Chapter 320: I'm Betting on Umaru Stock
Once the living room emptied out and Yukari found herself alone, her eyes went a little unfocused, and she slammed her face back into the giant pillow, hard enough to produce a dull thump.
For an ordinary person, that impact would've earned a pained yelp. But as Gensokyo's own youkai sage, Yukari could have headbutted a mountain into rubble without feeling a shred of pain.
After all, she'd been through the ringer in the Dimensional Chat Group long enough that her strength went without saying—her physical constitution ranked among the top tier in the whole group.
Face buried in the pillow for a solid few minutes, she finally lifted her head—just barely.
Her earlier line about her brain being "overloaded" hadn't been an excuse. She genuinely felt like her mental processing capacity and computational speed had somehow, inexplicably, become insufficient for the moment.
Her hasty confession back at the Naruto world's fireworks show had already left her feeling like her whole self had been thoroughly wrecked in some way. She'd bolted straight back to Gensokyo, hoping for a moment to properly calm down.
And she desperately wanted to figure out—why on earth had she said something that embarrassing in the first place?!
That wasn't how a proper youkai sage was supposed to behave!
What she hadn't anticipated at all was that jerk of an Admin coming back around for round two—and then, right in front of Ran, Chen, AND Sakura, doing that incredibly mortifying thing!
Have I somehow become... impure? UNACCEPTABLE. Why is this happening to me?!
This wasn't at all how she'd pictured things playing out—somehow she'd gone from the one taking initiative to the one on the receiving end. That damn Admin had flipped from passive to fully in control that fast—how does an eternally-single dog have this much experience with this kind of thing?!
Her whole head shot straight up off the pillow. Not even noticing her own tangled, disheveled blond hair, Yukari muttered dazedly to herself, "Oh no. I'm done for. I think I've actually fallen in love!"
For thousands of years, every single time her "mating season" rolled around, she'd handled the urge with perfect discipline, staying single right up to this very day.
So why, exactly, could she suddenly not control that same urge this time?
The real kicker was that she'd been the one to strike first, no warning at all, out of nowhere.
Yukari could still clearly picture Admin's face in that moment—totally, comically stunned.
And now the one wearing that exact same stunned expression was her. Was this how karma worked—the wheel of fate spinning right back around?
"Damn Admin-sama, damn Admin-sama, damn Admin-sama, DAMN ADMIN-SAMAAAAA...UNACCEPTABLE! My whole head's a complete mess, I can't even think straight anymore. Feels like my IQ's dropped by half. They always say people in love get noticeably dumber, don't they?"
"Ptooey, ptooey! Why am I accepting the fact that I've fallen in love this fast?! Calm down...calm down...calm down, I need to think this through properly. Need to keep a level head, level head—I can't just stay on the defensive here, I need to be the one taking control again."
[...]
Yukari muttered on to herself like this for several minutes straight, half in a daze.
This left Ran and the others, who'd retreated to another room, genuinely worried—concerned this poor youkai sage might have been thoroughly broken by whatever had just happened.
The walls here weren't exactly soundproofed, and Yukari clearly wasn't in any state of mind to bother setting up some kind of sound-blocking barrier.
Which meant every rambling word she muttered carried straight through to everyone else.
In an adjacent room, Ran sat with a complicated expression on her delicate, striking face, a hint of visible turmoil in her eyes. She sighed. "Lady Yukari really does seem to have actually fallen in love. That man just now, though—who was he? I've genuinely never seen him before."
"Lady Yukari's always disappeared without explanation for a few days, sometimes over a week at a time—I always assumed she was just sneaking off to wander the human world in secret. But now, thinking back on it... it seems more like she was secretly meeting up with that man, doesn't it?"
"Wait—hold on! If Lady Yukari ends up marrying that man, wouldn't that make Chen and me a pair of, like, dowry maids as her shikigami? W-wait wait wait, I'm not ready for this at all!"
Even Ran was thoroughly rattled at this point—in all her years of existence, she'd never once encountered a situation quite like this.
If even Yukari herself had gone blank with shock, of course Ran would end up right there with her.
And so, Ryū's little "surprise round two" had single-handedly plunged several of Gensokyo's most famous youkai into an existential crisis of sorts.
Which left poor Sakura, utterly bewildered, standing there awkwardly, watching this "big sister fox" who now seemed just as rattled as everyone else.
That night, Sakura felt like she'd grown up several years in a single evening—and had witnessed something she really wasn't supposed to see.
She hesitated over whether to keep this whole thing to herself...
...or spill it in the Dimensional Chat Group?
If she said something, would Yukari-nee absolutely wreck her for it later?
That possibility seemed uncomfortably likely.
Sakura's consciousness slipped into the Dimensional Chat Group, and she found Admin—who'd only just left Gensokyo—already chatting away completely normally, as if nothing at all had happened.
Quite the contrast to Yukari's current state of muttering, dazed disarray.
Was Admin-sama really this unfazed by the whole thing?
Truly worthy of being Admin—so impressive!
What Sakura didn't realize, of course, was that Ryū's internal "panic" level was every bit as high as Yukari's own.
The two of them just happened to cope with the panic differently—Yukari had withdrawn into a kind of self-imposed lockdown to process it, while he needed some other kind of distraction to keep his mind off things.
And right now, chatting away in the group was pretty much the only distraction Ryū could think of.
Edward Newgate: Speaking of which, did Admin and Yukari-senpai actually make any progress? Don't tell me they only watched fireworks together and that's it. Or did Yukari-senpai never even show up, and this was all just her usual empty talk?
Edward Newgate: She's cried wolf so many times already, honestly, hard not to be a little skeptical!
Terrible Tornado: Hm...not entirely sure. Tried DMing Yukari-senpai just now, but she hasn't answered.
Terrible Tornado: Admin's over here acting like nothing happened, but something about this feels genuinely off. I'm pretty sure SOMETHING went down.
My True Form Is Cola: Wait, so if Yukari-senpai really was just talking big, does that mean I can put my chips back on Kaguya stock?
Street-Corner Illustrator: Heh...you two can keep betting on Yukari or Kaguya stock all you want, but I'm doing something different—I'm putting everything on Umaru stock!
My True Form Is Cola: Pfft...don't drag an innocent bystander like me into this mess, you shameless little artist!
Crazy Diamond: All you girls are betting without any real technical basis whatsoever, meanwhile I'm putting mine on Kizaru-ojisan!
Admiral Kizaru: ???
My True Form Is Cola: ???
Edward Newgate: ???
RawrSoFierce: ???
Terrible Tornado: ...you are WILD, aren't you.
[...]
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