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[Yamashita's Apartment — Tokyo]
"What did you say?"
Riku's voice came out quieter than he intended, catching on something dry at the back of his throat.
I can do this, Yamashita told herself, fingers curling into the layered chiffon of her Gwen skirt until the fabric bit pale crescents into her palms. If it's going to happen no matter who I sign with—at least let it be someone like him.
"I can do it."
Her chin dropped. The blush that had been hovering around her ears all evening finally crested her cheekbones and bled down her neck in uneven patches. She nodded—once, slow, like a metronome winding down.
She didn't belong to the industry. Not yet. But even outsiders heard the whispers: talent agencies with leather couches that smelled like disinfectant and regret, photographers whose lenses lingered three seconds too long, contracts signed on bedsheets instead of desks. Yamashita Tachibana had dressed as Gwen tonight because she understood, in some dim and reluctant way, that certain people wanted their fantasies gift-wrapped before they were unwrapped.
Riku studied her expression—the downcast lashes, the rigid line of her shoulders, the way her breathing had turned shallow and deliberate, like she was rationing each inhale.
It clicked.
She thought he was asking her to sleep with him.
The narrator's voice surfaced in his skull, crisp and amused:
「Madam Yamashita Tachibana seems to have arrived at a rather colorful misunderstanding about your intentions, Riku-kun. You could correct her, of course. Or—you could lean into the error. Tonight could become a sleepless one. All you have to do is take the initiative, and she'll give herself to you willingly.」
Two roads stretched out in front of him like diverging rail lines.
Option A: Explain the misunderstanding. Tell her she'd gotten it wrong, that he wasn't that kind of man. Walk away with a "good guy" card stamped on his forehead and absolutely nothing else.
Option B: Exactly what the narrator suggested. Let the misunderstanding breathe. Accept her flawed assumption and let the night unspool wherever it wanted to go.
Let her keep thinking it?
Riku's gaze traveled—unhurried, deliberate—down the full length of Yamashita Tachibana's body. The Gwen cosplay clung and billowed in alternating waves: the high-collared bodice cinched tight against her ribs, white lace trim following the upper curve of her chest where soft skin pressed against the fabric's edge. The voluminous skirt flared from her waist in layers of pale blue and cream, but even its generous silhouette couldn't fully disguise the shape beneath—the tapered waist, the generous swell of her hips, thighs that pressed the chiffon flat whenever she shifted her weight.
For a photographer with particular tastes, this was the visual equivalent of dangling raw steak in front of a starving dog.
Even Riku—who prided himself on a certain professional detachment—felt something stir behind his sternum. A low, predatory warmth that climbed up the back of his neck and settled in his jaw.
Option B was looking increasingly reasonable.
If Yamashita wanted to misunderstand, then let her misunderstand.
He swallowed.
Now what?
What do I actually say?
Two seconds of dead air pressed down on the room like a physical weight. Outside the window, a distant ambulance siren rose and fell, muffled by seven floors of concrete. Neither of them moved.
Thank god they were alone.
Riku opened his mouth.
His own voice surprised him—rougher than expected, threaded with something that wasn't entirely performed.
"Madam Yamashita... I—I'm a little... urgent tonight."
Urgent.
The implication landed like a stone dropped into still water. Yamashita's heart kicked sideways against her ribs. Heat rushed into her face so fast her vision blurred at the edges. Her hands seized fistfuls of her skirt, knuckles blanching white beneath the lace trim.
Her breathing shortened—quick, shallow pulls through parted lips.
She'd said she could do it. Saying and doing were two wildly different countries separated by an ocean she'd never crossed.
I've never done this before, she thought, and the honesty of it made her chest ache. I don't even know where to put my hands.
"I... I..."
The pronoun stuttered out of her three times without finding a sentence to attach itself to. Each repetition shrank quieter than the last.
After a silence that felt geological, Yamashita shifted her weight. Her body inched toward him—small, reluctant movements, her knees pressing together beneath the costume's skirt. She lifted her face.
Riku's eyes met hers.
There was nothing gentle in them. They were dark and direct, fixed on her with the unblinking focus of a predator that had already decided to move and was simply choosing the angle. The amber lamplight caught one iris and turned it molten.
He's looking at me like I'm already underneath him.
The thought sent a tremor through her thighs.
Yamashita summoned every scrap of nerve she had left.
"O... okay."
She stood. The motion was glacial—knees straightening, spine uncurling, the layered skirt rustling as it fell back into place around her legs. She took one step forward. Then another. Her low-heeled costume boots made no sound on the office carpet.
She stopped directly in front of Riku.
And stood there.
Close enough now that he could smell her—really smell her. Not just the ambient sweetness that had been hovering at the edge of his awareness all evening but the full, concentrated thing: strawberry body lotion layered over warm skin, cut with something fainter beneath it, almost botanical, like crushed green stems. The combination was absurdly girlish and devastatingly effective.
It tightened something low in his abdomen.
Yamashita Tachibana's figure, viewed from this distance, was a study in contrasts. She was softer than Hirose Kaguya—less sculpted, more yielding, with the kind of curves that suggested she'd never once set foot inside a gym but had been blessed by sheer genetic generosity.
Her waist nipped inward where the bodice gripped, then flared into hips that the Gwen skirt couldn't contain. If Riku had to place her on the spectrum, she was an amplified version of Yukigami Nahiro's proportions—the same essential architecture, but everything turned up a full size. Bust straining against the lace-trimmed neckline, thighs that would spill over his palms, an ass he could feel the shape of through the layered chiffon every time she turned.
And she's greener than any of them, he thought. Completely untouched.
While Yamashita stood frozen in her own uncertainty—shoulders hunched, fingers fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve—Riku moved.
He stood up. Fast. Decisive.
Yamashita flinched. Her body jerked one step back on pure reflex, eyes widening, lips parting around a sound that never made it out.
Too slow.
Riku's hand closed around her wrist—firm, not painful, his thumb pressing into the soft underside where her pulse hammered visibly beneath pale skin. His other arm looped around her waist. He pulled.
Her feet left the ground for half a second.
Riku pivoted, lifting her, turning her, and set her down on the edge of the table with a controlled thud . Yamashita's legs dangled off the edge, knees apart by the width of his hips where he'd stepped between them. Her palms slapped flat against the tabletop behind her for balance, scattering a stack of unsigned contracts onto the floor.
He's done this before. The realization hit her like cold water. This isn't his first time. Not even close.
A spike of regret lanced through her chest.
"I... I..."
Moisture gathered at the corners of her eyes, turning the lamplight into prismatic halos. She blinked rapidly, jaw trembling.
"I—it's my first time."
The confession fell out of her mouth before she could swallow it.
Riku leaned forward. Slowly. His palms settled on the table on either side of her thighs, caging her in. His face stopped six inches from hers—close enough that she could see the individual lashes framing his eyes, could smell the faint cedar of his cologne mixing with the strawberry sweetness rising off her own heated skin.
"Yamashita-san." His voice dropped to something barely above a murmur. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
He let the question hang for one beat. Two.
"If you say no right now, I'll pretend this conversation never happened. Your contract proceeds as normal. Nothing changes."
Push. Pull. Release the tension, then watch it snap back tighter than before. He'd perfected this particular rhythm long ago—the performance of restraint that made the other person chase the outcome he'd already chosen.
Yamashita's hands flew to his chest. Palms flat against his sternum, arms locked at the elbows—a barricade made of trembling wrists and rigid fingers. She almost pushed.
Almost.
But then the thought spiraled forward: If not him, then who? Some agency executive twice my age with clammy hands and sour breath? Some overweight producer who treats it like a transaction?
She'd already seen the alternative. She'd already decided she couldn't stomach it.
So why not Riku?
At the very least, she thought, staring up at the sharp line of his jaw, the clean symmetry of his face, he's beautiful. Undeniably, infuriatingly beautiful.
"I... don't regret it."
Her voice was small. Barely a whisper.
Riku tilted his head. "You don't regret it?"
Yamashita's teeth sank into her lower lip. She tasted strawberry gloss and copper.
"I don't regret it."
Louder now. Steadier. Her jaw set with a stubbornness that looked borrowed from someone braver.
The hands braced against his chest softened. Her elbows unlocked. Her fingers uncurled from their rigid splay and slid upward—over his collarbones, along the sides of his neck, until her arms looped clumsily behind his nape. The motion was artless and genuine, the embrace of someone who had studied the theory but never once practiced.
She pulled herself toward him.
Her lips found his.
The kiss was green and honest and slightly off-center—her mouth landing half on his lower lip, half on the corner, before she corrected with a small, embarrassed adjustment. Warm. Wet. Her breath hitching against his chin. She tasted like the strawberry gloss and underneath it, something clean and faintly sweet, like melon candy.
Nnhh—
A tiny sound escaped through her nose, half-swallowed.
Riku's hands didn't stay idle.
His left palm slid up the outside of her thigh, gathering chiffon and tulle as it went, bunching the elaborate Gwen skirt upward in fistfuls. His right hand found the small zipper concealed along the bodice's side seam—index finger hooking the pull tab, dragging it down in one smooth, practiced motion. The fabric loosened around her ribs. The lace-trimmed neckline sagged forward, and Yamashita gasped against his mouth as cooler air touched the newly exposed swell of her chest.
Her skin was flushed from clavicle to sternum—a mottled pink-and-cream canvas, smooth and unblemished, faintly damp with nervous perspiration. Her bra was simple white cotton with a tiny bow at the center gore, and Riku unclasped it one-handed with the efficiency of someone who'd done this enough times that the mechanism was muscle memory.
Yamashita's face burned scarlet.
She could feel everything—his fingertips tracing the underside of her bare breast, the callused pad of his thumb dragging across one stiffened nipple, the scratch of his shirt buttons against her stomach where the bodice had crumpled between them. Each point of skin-to-skin contact sent involuntary tremors rippling outward through her limbs.
Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god—
Then Riku's hips pressed forward.
The first pressure came blunt and insistent, nudging against her entrance through the thin barrier of her underwear. His free hand hooked the cotton aside—the elastic snapping faintly against her inner thigh—and then there was nothing between them, and she could feel the broad, hot head of his cock notching against her, slick and heavy.
He pushed.
"A-ahh—!?"
Yamashita's palms slapped against his chest. Not pushing—clutching. Her fingers seized fistfuls of his shirt, twisting the fabric into wrinkled ropes. Her spine arched off the table, shoulder blades digging into scattered papers.
The stretch was searing. A sharp, splitting burn that radiated outward from her core and turned her thigh muscles to locked cables. He was thick—thicker than she'd braced for—and every centimeter felt like it was reshaping something inside her that had never been asked to accommodate anything before. Her inner walls clenched and resisted and then, grudgingly, yielded, and the sensation of being filled was so overwhelming that her vision whited out at the edges.
"Hhnnn—! Nngh—!"
Ragged, bitten-off sounds punched out of her throat with each fractional advance. Her heels kicked uselessly against the side of the table. Tears beaded along her lower lashes and spilled in hot tracks down her temples into her hairline.
"S-slow... slow down... please slow down—"
The words came out wrecked, consonants blurring into vowels, her voice cracking on the final syllable.
"Yamashita-san..." Riku's breath was warm against the shell of her ear, his lips barely grazing the lobe. "It gets better after this. Just bear with it."
Zero mercy.
He drove his hips forward in a single, decisive stroke—bottoming out with a wet, fleshy slap that echoed off the apartment walls. His pelvis pressed flush against hers, pinning her to the table, his full weight settling over her body like a warm, immovable slab.
"A—AHHHH—!!"
Yamashita's eyes rolled upward. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream that took two full seconds to find its voice—and when it did, it came out fractured and airless, more sob than moan. Her fingers clawed at his shoulders. Her thighs locked around his waist in reflexive, shuddering contractions. Every nerve ending between her hips felt like it had been struck with a tuning fork and left vibrating at a frequency she couldn't name.
It hurts. It hurts it hurts it—
...oh.
Something shifted. The burn didn't disappear, but it softened at the edges, and beneath it—deep, insistent, rhythmic—a current of pleasure she hadn't expected began to pulse outward from the place where their bodies joined.
Riku withdrew halfway and thrust back in.
"Mmph—! Hahh... hahh..."
Again. Faster.
Schlck. Schlck. Schlck.
The wet, obscene sound of their coupling filled the small office, layered over the creak of the desk, the rustle of crumpled paper, the rapid percussion of Yamashita's breathing. The strawberry scent of her lotion had been swallowed by something headier now—musk and salt and the sharp, animal sweetness of arousal, thick enough to taste on the back of the tongue.
Riku's hips found a rhythm—deep, steady, punishing strokes that drove Yamashita's body backward across the table with each impact. Her Gwen skirt was bunched around her waist in a ruined cloud of chiffon and tulle. Her bare thighs gripped his flanks, skin slapping skin. His cock—veined, flushed dark, glistening—pulled almost entirely free with each backstroke before slamming home again, and Yamashita could feel every ridge and curve of him dragging along her inner walls, stretching her, filling her so completely that each thrust pushed a breathless, involuntary sound out of her lungs.
"Ah—! Ahh—! Ahhnn—!"
Her back arched. Her toes curled inside her costume boots. The desk groaned beneath them.
Riku picked up speed.
"A-AHH—!?"
---
"Ahh—!?"
"What happened? Emi?"
Riku's apartment glowed in muted lamplight. The kitchen counter was littered with fabric scraps and a tangled spool of white thread. Tachibana Haru stood at the sink, rinsing a pair of mugs—lavender dish soap and lukewarm water filling the air with a clean, faintly floral scent.
Tachibana Emi sat cross-legged on the living room floor, one index finger jammed between her lips. A sewing needle glinted on the cushion beside her, threaded with dark blue cotton.
"Pricked my finger on the needle." Emi pulled her finger free and examined the tiny bead of blood welling from the pad. She frowned at it like it had personally offended her.
I can't even sew a button without injuring myself, she thought, pressing her thumb against the wound until it stung. If Riku-kun sees this, he'll laugh at me. Or worse—he'll fix it himself in ten seconds and make me feel completely useless.
"Be more careful," Haru called over her shoulder, setting the mugs upside-down on the drying rack. "You can barely thread a needle, and you're trying to hem an entire skirt. That's like attempting chess strategy when you can't even play checkers."
"Rude."
"Accurate."
Haru wiped her hands on the dish towel and glanced at the clock above the stove. 12:14 AM. The numbers blinked their sterile green blink.
He's still not back. Something tightened beneath her sternum—not quite worry, not quite jealousy, occupying the unnamed territory between the two.
"Speaking of which," Haru said, keeping her voice carefully neutral, "it's pretty late. Riku-kun still isn't back yet?"
"No idea." Emi sucked her injured finger again and shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "Probably something important came up."
Across the room, Yukigami Nahiro knelt beside the low table, smoothing the fitted sheet over the futon she'd dragged in from the storage closet. She tucked the elastic corners beneath the mattress pad with precise, deliberate movements—hospital corners, crisp and even. The pillow she'd selected was the firm one, because she'd noticed Riku always pushed the soft one aside by morning.
He's been sleeping on that miserable floor pad in the living room for days, Nahiro thought, running her palm across the freshly laundered sheet to press out the last wrinkle. His back must be in agony. He just won't say anything because he's an idiot who thinks suffering quietly is the same as being considerate.
The three of them had held a summit earlier that evening—rare diplomatic ground between women who spent most of their waking hours in cold-war orbit around the same man.
Resolution One: Riku would no longer sleep on the living room floor. The futon would be set up in the bedroom, and they would make room.
Resolution Two: A non-aggression pact. No one would make any moves on Riku during the night. Hands to themselves. Boundaries respected. Mature, civilized cohabitation.
All three had agreed.
All three had lied.
Haru dried the last mug and set it in the cabinet, her reflection ghosting across the dark window glass. He'll come home tired. I'll have tea ready. Just tea. Nothing else. ...Unless he wants something else.
Emi bit a thread free with her teeth and held up the half-hemmed skirt, squinting at her crooked stitching. I wonder if he'll notice I shortened this. It's his favorite skirt on me. Was. Before I butchered it. God, I really should have just used fabric glue.
Nahiro plumped the pillow one final time, set it at a precise angle, and sat back on her heels. The agreement will hold for approximately one night. Possibly two. After that, all bets are off.
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[Yamashita's apartment — 1:23 AM]
The Unit smelled like sex and strawberries and the faintly acrid ghost of spent latex.
Riku sat on the couch, legs spread, head tilted back against the headrest. His shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, the fabric rumpled and untucked. A thin sheen of perspiration cooled along his collarbone.
Yamashita Tachibana knelt between his knees.
Her Gwen bodice hung loose around her shoulders, lace trim crumpled, the zipper still gaping open along her side. Her hair—which had been pinned into the character's signature style hours ago—had come almost entirely undone, chestnut strands clinging to her flushed cheeks and the damp curve of her neck. Her lips were swollen and glossy, pupils blown wide, chest still rising and falling in shallow, uneven intervals.
I can't believe I just did that, she thought, her face burning so hot she could feel her own pulse in her earlobes. I can't believe any of that just happened. My legs are still shaking. Everything below my waist feels like it belongs to someone else.
She reached to her left without looking—fingers finding the small plastic wastebasket and dragged it toward her.
Yamashita leaned over the bin, lips parting.
A thick, viscous strand of milky white drooled from her lower lip, stretching before it broke and dropped into the trash with a faint, wet plat. She spat twice more—quick, delicate motions, her brow furrowed, tongue pressing forward to clear the residue coating the roof of her mouth. The taste was salty and alkaline and stubbornly persistent, clinging to her taste buds despite her efforts.
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