"Hyaaan—!"
Kazama Haru slipped out from beneath her arm like an eel wriggling free of a net, and the sudden loss of warmth against her ribs pulled a startled, kittenish cry from Togawa Sakiko's throat before she could catch it.
Six pairs of eyes turned toward her at once — some dazed with drink already, others glinting with that particular brand of teasing that only surfaces among girls who've spent too many hours in a rehearsal room together. Sakiko's cheeks bloomed the color of the paper lanterns swaying overhead, that fevered pink climbing from her collarbones up past the choker at her throat, and the realization of what she'd just done — clinging to him in front of everyone, in front of Uika-san — hit her like a bucket of ice water poured down the back of her turtleneck.
Kill me. Someone please just kill me now, desuwa.
She wanted to melt into the tatami and never resurface. Mercifully, at that exact moment, the waiter arrived with a clatter of glassware and a booming "Sorry for the wait!" — steaming skewers of yakitori, a mountain of karaage still crackling in its own oil, edamame frosted with sea salt, and the drinks. Oh, the drinks.
To smother her humiliation, Sakiko snatched the nearest mug — a foaming golden pint of ice-cold Asahi — and tipped it back with the desperation of a shipwreck survivor.
"Gh— kohon, kohon, kohon!"
The bitterness detonated across her tongue like fireworks made of copper wire and old bread. Carbonation clawed up her sinuses. She doubled forward, silver hair spilling over her shoulder in a pale curtain, one hand slamming against the table hard enough to make the little soy sauce dish jump.
"Saki-chan?! You good?!"
Hatsuka — seated at her left, apron-sweet and worried — was already rubbing warm circles between Sakiko's shoulder blades, palm firm through the wool of the black cardigan.
Half a minute crawled by before Sakiko lifted her head, panting, her violet eyes glossy and rimmed with tears from coughing. Wakaba Mutsumi wordlessly handed her a napkin across the table, and Sakiko dabbed at her lips with the delicacy of a duchess recovering from a scandal.
"N-no, I'm fine. So this… this is alcohol? It doesn't taste good at all. I truly cannot comprehend how anyone becomes attached to something so vile, desuwa."
After that first sip, her father's decadent shipwreck of a lifestyle became even more inscrutable. What was he chasing in the bottom of these glasses?
"Togawa-san, you drank it too greedily." Yahata Umiri lifted her own ochoko of chilled junmai with the poise of a tea ceremony instructor, her lavender bob catching the amber lantern light. "Sake is meant to be sipped, not conquered."
"Nah nah nah, Sakiko you're just being lame~!" Yuutenji Nyamu bounced in her seat, her pink twin-tails swinging. "Watch a real food vlogger work — this is how the pros chug! One-time-only demonstration, better hit record!"
She hoisted a full liter jug of beer nearly as wide as her face, tipped her chin back, and drained it in one smooth cascade — throat working, cheeks flushed peach, a single droplet escaping the corner of her mouth to trail down her jaw.
"Pwahhh~! That hit the spot!"
Maybe it was the salt of the karaage prickling her tongue, maybe it was the contagious warmth of the atmosphere — either way, Wakaba Mutsumi, seated beside Hatsuka in her cream-colored blouse, stared at the drinks with those luminous golden eyes for a long, still moment before her small hand closed around a chilled tokkuri of sweet nigori.
"Oh?! Mutsumin's gonna drink too?!" Nyamu squealed.
Sakiko leaned in, still nursing her wounded pride. "Mutsumi, small sips. Please. I do not want you to end up as pathetic as I just did."
"Ganbatte, Wakaba-san," Umiri intoned, deadpan.
"Mutsumi, don't push yourself." Misumi Uika, ever the mother-hen idol, quietly readied a fresh stack of napkins in her lap, pink hair pinned back with a small pearl clip.
"Nn. I will drink."
Under the collective gaze of five girls watching a comrade march to war, Mutsumi's pale pink lips touched the rim. She tilted the cup at a measured, unhurried angle — throat moving once, twice, three times in soft swallows — and set the empty vessel back on the table with monastic precision.
She covered her mouth with two fingertips. A small, feathery burp escaped.
"…Delicious."
Objective. Clinical. Utterly Mutsumi.
"My turn, ne." Uika lifted her wine glass and drained the red without so much as a wince, then dabbed her lips with a napkin as if she'd merely finished tea. Years of sponsor banquets had bulletproofed her palate against everything from cheap shochu to overpriced Bordeaux.
Sakiko slumped, silver bangs hiding her eyes. "…So I am the only one who cannot drink."
"Maa maa, Sakiko-chan, there's still someone playing invisible over here~"
Nyamu draped an arm across Sakiko's shoulders and jabbed a finger across the table at Kazama Haru — sitting there in his charcoal button-down with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, hair mussed from a week of too little sleep.
"Manager-kuuun, you're just gonna sit there and watch your girls drink? Are you a man or not~?"
"Punishment game! Punishment game!"
Mutsumi nodded once, grave as a judge. "Nyamu is correct. Haru-kun is being a party pooper."
"Kazama-san, they've said terrible things about you. Please, allow me to pour you a proper apology." Yahata Umiri already had the waiter flagged down and was requesting the largest glass in the establishment, into which she proceeded to pour the highest-proof shochu the izakaya carried, filling it to the rim like a sacrificial chalice.
Umiri-san, aren't you the cruelest one here?!
Kazama Haru stared at the tumbler of clear liquid now nudged across the lacquered table toward him, a wry smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. In truth, his abstention hadn't been about pride or protest. As the only man at the table, and as the manager entrusted with getting five idols home safely through the neon rivers of Shinjuku, staying sober had simply been the professional call.
One or two drinks, sure. That wouldn't dent him.
But this glass in front of him? This tumbler that could double as a flower vase? After four days of three-hour sleep cycles? He was reasonably confident it would fold him like laundry.
He'd explained all of this. In detail. Twice. The girls had listened, nodded solemnly — and then apparently held a silent conspiracy meeting through eye contact alone.
Sakiko raised another glass, her cheeks already dusted with the pink of a girl who'd never touched booze before ten minutes ago. Her lavender-lidded eyes glimmered with something suspiciously mischievous beneath the demure smile.
"Haru-kun, that excuse simply will not do. Since my earlier performance was so terribly uncool, allow me to drink the first glass together with you as recompense."
Her slender arm extended across the table, sleeve slipping down to reveal a delicate wrist. Her smile was thoughtful, gentle — and completely, utterly rigged.
Ojou-sama mode: activated. I'm doomed.
"Kanpai," he sighed, clinking his tumbler against hers.
Chiiin.
Sakiko, having learned her lesson, drank in measured swallows this time — and to her genuine surprise, beneath the bitterness she caught something almost sweet, honeyed and warm curling in her chest. The Asahi disappeared cleanly, and she set her mug down with a soft tonn.
Haru had no choice. Cheers rose around him like a sports arena chant — ike ike ike ike! — and he tilted the tumbler back, the cold liquor searing a straight burning line down his throat.
…Ah. That's — yeah. I'm already seeing two of Nyamu.
"Kazama-san, your tolerance is admirable. Allow me to offer a second toast — as gratitude, for your dedication these past days." Umiri's glass had somehow refilled itself, and she was already lifting a matching tumbler in his direction, that faint fox-like curve to her mouth.
You know I can't refuse gratitude phrased like that. Umiri-san, you absolute demon.
He drank.
The izakaya blurred around the edges — the paper lanterns smearing into gold halos, the murmur of nearby salarymen ("—so the section chief goes, and I told him, listen—") softening into a warm distant hum, the sizzle of a grill somewhere in the back.
When his vision refocused, Wakaba Mutsumi was standing directly in front of him, small and solemn, blonde hair falling forward, holding a delicate ochoko of nigori in both hands like an offering. Those golden eyes met his with the quiet gravity of a cat presenting a caught bird.
"Mutsumi… you too?"
"Haru-kun." Uika's voice threaded through the fog, warm as a heated blanket. "If you're unwell, please don't push yourself, ne? Your feelings have already reached us."
"NEXT UP: KUMAMOTO'S FINEST! Bring the bottle!"
Hatsuka — the straightforward one, cheeks already pinked from her own drinks — snatched a fresh bottle of shochu and sloshed a generous pour into both her glass and his, foam bubbling up over the rim onto the wooden coaster.
Kazama Haru accepted the cup in what felt like slow-motion, his limbs moving with the delayed responsiveness of a puppet whose strings had been left out in the rain. The world went soft-focus, edges bleeding gently into edges, the smell of grilled chicken and salt and citrus and someone's floral shampoo — Uika's, maybe — all layering together into a warm sensory soup.
Through the haze, he watched Togawa Sakiko pour herself another glass, unprompted. Her smile had turned genuinely sweet, dreamy at the edges, silver lashes lowered.
Ah. As expected of Togawa-sensei's daughter. The alcohol genes really are hereditary — she's already befriending the stuff, huh…
The disrespectful thought was his last coherent one.
In excruciating slow motion, under the collectively held breaths of five girls who had planned this exact outcome, Kazama Haru's upper body pitched gently forward — shoulders first, then chest, then head — and his forehead met the tablecloth with a soft, defeated tonn.
His breathing evened out. Long, deep, defenseless. Right there among the five girls he'd spent the entire week trying to protect, he had, at last, been thoroughly and lovingly defeated.
Yuutenji Nyamu stuck out her tongue in triumph, flashing a peace sign. "Yattaaa~ Manager-kun successfully captured!"
"Fufu, Haru-kun looks so obedient when he sleeps," Uika murmured behind her hand.
"Ah — photo, photo!"
Sakiko fumbled her phone out of her tote with the giddy urgency of someone smuggling contraband, framing the shot with trembling fingers. She was pleasantly stunned to discover the other members had been plotting exactly the same ambush — his silver-haired doom had been a group project all along.
Wakaba Mutsumi said nothing. She simply slipped her cream cardigan off her own shoulders and draped it, with careful ceremony, across the sleeping boy's back.
"He has a face that looks very easy to tease," Yahata Umiri remarked, and something unusually soft — almost fond — flickered across her sharp features as she studied his sleeping profile, the long lashes, the parted lips, the faint pulse at his throat.
BUZZZZZ—!!!
Right as the warmth of the moment settled in like a quilt, Kazama Haru's phone — face-up on the table between the yakitori platter and the tsukemono dish — juddered violently against the wood, screen flaring bright.
"Ara? Who's calling this late?"
"Haru-kun's okaa-san, maybe?"
"It's past ten, so it must be family worrying about him."
Five heads leaned in with matching curiosity, hair of five different colors — silver, blonde, purple, pink, deeper pink — angling into the phone's blue-white glow like moths drawn to a lantern.
The caller ID displayed a name the majority of the members had never once heard him mention—
—"Sena Ajisai."