Surely they wouldn't get drunk after just a few sips, right?
Jhin had barely finished that thought before reality slapped him hard across the face.
All four of them let out a synchronized, boozy hiccup — just like Kikuri Hiroi when she was absolutely hammered — and broke into dopey, tipsy grins.
They looked adorable. And yet, Jhin felt a chill crawl up his spine.
Because they were all staring at him with the same gleaming, hungry eyes of wolves that had just spotted a meal.
Ryo was the first to act. She rummaged through the pile of snacks on the coffee table, ultimately selecting a box of chocolate sticks. She snapped the cardboard open, tore through the silver wrapper with practiced efficiency, pulled one out, and took a bite.
"This one doesn't taste good. Here, you have it." Ryo held out the half-eaten chocolate stick and aimed it vaguely in Jhin's direction — except that from her perspective, there were three Jhins floating in front of her, and she couldn't figure out which mouth to aim for. "Weird... why are there so many of you? Guess I'll just eat two more then."
"Hey, hey, hey — no, stop, I'm right here," Jhin said quickly, snatching the chocolate stick out of her hand and popping it into his own mouth. "See? I already ate it."
Ryo squinted at him, thoroughly confused. "I didn't see that. Nope. Doesn't count. You have to eat another one."
She proceeded to pull the entire box out, cupped it in her palm, opened her mouth wide, and left a perfectly neat row of bite marks along the top of every stick in the row. Chewing thoughtfully, she held the box out toward him and mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate, "Here... eat 'em."
So this is what Ryo is like when she's drunk. Exactly how committed are you to the concept of an indirect kiss?
Figuring that everyone else was already wasted anyway, Jhin decided cooperating with Ryo was the path of least resistance. He accepted the handful of chocolate sticks she shoved at him and ate them dutifully. But even that wasn't enough to satisfy her — she was already digging through the snack pile again, hunting for the next suitable indirect-kiss candidate.
Just as Ryo was gearing up for round two, Hitori Gotoh stepped forward and put a stop to it.
"Ryo," Bocchi-chan announced with alarming confidence, "I think I should be the one to demonstrate what proper feeding play actually looks like!"
Drunk Hitori Gotoh was a completely different creature. Her shyness had been replaced by something terrifyingly bold. She picked up a biscuit, held it between her soft pink lips, marched straight up to Jhin, and launched herself at his face with the reckless energy of someone who had absolutely no intention of surviving the impact. If she'd actually connected at that velocity, she probably would have shattered the biscuit to dust and given them both mild concussions and split lips to go with it.
"What the—!"
Jhin yelped and threw both hands up, catching Bocchi-chan's oncoming head between his palms with a firm squeeze, narrowly preventing the two of them from generating sparks in the most literal, physical sense.
Hitori pulled the biscuit from her mouth and blinked at him in genuine bewilderment. "Jhin, why aren't you cooperating?"
"Bocchi-chan, slow down — that was actually dangerous."
"Oh."
She considered this for exactly one second. If the road to Rome was blocked, then Rome would simply have to come to her. She reached up, placed a hand behind Jhin's head, applied a modest amount of pressure, and completed the kiss with minimal fanfare — apparently forgetting entirely that she was supposed to be giving Ryo a demonstration.
"Whoa, Bocchi-chan is so bold!"
The chorus of impressed shrieks from her bandmates made Hitori preen with satisfaction. When the deep kiss concluded, she tossed the biscuit into her own mouth, then pulled Jhin's head against her chest and addressed the room with great authority. "See? Jhin likes this too."
"Ohhhh! As expected of Bocchi-chan — someone with experience really is on a different level!"
Nijika cheered her on with enthusiastic praise, while Kita Ikuyo glanced down at her own modest chest and mourned in silence.
Ryo tugged at Hitori's sleeve. "Bocchi-chan. Let me try too."
"Hm? Oh, sure, go ahead." Hitori magnanimously released Jhin, stepping aside to yield the floor to Ryo, then settled back onto the sofa to watch with great academic interest how well her protégé had absorbed the lesson.
Jhin would be lying if he said there wasn't a tiny — a genuinely microscopic — part of him that was enjoying this. Just a little. An astronomically small amount.
But he still had his wits about him, and he wasn't about to let Ryo run wild. He raised a hand and stopped her mid-approach. "Ryo. Don't."
"Why can Bocchi-chan do it and I can't?"
"If I had to put it into words..." Jhin pointed at both of their chests, hoping Ryo, even in her current state, could grasp the vast, unbridgeable gulf that existed between her and Hitori Gotoh in this particular department. "...there are simply certain differences between people?"
"Damn it..." Drunk Ryo, it turned out, had a surprisingly expressive face. Her brow drooped. She covered her chest with one hand and shot a resentful sideways glance at Hitori, utterly unable to comprehend why her bandmate had developed so much better than her.
It has to be Bocchi's fault somehow!
Nijika and Kita Ikuyo, sitting nearby, were also caught in the blast radius of this particular area-of-effect attack. As fellow members of the Itty-Bitty Committee, they rallied to Ryo's side without a word of coordination.
"Ryo, don't give up just like that!"
"Ryo-senpai, use the power of your invincible bass to figure something out!"
Fueled by their cheering, Ryo ignited. She thrust both arms skyward with sudden, burning resolve. "Ikuyo! Nijika! Lend me your energy!"
"OHHHH!"
A peculiar resonance formed between the three of them. Nijika took one of Jhin's arms and Kita Ikuyo took the other, pinning him firmly to the sofa without leaving him any room to resist.
"Bocchi-chan! A little help here! Help! Where are you?!"
Jhin couldn't actually use his full strength to break free — he was terrified of hurting them — so all he could do was appeal to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, said girlfriend had apparently undergone a complete personality transplant and was sitting on the sidelines, cheerfully munching on cola gummies and snacks, watching the whole spectacle unfold with warm, entertained eyes.
"Heh heh. Jhin, you might as well just give in to Ryo."
Jhin couldn't even be bothered to point out how loaded that sentence was coming from Nijika. Since struggling was pointless and his girlfriend had defected to the spectator's gallery, all he could do was accept his fate. Either way, it wasn't like he was coming out of this as the loser.
Ryo grabbed a piece of chocolate, popped it into her mouth, and — as Jhin stared up at her with confused, helpless eyes — lowered her head toward him. The rich, bittersweet flavor of the chocolate traveled across her soft, dewy lips and the tip of her gentle tongue, arriving directly at his taste buds.
"Tsk tsk tsk..." Nijika's eyes went wide with fascinated attention, cataloguing every detail of the scene unfolding before her.
Jhin struggled hard, but his hands were pinned by Nijika and Kita Ikuyo, Ryo was sitting astride him with her fingers locked onto his shoulders, and no matter how much he tried to twist his head away, Hitori Gotoh materialized at the edge of the sofa and calmly took hold of his head to keep it still.
Bocchi-chan, what do you think you're DOING?!
Jhin let out a silent internal wail and clenched his jaw, refusing to give Ryo any further ground.
In the villa, four beautiful girls had a single young man pinned to the sofa and were forcing him to do things against his will. By any outside perspective, this was a scene that men would envy to the point of tears. But only Jhin knew the truth: he was balancing on a wire stretched over an abyss, and the name of that abyss was The Machete Ending.
His only hope was that the old saying about drunk people not remembering what they did the night before was actually true.
Having failed to advance, Ryo settled for the next best option. Like a little cat, she extended the tip of her small, pink tongue and began lapping lazily at his face, leaving behind a faint trail of alcohol and the clean, grassy scent that always clung to her.
Has Ryo been eating so much grass that her mouth is permanently marinated in it?
Jhin could only find what meager amusement he could in his predicament and let Ryo do as she pleased.
"Okay, okay — Ryo, I think that's probably enough now!" Nijika's voice rang in Jhin's ears like a chorus of angels.
"Jhin is my husband, you know. Letting you kiss him twice is already the absolute maximum I'm willing to compromise on!"
...Those angels were poisoned.
____
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