[Fuyumi's Apartment ]
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Fuyumi finished his apology with his head bowed low, shoulders rounded inward like a scolded dog—but his eyes, half-lidded beneath dark lashes, were watching her.
Sayuri hadn't scolded him. Hadn't slapped him. Instead, warmth had crept across her cheekbones in uneven patches of rose, spreading down her neck and vanishing beneath the collar of her cream-colored blouse. Her lips were parted just slightly, still glistening where she'd bitten the lower one moments ago. The flush made her look less like the composed, untouchable married woman he'd come to know and more like a heroine mid-confession scene—something out of Scum's Wish, maybe, all tangled guilt and want layered on top of each other.
His pulse kicked hard behind his ribs. Heat coiled in the pit of his stomach again, that magnetic pull southward, urgent and stupid and completely inappropriate given the performance he was currently selling. He swallowed it down, clenched his jaw, and leaned further into the role.
"Sayuri-nee, you don't have to comfort me." His voice cracked on the honorific—convincingly, he thought. "I'm an animal. I don't deserve your kindness. Hit me. Yell at me. Anything. Otherwise I can't live with myself."
He pressed his knuckles against his own thigh hard enough for the tendons to stand out, a picture of self-loathing so thorough it could've been pulled straight from a redemption arc in March Comes in Like a Lion—all brooding angles and averted eyes.
Sayuri's throat bobbed. She was still flushed, still radiating that low-frequency embarrassment that clung to her like perfume, but she straightened her posture and smoothed the front of her blouse with her left hand. Only her left hand. Her right stayed at her side, fingers curled loosely inward, sticky and warm.
He's just a boy. A teenage boy who lost control. That's all this was. That's all it can be.
"This time, the responsibility is partly mine," she said, her voice pitched toward steadiness and almost reaching it. "I can't blame you entirely, Fuyumi-kun. I was too hasty trying to help you, and I wasn't thinking clearly."
"But Sayuri-nee—you were helping me, and I—" He dropped his chin, letting his bangs fall over his eyes. "I did that to you. I'm not even human."
God, the way he looks right now. Like a kicked puppy who knows exactly how effective being a kicked puppy is.
She exhaled through her nose—slow, deliberate. Her voice softened despite itself, layered with a complexity she couldn't quite mask: tenderness and exasperation and something warmer than either.
"It's my fault for forgetting your age, Fuyumi-kun. You're still in your adolescence. Boys your age have... energy to spare." The word energy came out slightly strangled, and her gaze dropped to her own lap for a half-second before snapping back to his face. "It's easy to lose control. I should have been more careful."
"Really?" He lifted his head. Brown eyes wide and hopeful, catching the grey daylight from the window behind her. "You really don't blame me, Sayuri-nee?"
She met those eyes—doe-wide and earnest and completely, devastatingly pretty for a boy—and something behind her sternum compressed like a fist closing around a small bird.
She nodded. Firm. Definitive.
"It was just an accident. Neither of us is at fault."
Fuyumi let out a long breath, his shoulders dropping as though a physical weight had been lifted off them. The tension drained from his face, replaced by a gratitude so open and guileless that it bordered on painful to look at.
"Thank you, Sayuri-nee."
Thank God she's not angry. Thank God she's not disgusted with me. Thank God—
Sayuri managed a smile, though it sat unevenly on her mouth. No matter how she framed it—accident, mutual responsibility, a lapse in judgment—the facts remained unchanged. He'd come undone in her hand. Her right hand, which even now felt slick between the fingers, the viscous warmth of him cooling against her skin in the apartment's stale air. The smell hadn't dissipated either—faintly chlorine-sharp beneath the green-tea room freshener, clinging to her palm like evidence she couldn't rinse away with rationalizations alone.
She could still feel the way he'd pulsed. The way his hips had jerked forward at the end, involuntary and raw. The thickness of him, the heat—
She blinked hard and redirected.
"Fuyumi-kun," she said, voice carefully instructional now, the way a tutor might address a student after an embarrassing exam result. "What happened between us just now—that was acting. We were rehearsing. As performers, we can't let ourselves get lost inside the scene, or it starts bleeding into real life." She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, the gesture slightly too quick to be casual. "What you need to do next is go to your girlfriend. Show her that your body is perfectly healthy. Just like... just now..."
The sentence collapsed under its own weight. Her cheeks flared crimson—deep enough that the color reached her earlobes—and she pressed her lips together.
Fuyumi rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish for a moment, before brightness flooded his expression. He straightened up, fists clenching at his sides with the kind of protagonist determination that belonged on a tournament arc poster.
"It's all thanks to you, Sayuri-nee! I feel like my confidence is back. I'm going to find her. I love her so much—I'll prove to her that I can make her happy!"
The declaration rang through the small apartment with all the earnest, oblivious energy of Naruto screaming about becoming Hokage.
Something in Sayuri's chest twisted sideways.
He loves her. He loves this girlfriend of his. Minutes ago he was throbbing in my fingers, his cum sliding between my knuckles, and now he's standing here glowing about another woman.
Of course he is. Of course.
A prickle of jealousy threaded through her ribs—small and sharp, like a fish bone lodged where it shouldn't be. She envied that girl. Resented her, even, in a petty and irrational way that she immediately tried to smother. The boy in front of her had just used her hand to release weeks of pent-up frustration, and within minutes he was professing devotion to someone else entirely. It stung. It shouldn't have, but it stung.
She was rational, though. She'd always been rational. So she assembled the correct expression—warm, supportive, sisterly—and said:
"Then I'll wish you both the best."
The words came out smooth. Practiced. The smile that accompanied them was nearly flawless.
But if my suspicion is right... if the only reason he could perform was because of me...
She didn't finish the thought. Couldn't afford to.
Her right hand trembled.
The sensation brought her crashing back into her body—the stickiness between her fingers, the faint tackiness where his seed had begun to dry along the lines of her palm, the way it clung in the webbing between her index and middle finger. She glanced down involuntarily, then snapped her gaze back up.
Fuyumi was just... standing there. Talking. Making eye contact as though her right hand wasn't glazed with his cum. As though they were two perfectly normal people having a perfectly normal conversation, and she wasn't quietly losing her mind trying to maintain composure while the evidence of his orgasm cooled against her skin.
Has he forgotten? Is he ignoring it? Am I supposed to just—stand here? With his—on my—
She'd been so committed to performing the role of a calm, experienced older woman—the kind of unflappable onee-san character from a josei drama who could handle anything with grace—that she'd pushed through the discomfort, comforted him, gave advice, smiled, nodded, all while her right hand hung at her side like a filthy secret. And now her composure was cracking at the edges like old lacquer.
"Fuyumi-kun—" The words left her in a rush. "I need to use your bathroom to wash my hands."
She didn't wait for a response. She turned on her heel and walked—not quite ran, but close—toward the narrow hallway, her low heels clicking rapid-fire against the hardwood floor.
Fuyumi watched her retreating figure—the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her dark hair swayed against the small of her back, the barely perceptible wobble in her stride that betrayed how rattled she actually was beneath all that poise.
He smiled.
Slow. Private. The kind of smile that never reached polite company.
He'd left it on purpose, of course. Watched her stand there with her hand dripping, talking to him with that composed expression, offering emotional support like a school counselor while his release webbed between her elegant fingers—and the sight had filled him with a dark, syrupy satisfaction that pooled low in his gut. Something about a woman that refined, that put-together, calmly discussing his love life while coated in physical proof of what he'd done to her...
It was deeply, irreparably fucked up.
I might actually be a pervert.
The thought surfaced with surprising clarity, and Fuyumi considered it the way one might consider a weather report—mildly interesting, ultimately irrelevant. After everything the System had put him through, "pervert" was a rung on a ladder he'd already climbed past. He'd done worse. He'd do worse still. The label fit like a glove he'd been wearing so long he'd forgotten it wasn't skin.
He shrugged to no one.
---
Several minutes passed. Water ran behind the bathroom door—a sustained rush that suggested thorough scrubbing. When Sayuri finally emerged, she had her arms wrapped around a bundle of folded clothes pressed against her chest—the outfit she'd changed out of the other night. Her cheeks still carried residual pink, but her eyes had steadied, and her voice came out with the practiced gentleness of someone who'd spent the interim coaching herself back to baseline.
"Fuyumi-kun, I'm going to head home and do some laundry." She shifted the bundle higher against her chest. The fabric smelled faintly of detergent and skin—hers. "I brought you food, by the way. Make sure you eat. It was Tanaka who asked me to prepare it for you."
The addition came quickly, almost too quickly—Tanaka asked me to do it—a clarification she hadn't planned on making until ten minutes ago, when the world had still been simple. Before his cock had been in her hand. Before she'd felt him throb and swell and burst across her fingers. Now, with everything recalibrated, she needed the distance that attribution provided. She didn't want Fuyumi thinking the meal was her idea. Didn't want him reading into it. They were collaborators. Scene partners. Nothing more.
Nothing more.
"Thank you so much, Sayuri-nee." Fuyumi's voice was warm, genuine-sounding.
Thanks for the hand job, too, he added internally, his expression not shifting by a single millimeter.
Sayuri offered him a small, careful smile—the kind that kept its boundaries clearly drawn—then turned and left with her bundle of clothes held tight against her body like armor.
She'd checked everything in the bathroom. Inspected each garment—especially the intimate ones, the bra and underwear she'd left folded on the shelf—turning them inside out under the fluorescent light, running her fingers along seams and fabric, searching for any stain or residue or suspicious dampness that would confirm her worst fears. She'd found nothing. Not a single mark. The relief had loosened something in her chest, and her trust in Fuyumi had climbed another quiet notch upward.
He's a good kid. A little out of control, but good.
The good kid in question was currently sprawled on his bed, arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling and calculating the optimal strategy for getting that married woman naked.
Sayuri's husband, Tanaka, was—by Fuyumi's assessment—exactly the type of man who'd eventually hand his wife off to someone else for sport. The cuckold archetype. Fuyumi had seen enough to recognize it, the way Tanaka orbited Mitsuki with that particular blend of possessiveness and detachment that screamed unresolved kink. If someone else was going to end up between her thighs eventually, Fuyumi figured it might as well be him. Why let another man benefit from what was practically falling into his lap? Besides—
Scum Points.
The thought snapped his focus back to business. He flicked his wrist, and the Exchange Interface shimmered into existence before his eyes—a translucent panel hovering in mid-air like an AR overlay from Sword Art Online, pale blue text scrolling against a dark background. He'd passed out after last night's settlement without checking today's refresh. Three new items waited in the shop rotation.
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「 Ironclad Face — 50 Scum Points 」
Your facial skin becomes extraordinarily resilient. Slaps inflict zero pain. Essential for the man who knows he's going to get slapped and has made peace with that lifestyle.
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「 Basic Stamina Elixir — 500 Scum Points 」
Upon consumption, the user achieves peak virility—roaring like a spring rooster, burning with the fighting spirit of a thousand bulls. Engage in marathon bedroom combat for hours without flagging. An indispensable weapon for the dedicated practitioner of horizontal warfare.
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「 X-Ray Vision — 100,000 Scum Points 」
Grants permanent penetrative sight. See through clothing, walls, and other obstructions at will. The definitive tool for the committed voyeur. Disclaimer: what you see cannot be unseen.
---
Fuyumi blinked at the third item.
He read the number again. Counted the zeroes. One, two, three, four, five.
One hundred thousand points.
Even at a generous daily income of three hundred points—and that assumed he was operating at maximum scumbag efficiency every single day—he'd need over a year of pure accumulation. No spending. No impulse purchases. Three hundred and thirty-four days of grinding without touching his balance.
For eyes.
He frowned, rolling onto his side. The mattress creaked beneath him, springs complaining faintly. Grey light from the window laid a long, pale rectangle across the floor, illuminating dust motes that drifted like plankton.
The pricing made sense, though, once he thought about it. Every isekai and urban fantasy he'd ever consumed—The Breaker, The Gamer, Solo Leveling—operated on the same principle: the more a power warped reality, the higher its cost. X-Ray Vision wasn't just a peeping tool. It was a skeleton key. Gambling halls, gem markets, poker tables, geological surveys—a single glance could generate millions of yen. The System wasn't pricing for perversion. It was pricing for economic disruption.
A hundred thousand points was, in that context, almost reasonable.
Almost.
He dismissed the notion without a second thought. He had two hundred points. The gap between his wallet and that skill was an ocean he couldn't even see the far shore of.
He flicked back to the other two items. Ironclad Face had appeared before—a repeat from an earlier rotation. Fifty-point items were clearly the System's equivalent of gacha commons: starter-tier abilities, some useful (Keen Smell had been a genuine find), most forgettable. A face that couldn't feel slaps was situationally hilarious but strategically useless. Pass.
The Basic Stamina Elixir, though—that one made him pause. Five hundred points for hours of sustained performance. Compare that to the Enhancement function: six hundred points per minute of permanent duration increase. The elixir was single-use, sure, disposable as a convenience-store energy drink, but the raw value-per-point ratio crushed the Enhancement option for anyone who needed burst performance rather than incremental long-term gains. Emergency use. Boss fights, metaphorically speaking.
Still couldn't afford it.
Fuyumi dismissed the interface with a lazy wave. The translucent panel dissolved like breath on cold glass, and he was left staring at the water-stained ceiling of his apartment, listening to the muffled hum of traffic four stories below and the distant clatter of a neighbor's washing machine cycling through its spin.
The room smelled like green tea air freshener and something sharper underneath—the lingering ghost of what Sayuri had washed off her hands.
"Broke," he muttered. "Sitting around here waiting isn't going to change that."
He swung his legs off the bed, feet hitting the cool floor. His sneakers sat by the door, laces still untied from yesterday. The bento Sayuri had left waited on the kitchen counter in a cloth-wrapped container, a faint curl of steam escaping from beneath the knot.
He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, shrugged it on, and headed for the door, rolling his shoulders loose as he walked. The lock clicked behind him, and Shibuya's overcast afternoon swallowed him whole—blue sky pressing high over the clouds, the smell of yakitori smoke drifting up from the street vendors below.
Fuyumi shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking.