Saturday, November ninth. She woke up and only then remembered she didn't have work today.
"Familiar ceiling…"
Her head was swimming, her vision blurring at the edges, her breathing thick and stuffy, her whole body warm… warm… wait—huh?!
Takamatsu Tomori threw back the covers and discovered that her adorable kouhai was currently sprawled face-down on her chest, drooling.
The peaceful sleeping face of a beautiful girl — the very picture of ease and contentment.
"I told myself I'd stop drinking — and here we are again."
That's it! Not a single drop more today!
Tomori shook her head back and forth, as if she could slosh her brain matter around until the pain dissolved. It didn't work. It made everything worse.
"Quitting. I'm done. I really, truly cannot keep doing this."
But the scorching, malty heat of alcohol — and that singular, inexplicable scent that belonged to Yoshiiro Chiose alone — kept luring Takamatsu Tomori back for one more glass, every single time.
"Hff… hff… hff…"
Her adorable kouhai had yet to wake. She lay draped across Tomori's chest, rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
"Hiss — why do I suddenly… really want a drink."
Tomori murmured at the ceiling, bewildered at herself, though it didn't matter how desperately she craved it — there was nothing to be done. Her apartment contained rocks, notebooks, stationery, and various other collectibles. Not a drop of alcohol had ever crossed the threshold.
"Sai… didn't she have some on her…?"
A flash of inspiration, followed by a slow tide of want rising in her chest. Tomori's limbs were jelly, but she managed to peel herself free from Chiose's hold.
She crept to the door, washed up quickly and simply, then began rummaging through the small mountain of clothes they'd stripped off the night before.
"Just as I thought… what's this called? Demon-Slayer Spirits?"
A rather cute little carton printed with red demons dancing in a row — those demons were clearly malicious customer-service reps dispatched straight from alcohol hell.
The little demon murmured, and Tomori heard a faint, insidious sound whisper right beside her ear.
[Go on, drink up, drink a little more, it's fine… one sip and you absolutely won't be disappointed.]
One sip… that'd be alright, wouldn't it?
Maybe the drink Chiose carried around tasted a little like Chiose herself…
God, that's depraved. Since when did she turn into this kind of person.
Takamatsu Tomori, dressed in a silk slip dress, collapsed onto the floor in a duck-sit, both hands trembling faintly — and she couldn't have cared less.
"So thirsty, my throat's basically on fire. Maybe a little alcohol would actually help with that."
Besides, according to Chiose's own explanation, she was currently in the most critical phase of the Happiness Spiral.
That is: the enormous sense of contrast and hollow emptiness that ordinary people must face when they return to reality after a peak of happiness.
[Just one sip, it's fine, Chiose won't blame you — sure, you've only known each other a few days, but you're the best of friends!]
R-right! Maybe… that's actually true!
Tomori wavered and hesitated — and then finally pushed the straw in and took a slow, long pull.
Sharp baijiu, indeterminate proof, but it really… it really did carry the same scent she'd caught that very first day in some brand of beer she couldn't even name anymore!
So… so this was that smell!
One carton. Two cartons. Three cartons…
By the time Tomori felt a leaden weight settle in her stomach, she dimly registered that she had, perhaps, gotten herself drunk again.
"Is drinking first thing in the morning actually a good idea?"
Tomori had no idea. But she was definitely happier now.
The person melting bonelessly into the floor was absolutely not Takamatsu Tomori. Takamatsu Tomori refused to admit she was slowly becoming someone who couldn't function without a drink!
A drumbeat even rose in her ears — crisp and resonant, punctuated by the thud-thud-thud of leather boots on pavement as a marching band drew near.
"We will… keep going~"
Tomori tried to sing, but couldn't hear her own voice.
"We will keep going, but…"
Who was "we," exactly? Was it Tomori and Chiose, walking forward as lifelong friends? Or was it that failed band from the past?
The former was a future shrouded in fog. The latter had already vanished.
"We" — what a terrifying word.
...
In the bedroom on the other side of the apartment — Tomori's bedroom — Yoshiiro Chiose had been sleeping with her rear end pointed at the ceiling. Her eyes snapped open.
Crimson veins had crept into the edges of her rose-pink irises.
"Exhausted… ugh… I really do need more practice with drinking."
She'd better not develop some kind of cyber-alcohol dependency after she left the simulation. That would be catastrophic. She'd have to schedule a cyber-detox into the next simulation.
Every inch of her body felt strange, like ten thousand tiny Tomoris were crawling all over her.
Last night she'd helped Tomori undress, given her a bath, mopped the floors, tidied up, done the laundry, put the room in order… she'd been busy until very late before she finally let herself sleep.
"So this is what a housewife's daily routine feels like. Owww…"
She'd gone to sleep intending to get revenge for the time mini-Tomori had drooled all over her during that last simulation. When she woke up she found traces of moisture at the corner of her own mouth — but Tomori's sheets were perfectly dry.
What did that tell her?
It told her the revenge had been a complete success!
But could revenge count as revenge if the person you were avenging yourself on didn't even know it had happened? Tch.
"Tomori! I'm up! Are you out there?!"
Silence outside. The apartment felt as though no carbon-based life forms had ever inhabited it.
"Tomori?"
She found a shirt in Tomori's wardrobe that was barely decent enough to wear. Chiose left it unbuttoned, padded barefoot out of the bedroom, and spotted the intoxicated figure slumped on the floor in an instant.
"Pfft — whose little alcohol lamp is this? Didn't someone swear off drinking recently? How did she go and sneak a refill on her own?"
"I — ngh, I wanted to experience that thing you talked about… the Happiness Spiral! Hff…"
"So? How does it feel?"
"So good… so incredibly good…"
Takamatsu Tomori breathed out a gust of toothpaste-tinged alcohol fumes, tilted her head to one side, and passed out.
"Idiot…"
Chiose carried her back to bed, drew the curtains shut, closed the bedroom door, and went to work in the kitchen alone.
Oil hissed and spat in the pan, the range hood roaring at full blast to drag away the pungent smoke. It was half past eleven — if they were eating, this was officially blunch.
"This simulation… seems to be going rather smoothly." Chiose cracked an egg into the pan with flawless precision and murmured to herself. "The relationship is already fully established — and it only took two days. From here, I just need to keep moving forward, step by step."
The idiot who went by the name Takamatsu Tomori had been completely figured out by Yoshiiro Chiose. That poor little creature was trotting along Chiose's script with admirable obedience.
This simulation was, in every meaningful sense, progressing far better than the last. Chiose stepped out onto the balcony to snip some green onion, and the floor-to-ceiling glass door threw her own reflection back at her.
So this was… herself, all grown up.
Her body was mature — ripe enough to drip — her limbs long and elegant, every inch the composed older woman she'd grown into, more alluring and fully-formed than the Chiose back in reality who hadn't even started high school yet.
And in those half-hazy eyes of hers was an expression she had never once seen on her own face before.
"It seems like… I really am turning into a bad woman."
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