Chapter 439

Legs spread wide, back sunk so deep she practically merged with the seat, and a sullen expression.

I caught Hiyori slouching in the backseat through the rearview mirror and spoke.

“You tired?”

“From what?”

“I’m asking if the workout wore you out.”

“No?”

“Right.”

“You were about to lecture me for slouching, weren’t you?”

She had me there.

It seemed Hiyori had reached the point where she could predict my reactions.

“No.”

“Really?”

“As long as you keep your shoes off the seats, you can sit however you want.”

Truthfully, I wouldn’t care even if she did put her shoes on the seats.

Though if she did, Miyuki would definitely scold her from the passenger seat.

Either way, Hiyori seemed to be pouting because she hadn’t managed to claim the passenger seat.

Her eyes were practically burning with competitive fire.

I let out a soft chuckle at her antics, threw a quick glance at Miyuki—who was quietly staring out the window—and focused on the road.

Traffic was light at this hour, so we soon arrived at Hiyori’s house.

Hiyori opened the back door and stepped out. She gave Miyuki and me a polite, if not terribly deep, bow of farewell, then opened the Main Gate to her house.

“She seems very... honest about her feelings.”

Miyuki spoke while watching Hiyori trudge lazily through the Main Gate.

I slowly pulled the car away from the curb, letting out a dry chuckle as I agreed with her observation.

“She is. Haven’t you said that before, though?”

“Did I?”

“You did. What do you want to eat?”

“I want... to go to a ramen shop.”

“It’s not even raining, though?”

“I still want to go.”

A lot of people got sentimental on rainy days.

Miyuki was usually one of them, but right now, despite the perfectly clear weather, she was giving off that exact same vibe.

She looked like she had a lot on her mind. As we drove out of Hiyori’s neighborhood, I stole a glance at her and carefully broke the silence.

“What did you talk about with Asahina today?”

“Today? Ah... you mean earlier?”

“Yeah. When you kicked me out. If you don’t want to talk about it now, we can wait until we get to the ramen shop.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s not like I have anything to hide... Asahina said she likes Matsuda-kun too. Kyaah—!? Wh-what are you doing...?”

Miyuki, who had been calmly recounting her morning conversation with Hiyori, suddenly shrieked.

It was because I had slammed on the brakes right in the middle of a right turn.

Both of our upper bodies pitched forward before snapping back against the seats.

Miyuki stared at me in disbelief, pressing a hand to her chest as she asked.

“Are you okay? Why did you do that?”

My mind had completely blanked out at the sudden bombshell she dropped without any buildup.

Still, to think Hiyori would confess her feelings directly to Miyuki like that...

True to her nature, she had just charged straight ahead.

I could only imagine the look on Miyuki’s face when she heard that right to her face.

She must have been just as shocked as I was right now.

She wouldn’t have been shocked to learn Hiyori was interested in me, but rather that Hiyori had declared it openly right in front of my actual girlfriend.

I gathered my wits, finished turning the steering wheel, and answered.

“I’m fine. It just caught me off guard for a second... Sorry about that. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No, I’m okay. But why were you so surprised? Did you seriously not know?”

Hiyori and I spent a lot of time together, worked out together, and she had expressed interest in me plenty of times. There was no way I couldn’t have known.

Miyuki likely wasn’t asking because she actually thought I was clueless.

The motto for my conversations with Miyuki today was complete honesty.

So I wasn’t going to wrack my meager brain trying to come up with an excuse.

“I knew.”

“I thought so.”

“Yeah.”

“It seemed like it.”

“What made you think that?”

“During the school trip, and even before that... and on days you work out like today, you’re always hanging around Asahina. It would be stranger if you hadn’t noticed.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. You must really like Asahina, then?”

Miyuki’s voice was as gentle as always.

But given the situation, she sounded more terrifying than the Grim Reaper himself.

Even though I had just resolved to be completely honest, hearing that question still made me hesitate.

But I had to. It felt like if I didn’t do it now, I’d never get another chance. Any later would be a mistake, so I figured I might as well lay everything on the table.

Just as I steeled myself and opened my mouth to answer, Miyuki continued.

“I asked Asahina why she kept trying to hang around here, both last time and today, and that’s how she answered.”

“Just straight out?”

“Yeah. She said, ‘I like Matsumatsu too...!’”

That sounded exactly like how she would say it.

I remembered hearing Hiyori throwing a bit of a tantrum out on the engawa earlier. That must have been when she made her confession.

“So I quietly scolded her, asking if liking you meant she was entitled to stay here, and she jutted out her lip.”

As Miyuki spoke, I could perfectly picture the changes in Hiyori’s expression as she sat flopped on the mattress.

“So she got all huffy?”

“Her expression was a bit ambiguous, so I couldn’t really tell. But to me, she looked like she was about to cry. Aggrieved, maybe? It felt like she was being stubborn because she was trying to snatch something away and wasn’t succeeding... Something like that.”

It seemed Miyuki had read Hiyori’s true feelings perfectly.

“I see.”

“Do you want to... do it like that time with Senior Nanase?”

She skipped the details and trailed off, but it was crystal clear she was talking about a threesome.

To translate Miyuki’s vague question: she was asking if the reason I wasn’t pushing Hiyori away was because I wanted to repeat what we’d done with Chinami... That was what it meant.

At this, I paused for a moment.

Ordinarily, I would have just nodded in agreement. But I had something else to say first.

Just this brief hesitation alone would be enough for Miyuki to figure out the answer and pave the way for me to say my piece.

One way or another. And I had to strike when she gave me the opening.

“I know you have a thing for that, Matsuda-kun. You told me when we were watching that adult stuff together.”

“True.”

“So you really do want the three of us to do it together, right?”

“I do want to.”

“Why? Just because it’s your fetish? Or is it because... I’m just not enough?”

I had once had a conversation very much like this one with the old Miyuki.

Back then, she had addressed me roughly as ‘Hey.’

She had even teared up, snapping at me and asking if I had a death wish.

But the Miyuki sitting next to me now was different. Her voice might have been trembling slightly, but she wasn’t flying off the handle.

My presence in her heart had simply grown that massive.

Large enough that she could maintain her composure even during a conversation like this.

Either way, the opportunity I wanted had arrived.

It wasn’t the perfect segue, but it was better to lay it all out now before Miyuki suffered any more silent heartache over it.

I flipped on the hazard lights, pulled over to the shoulder of the road, turned off the engine, and unbuckled my seatbelt.

I leaned over toward Miyuki, who was looking at me in total bewilderment.

“Wh-what...? What are you doing?”

I wrapped my arms around her small, flustered frame and spoke.

“Why on earth would I think you aren’t enough? Do you have any idea how much I love you?”

Up until this point, I had told Miyuki that I liked her plenty of times, but I had never actually used the word ‘love.’

In my head, I said it constantly. But this was the very first time I had ever said it out loud.

In Japan, the word for love was largely considered poetic.

Which was another way of saying it was practically a dead word in everyday conversation.

When expressing affection to a partner, people almost universally used the word for ‘like,’ a word that was also used for friends and family with just a slight shift in nuance.

Because it was so rarely spoken, a confession of true ‘love’ carried immense weight, and when I pulled back from the hug, I saw that Miyuki’s eyes were as wide as saucers, exactly as I had expected.

“Huh...?”

“I love you. I truly do.”

“...”

Miyuki bit her lower lip.

It looked like she desperately wanted to tell me she loved me too, but because she had never actually used the word before, the words were caught in her throat.

At a time like this, all she needed was a gentle little push.

“Don’t you?”

“N-no...! I...”

Did Miyuki even realize she was frantically fanning her face right now?

Watching her completely short-circuit from the suddenly heated, romantic air, I had to fight back a grin, even though I knew I needed to stay serious.

I had successfully steered the atmosphere entirely in my favor.

If her reaction had been negative, my backup plan was to just detonate the bomb outright and confess that I was aiming for all four of them, her included.

But the ‘I love you’ confession had worked far better than I had dared to hope. Judging by the flow of things, this was going to work out in my favor.

In this kind of situation, the best move was to feign taking a step back, mix a little calculated vulnerability into my true feelings, and give Miyuki time to process.

Reaching that conclusion, I leaned forward and lightly tapped my forehead against Miyuki’s, whose face was flushing crimson all the way down to her neck.

Then I spoke.

“As for your question from earlier... it really is something I want. It’s like a fantasy for me. So when you asked, I just gave you an honest answer.”

“I knew it... I figured as much...”

“Yeah. Honestly, part of me desperately wants to force my own greed onto you. To do it with all four of you.”

“H-how many...? Four...?”

Miyuki’s jaw dropped.

Was the number too high? Should I have started with three and slowly worked my way up?

A sudden wave of regret hit me, but once the words were out, there was no taking them back.

That was the whole reason I had been so painstakingly cautious up until now, but in the end, it was fine as long as I managed to get my true feelings out at a good time.

I met Miyuki’s utterly panicked stare, then reached for my seatbelt and buckled it, drawing her gaze along with my movement.

Then I put the car back in gear and spoke in a serious tone.

“But if you’re really against it, I’ll drop it. I’d have no other choice.”

“You’d have no other choice... Does that mean you’d do things my way?”

HOOOONK—!

Just as Miyuki hit me with a question that could have painted me right into a corner, another car abruptly swerved into my lane.

I laid on the horn to warn the offending driver, then glanced back over at Miyuki.

“You okay?”

“Huh...? Ah, yeah... I’m okay.”

Did the sudden swerve scatter whatever thoughts she had left?

Miyuki didn’t press the question any further; instead, her long eyelashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly.

I decided to drop the subject for now. I wouldn’t bring it up again until we finished eating and got back home.

Besides, once Miyuki had time to sort out her thoughts, she would be the one to bring it back up—either when we went to bed, or right before we fell asleep.