They made their way to the clothing section near the second floor.
When Sakayanagi Arisu saw the storefront ahead — elegant décor, refined interior — and then read the single word printed on the sign above the entrance: Custom Orders.
She cast a sideways glance at Amanatsu Kazuha, her tone laced with disappointment.
"It seems your intelligence-gathering isn't quite as sharp as I'd imagined, Amanatsu."
"I rather expected you to lead me straight to a ready-to-wear boutique."
Amanatsu Kazuha only laughed, unbothered, clasping her hands behind her back as she explained:
"Now, now, Senpai, that's hardly fair~ After all, Advanced Nurturing High School does keep its rules and conduct rather strictly."
"And with cameras absolutely everywhere, outside of buying certain... adult items from a shop assistant, it's pretty much impossible to find the kind of specialty costume that's just openly sitting on a shelf with a little suggestive flair, you know!"
She paused, tapping her index finger lightly against her chin in a show of recollection.
"That said — I did hear from some upperclassmen that the school used to hold a maid café during the cultural festival. Only problem is, those costumes were all purchased directly by the school..."
"So right now, our options are basically: settle for less and get something custom-made here, or... just wait for an online order to arrive?"
Sakayanagi Arisu heard this, looked again at the word Custom Orders on the sign, and let out a soft, resigned sigh — the sound of someone genuinely put out.
"How inconvenient." "I was hoping to take care of this today while we actually had some free time. I didn't expect to still have to wait."
"But if waiting is unavoidable regardless, I may as well make it feel like a proper occasion."
With that, Sakayanagi Arisu pushed open the shop door and glided inside.
Amanatsu Kazuha lingered in the doorway, turning to look at Chris, her narrowed eyes glinting with something sly.
"What about you, Senpai? Want to get a butler's outfit tailored while we're at it? A matching set sounds fun, don't you think?"
Chris glanced down the empty corridor, then tugged the corner of his mouth in a helpless half-smile.
"Feels a bit surreal... Most of the other students are in counseling sessions right now, and here we are doing something like this."
Amanatsu Kazuha looped her arms loosely together, standing in that lazy, unhurried way of hers, her red twin-tails swaying faintly.
"That's just because they haven't adjusted yet."
"Once they do, it'll be back to business as usual." "At its core, humans are creatures that need balance — work and rest. Even under the weight of death, a little entertainment goes a long way toward easing the mind, don't you think?"
Chris didn't reply. He simply stepped forward and followed them into the shop.
Inside, Sakayanagi Arisu was already in negotiations with the front desk attendant.
"Excuse me — would it be possible for us to design the style ourselves?"
The receptionist smiled and nodded.
"Of course. And if you'd like, one of our professional designers can be on hand to offer guidance as well."
"That won't be necessary." Sakayanagi Arisu tilted her chin upward with quiet confidence. "I trust my own design sensibilities."
On that note, she turned around and waved a hand toward Chris, who had just walked through the door.
"Chris, come help me with something."
Chris raised an eyebrow. He was puzzled, but he didn't refuse. After all, he was already here — helping out a little was no big deal. It wasn't as if he could just sit on the sofa in the lobby and stare at the wall.
He followed Sakayanagi Arisu into a spacious VIP fitting room, its walls lined with sample garments on display.
A female designer stepped forward with a measuring tape and notebook, ready to discuss Sakayanagi Arisu's specific preferences.
Sakayanagi Arisu, however, paid the designer no mind. She walked directly to the rack, pointed at a sample garment — a classic black-and-white maid outfit — and said, crisp and unhesitating:
"This silhouette as the base. It's for personal use. The color, the neckline depth, the hem length, the lace trim, the apron style, the ribbon placement — I'll give you specific adjustments shortly."
"For now, could you please step outside for a moment? I need to take some private measurements."
The female designer blinked, her gaze sweeping between the three of them — Chris, Sakayanagi Arisu, and Amanatsu Kazuha, who had followed them in.
Her expression was practically screaming: You high schoolers are really something else.
But professional discipline won out. She kept her thoughts to herself and quietly excused herself from the room.
With the outsider gone, Chris turned to head out as well.
Only — a hand shot out and grabbed the hem of his jacket.
Amanatsu Kazuha.
"Can't you two just measure each other? What do you need me in here for?"
Chris turned back, puzzled.
Amanatsu Kazuha dodged his gaze. The tips of her ears had gone faintly pink.
She looked down at herself — at a figure that had, by any measure, filled out quite nicely — and muttered in a small, slightly awkward voice:
"I mean... helping Sakayanagi-senpai with her measurements is totally fine."
"But if she ends up wanting to help with mine afterward... that would be a little inconvenient, actually."
"It's just over clothes anyway. It's not a big deal."
Chris heard this and looked over at Sakayanagi Arisu.
She was staring at Amanatsu Kazuha with undisguised contempt.
The look said, plainly: Are the ones coming out of the White Room these days so dim they don't know what a chair is for?
But when it came to female rivalry, Sakayanagi Arisu was clearly not the type to back down either.
She immediately turned to Chris, chin tilted upward.
"You're staying. The one who should leave is someone else."
Chris found himself genuinely amused.
He glanced at Amanatsu Kazuha's deliberately thrust-out chest, then looked back down at Sakayanagi Arisu — and in the end, couldn't hold it back. A short, helpless laugh slipped out.
That laugh landed squarely on a very particular nerve.
The girl's cheeks puffed up instantly, like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.
"I changed my mind! You get out too! I'll do it myself!"
Amanatsu Kazuha, seeing the situation unfold, immediately brightened and made a show of stepping toward Sakayanagi Arisu with the measuring tape outstretched.
"Aw, don't be upset, Senpai~ Let me help you~"
"Absolutely not." Sakayanagi Arisu waved her off with clear disdain, her voice dropping low. "Since Chris apparently doesn't feel like helping, I'll manage on my own. It's not as though I wasn't used to doing everything alone back when my health was poor..."
At that classic guilt-tripping opener, Chris gave a resigned pull at the corner of his mouth and stepped back to her side.
"If you put it that way, Kamuro's probably not going to be happy about that."
"I happen to know someone who put her through her paces like a personal maid for years — she's been venting to me on Line practically every night about your old labor-exploitation tactics."
Sakayanagi Arisu gave a light, unfazed huff — the kind of person who could be in the wrong and still hold her posture.
"In exchange, I kept her secrets and made sure she was protected all through the Black Sphere exam. That's a perfectly fair trade."
"Drop it." Chris plucked the measuring tape out of Amanatsu Kazuha's hand and gave Sakayanagi Arisu a light tap on the arm with one end of it. "Before your heart was fixed, I'd say it was anyone's guess whether she was helping you or you were helping her."
"Arms up. I'll handle height, shoulder width, and waist. That's it."
"For chest and hip measurements, the two of you can sort that out yourselves. I'm not ending up in a black room over this."
Sakayanagi Arisu pouted — but she was obedient. She raised both arms without further protest, letting Chris loop the soft tape measure around her slender waist.
Just as Chris noted down the measurements and moved to take her height, Sakayanagi Arisu rose very slightly onto her tiptoes and spoke quietly.
"Get the thigh circumference too, while you're at it. I'm planning to have a lace thigh ring made."
Chris gave her a look. "That needs custom sizing? Don't those come with adjustable elastic?"
Even so, his hand, acting entirely of its own accord, reached down and closed around the girl's slender thigh through the fabric.
"Hyah—!"
The sudden warmth startled a small, flustered sound out of her. She trembled, almost losing her balance entirely.
Chris withdrew his hand, shaking his head with quiet amusement.
"All bark."
"You can't even handle a hand on your thigh, and you were talking about letting me measure your chest and hips? You really don't know yourself at all, do you?"
Sakayanagi Arisu's ears were bright red, but she kept her chin up, stubborn to the last.
"Go on, then. How do you know I'm not faking it?"
Chris couldn't be bothered to engage.
He'd tested this enough times by now. He understood Sakayanagi Arisu's character perfectly well. Pure, textbook tsundere. The moment things got real, she'd be the first one to cry uncle.
Amanatsu Kazuha, who had been watching the whole scene from the sidelines, finally couldn't contain herself and dissolved into laughter behind her hand.
It took a while before she managed to rein it in enough to speak.
"Sakayanagi-senpai always looks so composed and untouchable — I never expected her to be secretly this adorable~"
Chris gave her a quiet sideways glance.
You're not much better, he thought. The difference is purely in the details.
That said, on the surface at least, his relationship with Amanatsu Kazuha was still fairly casual.
He had no intention of letting her use this moment to get anything out of him.
Right — because from Chris's perspective, this whole so-called "fan service" situation was, in reality, these girls taking advantage of him.
After all, as a deity — and one approachable enough to stand here doing this — it was something of a grace extended, wasn't it?
So once the basic measurements were done, Chris called it. He simply left, walking out and leaving Sakayanagi Arisu and Amanatsu Kazuha alone together, staring each other down.
Besides — with the Combat Suit, and no weapons involved, if those two actually decided to fight, they couldn't seriously hurt each other. If it came to that, he'd have a front-row seat to the timeless spectacle of two girls pulling each other's hair.
Well. If it happened.
Speaking of which — how exactly was a Parasyte's intelligence calculated, anyway?
Feels kind of sharp sometimes, then bizarrely dense at others.
Chris, standing out in the corridor, let his mind wander for a moment.
Eh, easy solution. Restrict it to combat mode only. Sealed in the capsule the rest of the time — communication through the watch only.
He wasn't exactly the exclusive type, but Chris didn't like having spectators. He wasn't about to rope the Parasyte into that too — that would just be weird.
He was still mentally drafting amendments to the Black Sphere ruleset when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out. A voice call.
Caller: Tachibana Akane.
Chris picked up without hesitation. "Senpai. Something up?"
The other end of the line was silent for a full thirty seconds.
Then, slowly, Tachibana Akane's voice came through.
"Chris... The Student Council President — he didn't actually die, did he?"
Chris feigned mild puzzlement, keeping his voice level.
"That's correct. The Black Sphere told us during the settlement — the President was thrown into another world by Jikku's spatial rift. There's a chance to retrieve him in a future exam."
"Alternatively, you can spend 100 S-Points directly and have the Black Sphere bring him back by force."
He asked in return: "What's going on, Senpai? Didn't the Black Sphere announce those terms to your group as well?"
On the other end of the line, Tachibana Akane sniffled. When her voice returned, it was thick with something held back.
"The Black Sphere... yes, it told us. It even said that after hearing the news, Vice President Nagumo Miyabi volunteered to use his own accumulated points to bring the President back..."
"That sounds like a good thing."
Chris kept his tone warm, gently steering. "So the President should already be back in the Student Council office dealing with a backlog of paperwork, then? Horikita seemed really shaken — should I be the one to share the good news with her?"
Another long pause.
When Tachibana Akane finally spoke again, she was fighting hard to keep the tears out of her voice.
"Even though... not many of the upperclassmen present actually objected..."
"I... in the end, I asked Nagumo Vice President to think it over again..."
"And then he used those 100 points to redeem a set of armor instead."
Tachibana Akane added, as if trying to reassure herself: "The Vice President said he'll definitely use his own strength to bring the President back from the other world someday."
Chris responded with affected surprise.
"I had the impression you and the President were quite close, Senpai — he even specifically asked me to look out for you if things got dangerous."
"So why did you stop Vice President Nagumo Miyabi in that moment?"
Tachibana Akane's voice broke entirely, tears bleeding into every syllable.
"Because... because I knew that if the President had been there himself, he would never have agreed to spend a hundred points — a strategic resource that precious — just to bring one person back!"
"As the Student Council Secretary, I can't let my personal feelings put everyone else's lives at risk down the line!"
Chris kept the smile off his face with considerable effort and replied in the most composed tone he could manage.
"Senpai, you really are someone who puts the greater good first."
"But negative emotions are like a snowball. The longer you pack them down inside, the bigger they get. Sooner or later you need an outlet — only then can you actually move forward."
"If you need that right now, I'm here."
On the other end of the line, Tachibana Akane seemed to have found exactly that — someone she could finally speak to.
With Chris's acknowledgment, her composure steadied noticeably. She even managed to turn it around and offer him a word of comfort.
"Don't worry about it, Chris."
"Just being able to say all of this to you — I already feel a lot better..."
A brief pause, and then Tachibana Akane's voice shifted, carrying a note of guilt.
"Chris... honestly, I used to be biased against you."
"I always thought the President was overestimating you — that asking you for a favor was completely unnecessary. I thought you were just a first-year who'd gotten lucky, someone only a little above average..."
"But after living through the Black Sphere exam firsthand, I realized just how naive and foolish that thinking was. I'm sorry..."
Chris replied quietly.
"You never actually did anything to hurt me, Senpai. There's no need to apologize."
"But — if saying sorry makes you feel better, then I'll accept it without argument."
Tachibana Akane let out a small sound of acknowledgment and sniffled once more.
"Then I'll let you rest. I still need to sort through some files and get ready to welcome the new transfer student arriving in Class A..."
Chris gave an equally quiet acknowledgment.
He noticed that even after everything had been said, Tachibana Akane seemed reluctant to hang up. So he considerately ended the call himself.
There was only so much emotional support you could offer over a phone line with no physical presence to back it up. Words alone could only go so far.
Besides — with his god's-eye view, Chris already knew exactly what had happened.
The so-called "Nagumo Miyabi wanting to revive Horikita Manabu, stopped by Tachibana Akane" — in reality, it was simply that none of the upperclassmen had thought to ask, or had thought to check, whether Horikita Manabu's accumulated S-Points would still be on his account if he were brought back.
Because Horikita Manabu had gone hunting the Beastmaster and man-eating demons during the exam. Even with his mid-game exit and without completing the full run, the points he'd racked up had to be somewhere in the range of seventy or eighty S-Points.
Which meant that if Nagumo Miyabi's group wanted to revive Horikita Manabu, all they actually needed to do was cover the remaining twenty-odd S-Points gap.
Any way you calculated it, that was an absolutely manageable strategic expenditure.
But... there was nothing to be done.
Because the beautiful senpai had been stuck on the wrong battlefield the entire time, forced into passive observation mode, sleepwalking through the whole thing without the mental bandwidth to run those numbers.
And Nagumo Miyabi had been blindsided by the sudden loss of the person he loved, completely swept away — he hadn't thought of it in the moment either.
Well... I'd like to think that even if big brother-in-law found out the truth, he absolutely wouldn't sweat something this trivial, right?
Chris thought this to himself, barely holding it together.
Behind him, the fitting room door — which had been firmly shut — was quietly nudged open a crack.
Sakayanagi Arisu poked half her head out, eyeing him with suspicion.
"Who were you on the phone with?" "That expression on your face was distinctly sinister."
Chris pocketed his phone and replied offhandedly.
"Tachibana Akane senpai. About Horikita Manabu."
"Turns out Nagumo Miyabi, who never seemed to get along with the President on the surface, was actually willing to spend 100 S-Points to bring him back after the exam. If Tachibana Akane hadn't stepped in on behalf of the bigger picture, the President would probably already be back at his desk buried in paperwork."
Sakayanagi Arisu's eyes widened slightly, her surprise completely unguarded.
"They didn't know that Horikita Manabu's accumulated S-Points would still exist upon revival?!"
"We chose not to intervene in Horikita Manabu's situation because we're in a different year group — different faction entirely."
"But his own allies shouldn't have balked at that kind of cost, surely!"
"He was the one carrying the main DPS airdrop slot — he must have had at least several dozen S-Points on his account, regardless."
Chris raised one finger to his lips in a quiet shh.
"Keep it between us. Don't tell the senpais."
"If she found out the truth, she'd probably be guilt-ridden enough to commit ritual seppuku on the spot."
Sakayanagi Arisu let out a slow, comprehending "Oh~"
"So this is the dark comedy of information asymmetry. The Black Sphere really is merciless."
She shifted tone. "By the way — have you noticed anything different about my appearance compared to when I went in?"
Chris gave her a flat look.
"You're wearing a cat-ear headband. That's all. Hardly grounds for fanfare."
"If you walked out in a full bunny girl outfit and did a little spin for me, that might actually be worth commenting on. A headband? You're severely underestimating me, Arisu."
Sakayanagi Arisu didn't take offense. She returned him a perfectly composed roll of her eyes.
"If I actually wore a bunny girl outfit right now, Chris-kun would be hauled away as a public menace."
"But that level of advanced equipment is still a ways off. We'll work up to it."
The two of them were still trading barbs when —
The door Sakayanagi Arisu was holding by the handle was suddenly shoved from the inside.
Caught leaning forward, completely off guard, Sakayanagi Arisu pitched forward with the motion and landed squarely in Chris's arms.
Amanatsu Kazuha emerged from the fitting room, looked at the two of them tangled together, and stuck out her tongue with a sheepish grin.
"Whoops, sorry, Senpai~"
"I thought you were just standing by the door waiting for me to finish changing. I had no idea I was interrupting something."
Sakayanagi Arisu lifted her head from Chris's chest and shot Amanatsu Kazuha a withering glare.
But she showed no sign of moving.
Chris glanced down — and then he understood exactly why Sakayanagi Arisu had only dared open the door a crack before.
She had tried on one of the sample maid outfits from inside the shop.
The waist and skirt had been taken in quite snugly — fitted to her frame. But at the most critical area — the neckline — the sizing was off by a full size up. The collar gaped open, loose enough to let in a breeze.
Chris genuinely could not hold it back. He laughed again, just as shamelessly as before.
"It's fine, really. Small can be cute too."
Sakayanagi Arisu went scarlet. She flashed a tiny set of canine teeth at him.
"You keep looking! I'm actually calling the police this time — public indecency!"
Chris cleared his throat, delivering the follow-up with perfect composure.
"There was really no need for me to help you at all, was there."
"If there's nothing there to begin with — what difference does measuring make?"
"I hate you!" Sakayanagi Arisu, thoroughly flustered and furious, stamped on Chris's foot, pressed her hands to her chest, and fled back into the depths of the fitting room without a backward glance.
Amanatsu Kazuha stood to one side, grinning.
It was a good while before she managed to settle her amusement enough to speak in a normal tone again.
"Looks like Senpai will have her custom order done in no time. They basically just need to cut away the extra fabric at the chest... I'm not so lucky — mine's too tight, I'm being strangled. I'll have to ask them to make me a whole new one in a bigger size."
At that, Chris instinctively glanced over.
He noticed — only now — that the sample maid outfit Amanatsu Kazuha had on was pulled quite taut across her chest, the fabric strained into a deep, emphatic crease by the generous curve beneath.
She had obviously chosen a size smaller than she needed on purpose.
Because there was no other way to achieve a visual effect this dramatic — buttons threatening to pop, a pressure so emphatic it recalled the effortless, overwhelming presence that Kushida Kikyo managed to project every single day.
Chris exhaled, resigned.
When it came to female vanity and competitive instinct, you really had to hand it to them.
Regardless of actual size — given any opportunity, it was going to get pushed to the forefront.
Though Amanatsu Kazuha, to be fair, didn't actually need the assist.
____
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