[Sasaki Fuyumi's Apartment]
The overhead light had been off for an hour. Sasaki lay in bed with his phone dark on the nightstand, the only illumination in the room coming from the translucent blue interface hovering above his chest like a heads-up display ripped straight from Sword Art Online's menu screen. Cold fluorescence painted the ceiling in shifting rectangles, each one a separate item listing. The sheets beneath him smelled faintly of detergent and his own sweat—he hadn't showered after the walk home, too busy replaying the day's events behind his eyelids, cataloguing every micro-expression that had crossed Sato Ruri's face when his mouth found hers.
Now, though, business.
Three items rotated slowly inside the Exchange Shop, each one bordered by that same pulsing blue glow, stat blocks fanning out beneath them like tooltip windows in a gacha pull screen.
> 「 Hemostatic Bandage 」
> Scumbag Points Required: 50
> A bandage with exceptional clotting properties. Stops hemorrhaging rapidly upon application. Ensures the user won't bleed out so easily—because corpses can't break hearts.
> 「 Vital Evasion 」
> Scumbag Points Required: 200
> Passive Skill — When struck, the user's body instinctively shifts to protect critical organs and vital points. The worse the beating, the luckier your survival.
> 「 Keen Scent 」
> Scumbag Points Required: 50
> Heightened olfactory sensitivity calibrated to romantic targets. Memorize the unique scent of every girl you've wronged. Once memorized, you will detect their presence within a ten-meter radius—preventing unfortunate encounters with knives, blunt objects, or emotional confrontations.
Sasaki stared at the listings. Disappointment settled in his stomach like lukewarm rice—none of these were offensive tools, nothing that would give him an edge against Egawa Mitsuki in a direct confrontation. But that feeling lasted all of two seconds before pragmatism shouldered it aside. Even if the shop had rolled something spectacular, he couldn't afford it. Baby steps.
He scrolled through the detailed descriptions. Similar to yesterday's refresh—survival-oriented abilities, defensive in nature. Keen Scent was a repeat from the previous cycle, which told him something useful: items could reappear. He wouldn't miss out permanently just because his point balance was thin on any given day.
Let's do the math.
Today's settlement reward: 250 Scumbag Points. Yesterday's leftover: 100. Total balance: 350.
All three items combined cost 300.
He didn't hesitate. His finger tapped each listing in rapid succession—confirm, confirm, confirm—and the shop interface pulsed three times, each pulse accompanied by a chime that sounded suspiciously like a rare drop notification from Genshin Impact.
The Hemostatic Bandage was invaluable. Rapid clotting could be the difference between walking away from a bad situation and painting a hallway red. Vital Evasion was the real prize, though—a passive skill that moved his body away from killing blows on pure instinct. In a school where Egawa Mitsuki had the connections to make violence happen without dirtying her own hands, that was borderline divine protection.
And Keen Scent... the applications went beyond mere self-defense. If he could memorize the scent of every girl he'd entangled himself with, he'd always know when they were nearby. Cheating would become virtually risk-free—no girlfriend, no wife, no scorned lover could ever catch him in the act, because he'd smell them coming and vanish before they rounded the corner.
The ultimate infidelity skill.
Heat flooded his skull, brief and sharp, like a fever spike that passed in seconds. Something shifted inside his body—subtle, subdermal, more sensation than event. Vital Evasion was passive; it wouldn't activate until someone actually tried to crack his skull. Keen Scent required him to first memorize a target's scent before the radar function kicked in. And the bandage—
He opened his right hand, palm up.
A roll of gauze materialized from thin air, white and tightly wound, resting in his palm as if it had always been there. The texture was dense, medical-grade but oddly warm, faintly humming with that same system energy. Sasaki turned it over once, then willed it into the system-provided inventory—a spatial backpack that existed somewhere between thought and physics, accessible only to him, designed to store exchanged items.
Remaining Balance: 50 Scumbag Points.
Thin. He'd have to work harder tomorrow.
Sasaki dismissed the interface with a blink, and darkness swallowed the room whole. The city beyond his window was silent save for the distant mechanical hum of the HVAC system and the occasional creak of old plumbing in the walls. He turned onto his side, pulled the comforter to his chin, and closed his eyes.
Sleep took him fast.
---
The dream arrived without preamble.
A vast dark room—no walls visible, no ceiling, just polished obsidian floor stretching in every direction, reflecting his silhouette in smeared detail. Sasaki stood at the center of it, barefoot, shirt open, a coiled leather riding crop in his right hand. The leather was old and supple, molded to his grip as though he'd held it a thousand times.
Before him, two girls knelt side by side on the cold stone.
Sato Ruri—silver-lilac hair pooling on the floor around her knees, her school blouse hanging open at the collar, those storm-blue eyes wet and downcast, her wrists connected by a thin chain to a collar buckled snug around her pale throat. The leash trailed across the floor to Sasaki's left hand.
Egawa Mitsuki—midnight-black hair falling like a curtain over her face, her posture rigid even in submission, jaw clenched, amber eyes burning with something between fury and surrender. An identical collar circled her neck, the leash wrapped twice around Sasaki's fist.
Neither spoke.
Sasaki tugged both leashes once—clink—and both girls lowered themselves further, foreheads nearly touching the floor, until their lips found his bare feet. Ruri's mouth was hesitant, feather-light, a trembling brush of warmth against his instep. Mitsuki's was harder, sharper, teeth scraping skin like a warning disguised as obedience.
He smiled.
---
Sasaki slept like the dead. Dreamless after that single vivid tableau, his breathing deep and even, body utterly still beneath the covers.
Someone else, however, was not so fortunate.
---
[Sato Ruri's Room — April 6th, 2026, 12:18 AM]
Ruri lay on her back atop the duvet, still in her pajamas—an oversized lavender sleep shirt that rode up past her navel and matching cotton shorts so thin they might as well have been a suggestion. The room smelled of her shampoo, wisteria and green tea, mingling with the faint vanilla of the scented candle she'd forgotten to blow out on the dresser. Its flame guttered in a draft from the cracked window, throwing trembling shadows across the ceiling.
She wasn't sleeping.
Her right hand drifted to her mouth—fingertips pressing against her lower lip, feeling the plush give of it, the phantom ache that had been there for hours now and refused to leave.
The kiss.
It surged back behind her eyelids whether she wanted it to or not. Sasaki's mouth on hers. Not gentle. Not asking. His hand on her jaw, tilting her face up like he owned the angle, his tongue pushing past her lips with no preamble, no hesitation, just raw intrusion—tasting her, taking, the wet sound of it obscene in that narrow alley—
"Nngh—"
Ruri bit down on her own lip hard enough to taste copper, her face burning so fiercely she could feel the heat radiating off her cheekbones into the air.
Domineering. That was the only word for it.
Crude. Rough. The kind of kiss that belonged in the pages of a josei manga she'd never admit to reading, the kind where the heroine slaps the hero afterward and still thinks about it for forty chapters.
She'd wanted to slap him. She should have slapped him.
She hadn't slapped him.
And the worst part—the absolute, unforgivable worst part—was that the memory didn't just live in her mouth.
It lived lower.
Her hips shifted restlessly against the mattress, thighs pressing together beneath the thin cotton shorts. The place where Sasaki's palm had connected with her ass—twice, firm enough to sting through her skirt—throbbed with a low, residual current that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with something she categorically refused to name. Tingling. Electric. A static charge that radiated outward from the point of impact in slow, maddening waves, settling deep in her pelvis, making her inner thighs clench and her breath catch in stuttered little half-gasps.
My panties.
She groaned into the pillow, pulling it over her face. He still had them. That bastard still had her underwear in his pocket—or wherever he'd put them—and the knowledge of that sent a fresh spike of mortification rolling through her so intense it made her stomach flip. She could picture them, the pale blue cotton with the tiny white bow at the front, crumpled in his hand, warm from her body, and he'd looked at them, he'd touched them while they were still warm—
"Ahhnn..."
The moan escaped before she could smother it, muffled against the pillow's surface but unmistakable in the quiet room. Ruri curled onto her side, knees drawing up toward her chest, the lavender shirt twisting around her torso. Her body felt boneless. Weak in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion—a liquid, shivery weakness that pooled in her lower belly and turned her limbs to something useless and trembling.
His hands.
Those hands. Broad-palmed, long-fingered, calloused in places that surprised her. One had cupped her jaw, thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath her ear. The other had gripped her hip, then slid down, down, fingers curving over the round swell of her ass and squeezing—not playfully, not experimentally, but with a certainty that said he knew exactly how she'd react before she did.
And she had reacted.
I made a sound. I made a sound when he touched me there and he heard it and he smiled.
Ruri pressed her face deeper into the pillow, her expression cycling through a whiplash of emotions—fury pulling her brows together, shame flooding her cheeks scarlet, and something else, something bewildered and unwanted, softening the corners of her mouth every time the memory looped back to the exact moment his lips had touched hers and the world had gone briefly, terrifyingly quiet.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I hate him, I hate him, I hate—
Her teeth sank into the pillowcase, and she lay there, breathing hard, flushed from collarbone to hairline, the vanilla candle guttering, the shadows dancing, the sensation between her thighs absolutely refusing to fade.
He's the worst person alive.
She hugged the pillow tighter and didn't sleep for a very long time.
---
[Seirin Academy, Main Building, Second-Floor Corridor —]
Morning arrived overcast, the sky a flat pewter sheet that turned the campus lawns grey-green and leached the warmth from the brick walkways. Cherry blossom petals from the trees lining the courtyard skittered across the pavement in papery clusters, damp from overnight dew, sticking to shoes and backpack straps. The air tasted like rain that hadn't committed to falling yet—metallic, heavy, carrying the institutional smell of floor wax and chalk dust that every Japanese high school seemed to exude from its bones.
Sasaki approached the rear entrance of Classroom 2-C, bag slung over one shoulder, movements unhurried. Students in the corridor moved in the usual pre-homeroom rhythm—clusters of two and three drifting between classrooms, snippets of conversation about last night's anime episode or the upcoming midterms bouncing off the linoleum walls. A boy near the water fountain was showing something on his phone to a friend, both of them laughing. Someone's bento had already been opened early; the faint scent of tamagoyaki and pickled plum drifted from behind a half-open locker.
He reached the back door just as it swung outward.
Sato Ruri stepped through, hand linked with another girl's, mid-sentence about something that evaporated the instant her gaze landed on him.
Her reaction was instantaneous. Color flooded her cheeks—a vivid, damning pink that spread from her jawline to the tips of her ears. Her storm-blue eyes widened a fraction, and Sasaki caught the exact moment recognition ignited into something combative: irritation laced with an undercurrent of embarrassment so acute it practically had a scent. She pressed her lips together, set her jaw, and turned her head away with the deliberate precision of someone pretending a person did not exist.
I'm not looking at him. I'm not. He doesn't exist. He's air. He's less than air.
She tugged her companion's hand, angling to pass without a word.
Her companion, however, had other plans.
"Fuyumi-kun! Hey—did you piss off a teacher or something?"
The girl speaking was still holding Ruri's hand, leaning slightly forward with a grin that broadcast pure, uncomplicated friendliness. Sasaki's gaze shifted to her, and he catalogued her automatically—the way he'd started cataloguing everyone since the system had rewired his brain for this particular game.
Reina Yanagi. Seventeen. Five-foot-three, maybe five-four in her indoor shoes. A compact, energetic frame—narrow shoulders tapering to a waist that was slim without being delicate, hips that curved modestly beneath her pleated navy skirt, thighs toned from what was probably a sport she did casually rather than competitively. Her hair was a warm chestnut brown, cut in a layered bob that framed her jawline, the ends flicking outward in that effortlessly tousled way that either took ten minutes with a curling iron or zero minutes of care.
Round face, button nose lightly dusted with freckles across the bridge, wide hazel eyes that sat beneath expressive brows currently arched in amused expectation. Her blazer was unbuttoned, the collar of her white dress shirt slightly rumpled, a small enamel pin shaped like a cat's paw clipped to her breast pocket. Her chest—and he noted this with clinical dispassion rather than interest—was modest. A B-cup at most, the fabric of her blouse lying relatively flat compared to Ruri's conspicuous silhouette beside her. Pretty. Undeniably pretty. But standing next to Sato Ruri, she existed in the kind of shadow that even someone with her personality couldn't fully step out of.
He looks the same as always. Totally unbothered. How is he always so unbothered? It's kind of annoying, honestly. Does he even care about anything?
What Reina had that physical measurements couldn't capture was warmth. She radiated it. Every interaction Sasaki had witnessed—with classmates, with teachers, with the cafeteria lady who always gave her an extra croquette—carried the same sunny, open-faced approachability that made her universally liked. She was the human equivalent of a Natsume's Book of Friends protagonist: kind without agenda, sweet without naiveté, the sort of girl who remembered everyone's birthday and made it seem effortless.
"Sensei asked me to pass along a message," Reina continued, undeterred by his flat expression. "You've been assigned public area cleaning duty today. Like, right now. Before homeroom." She tilted her head, grinning. "What'd you do, fall asleep in class again?"
Beside her, Ruri had been mid-step to leave—but at this, she paused. Her eyes cut sideways toward Sasaki, the embarrassment momentarily displaced by something sharper. Curiosity. And beneath it, the faintest, cruelest glimmer of satisfaction.
Sasaki caught that glimmer. Catalogued it. Filed it.
His gaze drifted past both girls into the classroom, landing briefly on Egawa Mitsuki's form near the window—hunched forward, head resting on folded arms, black hair spilling across the desk like ink on water. To anyone else, she looked like a student catching a pre-class nap. Sasaki's jaw tightened a fraction.
He turned back to Reina and nodded once. "Got it."
Reina blinked, clearly expecting more—a joke, a complaint, some kind of reaction she could volley back. When none came, she puffed out her cheeks in exaggerated disappointment. "Boooring. You're no fun, Fuyumi-kun." But the grin bounced back instantly. "Well, hurry up then! Bell's in twelve minutes."
She pulled Ruri along by the hand, the two of them heading down the corridor toward the restrooms. Sasaki watched them go. Right before they turned the corner, Ruri glanced back over her shoulder—a quick, furtive look—and the expression on her face was unmistakable.
Gloating. Pure, petty, schadenfreude-flavored gloating. The kind of look that said serves you right in every language.
Good. Let him suffer a little. After what he did to me—after what he took from me—he deserves to scrub floors on his hands and knees.
Something hot and tight coiled in Sasaki's chest.
So that's how it is, Sato Ruri.
He exhaled through his nose—a single, controlled breath that anyone else would have mistaken for a sigh. His expression didn't change, but behind it, a decision crystallized with the quiet, definitive click of a lock engaging.
Fine. After school, then. I'll remind you who's holding the leash.
He pocketed the thought and went to get the broom.
---
[Seirin Academy, East Wing Ground Floor — Public Cleaning Area — 7:53 AM]
The area assigned to Class 2-C's cleaning rotation was a wide stretch of corridor running along the east wing's ground floor, connecting the shoe lockers to the stairwell. Normally it was manageable—sweep, mop, empty the bins, done in ten minutes.
Today, it looked like a ticker-tape parade had been held and no one had bothered to clean up.
Sasaki stood at the corridor's entrance, broom in one hand, dustpan in the other, and stared.
Paper. Everywhere. Not whole sheets—those would've been easy. Someone had taken the time to tear pages into confetti-sized fragments, hundreds upon hundreds of tiny white and ruled pieces scattered across the linoleum like artificial snow. They covered the floor from wall to wall, drifted into the corners where the baseboard met tile, accumulated in the grooves of the floor's expansion joints. The overhead fluorescents—buzzing faintly, casting that flat, institutional glare—lit the mess in unforgiving detail. The air smelled like dust and the faintly chemical tang of cheap notebook paper.
This wasn't random.
This was deliberate, targeted, personal.
Mitsuki's doing? Or the teacher, trying to curry favor with her family?
The distinction didn't matter. Both roads led back to Mitsuki. The teacher wouldn't have dared this without at least her implicit blessing, and Mitsuki wouldn't have needed to lift a finger—her name alone was enough to make faculty bend.
Sasaki set the broom against the wall. He didn't crouch to start sweeping. Didn't sigh or curse or kick at the paper. He simply pulled out his phone, navigated to his gallery, and opened the video he'd recorded yesterday—the one of Egawa Mitsuki on her knees, her tongue dragging across his fingers, those amber eyes glaring up at the camera with a humiliation so raw it was almost beautiful.
He sent it to her contact with no message attached.
Then he pocketed the phone and leaned against the wall, arms crossed, waiting.
The phone vibrated in his pocket. Once. Twice. A rapid-fire staccato of incoming messages—five, six, seven vibrations in quick succession—each one a notification he didn't bother reading. He could imagine the content well enough. Demands. Threats. Variations of delete that right now escalating in desperation with each ignored reply.
Eventually, the buzzing stopped.
Silence settled over the corridor, broken only by the electrical hum above and the muffled sounds of students elsewhere in the building—locker doors clanging, distant laughter, the rhythmic squeak of someone's shoes on a freshly mopped floor one hallway over.
Four minutes passed.
Then the sharp tak-tak-tak of shoes descending stairs at speed—not running, but close, the cadence of someone moving faster than dignity preferred. Sasaki straightened off the wall and watched the stairwell entrance.
Egawa Mitsuki rounded the corner and came straight for him.
She was slightly out of breath—the barest rise and fall of her chest beneath the blazer, a single strand of ink-black hair fallen loose from behind her ear. Her face was composed in that porcelain mask she wore like armor, but the cracks showed: her amber eyes were too bright, her nostrils flared with each controlled exhale, and her right hand, hanging at her side, was curled into a fist tight enough to blanch the knuckles. She smelled faintly of something floral and cold—white jasmine layered over something astringent, like rubbing alcohol or antiseptic hand cream. The scent of someone who kept herself immaculate as a form of control.
If he uploaded that video I will destroy him. I will dismantle every part of his pathetic life brick by brick and salt the ground where it stood. But first—first I need to know how much he has, what he wants, and whether he's stupid enough to think this is a game he can win.
She stopped two feet from him, chin level, posture rigid. Her voice came out flat and precise, each word a blade placed carefully on the table between them.
"You recorded it."
Not a question. A confirmation she needed to hear him say.
"Sorry about that," Sasaki said, his tone carrying the exact inflection of an apology and absolutely none of its substance. A lopsided smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—lazy, amused, infuriatingly casual. "It was just such a memorable moment. Couldn't help myself."
Mitsuki's expression didn't flicker. But her jaw tightened—a millimeter shift, the masseter muscle bunching beneath her skin—and her eyes narrowed to a degree that would have made most people take a step back.
"Delete it." Her voice dropped half a register, the warmth bleeding out until only the blade remained. "If that video surfaces—anywhere, in any form—you will regret it in ways you are not currently equipped to imagine."
The air between them changed. Sasaki felt it—a cold pressure against his sternum, instinctual, the lizard-brain recognition that this was not a bluff. This wasn't Mitsuki playing the role of imperious queen bee. This was a girl whose family name carried weight measured in generational wealth and institutional influence, and who understood exactly what would happen if footage of her—Egawa Mitsuki—on her knees, tongue on a boy's fingers, eyes glazed with visible humiliation, reached the internet. It wouldn't just be embarrassing.
It would mobilize her family. And her family did not handle problems with sternly worded letters.
She's not threatening me. She's warning me.
The realization settled in his gut like a cold stone. He noted it, weighed it, and set it aside. Deleting the video was out of the question. The more leverage he held over Mitsuki, the safer he was. Mutually assured destruction was the only currency that kept their power dynamic from tilting irreversibly in her favor.
He didn't answer her demand.
Instead, he gestured with an open palm at the carpet of shredded paper blanketing the corridor behind him.
"Sensei assigned me to clean this area this morning." His voice was even, conversational, as though they were discussing the weather. "You're going to help."
Mitsuki blinked. For a half-second, genuine confusion displaced the cold fury on her face—and then understanding hit, and her expression curdled.
The teacher did this. That spineless, boot-licking—he did this to impress me, and now Fuyumi's using it as leverage because he knows I can't deny the connection.
Her anger pivoted—away from Sasaki, toward the absent faculty member who had decided, unbidden and unwanted, to make an enemy on her behalf. Her fist unclenched at her side, fingers flexing once, twice, the tendons standing out along the back of her hand before she forced them still.
Sasaki watched the entire emotional sequence play out across her body language—the shift of her weight, the subtle release of her shoulders, the way her gaze dropped to the mess behind him and stayed there—and said nothing. He didn't need to. She'd already connected the dots.
He held out the broom, handle-first, and waited for her to take it.