"Mio. Hey. Wake up."
Someone was squishing her cheek.
Shirai Mio slowly peeled her eyes open. The first thing she saw was Yuigahama Yui's face, looking down at her from above with that stupidly pretty expression.
Mio blinked. One second. Two. Three.
Oh right. She was still at Yui's house.
Somewhere between the movie not being her speed and the kotatsu being too her speed, she'd apparently passed out.
"What time is it?" she mumbled.
"Six PM. If I hadn't woken you up, you'd have probably slept straight through to night."
"...Already six?"
She was trying to drag herself out of the kotatsu when Yui caught the hem of her clothes.
"Mio. Why don't you just stay over tonight? We don't have school tomorrow anyway."
Mio looked at Yui's expectant expression. Then she thought about Shiina Mashiro back home, probably staring at an empty bowl and waiting for someone to notice.
And then there was the fact that both Mashiro and Yui were sitting at exactly 45 conquest rating right now. Triggering a task with either of them would be equally dangerous.
She was still turning this over when rain started against the windows outside—soft and steady, like the weather had thrown its vote in too.
Even so, Mio took out her phone first and confirmed that Sengoku Chihiro was home, then said:
"Well. If you're that reluctant to let me go..."
"Of course I am. You came all this way—why would I just let you leave?" Yui said, completely deadpan.
At school, if Mio had said something like that, Yui would have gone red and immediately pushed back with "I didn't say that!" or something along those lines. But she'd figured something out today: her parents were gone, they were alone, and there was zero reason to be embarrassed. If anything, leaning into it might get her a look at Mio's embarrassed face.
Cute little counterattack plan. If only it had worked.
Mio was mentally calculating whether to complete the next task or not when a key in the front door broke the silence.
Mrs. Yuigahama stepped inside, spotted the two of them tangled together in the kotatsu, and smiled a smile that held several entire novels' worth of subtext.
"Looks like I came back at the wrong time."
"Mom—" Yui straightened up. "Didn't you say you'd be back late?"
"It is late, isn't it? Or did I interrupt something?" She tilted her head. "Should I leave? I can leave."
"No—nothing—I was just surprised, that's all." Yui pivoted immediately. "...I'm kind of hungry."
"Then I'll start dinner! Mio-chan, is there anything you'd like to eat?"
"I'm not picky at all. Though... Yui mentioned your braised pork was amazing..."
"Braised pork it is, then!"
Mrs. Yuigahama set her bag down and practically bounced into the kitchen, already cracking her knuckles. When Mio tried to follow and help, she was waved off with a firm "Guests don't cook" and sent back to the kotatsu.
So Mio ended up back where she started, watching variety TV with Yui.
On screen, there was an actor Yui had been kind of obsessed with for a while. The type she'd privately decided she wanted for a boyfriend someday—that whole package.
But watching him now, she felt... nothing. The heart-thump she used to get was just gone.
Without really meaning to, Yui shifted her gaze to Mio's face instead.
She studied it for a moment.
Her heart rate picked up.
Wait.
That's not—
She caught herself, frowning. This was the effect of what happened this afternoon. It had to be. Just her brain being weird about it.
"Yui," Mio said sweetly. "Is my face really that interesting? You've been staring for a while. Did I get something on me?"
"It's a pretty face," Yui said, without missing a beat. "That's why I was looking."
"Aw, thank you~"
Mio was about to say something else when the System cut in—
"Host! I'd like you to find a way to maintain any form of physical contact with Yuigahama Yui for over twenty minutes, while Mrs. Yuigahama is present. Succeed and you may receive a Yuigahama Yui-series card or item reward. Fail and you'll be drawing from the punishment deck."
"...What kind of damage did you take to come up with this stuff?"
At least she was a girl right now. Two girls being physically affectionate in front of a parent wasn't going to set anything on fire. If she was still her old self, she wouldn't even have dared think about it.
"Host, I assure you the System has not sustained any psychological damage whatsoever."
Mio just snorted and turned back to the task at hand—specifically, deciding whether to bother.
Yui's conquest rating only needed five more points to hit 50. Once it crossed that threshold, the task difficulty would permanently escalate. She'd already confirmed with the System: even if the rating dropped afterward through failures or other means, the difficulty didn't come back down.
Based on previous tasks, physical contact tasks usually only bumped the rating by two or three points. On paper, it looked manageable.
Except—daily interactions could also raise it. If she completed the task and then Yui did something cute at the wrong moment and the rating ticked up naturally...
And Yui did a lot of cute things.
Mio stared at the ceiling for a moment, then exhaled and flopped forward onto the kotatsu table, sprawling out the way Mashiro did when she wanted attention.
Task declined. Pretend this never happened.
Instantly, her shoulders dropped about three inches.
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