"Thanks for the hospitality~"
Although she kept saying it didn't taste good, Hiroi Kikuri still honestly finished all the fried rice.
"It seems you really were hungry..." Asakura sighed emotionally as he looked at the polished plate.
"Food must not be wasted."
Hiroi Kikuri said with a straight face, "This is an insight I gained after going hungry for two whole days and finally managed to scrounge a meal over at Shima's place!"
"It's clearly a very serious insight, but why does it sound so unserious coming from your mouth..." Asakura complained while clearing the table. "I suppose this could be considered a kind of talent."
"Really, don't just complain about me sentence after sentence. At a time like this, shouldn't you say 'the hospitality was inadequate' instead?"
"If the hospitality were too adequate, I feel like you'd stay at my house and never leave, so this is just about right."
"Dammit, even though it's only the second time I've been here, have I already been found out..."
"You really intended to do that, didn't you!"
After a not-so-intense exchange, Hiroi Kikuri adjusted the bath towel on her body, then stretched out her legs that had been curled up. "Whew, eating at a low table still feels a bit uncomfortable, mainly because the legs have to be curled up like this..."
"Isn't it basically the same as a kotatsu in winter?" Asakura sighed. "Well, although I am considering whether to buy a new set of table and chairs for the living room..."
As soon as Asakura finished speaking, he noticed Hiroi Kikuri looking at him with a strange gaze.
This couldn't help but make Asakura a bit suspicious. "What? Is there something wrong with what I said?"
"No, I just thought you were a more... well, it doesn't matter..." Hiroi Kikuri said, staring intently at Asakura.
"Huh?" Asakura was startled, unable to get on her wavelength.
"Because isn't it like there's nothing here? Even though it's a home, it looks empty." She continued, "Although I didn't look closely, those pieces of furniture should have been taken away from home a long time ago, right? After so long, there's still no sign of replenishing the furniture, so I thought Asakura, you were that kind of person."
"The kind of guy who seems to have nothing in this world he completely cares about, nothing he wants to return to, no 'home' that he values. For you, this world seems to have no sense of belonging at all, with a void in your heart."
The alcoholic scent on Hiroi Kikuri didn't seem to have faded yet, and her eyes still carried a bit of drunkenness. But for some reason, Asakura felt that her slightly hazy eyes could instead notice things that ordinary people wouldn't.
"You're overthinking it..." Asakura responded nonchalantly. "If a house being empty means a void in the heart, then Hiroi-san, your heart must be a chaotic, filthy, broken mess."
"On what grounds do you assume my home is a chaotic, filthy, broken mess!" Hiroi Kikuri protested loudly, but the hint of guilt in her voice couldn't be hidden.
"Just based on the fact that you can only scrounge meals and stay at my place right now..." Asakura said slowly.
"Guh..."
Hiroi Kikuri slumped onto the low table.
After a moment, she said dryly, "I know my view is a bit one-sided. Didn't you just say you were going to buy a new set of table and chairs for the empty living room? This place probably won't be empty like this for much longer... Ugh, I feel like it's hard to express my meaning, the more I think about it in my head, the more confused I get... Wine! Give me wine!"
"Don't think about tricking me into giving you wine. Compared to that, you should hurry up and change your clothes. Don't you feel uncomfortable wrapped in a bath towel?"
"I feel like there's not much difference from the part covered by the dress I usually wear, I forgot about it subconsciously..."
Hiroi Kikuri scratched her head, revealing a carefree smile.
Actually, this person's smile after getting drunk was quite infectious. Just looking at it could make one's mood slightly better. No wonder even though she always did all sorts of chaotic things on stage, she could still garner quite high popularity.
Just for some reason, after Hiroi Kikuri went to the locker room to change into a maid outfit, she showed a considerable degree of resistance to that maid outfit.
—As a side note, although Asakura said this maid outfit was prepared for employees, it was actually the one prepared for Kawaragi Momoka that had already been taken to the store. The maid outfit currently at home was actually the one Asakura prepared for Gotō Hitori.
Anyway, in the end, Asakura really had no choice but to give her one of his own T-shirts and a pair of athletic shorts. Only then did Hiroi Kikuri change out of the bath towel.
The loose T-shirt completely covered the athletic shorts Hiroi Kikuri was wearing on her lower body, creating an illusion that she wasn't wearing anything underneath. Even though she was showing less skin than when she was wrapped in the bath towel, the level of sexiness actually increased instead...
He didn't expect the "boyfriend shirt" joke he started with to be "called back" in such a strange way.
After sending Hiroi Kikuri off to sleep, Asakura also took a bath.
Unlike many schools that hold a three-day cultural festival, Sobu High's cultural festival only lasted one day. But Asakura felt that this day was exceptionally long, and many things had happened. Although solving those matters didn't take much effort, the mental fatigue had indeed accumulated bit by bit.
While soaking half his body in the bathwater, which appeared pale green due to the addition of bath salts, feeling that warmth envelop his body and wash away the bone-deep fatigue bit by bit, Asakura finally understood why Japanese people like soaking in baths so much.
"Clearly a drunkard, yet surprisingly sharp."
Muttering a sentence casually, Asakura submerged half of his face into the water, as if to spit out all the annoyance and fatigue in his heart, bubbling "gurgle gurgle" in the process.
After finishing his bath, he didn't do anything else. After confirming that Hiroi Kikuri had already gone to the guest room to sleep, he also went back to his bedroom to rest.
"Don't leave the troubles for the next day..." looking at the familiar ceiling, Asakura murmured softly in a half-asleep state, "Tomorrow is another new day..."
As a result, in the middle of the night, he woke up with a start from his dream, subtly feeling a warm thing with a faint scent of alcohol crawling into his bed.
Without thinking much, Asakura kicked Hiroi Kikuri off the bed.
It was already the middle of the night, yet the alcoholic scent on her couldn't have dissipated yet. This person had probably just run to the kitchen to take out the wine he had hidden in the fridge to drink and ended up getting drunk, which is why she ran into the wrong room and crawled into the wrong bed.