Hitori Gotoh, stopped mid-act by Jhin, flopped back onto his lap in a sulk, rolling back and forth in petulant protest. It didn't take long for his practiced, soothing head-pats to dissolve her indignation entirely. She let out a blissfully dopey little laugh — heh heh heh — and went slack.
Once he confirmed she'd been appeased, Jhin quietly zipped himself back up and turned his attention to managing the remaining three thoroughly, catastrophically drunk girls.
"Jhin, come on — are you coming to take a bath with me or not?"
"Jhin, can I hold you from behind tonight when we sleep?"
"Jhin, remember to sneak out of your room in the middle of the night. We still haven't finished our indirect kissing practice — or hey, we could just skip straight to the direct kind."
What is going on?
Hitori Gotoh was slowly, reluctantly drifting back to sobriety. All sorts of wolfish, predatory lines were shoving their way into her ears one after another. She blinked. The last haze of drunkenness cleared from her eyes.
Her closest friends were — one by one — trying to seduce her boyfriend into cheating?!
The sheer shock of it made her genuinely wonder if she was still dreaming. She decided, for the moment, to stay very still and very quiet, and see how this all played out.
Jhin, naturally, refused all three drunken invitations. "No. Absolutely not. You're all wasted right now — stop messing around."
Oh. So they're drunk. Which means... I was drunk too?
Hitori couldn't recall a single thing she'd done in the past stretch of time. The last memory she had was eating one of the fermented sweet rice balls Jhin had made — the sweet, clean taste of them had been wonderful — and then everything after that was a complete blank.
Jhin, you really are the greatest boyfriend in the world. You actually held firm against temptation like that.
In Hitori Gotoh's eyes, every single member of Kessoku Band — herself excluded — possessed a charm that was entirely their own.
Nijika had that brilliant golden hair and those expressive crimson eyes, her whole presence crackling with the kind of youthful energy that made you feel warmer just by looking at her — the quintessential girl-next-door, the sort of person whose smile alone could brighten a bad day.
Ryo, despite her perpetually blank expression, was striking in her own quiet way — that delicate face with the teardrop mole at the corner of her eye, like a solitary flower growing on a glacier, cold and proud, making you want nothing more than to see it bloom into a smile.
And Kita Ikuyo — well, there was no need to even elaborate. Bright, warm, always smiling that sweet smile of hers, dressed impeccably without fail. When she looked at you with those large amber eyes full of gentle laughter, you'd swear they could melt the hardest stone in existence.
Hitori Gotoh tried to imagine it — if she were a boy, facing the three of them like this? She decided, with complete honesty, that there was essentially zero chance she'd be able to refuse.
"I am not drunk," Nijika announced, apparently feeling it necessary to prove this point. "We're adults, aren't we? Who gets drunk off a little sweet rice wine?" She puckered her soft pink lips and planted a kiss squarely on Jhin's face, then laughed and said cheerfully, "See? I kissed you right on the mouth."
"Yes, yes, you're completely sober. Now be a good girl and go back to your room to sleep."
Nijika was having none of it. She nuzzled her cheek against him and refused to let go. "I don't want to. You have to sleep with me. Please~"
Jhin turned his head away with a slight frown. "Nijika, stop that. It's hot."
"You've changed! You never used to treat me like this! You big heartless lug!"
"All right, all right. You go to sleep now, and I'll be there in a little while."
"Mm. Goodnight, sweetheart." Nijika kissed him, satisfied, and toddled off to the bedroom.
Since when did Nijika get so close to Jhin that she's calling him sweetheart?
Hitori Gotoh was shaken to her core. Even drunk, she thought, most people wouldn't throw around terms of endearment that married couples used.
Does Nijika actually have some kind of relationship with Jhin that I don't know about?
She hadn't even finished processing that when Ryo — seeing that Nijika, the one person who'd been keeping her in check, had finally left the room — immediately seized Jhin's lips for herself.
Hitori Gotoh's brain crashed.
W-W-W-WHAT. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHAT!?
Nijika calling him sweetheart was one thing — but Ryo and Jhin actually kissing? Whatever had happened during the time she'd been drunk, compared to this, everything else was completely trivial.
Why is Ryo kissing Jhin? What on earth happened while I was out of it to get things to this point?
It was true that with Nijika gone there was no one left to hold Ryo back — but it also meant there was no one to help hold Jhin still either.
Jhin reached up and pressed his right hand against Ryo's cheek. "Ryo. Can you please stop with the surprise attacks? This is one hundred percent kissing, you realize."
"Is there something wrong with that?"
"Personally, I don't mind... but if you still remember all of this tomorrow when you wake up, are you genuinely not going to want to find a hole to crawl into?"
What do you mean you don't mind — Jhin, don't tell me you and Ryo are also—
Hitori was lying in Jhin's lap and could only see the underside of his chin from this angle. His expression was completely hidden from her, and her heart was drowning in confusion.
"I have never been afraid of anything in my life. A little kiss isn't going to put a bassist down for the count." Ryo removed Jhin's hand from her cheek, her voice carrying absolute certainty.
"With that said — Nijika's already asleep. Shouldn't you get to bed too? We can deal with the rest tomorrow."
"No. I haven't hit my target for indirect kissing practice today."
"Didn't you say the band is a single unit? Everyone else is about to go to sleep. Are you sure you don't want to?"
Ryo considered this for a moment. The scrambled logic somehow reached her muddled brain and she found herself nodding in agreement. "...You have a point. Fine. I'm going to sleep."
He'd managed to talk another one down. Jhin wiped the sweat from his forehead, then reached over and tugged lightly at Kita Ikuyo's small braid. "Kita, how about you? Ready for bed?"
"If you'll hold me like you did at the hotel that time, then I'll go."
Kita Ikuyo put forward a condition Jhin had no way of refusing. He could only nod and agree.
Every single day I walk into STARRY, I'm going to be looking at three people who've been there before me.
That sentence was the most honest possible summary of everything Hitori Gotoh was feeling right now.
She'd had no idea that the rest of the band had all gotten involved with Jhin. And of all of them, Kita Ikuyo had apparently moved the fastest — she'd even gone to a hotel with him already.
"Ahh, what a mess..." Jhin hadn't anticipated that his own cooking would end up being the spark that lit this whole riot. He shook his head helplessly, and his hand drifted down without thinking to stroke Hitori Gotoh's soft, smooth hair. "I was planning to come clean to Bocchi-chan about all of this in a few days anyway."
Hitori Gotoh's mind drifted back to her meeting with Kazami Kazuki — to the question Kazuki had asked her.
Friendship or love. What kind of choice are you prepared to make between the two?
So Kazuki-nee was already quietly hinting at this back then.
Her head was an absolute mess, and there was no way she could make a decision in this kind of state. So she did what she was best at: she put it off. She would wait for the day Jhin came and told her himself.
She sat up. Before Jhin could register what she was doing, she tipped the rest of her unfinished fermented sweet rice balls into her mouth in one go, then turned to face him, a slightly tipsy smile playing on her lips, and held out her arms.
"Jhin... carry me to bed."
Jhin thought her behaviour was a little odd, but then again, drunk girlfriends acting strange was pretty normal. He didn't think too hard about it. He scooped Hitori Gotoh up and carried her toward the other bedroom — there was absolutely no chance he was setting foot inside the room where Nijika and the others had gone to sleep. Not unless he had a particular desire to find out what a blood-stained machete felt like up close.
____
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