The moment Sanshokuin Sumireko caught sight of Hozuki Nozomi lingering in the doorway of the drama club, she narrowed her eyes and stalked over on soundless steps. Sunlight bled through the half-drawn blinds, striping the tatami in bars of gold and dust. She stopped a breath away from him, close enough that he could smell the faint bergamot of her perfume clinging to her collar, and jabbed one manicured fingertip against his chest.
"Well? Were you nervous just now? When Hazuki-kun was leaning in like that — did your stomach twist even a little?"
He hooked his arm around the curve of her waist and drew her flush against him in one motion, tilting her chin up with his knuckle. His mouth closed over hers — slow, unhurried, thorough — until the smart retort she'd been polishing died somewhere under his tongue. When he finally released her, her lips glistened, kiss-bruised and parted.
"Nervous doesn't quite cover it," he murmured, thumb dragging along her lower lip. "I wanted to phase through the wall and drive my fist through his jaw."
"Really, Sumireko. Baiting me on purpose? You even let him get within kissing distance."
She melted into his chest with a small, satisfied hum, her lashes fluttering low.
"I was wicked, I know. But how else would I see the color of your jealousy? Punish me tonight if it bothered you so much."
Her cheeks had gone the pink of the inside of a peach, and Hozuki Nozomi swallowed audibly, throat working. Anticipation coiled behind his ribs, low and hot.
"Ahem. You said that yourself, Sumireko. Look forward to it."
He stroked her hair once — long, careful — then his gaze drifted past her to Hazuki Yasuo's crumpled form on the floorboards.
"That kid was still fantasizing about my Sumireko even as he went down. He needs a proper lesson."
"What are you thinking?" she asked, angling her head against his shoulder.
"Castration."
"Ehh? That severe?"
"Can't stomach it?"
"Pfft. It's not that. He did help me earlier, so I couldn't shut him down cleanly. But he knew about us — he knew — and he still let that Ghost Lady try to snake her way inside me. That's a line."
"So. Do what you like."
Her voice had gone flint-hard by the end, and Hozuki Nozomi smiled the crooked smile he saved for cruelty.
He murmured a soft syllable of magic. A pale sigil bloomed briefly above Hazuki Yasuo's chest and sank into his sternum — a purification tailored to gut the boy's desire for women down to the root. Interest in men, of course, was untouched. Hozuki Nozomi wasn't in the business of extermination when appearances still mattered; Sumireko, Cherry, and Tsukimi didn't need to see him painted in that particular red. Later, once Hazuki had been quietly rerouted overseas, he could handle the rest cleanly.
"Come on. Let's go find that ginger-fried pork before someone else clears the counter."
"They dragged me off halfway through the queue — I doubt there's any left."
"Then we make it ourselves. Simple."
Their footsteps echoed down the corridor and faded.
….
A long while later, Hazuki Yasuo groaned, palms pressed to his temples, and sat up on the tatami. The drama club was empty. Late-afternoon light lay across the props table in a yellow slab.
"Am I… in the club room?"
"No — no, I was dreaming about Sumireko-san…?"
He rose unsteadily and drifted out. He would learn, in the coming days, that girls no longer moved anything in him at all.
...
Hazuki Yasuo was a footnote. The tally was clean: Sumireko untouched, the boy properly ruined. And yet no larger hand had shown itself, no puppet-string traced to a master.
Hozuki Nozomi turned it over. The Perverted Goddess. It had to be. What ordinary drifting spirit possessed the raw leverage to hijack Sumireko even briefly? Sumireko had been half-performing, yes — but if he hadn't been coaxing her latent magic circuits open these past weeks, if she hadn't crossed the threshold into being a proper mage, the possession would have taken. Fully.
Dangerous. Very dangerous.
On the walk home their luck turned. One last portion of ginger-fried pork sat in the case, and Hozuki Nozomi snatched it before an old woman in a linen shawl could point at it. With Sumireko, Sakurabara Momo, and Kusami Runa in tow, he brought the parcel back to Sakurasou.
That evening he did keep his promise.
The bedroom was dim except for the reading lamp; Sumireko lay across the sheets in nothing but the cardigan he'd bought her last month, its buttons undone, wool pooled at her elbows. He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand, weight settled between her thighs.
"Ah — Nozomi, wait — nnh—" Her hips rolled up on their own, chasing the friction of his cock dragging slow along her slick folds. He didn't push in yet. He watched her squirm, watched her nipples tighten in the lamplight, watched the flush crawl down her throat and pool in the hollow between her breasts.
"You wanted punishment."
"Mmh, don't tease — please, please just—"
He sank into her in one long stroke and her back arched off the mattress, a broken hyaan~ spilling from her throat. Wet. Tight. Her cunt clenched around him in fluttering pulses, and the scent of her arousal — sharp, sweet, mixing with the sandalwood of the lamp oil — filled the room. He fucked her in a rhythm designed to unravel her: deep, then shallow, then deep again, angling until her thighs began to shake around his ribs.
"Nozomi — Nozomi — I'm — ah, ahn, ah—"
"Come for me, Sumireko. All of it."
She shattered under him with a thin keening cry, nails raking crescents down his shoulders. He rode her through it, then longer, until she was boneless and glassy-eyed and mumbling half-formed things into his collarbone. When he finally spilled inside her, she trembled and smiled — genuinely smiled, the small private one — and drifted into sleep with his arm around her hips.
...
The next morning.
Hozuki Nozomi opened his eyes to the pearl-gray light of dawn seeping past the curtains. Sumireko's skin was warm and rose-flushed against his chest; he tilted his head down and pressed his lips to her forehead. On his other side, Nichiji Sumire stirred, hair fanned across the pillow — he wasn't about to slight her either, and he brushed a strand back from her cheek.
Two women who could pass for sisters, both his. He allowed himself a private, unearned little swell of pride.
The weekend was over.
...
After breakfast the household moved out in a loose flock. Aoyama Nanami, Shiina Mashiro, and Rita split off toward Suimei High School next door. Yusa Emi, that fierce hero from the other world, marched off to her part-time job — the proud girl was still grinding out yen to pay her rent to Hozuki Nozomi. He'd told her, more than once, that she didn't have to. But Yusa Emi understood the terms exactly: the alternative to rent was her chastity, folded neatly into his harem. She would rather scrub floors until her fingers bled.
Which was fine. She lived at Sakurasou, she came to him periodically for potions, and Hozuki Nozomi was in no rush at all. Yusa Emi would end up his eventually. Slow simmer.
...
Sōbu High School.
Hachiman Hikigaya had been drilling holes into Hozuki Nozomi's skull with his dead-fish eyes since the front gate.
"You scumbag. What the hell did you do to my Komachi while I was gone? Explain those photos."
Hozuki Nozomi shrugged, mild as tea.
"Komachi said her brother wasn't photogenic enough — 'too glare-y around the eyes,' her words — and asked me to be her scenery instead. I couldn't refuse. Who refuses Komachi when she does the wet-eye thing? Hikigaya-kun, could you?"
Hachiman's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"…No. I couldn't. — Wait, no! Don't derail me, you bastard. You didn't cop a feel during the shoot, did you?"
"Of course not. I'm not an animal, Hachiman. Komachi's still in middle school. Give me some credit."
Hozuki Nozomi's expression was the picture of wounded sincerity.
Hachiman stared at him for a long, suspicious beat, then exhaled through his nose.
"…Fine. Provisional trust."
He had to concede the shape of it: Hozuki Nozomi drew girls like moths, and more importantly, he shielded the ones near him. It made sense that Komachi latched on. But letting Komachi date the man? Never. That was a siscon's absolute red line, drawn in blood.
Hozuki Nozomi walked past him without ceremony and dropped into his seat. Shiina Mahiru sat one row up, silver-blonde hair spilling over the back of her chair. He reached forward and poked the dip of her waist through her uniform. She flinched, ticklish, and swatted his hand blindly before turning to glare at him over her shoulder — pink at the ears, mouth pursed.
Around them, the boys' collective aura darkened by several shades.
Behind Hozuki Nozomi, Alya Kujou — Alisa Mikhailovna Kujou — clicked her tongue softly and looked away. He already had a girl like Mahiru, and he was still flirting like a stray tomcat. Что за кобель.
What a scumbag.