Chapter 11: Yanami Anna's Rationality Defeats Her Appetite.
....
"Kihara, have you seen where my underwear went?"
Lala walked into the living room wearing nothing but a towel, steam still rising from her pink hair, long legs carrying her across the room with the unhurried ease of someone who had not considered that this might be a moment requiring any particular adjustment.
Kihara, without turning around, held the underwear out to her. "You left it on the sofa. Take it with you next time."
"Okay~"
She accepted it with a cheerful smile, circled around behind the sofa, dropped the towel, and began dressing in the living room.
Several drops of water landed on the back of his neck. He pressed two fingers to his temple. "Lala. I said to change clothes in the bathroom."
"But you said that was for when there are guests! It's just us right now — isn't all that extra effort a bit much?"
"Haah..."
Peke, who had been hovering nearby with a towel ready, took this moment to intercede.
"Kihara-sama, please don't worry. Lady Lala would never undress in front of a stranger. The reason she feels comfortable like this is precisely because you're her fiancé — she's simply acting according to her own preferences."
"Exactly what Peke said!"
Fully dressed, Lala wrapped her arms around his neck from behind with the affectionate confidence of someone who had decided this was simply how proximity worked, and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"What are you looking at~?"
"Work notification. I'm not going to school tomorrow — filming at the set."
"Eh!! You're an actor?!"
"Didn't I mention that?"
"You didn't~"
He patted the sofa cushion beside him.
"Come sit. I'll tell you a bit about it."
"Okay okay~!"
She vaulted over the sofa back and landed beside him, managing in the process to secure his left arm between terrain features that made extracting it complicated.
He kept the work stories light — anecdotes rather than details. The magical girl production next door whose lead actress could apparently generate actual flame with her bare hands. The new cinematographer who'd been so focused on a shot that he'd walked into the director. The villain who'd forgotten his lines and improvised something so nonsensically committed that the director had used the take.
When he paused for water, he looked down and found that Lala had gone boneless against his shoulder, breathing slowly, completely and contentedly asleep.
"Peke. Can you get a blanket?"
"Of course, Kihara-sama."
He tucked the blanket around her and made his decision for the evening. "Turn the lights off when you're done. I'll sleep out here with her tonight."
"Wouldn't it be more comfortable to wake Lady Lala and have her sleep in the bedroom?"
"Shh — keep your voice down. Some people have a hard time getting back to sleep once they're up. Better to leave things as they are."
"Understood."
Peke drifted to the light switch and pressed it. The living room went dark. Outside, the night was full of stars, the kind of quiet that only existed in the small hours. Kihara closed his eyes, breathing in the faint clean scent that drifted from Lala's hair, and followed her into sleep.
Sometime in the early morning, Lala surfaced from sleep.
She found herself on a sofa, Kihara beside her, and produced an expression that combined warmth with mild exasperation.
"Really, Kihara. Sleeping on the sofa when you have work tomorrow. You need proper rest."
She extracted her phone — which had been engineered to resemble an ordinary touchscreen device and contained considerably more — and took out the Jumping Warp-kun MK1.
The device's original function was biological teleportation across a variable radius with randomized destination. Through her modifications it now operated with precision targeting up to fifty meters. She had renamed it accordingly.
The one limitation she hadn't resolved: it couldn't transport clothing.
This registered to Lala as a minor operational footnote, not a meaningful concern.
She set the parameters, pressed the button.
Two people moved from sofa to bed in the same instant.
She pulled the blanket over both of them, settled herself against the warmth of his side with the contentment of someone who had made a good decision, and went back to sleep with her smile still in place.
Yanami Anna had gotten up early.
She knew Kihara had a filming day, which meant an early departure, which meant the window for delivering the bento she'd spent considerable time preparing last night was narrow. She had set her alarm accordingly.
There was also the other thing.
She needed to confirm that nothing had happened. Because Lala was, and she could not overstate this, the most credulous person she had ever encountered — the kind of person who would take a that's not how it works at face value without checking. Whoever wanted to could tell her three sentences and have her completely convinced.
A wolf who had access to that kind of sheep, given an entire evening and an empty house, was a wolf who should be checked on.
Not that I think Kihara would—
She let herself in with her key, held the bento box carefully, and stepped inside.
"Sorry for the intrusion..."
Her own voice echoed back at her from the entryway. The particular silence of an empty ground floor settled around her.
He's probably still asleep. The thought moved through her before she'd considered its implications. Should I go up? Wake him up the childhood-friend way?
This was, she realized with faint embarrassment, something she had never actually done. Her usual morning routine was to wait until he'd made breakfast and then arrive to eat it under the flag of we're childhood friends, this is normal. Food had always been the primary motivation. Action had never been required.
Lala had changed the calculus.
The crisis Lala's arrival had generated was, apparently, strong enough to override Yanami Anna's fundamental operating principle, which was minimize effort and let the food come to you. Here she was, at an unpleasant hour, carrying homemade food she had made herself, tiptoeing up stairs she had never tiptoeed up before.
She reached his bedroom door. Tried the handle. Unlocked.
She eased it open just far enough to slip through, crouching low.
Kihara was on the bed. Asleep. Face up. Breathing with the complete ease of someone who had no concerns about his morning.
Yanami Anna's mouth curved upward involuntarily. She stood up to her full height, drew a breath, and opened her mouth for the wake-up call—
"Good morni— EH?!?!?!"
She'd been crouching. Crouching had restricted her sightlines. Standing had resolved this.
Lala was right there. On his other side. Shoulder bare. Asleep with her face turned toward him.
Both of them. Bare shoulders. Same bed.
The second scream that came out of Yanami Anna was considerably louder than the first. Kihara launched upright from the sound like something spring-loaded. The blanket hit the floor.
Yanami Anna's mouth closed from full open to a small perfect circle.
Her eyes found the relevant evidence and catalogued it.
The evidence was, objectively, vivid.
In the shadow space, Shinobu quietly wiped the corner of her mouth, selected a donut, and settled in.
"What — what did you two do last night?!"
Kihara looked around the room with the expression of someone who had expected to wake up somewhere else and was not yet processing the discrepancy. He was fairly certain he had fallen asleep on the sofa.
"Mmm..." Lala sat up, rubbing her eyes. "I used the Jumping Warp-kun MK1 to move us to the bed."
"Why aren't you wearing clothes?!"
"It can only transport living things~!"
"PUT CLOTHES ON — BOTH OF YOU — RIGHT NOW—!!"
....
Thank you for reading.