“…Sleeping is — very hard.”
At some point I’d actually drifted off, and light filtering through the curtains woke me up. Reona and Riona were still asleep, still firmly bracketing me on both sides — and the pressure was immense.
I tried to sit up slowly so as not to wake them, and that’s when I noticed something deeply unhinged.
“Wh—!?”
Reona, sleeping next to me, was in her underwear. Her pajamas were on the floor next to the bed. Apparently my yelp had woken them — they sat up groggily.
“Hngh… noisy. What’s going on, this early?”
“Let me sleep more…”
“No, no — Reona, I’d like you to explain why you are in underwear.”
”…Nee-chan has a habit of stripping out of her pajamas in her sleep.”
“Yep, since forever. I just kind of do it.”
Reona, surprisingly chipper for the hour, kept up with the conversation. Riona, by contrast, was visibly half-asleep. Apparently Riona is constitutionally bad at mornings.
“P-please put pajamas back on.”
“But — Ryouya-kun, you saw me and Riona naked in the bath last night. Underwear feels like nothing at this point, doesn’t it?”
“That’s not the point.”
While Reona and I were having that exchange, Riona had already gone back to sleep. They both operate strictly on Reona-and-Riona time. We waited until Riona surfaced again, ran through morning routines, and then Reona piped up:
“So it’s Saturday — let’s skip the study session today, right?”
“Sure, fine.”
I’d been about to suggest the same thing — making them dedicate their weekend to me was already too much. Finals week kicks off Monday, so the two of them should be using this weekend however they wanted.
“What are we doing today, then?”
“I want to go shopping. Been a while.”
“Okay, let’s do that.”
So apparently Reona and Riona were going shopping. They’d look like a magazine spread doing literally anything together. Good for them.
“Have fun.”
“Oh — I forgot to mention. You’re coming with us, Ryouya-kun.”
“You really don’t need me along.”
“Riona and I aren’t the kind of cold-hearted people who’d leave Ryouya out.”
“I do not, for one second, feel left out.”
I tried to bow out gracefully — I didn’t want to crash the sister-sister time — but they steamrolled me. Apparently I was going whether I liked it or not.
We left the house, took a bus and a train, and ended up at Tokyo Inclusion Square, a big mixed-use complex in Odaiba.
“Let’s eat first? I haven’t had breakfast either.”
“Sure. Got any recommendations?”
“I want to go somewhere specific.”
“Then let’s let Riona pick.”
“Decided.”
We started walking. If Riona was making the call, it was probably a chic place. As I was thinking that, we arrived.
“Here. Let’s go in.”
“Oh nice, the atmosphere is good.”
It was exactly what I’d predicted — visibly chic in a way that made me, Mob Character B, feel intensely out of place.
”…After you guys went to the trouble of bringing me here, I’m sorry to ask, but — can we go somewhere else?”
“Why?”
“This place is packed with couples. I’m going to stick out so badly.”
“In that case, why don’t the three of us play couple together?”
Riona had asked the question, and Reona, with a wicked smirk, proposed something completely unhinged.
“Three-way couple — I’d just look like a scumbag two-timing both of you.”
“Riona and I see it as pure love.”
“So it’s not two-timing.”