[Hirose Apartment Complex, Sakura District — March 15th, 7:42 PM]
The door slammed behind Hirose Yoru before her mother could even register she'd come home.
The deadbolt clicked. Then the chain. Then the sound of footsteps retreating deeper into the room, followed by the creak of bedsprings accepting a body that had thrown itself down in defeat.
Hirose Kaguya stood in the hallway holding a dish towel, steam still rising from the kitchen behind her. The scent of miso and grilled mackerel hung in the air—comfort food that would go untouched tonight. She tilted her head, hints of crow's feet deepening around eyes that had seen too much of her daughter's stubborn silences.
She's home three hours early. No greeting. No explanation. That girl...
On the other side of that locked door, Yoru lay spread-eagle on lavender sheets that still smelled faintly of the fabric softener her mother insisted on. Her ceiling was covered in glow-in-the-dark stars—childish, embarrassing, but she'd never bothered to peel them off. Right now they weren't glowing. The room was too bright for that. Too bright for hiding.
Riku's face burned behind her eyelids every time she blinked.
His smirk. The way his fingers had touched her. The heat of his breath when he'd leaned close and whispered that threat like it was a love confession.
"Scum." The word came out cracked. "Scum. Scum."
Her fists twisted into her pillow, knuckles white.
Knock-knock-knock.
"Yoru-chan? A package came for you. Some kind of vintage gramophone?"
The gramophone.
Yoru's stomach lurched. She could picture it perfectly—polished brass horn, mahogany base, the kind of antique that belonged in a Ghibli film about ghosts and regret. A beautiful, expensive gift that was really just a leash disguised as sentiment.
「You don't want anyone finding out about today, do you?」
His voice looped in her skull like a broken record.
"Mom..." She wanted to say throw it away. Wanted to say burn it. Wanted to say I made a mistake and I don't know how to fix it. "Just... leave it somewhere. I'm not feeling well. I need to rest."
A pause. Then retreating footsteps.
Hirose Kaguya knew when to push and when to wait. Twenty years of single motherhood had taught her that much. Her daughter had always been fierce, independent—the kind of girl who broke her own fevers through sheer stubbornness.
She'll tell me when she's ready. She always does.
But the worried crease between her brows didn't smooth as she returned to the kitchen.
---
Ding. Ding. Ding-ding-ding.
Yoru's phone vibrated against her nightstand like an angry hornet. The screen lit up with notification after notification, all from the same sender:
Satou Shirou.
She picked it up. Set it down. Picked it up again.
Thirty-seven unread messages. The preview showed walls of text—apologies, explanations, declarations of love that used too many exclamation points and not enough self-awareness.
How am I supposed to face him now?
Something invisible had cracked between them. A fissure that widened every time she remembered what Riku had made her do. What she'd let him make her do.
---
[Outside Hirose Apartment Complex — Street Level]
Satou Shirou's thumb was going to develop a callus at this rate.
He stood beneath a flickering streetlamp, phone clutched in both hands like a talisman, the blue glow illuminating features that hadn't seen proper sleep in two days. His uniform was rumpled. His hair stuck up at odd angles. A plastic bag from the convenience store dangled from one wrist—melon bread and strawberry milk, Yoru's favorites, now room temperature and sad.
The evening air carried the smell of rain-soaked concrete and cigarette smoke from the pachinko parlor down the block. Somewhere a train rattled past, shaking the ground beneath his feet.
Passersby glanced at him and quickly looked away.
Did his stocks crash?
Rough breakup, probably.
Kids these days...
What they didn't see was the ten-thousand-character apology letter he'd painstakingly typed with his thumbs over the past six hours. It referenced their first date (the aquarium where she'd laughed at the blobfish), their first kiss (behind the gymnasium, both of them too nervous to do it properly), and approximately forty-seven specific instances where he may or may not have been insensitive without realizing it.
He didn't know what he'd done wrong.
He just knew that apologizing hard enough had always worked before.
I'll wait here all night if I have to. She has to come down eventually. She has to.
Right?
His phone screen dimmed. He tapped it awake. Typed another message. Sent it into the void.
[Message Delivered.]
[Read 7:48 PM.]
No response.
---
[Sakura Street, District 76 — 8:15 PM]
Riku had been walking home when the notification buzzed in his pocket.
Yukigami Nahiro: 「Riku-kun... can we meet? I'm at Sakura Street, District 76.」
Three minutes away.
He changed direction without hesitation, shoes crunching over fallen cherry blossom petals that had turned brown and slick with evening dew. The sky above bled from orange to purple to black, the sun dying dramatically over the city skyline like the final episode of Evangelion.
District 76 was mostly residential—quiet streets, small parks tucked between apartment buildings, the occasional konbini glowing like a beacon in the gathering dark. He followed the GPS pin she'd dropped until he reached a small public park bordered by ginkgo trees.
The path was gravel. The benches were iron and wood, painted green, chipped at the edges. A single vending machine hummed near the entrance, casting everything in artificial white. The smell of wet leaves and something floral—jasmine, maybe, from a nearby garden—hung heavy in the cooling air.
And there, sitting alone on a bench beneath a lamppost that had just flickered to life, was Yukigami Nahiro.
She saw him first.
Those enormous eyes—dark and liquid, perpetually surprised—blinked once, twice. Then she was on her feet, her movements quick and slightly unsteady, closing the distance between them at a pace somewhere between a walk and a jog.
"Riku-kun!"
She wore her JK uniform like a second skin. Pleated navy skirt swishing against pale thighs, white blouse straining slightly at the chest where— Jesus Christ.
With each bouncing step, her breasts moved like they had their own physics engine. Heavy. Soft. Defying gravity and good taste simultaneously. The kind of chest that made even other girls stare. Bigger than Yoru's, fuller, rounder—a fact that would have made the school beauty spit fire if she'd known Riku was noticing.
She reached him slightly out of breath, cheeks flushed pink from exertion and something else.
And then—without warning—she hooked both arms around his right bicep and pressed herself against him.
Warmth. Softness. Pressure that could make a man forget his own name.
Riku felt the swell of her breasts flatten against his arm, separated only by thin cotton. Felt her fingers curl into the fabric of his sleeve like she was afraid he'd disappear.
"Yukigami." His voice stayed level. Barely. "Are you feeling better?"
Something was different about her tonight.
Before, she'd been cool. Detached. A beautiful porcelain doll that observed the world from behind glass walls. Now those walls had cracks. Her gaze kept darting sideways—toward the trees, the shadows, anywhere but directly at him. Her shoulders were tense beneath the soft fabric of her uniform.
She was afraid.
In the direction she kept glancing, Riku's peripheral vision caught a flicker of movement.
A man.
Standing maybe thirty meters away, poorly hidden behind a maple tree whose trunk wasn't nearly wide enough to conceal him. Narrow face. Pockmarked skin. The kind of features that reminded Riku of a rat in human clothing—all sharp angles and twitchy alertness.
The Narrator's voice bloomed inside his skull:
「You notice a man watching Yukigami Nahiro with disturbing intensity. He appears to have been surveilling her for some time. It's obvious she called you here for a specific reason—but you don't particularly care about her motivations. You decide to do something... entertaining... while his eyes are on you. Your hand begins to slip beneath the hem of her blouse...」
Someone's watching her, huh.
Riku's lips curled.
This could be fun.
He leaned down, bringing his mouth to the shell of her ear. His breath ghosted over sensitive skin, and he felt her shiver—a full-body tremor that traveled from her shoulders to her knees.
In the ginkgo-scattered shadows, half-hidden by branches and the golden pools of lamplight, Riku bit down.
Gently.
His teeth closed around the curve of her earlobe—soft cartilage, warm and flushed with blood—and tugged. Not hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to feel.
"Nnnh—!"
Yukigami's gasp echoed too loud in the quiet park. Her knees buckled, and only his arm around her waist kept her upright.
Above them, the last traces of twilight bled away. The moon rose fat and pale over the city. Somewhere nearby, a nightingale began to sing.
And Yukigami Nahiro's face turned the color of ripe apples.
"If something's bothering you," Riku murmured against her ear, "you can tell me. I'm not going anywhere."
[Title: Shameless Thief] activated.
Her heart was pounding so hard he could feel it through her chest, through his arm, through the thin layers of fabric that suddenly seemed like far too much.
Riku-kun... why does he... why do I feel like this?
Her thoughts spiraled. His proximity was overwhelming—the clean soap-and-cedar smell of him, the heat radiating from his body, the way his lips had bitten her like she was something to be tasted.
No one had ever touched her like that.
No one had ever touched her at all.
Behind the tree, Yamashita Touya's hands clenched so hard he crushed the leaf he'd been fidgeting with into green pulp.
That bastard. That BASTARD.
He watched Riku's head lower, watched him whisper something that made his Nahiro blush like a virgin bride, and fury clawed up his throat like bile.
Yukigami Nahiro belonged to him. He'd paid for her. One hundred million yen, transferred directly to her stepmother's account. She was property. His property. And here was some random high school punk putting his lips on her like—
I'll kill him. I'll fucking KILL him.
But he didn't move.
Not yet.
He needed to see. Needed to know exactly what this boy was doing to his future wife.
---
Riku pulled back just enough to look at Yukigami's face.
Her lips were parted, shiny with saliva. Her eyes had gone glassy. Every breath she took pushed her chest against him in a rhythm that was doing dangerous things to his self-control.
「The man seems... agitated. You decide to push things further.」
"Nahiro."
The use of her first name—no honorific, nothing between them—made her gasp.
"Do you know what interest is?"
"I-Interest...?"
Before she could process the question, Riku's hand came up to cup her chin. Tilted her face toward his.
And kissed her.
Not a gentle kiss. Not a tentative first-kiss-behind-the-gymnasium kiss. This was claiming. His lips sealed over hers, hot and firm, and when she didn't immediately open her mouth he made her—tongue pressing against the seam of her lips until they parted, until he was inside her, tasting her.
"Mmmph—! Mmnn...!"
She tasted like strawberry lip gloss and something sweeter beneath it—innocence, maybe, or desperation. Her tongue met his clumsily at first, then with growing enthusiasm as his hand slid down to grip her waist and pull her flush against him.
The kiss deepened. Wet sounds filled the space between them—the slick slide of tongues, the soft pop of suction breaking and reforming, her whimpers swallowed whole by his mouth. His other hand found the small of her back, pressed against the dip of her spine through her blouse, feeling the heat of her skin beneath thin cotton.
When he finally released her, a thin strand of saliva connected their lips.
Yukigami's knees gave out entirely. Only his arm around her waist kept her from collapsing onto the gravel path.
"That," Riku said calmly, "was interest. For taking you to the hospital."
[Yukigami Nahiro — Affection: 80]
「Note: You could probably push things even further.」
Her thoughts were white noise. Static. The taste of him still on her tongue.
He kissed me. He kissed me he kissed me he kissed me—
"YOU BASTARD! SHE'S MINE!"
The roar shattered the moment like a brick through glass.
Yamashita Touya exploded from behind the tree, his rat-face contorted with rage, and charged directly at Riku. His arm reared back, fist cocked for a wild haymaker.
Pathetic.
The punch came in slow motion. Sloppy. Telegraphed. The kind of punch thrown by someone who'd never been in a real fight in his life.
Riku stepped back.
The fist sailed past his chin, close enough to feel the breeze.
And then his foot drove into Yamashita's gut.
"GWUH—!"
The impact lifted the smaller man off his feet. He flew backward—two meters, maybe three—and hit the gravel hard, skidding to a stop with his arms wrapped around his stomach and his face screwed up in agony.
"Yukigami Nahiro!" He coughed the words between gasps for air. "Your mission—hack—is to marry me! Don't think you can just find some random basta—"
Riku's foot connected with his face.
Size 43 sneaker, size 42 face. The math worked out poorly for Yamashita.
His head snapped back. His body flipped. He landed in a heap five feet away, groaning.
"Riku-kun!" Yukigami grabbed his arm. "Wait—"
He shook her off gently.
"Wait?" His smile didn't reach his eyes. "Why wait? Let's settle this now."
Before Yamashita could recover, Riku was on him.
A fist to the stomach. An elbow to the ribs. A knee to the thigh that buckled him completely. The Narrator System hummed in the back of his skull, and beneath its influence his body moved with the precision of an athlete—faster, stronger, harder than any high schooler had a right to be.
Yamashita tried to block. Tried to curl into a ball. Tried to remember how to breathe.
None of it helped.
Pain. Pain everywhere. Where did this kid—how is he—FUCK—
"STOP! I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY—"
The beating stopped.
Yamashita lay in a fetal position, arms covering his head, whole body trembling like a leaf in a typhoon. His earlier bravado had evaporated entirely.
Riku grabbed a fistful of his collar and hauled him upright.
"Start talking."
"I—I—" Yamashita's eyes darted desperately to Yukigami, then back to Riku. His teeth chattered. "My name is Yamashita Touya. Yukigami Nahiro's mother—her stepmother—she sold her to me."
"Sold."
"Y-Yes..." Yamashita's voice dropped to a whimper. "She—her business failed. She came to me. And I—I told her what I wanted. Her. Nahiro. One hundred million yen as a wedding gift. Her father agreed too! Both of them! I haven't even touched her yet, I swear!"
Behind them, Yukigami's face drained of all color.
Sold.
The word echoed inside her skull. Hollow. Empty. Like the sound a heart makes when it finally stops believing.
Mother sold me.
Father agreed.
I'm... I'm not even...
Her eyes went vacant. Something behind them—some last spark of hope—flickered and died.
「Poor Yukigami Nahiro. Abandoned by her parents, sold like livestock. Without your intervention, it's difficult to imagine what would become of her. You decide to give her a real future—to take her home with you, away from her venomous stepmother and indifferent father.」
Riku released Yamashita, letting him crumple back to the ground. He turned to face the girl behind him—this beautiful, broken creature who had been discarded by everyone who should have protected her.
Her gaze was empty.
Lost.
He reached out. Took her hand. Drew her close.
And when he spoke, his voice was the only anchor she had left in a world that had just collapsed around her.
"Come home with me."
---