—his little sister’s name.

He thought he heard a small voice say, “You coward.”