"Eh? What do you mean 'you knew it'? Have you heard that somewhere before, Aina?"
"No! No!"
"Eh? Super suspicious. Aina, are you really just trying to buy a gift for Kohei?"
Feeling like he'd opened some sort of Pandora's box, Yuu stared at Aina suspiciously for a few seconds before shrugging it off.
Whatever. If anyone was going to suffer, it was Kohei. As long as it didn't splash back on him, he had zero psychological burden!
"Any other questions? Not related to explosions?"
"Um, Yuu... I remember you've been staying at Auntie Sayaka's house since the first day you got here, right? You didn't secretly move out?"
Her pupils vibrated. Her gaze was no longer able to stay fixed on Yuu's face. Even though she tried to keep her head straight with her hands, her eyes involuntarily drifted downward.
The fact was that Yuu had been at Sayaka's house for nearly two weeks. Excluding the possibility of him "fighting dirty," wasn't he basically a ticking time bomb right now?
"Yeah. Sleeping on the sofa feels way better than the bed. It's more than a little softer!"
"Do you feel... like you need to go to the bathroom right now?"
"Now that you mention it..."
Being stared at so intensely in a sensitive area made Yuu look visibly awkward. Plus, the drink he'd had earlier was that low-alcohol beer they used to trick kids.
"I guess I actually do?"
"Waaaah! I knew it was like this! Hang in there, Yuu, I'll save you!"
"???"
Before he could explain, Aina shouted those words, covered her face, and ran off, leaving Miyazawa Yuu standing alone in the wind, reaching out a hand to stop her.
"Whatever. It probably won't be a big deal. Yeah!"
...
Meanwhile, on the other side, in the library provided for guests at Dolphin, Kotegawa Chisa was pacing in circles with her hands clasped behind her back, trying to soothe her guilty conscience.
During work today, she had... very "accidentally" committed an unforgivable error in principle.
Given the rough-and-tumble culture of the PaB club, when she noticed a guest's fly was open, she had unhesitatingly stepped forward to help him tidy his appearance!
In theory, while the move was a bit "hardcore," it shouldn't have been a huge issue. However, due to her lack of experience, she had nearly turned the guest's "tidied appearance" into a "funeral appearance"...
"...The manager already told me about this morning. Chisa, you..."
"I'm sorry! It's my fault! I didn't realize a man's weak point was so fragile!"
Bowing deeply and apologizing loudly, Chisa didn't want to deflect responsibility in front of her mother. Since she did it, she was willing to accept the punishment!
As long as...
Raising her head slightly, she nervously watched the side of Kotegawa Sayaka's face—her "poker face" behind her sunglasses showed absolutely no emotional fluctuation.
Her mother had finally started being kind to her; she absolutely didn't want to let a single mistake send their relationship back to freezing point!
However, to her surprise, Sayaka merely took the lollipop out of her mouth, licked it twice, and didn't immediately scold her for having no common sense!
"Fine. Don't let it happen again!"
"Eh?"
Her eyes went wide as she looked at her mother in disbelief. Chisa's eyebrows slanted into an 'eight' shape as her jaw dropped.
According to the usual script, shouldn't it be: "How can you be so useless! Nanaka would never make a mistake like this!"?
"What's with the 'Eh'? Do you only feel happy if I scold you?"
"No, not at all. Maybe you could just... yell at me a little..."
"???"
Sayaka turned to look at Chisa, who was scratching her cheek and staring at the floor with red ears. She wondered when her daughter had awakened a new "Masochist" hobby. No matter what, my daughter should be a Sadist!
But putting that aside, mistakes at work were inevitable.
Though that kid Yuu was a bit of a bastard, his words had some truth. At least under her gentle guidance, Chisa had only made one mistake so far...
However, more worrying than the mistake was the fact that Chisa's worldview and knowledge of personal hygiene seemed slightly lacking. She suspected that was exactly how her eldest daughter, Nanaka, had been snatched away!
"Chisa, if the person whose fly was open was Iori, would you have zipped it up for him?"
"Probably, yeah. It's just a quick favor, after all. But now I know I absolutely can't do that to guests!"
"..."
You can't do it to guests, and you can't do it to Iori either!
Sayaka pressed a hand to her forehead, feeling a massive headache coming on. As expected, health and physiology classes should be left to mothers!
Leaving Toshio to raise the kids—unless they were naturally gifted girls like Nanaka—no matter how good a kid was, they'd eventually end up like Chisa, knowing next to nothing about the differences between men and women.
"Write a three-thousand-word report for me explaining what was wrong with your behavior!"
Sighing, she stood up and walked to the door. Sayaka decided to make a schedule first, to slowly fill in the maternal education Chisa was missing!
"Starting tomorrow, I will teach you health and physiology. You should also take the initiative to learn more about the differences between men and women!"
"I understand!"
A smile had crawled onto her face without her knowing. Chisa wasn't sure if she was happy because she wasn't scolded or because her mother was going to spend more time with her.
But without a doubt, her heart was thumping, and warm blood was rushing through her veins to the tips of her fingers and toes, making her feel like she was walking on clouds.
Click.
The door closed. The last thing she saw was Chisa's smile. Sayaka couldn't help but curl her lips into a smile on the other side of the door as she prepared to pack up and go home.
As she turned, the voices from inside the room faded away...
"Chisa! Chisa!"
"?"
Rubbing her face, Sayaka wiped away the smile so that Yuu or Iori wouldn't see it and give her that "She's having an episode again, everyone back away!" look.
But the moment she turned around, Aina, who was supposed to be seeing guests off outside, came running over in a panic.
"What's wrong, Aina?"
"It's bad! It's an emergency!"
"Did the guest you 'pinched' come back to start a fight?"
Chisa instantly became tense. She really didn't want to be yelled at by the same guest twice in one day, but more importantly, she didn't want the matter to reach her mother!
"No! No, it's Yuu and Kohei and the other guy. They... they..."
Because of the sprinting, Aina was out of breath, her voice getting stuck on the word "they" in an infinite loop.
"Ah, so it's not a conflict with a guest? That's good..."
"They said they're going to explode down there and die! And Yuu is already in the early stages of detonating!"
"What? That's actually a thing?!"
Feeling like she'd heard something beyond absurd, Chisa looked at Aina like she was an idiot, her first instinct being disbelief!
But at that moment, her mother's warning suddenly rang in her ears: "Your knowledge of health and physiology is too poor, you need to learn on your own..."
"...I'll hear you out in detail then."
"Mm-hmm! Though I don't know much about men, Yuu said himself that if guys don't 'do that,' they'll go 'BOOM' in two weeks!"
"Eh? Are you sure you didn't misunderstand Yuu?"
"But think about it, Chisa! How do they usually act?"
Waving her arms, seeing that Chisa was skeptical, Aina began frantically and loudly citing examples from the boys' daily lives.
The guys at the PaB club were the type of hardcore characters who used adult magazines as currency. If they didn't have a physiological need, how could normal people be that obsessed!
Add to that their obsession with AVs and those dangerously blatant looks they gave girls in swimsuits...
"Now that you mention it... it kind of makes sense?"
Recalling the frequency of the "abnormal" sounds coming from her sister's room, Chisa pondered for two seconds and realized Aina might have a point!
Even her mother said her knowledge was lacking. Maybe men really did have a ticking time bomb mechanism!
If that was the case...
"I knew it! If it's true, their lives are at stake! Wait!"
"Exactly! You realized it too, Chisa!"
Pressing one hand to her face, Aina's art style shifted to look like something out of JoJo as she nodded slowly, looking at Chisa with a gaze full of grief and pity.
"Auntie Sayaka... is probably trying to use this to kill Yuu..."
"That explains everything! If Sister moved in, Yuu might have had some room to maneuver, but if Mom is personally watching him, he has no chance to 'release'!"
Her eyes went wide. Chisa finally understood why her mother chose to have Yuu stay there. It all made sense now!
No wonder her mother's attitude toward Yuu had softened lately. With this method, she just had to wait for Yuu to die quietly of natural causes.
Why bother arguing with a dead man? Is this the world of adults?
"No! We have to save them!"
"For Yuu, having Sister Nanaka is enough. I can take care of Kohei. But Iori..."
"I'll do it!"
Chisa slammed the table and stood up. With a determined look in her eyes, she clenched her fists and walked toward the door...