127. Let's Keep Business Ethics
127. Let's Keep Business Ethics
If it were the usual Minerva,
when she felt the desire to approach Chrono,
[May I join you?]
[Huh? I don't particularly mind...]
she would, as usual,
as she had learned,
approach Chrono and act together with him.
[Will you accept this?]
[Oh...you're really giving it to me?]
[It's repayment for everything up until now.]
[...Ah, wait. I think I'm a little moved.]
If there was something she wanted to repay,
she would have objectively considered what he might want, what he might need, and given him the optimal gift.
[I kind of disliked the sea because of the sea breeze.]
[...But you're eating that raw fish in your hands just fine, aren't you?]
[That's that and this is this.]
[...........]
If they were to go out and have fun,
she could probably plan a reasonably enjoyable course and ensure they had plenty of fun.
And if even that proved difficult...
[Even if he suddenly says let's play...for now, shall we go by the 'standard method'?]
[I will follow Chrono's opinion.]
Leaving everything to Chrono would also be a method.
The point was, for Minerva, the subject Chrono was an incredibly 'comfortable counterpart' when viewed from the perspective of a 'friend.'
And just as much, for Minerva, the counterpart Chrono was an incredibly 'comfortable friend' and also...
"WhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdoWhatdoIdo"
...had now become a 'boyfriend whom it was even difficult to approach.'
The moment she received the confession,
the moment she began to see him as a member of the opposite sex,
at least for Minerva, 'Chrono' was no longer 'Chrono.'
"Hueu, heu, haaaaa......"
He was not Chrono.
Boyfriend.
Lover.
Another haven that had come into her life.
Unlike the times when she was always anxious, not knowing when he might leave, he was an existence like a comfortable shelter that promised to always be by her side──however, from the very moment he declared he would become a shelter, another 'hope' was born for Minerva.
Hope.
The hope that there was someone who would catch her even if she fell.
And this hope, conversely, brought her the 'suspicion' that it could lead to 'despair.'
"What if Chrono gets disappointed... what do I do...?"
Humans, you see, don't even harbor hope when there is no place to lean on,
but the moment a place to lean appears, they tremble in fear of a despair that might visit them again.
"................"
Ultimately, Minerva reached a state where she could do nothing on her own.
That was only to be expected──for she had already tasted it several times.
The despair that unfolds when she tries to move on her own.
How lacking she was.
And how amazing Chrono was to have overcome it──no.
Ah.
Aauu.
Auueuuu....!
"Chrono..."
Even as she gradually fell deeper into the midst of despair,
"...Chrono."
just whispering his name made her break into a broad, foolish grin.
"Chronooo......"
When she was about to sink deeper once more from the dark history surfacing again,
[It's been 1 day since we started dating?]
".........Uuuuu....!"
she would tremble with joy again at the memory of that day.
A situation that anyone could rightfully see and ask if she was crazy.
While she was repeatedly denying reality in a disgraceful manner, thinking she would never act like this if she saw herself,
[──Haaat...♥]
"Ah......."
a sound came from the next room.
Minerva slowly lifted her head.
The clock.
The time was around 2:30.
It was AM, not PM; beneath a sky where the moon hung instead of the sun.
[Big Brother... does Mai taste good...?]
[Chyu byu byu byu byub!]
[Hiiiii....♥♥]
".....Eu....euueuu....!"
It was starting.
That sound, starting once again.
[Big Brother... Big Brother, Chrono, Master, Maaaster....♥]
The panting voice of a woman.
[Heup.....Euguk.....!]
Even Chrono's groans, occasionally mixed in.
"I hate... it......"
She tried covering both ears.
The sound was not blocked.
Of course it wasn't. She kept turning her head toward that direction even as she said she hated it.
"Eu....eueueu....."
She curled her body inward into a round shape.
Like a baby sleeping inside a mother's womb.
As if hiding her shameful figure from the sky and the earth.
"Eut.....!"
Both hands descended to the deepest place and toyed with her body, her spirit, with Hope.
[Big Brother... Big Brotherrrr....♥♥]
"Heu....eueueu....♥"
She inserted herself into what she terribly hated.
[I'm cum....miiing.....!]
"Heup───"
With both eyes squeezed tightly shut,
as if he were right before her eyes,
[Haaaaaaaaaang♥♥♥]
"Heugeueueueut....♥♥♥"
Climax.
A pleasure that made her head spin.
Choked breath. The inside of the blanket filled with humidity.
[.....Big Brother.]
[What.]
"............."
Just as the inside of the blanket, heated by body warmth and climax, was gradually cooling down,
[Mai, do you love me?]
[.............]
"Ah....."
the voices of those in the room across.
Voices that were even clearer, since distracting thoughts had already been cleared away once,
[...I don't hate you.]
[Tch....Coward.]
[Can't you say I'm careful?]
[Coward is correct. No objections.]
[I said it's not like that?]
"......Haa...."
They truly sounded so warm to the ear.
The voices of the two, murmuring together, were so very warm.
"....Heu, haaaa....!"
Yet the inside of her own blanket was growing this cold.
Those across the way seemed so very warm,
and from that sense of temperature disparity, from the icy cold,
"......It hurts."
Minerva tightened the blanket around herself even more strongly.
Something, a stinging sensation inside her chest.
Something she had never felt before,
or even if she had, it was something ever so very small,
now burrowed deep enough inside her chest that she could definitely feel it.
Pain,
ache,
as if stabbing the valve of the heart with a thick needle,
as if thorns had sprouted between blood vessels.
Cold and loneliness.
"Haaaaaaa....."
Minerva pressed her eyes firmly shut and buried her face in the blanket.
It will be okay.
When I sleep and wake up again, it will be okay.
Athena is also earnestly watching over me, too.
Surely tomorrow she will guide me with a different wisdom.
Minerva closed her eyes and waited for tomorrow to come.
Like that, on the day the morning sun rose,
".....Athena?"
her Main God's oracle did not descend.
**********************
"Athena?"
The day she performed 'Advent' with Athena for the first time.
Since that day, Athena had spoken often with Minerva.
Most of those conversations were about Chrono, or about Chrono, or mostly about Chrono.
But since the only stories Minerva had to tell were also about Chrono, it produced a situation where their conversations oddly matched up well.
".............."
The oracle had suddenly been cut completely off.
The unique sense of a 'presence' that was always felt when an oracle descended was distinctly absent.
"...Was my prayer perhaps insufficient?"
She sat down and knelt on the spot.
She pressed both hands together and offered a prayer toward Athena.
"................"
She offered a prayer,
".............."
a prayer towards Athena,
towards her Main God.
For dozens of minutes, she closed her eyes and offered a prayer solely seeking her Lord.
─Knock knock.
"!,....Who...?"
The sound of someone knocking on the door.
She rose from her spot and opened the door to find Mai waiting for her outside.
"Gonna order chicken. You gonna eat together?"
"Eh.....?"
Chicken?
Chicken for breakfast?
"Chicken for breakfast is a little... no, that's not it!"
A natural refusal.
The moment she realized she should use this as an excuse to visit Chrono's room instead of refusing,
"Breakfast? It's not breakfast though?"
"Huh?"
a single line from Mai.
"It's lunchtime right now."
".....Whaat?"
Lunchtime.
When Mai showed her phone and told her it was around 1 PM.
'I definitely woke up around 7...'
...Meaning she had prayed for over 5 hours straight.
"Ah──?!"
Minerva collapsed, plopping down.
Fatigue she hadn't noticed until just now rushed in all at once and the strength drained from her legs.
"Oh no... this is... this cannot be─Grrrrrrrowl!─Eut.....!"
A body condition that took even herself by surprise.
She clutched her stomach with both hands and tried to suppress the sound, but it wasn't a sound that would stop from that alone.
"...Three...no, gotta order four."
Mai opened the door to the room right next door and went inside.
"....Uuu...."
From the morning,
no, from the afternoon, what on earth was happening.
Minerva practically half-crawled as she followed Mai into the room.
"You slept well... I see."
"Hello, Chrono."
She entered the room, exchanging greetings naturally, and if she were to sit right next to him──it seemed like it would be too overwhelming,
so she took a seat maintaining an appropriate distance.
"............."
".....Huh?"
Chrono was oddly glaring at her.
At his gaze that seemed to ask 'is that really true?', she wondered if there was sleep in her eyes and turned her head to fumble around──now that she thought about it, she hadn't even washed her face after waking up in the morning, had she?
"U-uh, ju-just a moment, the restroom..."
"Uh, yeah. Sure."
She hurriedly went to the restroom.
She turned on the faucet, washed her eyes, washed her face, and gazed at her face which just barely got properly washed, letting out a sigh of relief──as if!
"Pajamas.....?"
Moreover, she had come out exactly as she was back when she was inside the blanket yesterday.
That appearance from yesterday.
Which meant....
"Only a top...??"
She was wearing only her upper garment.
Minerva had even taken off her underwear along with her sleep bottoms while doing who-knows-what, ultimately displaying a real missing-bottom fashion.
On top of that, since she had unhooked her bra to sleep, the state of her top was also a complete mess.
"Eu....aaaaah....!!!"
An unbelievable outfit.
An appearance that was, so to speak, the very model of a lewd woman.
Even by her own judgment, it was a hopeless outfit, and she felt like she naturally understood why Chrono had been glaring at her earlier.
'What an absurd appearance to show...'
Shame.
Humiliation.
The urge to hide somewhere right that instant.
And then,
".........Heut...?!"
why.
for what reason.
There should not be a reason to feel good...anywhere...?
"Ah....er...auuuu.....!"
Her face turned burning hot in an instant.
Her mind just couldn't bear to understand and rejected it, but her body had realized.
".......Haaaaaa..."
This self of hers.
That Chrono had been looking at her shabby, lewd, absurd figure...
....with 'that kind of gaze.'
That a male's
eyes held the gaze of one wanting a female.
The reaction of her body that had realized this was all too natural.
"......Gulp."
All sorts of imaginative flights spread through Minerva's head.
Could it be, that today would be that long, long-awaited day?
Wouldn't it work if she mustered just a little more courage and pushed forward?
Could the reason Athena had not appeared also be because there was no more reason for her to appear?
'Today...... is also virtually the last day, after all...'
Minerva ran a happiness circuit in her head diligently.
That day, when she wondered if the moment she had been dreaming of would soon arrive,
"Ah... I had a good time. Let's sleep soon. You go to your room too."
"............."
surprisingly, nothing at all happened.
...Okay.
Well.
She could grant that this could happen.
But as an aside,
[Eut....! Big Brother, you're more urgent than usual...]
[It's the same as usual though?]
[It's not. Mai can tell. The look in Big Brother's eyes is not the one when you're aroused by Mai.]
[...Is that so?]
"Ah.....?"
In truth, the fact that he 'got in that mood' because of her,
[So, do you hate it?]
[No.]
"Wait....."
and that he was relieving it with someone other than herself,
[Thinking of the girl next door, use me as much as you want...♥]
[Oh.]
"'Oh' is not what you should say!!"
it was something Minerva could absolutely not tolerate.
Just how far,
did he intend to make a fool of her?