Cleaning Lucky Sukebe (3)
Soft. Something incredibly soft and pleasantly fluffy was touching his hand. What am I grabbing? The memory of slipping from the ladder and falling flashed through his mind in fragments. Even as his head buzzed, the overwhelming volume filling his palm felt strangely vivid. It was the kind of sensation that made him instinctively want to hold on a little longer.
"Oww……" Shun groaned, furrowing his brow as he forced his heavy eyelids open. "……Huh?"
As his vision slowly cleared, the first thing he saw was a face. A face so impossibly beautiful it didn't seem real. Skin so fair and translucent it looked as if it were bathed in moonlight. Large, clear eyes like a lake, slightly damp from the shock. Delicate lips parted in shallow breaths, and the trembling of long lashes. All of it filled his view at a dizzying distance, close enough to touch.
Raon……? Only then did the rational part of Shun's brain kick back into gear. He had fallen from the stepladder. Raon had tried to catch him and gone down with him. Right now, he was on top of her, pinning her to the floor.
"S-Sorry! Raon! I slipped—did you get hurt anywhere, uh……?!"
Panicked, Shun tried to push himself up. As he did, his right hand—still braced against the floor—pressed down with his full weight. And then—
Squish♡
Instead of the hard floor he expected, his palm sank into something soft and springy, something that could never exist on wooden flooring. It filled his hand completely.
"……Hik?!"
At the same time, a tiny, adorable yelp escaped Raon's lips—the kind of sound he'd never heard from her before. Shun's gaze drifted downward in slow motion, like a broken robot. His dust-blackened right hand, the one he'd used to push himself up, was resting squarely on—
"……"
The disheveled collar of her school blouse. Precisely atop the soft curve of Raon's left breast.
"……"
A suffocating silence fell. Shun slowly raised his head to meet Raon's eyes.
The face that had been pale moments ago was now flushed crimson all the way down to her neck, like a ripe tomato. One sleeve pressed over her mouth, her slender shoulders trembling. Her large eyes brimmed with shock and humiliation.
She's…… so cute. Even in the middle of this unprecedented disaster, the thought flickered through Shun's mind for a split second—before being swallowed by the crushing weight of reality.
"Ah." I'm done for. Completely done for. Shun's face turned scarlet, then drained to corpse-white as a silent scream welled up inside him.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
First, let's get one thing straight. Ueda Shun was a perfectly ordinary, morally upright seventeen-year-old with a healthy mind. He understood the clear difference between reality and the fanservice-heavy romcom manga serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump. If this were a manga, the male lead would react like this:
"Ah! S-Sorry! It wasn't on purpose!" (flailing his arms, face bright red)
So the real question was: how would the beautiful heroine pinned beneath him respond?
Route ①
"Y-You……! Ueda, you pervert! Idiot! The worst!!"
The classic tsundere route. She'd slap him lightly and run away, only for her affection to secretly skyrocket the next day at school with thoughts like, Still…… when he touched my chest, my heart did skip a beat……
Route ②
"Y-You dummy…… If it's you, Ueda…… you can touch more……"
The instant-domination mega-dere route. She'd avert her eyes shyly, lips trembling, then look up with flushed cheeks. They'd swallow hard, exchange heated glances, and—if no background characters interrupted—head straight to an H-scene.
Route ③
"Kyaa~ Shun, you're so bold! You wanted to touch your big sister's chest that badly?"
The older-sister route, popular with a dedicated fanbase. She'd actually push her chest forward or grab his hand, turning the tables and flustering him instead. He'd stammer out a tsukkomi like "Stop teasing me, seriously……!" and the moment would pass in a haze.
No no no, there's no way that's happening! Yeah, if this were a manga or dating sim, that pink-tinted development would unfold. This incident would bring them closer, they'd start noticing each other more—"Ueda's hands were pretty big, huh……"—and a heart-pounding love-and-peace ending would arrive.
But that was a story made of ink and paper, or pixels on a screen. In reality, accidentally grabbing the chest of a girl he'd only met half a day ago? What awaited Shun was—
Route ④
Reality is cruel.
"Hey there~!"
"Uwah!"
Somewhere, a police officer would appear. The "Sexual Harassment Youth" event under Article 298 of the Criminal Code. Ueda Shun would become a molester.
And Shun knew—knew with 99.8% certainty—that he was overwhelmingly likely to land on Route 4. That was why he was currently experiencing what it felt like to have an out-of-body experience.
"L-Listen! I'm sorry! No, it really wasn't on purpose—I slipped from the ladder and gravity just…… or maybe my hand moved on its own without my brain's permission……!"
He didn't even know what nonsense he was spouting. Still, his mouth kept pouring out survival excuses on instinct. Meanwhile, his brain—overloaded with panic—had gone ice-cold, like post-nut clarity had arrived early. In that hyper-rational state, it calmly analyzed the situation and reached a conclusion.
Brain: Ah—this is a 100-to-0 loss.
No way. There was no convenient legal defense for this kind of sexual harassment. Shun's brain was smart. It abandoned the impossible defense and logged out of his body at top speed.
……No, you bastard! Don't give up! Come back!!
Emergency alarms blared inside his head. His half-detached soul was about to ectoplasm its way out through his lips. Even so, Shun kept talking until the very last second—spouting the kind of terrible lines only a light-novel protagonist would say.
"It's true! There wasn't a single gram of malice in what I just did……!"
"Ah, I get it, so……" Raon, still pinned beneath him, clutched her uniform collar with one arm and spoke in a trembling, tearful voice. "Please…… get off me, Ueda……"
That pitiful, quivering voice. Anyone could tell she was a terrified victim.
"R-Right! I'll move! I'll move right now!"
Just as Shun jerked upright in a panic—
Creak—
The half-closed guest room door swung wide open behind him.
"Shun~ There's so much dust in here. What on earth are you still doing in the room……?"
Himari, fresh from closing the tea shop downstairs, and Shun's father peered through the doorway. What met their eyes was their beautiful new niece, the transfer student, collapsed on the floor with tears in her eyes and trembling. And right on top of her, their own son—looking like a predator—pulling his dust-blackened hand away from her chest.
"……"
"……"
"……Ah."
Here it comes. So this is social death? Shun's vision began to blur and recede as he stood frozen with his mouth open. What are Kenji and Suzuki doing right now……? They're probably relaxing at Saizeriya, sipping melon soda. Must be nice…… But I…… I don't even know why I'm the one suffering like this……
"Uh…… u-uh-uh……?" Himari covered her mouth with shaking hands. For the first time ever, the ever-hyper woman's face went deathly pale. Even if you tried to view it through the most optimistic "my son would never bite" filter, it was useless. This was unmistakably the image of a lust-crazed son pinning his poor cousin—who'd only just arrived—on the floor and groping her.
"W-Wait! It's a misunderstanding! I can explain everything!!" Shun was the first to break the silence. He leapt up, waving his hands frantically. "I admit it looks extremely, extremely suspicious, but this is absolutely not the perverted, shameless act you're imagining!"
His brain cells had temporarily awakened in survival mode. Even though he'd been half-soulless moments ago, Shun launched into the most coherent explanation he could manage. He'd been cleaning the closet when the phone rang. Raon had put it on speaker downstairs. He'd sneezed from the dust near the end of the call and fallen. And unfortunately, the place his hand landed was…… well…… that. Anyway, that's how it happened!!
"……I see." Shun's father spoke slowly, his mouth opening at last. His voice was the same gentle, dignified tone he used when serving matcha to customers at the tea shop downstairs. "So what you're saying is…… this was an accidental, unfortunate mishap that occurred while you were falling from the ladder during cleaning…… Is that correct?"
"Yes! Exactly! That's precisely what happened, Father!" Shun nodded vigorously. Thankfully, his father, Ueda Tsubasa, was a reasonable man who'd spent his life running the tea shop and practicing the tea ceremony.
Thud—
Just as Shun was about to sigh in relief, the sound of something heavy and wooden striking the guest room floor reached his ears.
"……Huh?"
"Dad believes in our son." Shun's gaze instinctively followed the sound. His father's shadow stretched long in the backlight from the open doorway. And in that shadow's right hand—something massive that hadn't been there moments ago now jutted out.
Shun's pupils trembled. "The…… cypress mochi mallet from the tea shop……?"
Why? Why is that in Father's hand right now? The surface was polished smooth from years of use; one hit would definitely transmit the impact straight to the bone.
"That's right. I believe in you. I believe you're not the kind of beast who'd assault your own cousin."
"F-Father? W-Wait a second. That thing in your hand…… what exactly……"
His father's voice remained endlessly kind. Only kind. Scraaape— With every step, the cypress mallet dragged across the floor, producing a chilling friction sound.
"Therefore……" Tsubasa kept his gentle smile as he slowly raised the mallet onto his shoulder. "I'm truly sorry, Shun."
"Uwaaaaaah!! W-Wait, wait, Father, please—!"
"Regardless of the circumstances, the fact remains that you groped your poor cousin's chest on her very first day here."
"I-I didn't grope it! It was just a brief touch, and then I let go—no, I mean it was completely unavoidable……!"
Shun stumbled backward, screaming. Tsubasa's arm muscles swelled mercilessly. Whoosh—!! A heavy, sharp sound split the air. With the perfect form of a master who made handmade mochi at the tea shop, he swung from the hips upward.
"Ah—"
In that instant, Shun's entire life flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern. Memories of playing with friends. Hiding dirty magazines under his bed from his mother. And the fresh, innocent walk home with Raon just earlier that day. The last thing he saw was the shadow of the massive cypress club descending mercilessly toward the crown of his head.
Thwack—☆