We left the café and started wandering around Tokyo Inclusion Square. The total floor area is massive — even a single loop would take hours.
“Hey — finals end and then it’s summer break, right?”
“Yeah, assuming I don’t fail anything.”
“It’s fine. I will not allow Ryouya to fail anything.”
“Mm-hmm, I’m going to support Ryouya-kun all the way too.”
Reona and Riona looked thoroughly fired up about it. Their backing gave me actual hope for surviving finals — I’d better commit to the work too.
“By the way, Ryouya-kun, do you have any plans for summer break?”
“Mm — nothing in particular so far.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, genuinely no plans.”
I answered without shame. Reona and Riona were obviously going to be off having a magazine-spread summer with friends; I was going to be in my room, rolling around on the floor.
“So Ryouya is just always free.”
“Yeah, knowing how loner-status Ryouya-kun is, that tracks.”
“You’re both brutal. If you bully me too much, even I might cry.”
I made the protest reflexively. Just in case it’s unclear: I do not in fact have a fetish for being bullied.
“Since Ryouya-kun is such a sad case, Riona and I will play with you for the whole summer as a special favor.”
“Now Ryouya has plans.”
“And by ‘play’ you mean… when?”
If a family trip got planned on top of it, double-booking would be a headache. I needed to know.
“Every day of summer break, obviously.”
”…Eh?!”
Reona had delivered that cheerfully. Summer break is roughly four weeks. Every day sounded like a substantial commitment.
“Did you not want to?”
“N-no, that’s not it. But — what about your own plans? You guys have to have plans with friends and stuff.”
Please tell me they were not going to invite me along to those. Being dropped into a group of Reona-and-Riona’s actually-popular friends would kill me on contact.
“Oh, those? We’re canceling them.”
“You really don’t need to—”
“Nee-chan and I have Ryouya as top priority.”
Both of their faces were serious. There was no read where they were joking. Apparently Reona and Riona were dead earnest.
“So we are going to have a wonderful summer break together, the three of us.”
“I want to make lots of memories.”
”…You serious.”
And with that, my summer break was fully booked. The idea of me spending summer break with two beautiful twin sisters was the kind of thing past-me would have rejected as obvious fabrication. While I thought that, we kept walking.
“Oh — let’s stop at that arcade.”
“Seconded. Constant shopping was starting to wear.”
“Same as Ryouya and Nee-chan.”
The three of us stepped onto the arcade floor. The crowd ranged from elementary-school kids to adults. We started with the crane games — and Reona got locked in.
”…Ngh. Frustrating. One more try.”
“Hey — maybe we cut our losses? If we’ve put this much money in and still haven’t gotten it, the machine is probably stacked.”
“No. I’m getting it.”
She’d already spent something like three thousand yen, so I’d suggested calling it. Reona was not entertaining that. She fed in more coins.
“Once Nee-chan gets like this, nothing moves her.”
“Got it — Reona’s a ‘never quit’ type.”
“All we can do is wait until she’s satisfied.”
How long that would take, no idea. As I was watching Reona work, I noticed a parent-and-child duo at the next machine going for the same prize. Welp, another statistic. I was thinking that when they extracted the prize in about five tries.
”…Oh. So that is how you do it.”
I’d just been shown the technique. I crossed over to where Reona was about to feed her next coin in.
“Hey, can I try?”
“You figured out how?”
“Not guaranteed, but…”
I dropped a hundred-yen coin in and started working the crane. Reona had been trying to grab the prize and lift it directly. I used the arm to gradually nudge the prize sideways along the two parallel bars.
I positioned the prize so it was hanging half-off into the gap between the bars, then used the arm to press it down from above. Repeat — push, push — until the prize finally dropped through.
“There. Got it.”
“Ryouya-kun, that’s amazing.”
As I was crouching to fish the prize out of the chute, Reona, in an extremely high-energy state, came in from behind and hugged me from the back.
“H-hey — your chest is pressed against me!?”
“I’m pressing them against you as a reward.”
“That’s worse.”
The softness was sending direct signals to my lower half and I was in a deeply unstable situation. If I didn’t get clear soon, the erection would become visible to both of them.
“Nee-chan, Ryouya looks like he’s in trouble. Let go of him?”
“True. I’ll let you off the hook this time.”
“Why am I, mechanically, being framed as someone receiving a punishment?”
“But it was nice, wasn’t it?”
”…Yeah, I guess.”
Faced with that I answered honestly, and Reona was beaming. After that we played the rest of the arcade staples — shooters, air hockey, the works.