A light leap carried him over the wall. Akira landed silently in the garden and walked toward the open living room door.
Inside, the house hummed with domestic tranquility. Izumi Sagiri had complained of stomach pains earlier; Izumi Kirishima had prepared her something light and was now tidying the kitchen, her back to the entrance.
The past few days of Akira's "attention" had transformed her. She moved with a newfound radiance—skin glowing, posture relaxed, a quiet contentment softening her features. Since his agreement yesterday to leave Sagiri alone, the weight she'd carried had lifted entirely.
Her work had flourished too. Under the pen name "Eromanga Sensei," her illustrations had gained unexpected depth, attracting praise and increasing commissions. Income was rising.
All because of him, she admitted, scrubbing a plate with absent movements. That man.
If this was all he asked—if she could protect Sagiri by being his alone—perhaps this arrangement wasn't punishment. Perhaps it was something else entirely.
But he never takes precautions. The thought surfaced with mild frustration. Always leaving me to... afterward. I need to speak with him tonight.
The thought should have been stern. Instead, it made her smile. Her hips swayed unconsciously as she worked.
Strong hands seized her from behind.
She gasped—instinctive struggle—but a firm grip on her nape pinned her in place. Before she could form words, before she could think, he was there. Inside. Claiming.
Resistance melted into something else.
Upstairs, Izumi Sagiri had just settled into bed when the sounds drifted up—muffled, rhythmic, unmistakable.
He's here.
She was out of bed before conscious thought intervened. On silent feet, she crept to the stairs, peering down through the balusters.
Living room lights blazed. Kitchen lights blazed. But from her angle, she could see only empty spaces, hear only the sounds that made her skin prickle with unbearable heat.
Closer. I need to get closer.
She descended, step by agonizing step. At the bottom, still nothing visible. The sounds came from deeper in the kitchen now—her mother's legs had given out completely, and he'd taken her weight, supporting her entirely.
Izumi Sagiri pressed herself against the wall, straining to see.
[Trophy Unlocked: Human Cannon]
Effect: When wielding cannon-type weapons, attack power increased by 50% (adaptive).
Bonus: Stamina +5
Akira's grin was feral. Did not expect that.
He pulled up his status mid-act—a trick he'd mastered—and watched the numbers shift. Five points of stamina translated to ten additional points of in-game vitality.
Ten points. That's an entire extra cycle.
Cannon-type weapons. RPGs? Something to explore later.
He dismissed the interface and returned to the matter at hand.
Izumi Sagiri had crept into the living room proper now, crouching behind the sofa, heart hammering so loud she was certain they must hear. The sounds were closer, clearer—but still, still she couldn't see.
Then footsteps. Coming toward her.
She dove.
Under the sofa she scrambled, flattening herself against the floor, barely fitting in the narrow space. The underside of the cushions pressed against her back.
He saw me. He MUST have seen me. What do I do?
Fear warred with something else. Something hot and urgent that made her legs tremble for reasons beyond terror.
The sofa creaked above her. Weight settled onto the cushions. And then—
Movement. Rhythm. The springs compressed and released, compressed and released, each cycle pressing the cushion against her back, transmitting force through the fabric into her body.
Her mother's sounds filtered down—those same sounds she'd heard through doors, through walls, now vibrating through the very furniture.
Izumi Sagiri arched her back instinctively, meeting each compression, her body understanding what her mind still struggled to accept. She was experiencing this. With her mother. Through the barrier of the sofa, she was there.
Above, Izumi Kirishima noticed nothing amiss. If anything, the sofa seemed to provide unexpected assistance, supporting her efforts in ways she hadn't anticipated. She was too far gone to question it.
Akira felt everything.
The resistance beneath him. The rhythmic pressure. The hidden presence adding texture to every moment.
Hahaha.
The thought was crystalline even through pleasure's haze: I'm not touching her. She came to me. She chose this.
The game's narrative flexibility continued to surprise him. He'd expected this storyline to unfold slowly—weeks of buildup, careful triggers. Instead, it was advancing in parallel, mother and daughter converging on the same point from different angles.
Simultaneous progression.
The alarm on his phone vibrated—his carefully set boundary. Three hours exactly.
He withdrew, satisfied, and dressed with unhurried efficiency. The mother sprawled boneless on the sofa. The daughter lay hidden beneath it, trembling with unspent tension.
Neither moved as he walked out.
Outside, the game interface shimmered into view:
[Shop]
[Work]
[Fight]
He selected Work.
Sub-options expanded:
Unloading (Laborer): ¥20,000 | Stamina +1
Sales Associate: ¥50,000 | Stamina +0.5 | Spirit +0.5 (Requires uniform purchase)
Web Novelist: ¥100,000 | Spirit +1
Spirit. The stat that had remained stubbornly at 0.8 throughout all his combat grinding. So this was how you raised it.
Sales required customer interaction. Uniform purchase required upfront investment. But the Spirit gains were tempting.
Spirit. Energy. Same thing.
He'd need to experiment. Find the most efficient path.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
For now, he walked into the night, leaving behind a house where nothing would ever be the same.
Sales gives 0.5 Spirit. Web novelist gives 1.0 Spirit.
Akira stared at the options, suspicion blooming.
Is this Spirit gain legitimate? No requirements? No hidden costs? Just... write and get smarter?
He clicked Web Novelist.
A prompt materialized:
[Session Summary]
I sat before the glowing screen. Sighed. Scratched my head. Hours passed like dying stars.
Total output: one sentence.
"Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap crap!"
[Rewards]
¥100,000
Spirit +1
Akira nodded, entirely satisfied.
As expected of me. Peak efficiency. Maximum return for minimum effort.
Now that he understood where the other stats lived, he had a new priority: push Strength and Agility to 10. The baseline for whatever came next.
He tabbed back to the fight interface.
[40-50 Persons] — AVAILABLE
Perfect.
He selected it without hesitation.
Simultaneously, at the Dockyards
"Falcon to all units—I've got eyes on the largemouth bass. Repeat, largemouth bass spotted."
"Fox copies. Target appears finless. Confirmed finless."
"Seal copies. Waiting for bass to school."
The dock stretched into moonlit darkness, cargo containers forming a labyrinth of shadows. At its heart, five distinct groups had gathered—eight vehicles total, over forty individuals. A summit meeting between upstream suppliers and downstream distributors. The topic: flour. The pure kind. The kind that moved in kilos, not cups.
"I'm telling you, Crocodile's whole operation got wiped. Twenty million in product—gone. Poof." The speaker, a scarred man in a leather jacket, swept his hand through the air for emphasis. "Anyone hear anything?"
Silence. Then a thin, nervous voice: "I just want to know if the next shipment's pure. The last batch cut corners, and my guys are—"
"No new players in my territory. If there were, I'd know."
"Mine either. We're dry across the board. Something's wrong."
The meeting was hitting that critical point where frustration curdled into suspicion. Fingers drifted toward waistbands. Postures shifted.
Then—
A rift. A vertical tear in reality itself, hovering at the edge of their gathering like a wound in the world.
A figure leaped through.
Fast. Predator fast. It moved like a tiger descending—no, like something that had evolved specifically to hunt things that thought they were predators.
It hit the first man before anyone could shout. Then the second. The third.
Chaos erupted.
In the perimeter van, federal agents grabbed their radios.
"CLOSE THE NET! CLOSE THE NET NOW! Don't let the bass escape!"
But the bass wasn't escaping.
The bass was being filleted.
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