Chapter 17 — The Gap Between Her Usual Self
This was the first time I had ever stepped into a girl’s room.
In the fantasies guys tend to have, I imagined it would be filled with soft, fluffy things and covered in cute decorations. Maybe there’d be a teddy bear wearing a bow tie sitting by her pillow. Maybe she’d be the type who couldn’t sleep without hugging it—that kind of unexpected gap between appearance and reality.
Instead, her room shattered those fantasies with ease.
Not that I minded. The fantasies were mine alone, after all.
The modest eight-tatami room had the exact same layout as mine. Unlike my disaster of a room, however, everything here was neatly organized. A simple desk, a bed, and a stylish glass coffee table in the center. That was it.
Well, that and the pink trash can.
Considering how often she’d told me to buy one, I supposed that made sense.
Her clothes were probably stored in the closet. There wasn’t a single garment lying on the floor. No wonder she’d been so quick to call me out whenever my room was a mess.
Putting my observations aside, I carefully transferred Yuki Ōhira onto the bed.
Needless to say, there was no bow-tied teddy bear by the pillow.
As soon as I laid her on her back, her ragged breathing became impossible to ignore.
“Are you okay?”
“Haa… haa…”
She looked miserable. Too exhausted to answer, she could only struggle for breath.
I wasn’t enough of a bastard to leave someone like this alone.
My mind raced, searching for something—anything—I could do.
“A thermometer…”
She was obviously burning up, but I should still check her temperature.
The problem was that I’d never been in her room before. I had no idea where she kept a first-aid kit, let alone a thermometer. It was only a small apartment, so I could probably find it quickly if I searched, but I wasn’t about to go rifling through a girl’s belongings like some pervert.
“The hallway… storage…”
The weak words she managed to force out sounded like an answer to my question.
I didn’t bother asking for permission.
Making her waste energy on that would be cruel.
I immediately headed into the hallway.
Since our apartments had identical layouts, I knew exactly where the storage closet was.
The kitchen was on the left after leaving the room. The bathroom and sink were on the right. Beside them was a narrow door that seemed almost like an afterthought.
That was the storage space.
When I opened it, I found a shelf dividing the interior into upper and lower sections. Cleaning supplies and a first-aid kit sat on the upper shelf.
I pulled out the kit and checked inside.
Bandages, cooling patches, over-the-counter medicine…
And a thermometer.
Perfect.
As I reached to close the door while carrying the kit, something in the lower section caught my eye.
“…That’s…”
An enamel sports bag.
One I knew all too well.
“My baseball gear…?”
There was no way I could mistake it.
I almost reached for it, then stopped.
I wanted to know why my baseball equipment was here.
But Yuki’s condition came first.
Closing the door, I returned to her room.
“Can you take your temperature?”
She was still breathing heavily.
Apparently even speaking was too much now. She simply gave a tiny nod and accepted the thermometer from me.
“Haa… haa…”
Her face was bright red.
Then she started undoing the buttons of her shirt.
I immediately turned around.
Seriously?
Watching a feverish girl breathing heavily while unbuttoning her shirt was way too much stimulation.
“I’ll go buy some cooling patches.”
No.
Getting turned on by someone suffering from a fever was not okay.
Trying to cool my own head, I called that over my shoulder and headed for the door.
Then—
A hand suddenly grabbed my arm.
“Ōhira?”
My heart nearly stopped.
When I turned around, her shirt was soaked with sweat and clinging tightly to her body. Several buttons were undone, exposing the curve of her cleavage as she sat on the bed with her arms tucked close to her sides.
The pose looked straight out of a gravure magazine.
I somehow managed not to die on the spot and quickly averted my eyes.
“H-Hey…”
“S-Sorry… Could you… get me some clothes…”
“C-Clothes?”
“Something from the closet… gym clothes are fine…”
“Oh. Right. Sure.”
Well, with how drenched she was, I couldn’t blame her.
Since she’d practically given me permission, I opened the closet without hesitation.
There weren’t many clothes inside, which made her usual mini-skirt maid outfit stand out immediately.
Below the hanging clothes sat a plastic drawer unit.
There were no pajamas or gym clothes hanging up, so I figured they’d be inside.
I opened the first drawer.
“…”
Wrong drawer.
Or maybe the right drawer, depending on how you looked at it.
In my hand was Yuki Ōhira’s bra.
Blood rushed through my entire body at the speed of light.
“…Does this thing hold melons or something?”
I deliberately phrased it that way in a desperate attempt to calm myself down.
It didn’t work.
She was my classmate.
A girl the same age as me.
Someone who attended the same school and lived through the same days.
And yet her chest had developed to a downright indecent degree.
How was I supposed not to react?
I’d always thought she was well-endowed just from looking at her.
Seeing the bra drove the point home.
Her body was proof that the gods played favorites.
And right now, that very girl was lying in a vulnerable state—
“Nope. Absolutely not. Keep this up and I’ll get killed. Begone, worldly desires.”
Somehow regaining my sanity, I reluctantly closed the drawer and opened the next one.
There, at last, was her school gym uniform.
I assumed she had actual pajamas somewhere, but she’d said gym clothes were fine.
So I grabbed them and returned.
She’d abandoned the gravure pose and was lying flat on her back again, breathing painfully.
Just then, the thermometer beeped.
“What is it?”
“…39.2.”
“Ouch. That’s rough.”
A fever over thirty-nine degrees Celsius.
“Change into those for now. I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
She nodded obediently.
Then, without the slightest hesitation, she started taking her clothes off.
I fled the room immediately.
At over thirty-nine degrees, she was probably too delirious to care about anything anymore.
I headed straight to the kitchen, borrowed a glass, and filled it with water.
Then I grabbed some over-the-counter medicine from the first-aid kit and waited a few minutes before returning.
Fortunately, she seemed capable of changing clothes on her own.
She was now wearing her gym uniform.
“The medicine might not do much, but it’s better than taking nothing.”
She quietly sat up and swallowed the pills.
Then she lay back down, still breathing heavily.
“Are you okay? I’m going to buy cooling patches and some other things.”
Seeing someone suffer this much made it impossible not to help.
Call me meddlesome if you wanted.
At least it proved my conscience was still functioning.
Just as I reached the door, I heard her weak voice.
“Wait…”
I turned back.
“Could you… stay with me… for a little while…?”
The request caught me off guard.
Normally, Yuki was composed, dignified, and strong.
But now she was burning with fever, frightened and vulnerable.
The contrast hit me hard.
And honestly, I understood.
Most high school students would have family nearby when they got sick.
Yuki and I weren’t like that.
If either of us came down with a bad fever, we’d be completely alone.
Of course that would be terrifying.
“…Okay.”
If our positions were reversed, I probably would have asked her the same thing.
So I answered as gently as I could and stayed by her side, quietly watching over her until she finally began to settle down.
