When I opened the drawer filled with my everyday clothing, the first thing that drew my attention were the clothes Miyagi had given me.

          Just before spring break, she had handed me a shirt to replace my uniform that got drenched in soda, which I had attempted to return to her.

          However, Miyagi never took it back, and I wound up keeping it.

          In any case, I had no intention of wearing it again.

          I gently touched the shirt that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.

          I had washed it with the purpose of returning it to Miyagi, so there were no longer any traces of her on it.

          I shut my eyes briefly, then picked out a tank top and headed to the bathroom.

          My family typically didn’t turn in early on Friday nights. Even at this moment, it was already past 11 PM, and the living room lights were still on. I walked quietly down the hallway and entered the bathroom. Instead of leisurely soaking in the hot water, I opted to finish my bath quickly. Afterward, I retrieved a bottle from the fridge and headed back to my room.

          I glanced at my phone sitting on my desk.

          I took small sips of my tea while responding to the numerous messages that had come in. After I had consumed about half of it, I laid down on my bed, still holding my phone.

          I didn’t intend to dwell on what happened today, but it still crossed my mind.

          ―― I took my clothes off in front of Miyagi and forced her to do the same.

          I put my smartphone down next to my pillow and sighed.

          Meeting Miyagi three times a week wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

          It was natural to want to hang out with my friends on my days off. Such thoughts were normal among close friends, and meeting Miyagi during the break fit right in with this idea.

          So there were no issues there.

          However, the problem was that one of the rules we had come up with explicitly prohibited undressing or forcing someone else to undress.

          I shouldn’t have done what I did on that rainy day.

          I should’ve brushed Miyagi’s hand away when she tried to remove my uniform and then played it off by calling her an idiot. Instead, because I allowed her to break the rules, things were now starting to spiral out of control.

          I heaved another sigh as I stared at my ceiling.

          I had cursed myself for forcing Miyagi onto this very bed the other day, and I continued to curse myself even now. Those curses were beginning to seize control of my heart, causing my emotions to become twisted in the process.

          The thought of taking off Miyagi’s clothes and touching her suddenly crossed my mind.

          However, right as I was about to imagine something more, I immediately suppressed the thought.

          「This is bad…」

          I shouldn’t be imagining things like this.

          Ever since Miyagi came to my room that day, numerous thoughts flooded my mind – thoughts I wouldn’t ever dare voice to anyone else.

          ‘I should’ve kissed her back then.’

          ‘I should’ve left a mark on her.’

          These were the absurd ideas that were polluting my head.

          This was not like me.

          I considered myself resourceful and skilled at socializing. Since I started high school, my school life had been relatively enjoyable, and I had intended to keep things that way until graduation, but my feelings for Miyagi were beginning to get in the way of that.

          It wasn’t like I disliked Miyagi.

          I wasn’t kidding when I told her that I was quite fond of her.

          It was okay to have slightly stronger feelings for Miyagi compared to my other friends, but that wasn’t the case here. I realized that I liked Miyagi much more than I initially thought, and I was struggling to control my emotions for her.

          That was why I wanted to try acting like my usual self today.

          I let out a huge sigh.

          In the same way that a malfunctioning smartphone can often be fixed by rebooting it, I believed I could reset myself and go back to how I used to be.

          If I had acted like there was a deeper meaning to undressing, it would end up making things awkward between us. So instead, I pretended that it was a normal, everyday occurrence.

          I let Miyagi order me to undress, and I removed my clothes without hesitation, treating it as if it were as ordinary as getting changed at school.

          I knew I was just deceiving myself and misleading my own feelings.

          It was difficult to force myself to change how I felt, but at least by doing this, I could begin to untangle my emotions and try to make sense of the situation.

          Much like how it was last year, all I had to do was treat her orders – regardless of how tedious or disagreeable they might be – as a way to pass the time. I just needed to recall my mindset from when I used to view this as nothing more than selling my time to Miyagi.

          That was the plan I had come up with.

          But in the end, it didn’t seem to work out very well.

          I was okay with her undressing me, and I was okay with her ordering me to undress myself.

          Those were the two options I had been ready for, and as I had predicted, Miyagi ordered me to remove my own clothes.

          I was used to hiding my feelings. I had become skilled at suppressing them and moving on.

          Therefore, I was able to take off my clothes in front of Miyagi without letting my emotions show on my face. However, that didn’t change how I felt on the inside, and my emotions continued to run wild. Because of that, I even ended up forcing Miyagi to undress as well.

          ―― No, that was a lie.

          The truth was, I simply couldn’t stop myself from wanting to take Miyagi’s clothes off. In the end, I realized that my hidden desires wouldn’t vanish into thin air just by pretending to be composed, and I was ultimately left with a yearning to explore more of her.

          Even now, despite regretting my actions, I couldn’t shake the thoughts of how soft Miyagi had felt and whether she had found my touch pleasurable. My thoughts were becoming so entangled that it felt impossible to unravel them, and I found myself dwelling on things I shouldn’t be thinking about.

          I’d been acting in ways that didn’t feel like myself lately, and it left me feeling disgusted with myself.

          I wanted to touch Miyagi – and not just through cloth.

          I had never felt like this towards anyone else before.

          There were an increasing number of things I wanted to do to Miyagi that I wouldn’t want to do with anyone else. Even though it was the middle of summer, these thoughts of mine continued to accumulate like piles of snow that refused to melt away.

          「I guess it’s good that it’s Friday today.」

          My heart felt so burdened that I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I had to see Miyagi again as soon as the day after tomorrow.

          I found Miyagi interesting, but I just wanted our connection to revolve around the comfort I felt being in her room. I had already made the decision to leave home and attend a university in a different prefecture after graduating, and I had no intentions of changing those plans.

          However, it wasn’t like I aspired to lead a wholly pure and virtuous life either, so incorporating some excitement from time to time was a good thing. As long as I didn’t become overly involved with Miyagi, I should be allowed to enjoy the time spent in her room and treat it as a pleasant little distraction.

          I was well aware of how irrational and flimsy my arguments sounded.

          However, when it concerned Miyagi, my thoughts were all over the place. I still didn’t have a firm grasp on them, so the more I thought of her, the more uncertain I became about what I should do.

          So it should be acceptable to overlook some inconsistencies in my arguments.

          If anything, it was Miyagi’s fault for constantly giving me such strange orders all the time.

          Moreover, it felt like she’d become extra attentive to me lately, which made me feel a bit uneasy.

          As I shifted the blame onto her in my thoughts, my gaze drifted toward the wall that separated my room from the room next door.

          The last time I spent this much time thinking about one person was my older sister, who lived in the room next door. After my parents started favoring my older sister, she was all I could think of.

          I’ve changed a lot since then, but my current behavior was reminding me of how I used to be, which was frustrating.

          「Ugh, I’ve had enough of this already. Even though it’s summer break, I just can’t seem to feel that excited about it.」

          I picked up my phone.

          When I looked at the clock, it was almost 1 AM.

          Maybe Umina’s still up.

          She was notorious for being a night owl, so as long as today was one of her days off, she should be awake at this hour. I decided to give Umina a call to clear up my mood. It rang once, then twice, and finally, on the fifth ring, I heard a lively and cheerful voice on the other end of the line that made it feel like it wasn’t the middle of the night.

          「It’s pretty rare for you to call at this hour. So, what’s up?」

          「I couldn’t sleep. Are you free to chat right now?」

          「Sure. I wasn’t really doing anything after my boyfriend fell asleep while we were on call together.」

          It wasn’t like I specifically needed to talk to Umina or anything.

          Anyone would’ve been fine as long as I could pass the time. Though, I did prefer to talk to someone that I could hold a relaxing conversation with, so we started talking about trivial things.

          It made me feel a bit more at ease hearing a voice that wasn’t Miyagi’s.

          I was just chatting about anything that came to mind without putting much thought into it, yet the conversation flowed more smoothly and was livelier than all the times I tried to talk to Miyagi.

          But I wasn’t sure if I could call this “fun” or not.

          I hung out with Umina last week, so our conversation ended up being about the things we did together, as if we were reliving the past.

          「Hazuki, you haven’t been hanging out with us as much this year. Is cram school really that busy?」

          Umina, who always referred to my prep school as “cram school”, asked without hiding her dissatisfaction.

          I probably spent about twice as much time with her last year, so it was only natural for her to voice her complaints.

          「Yeah, kind of. My schedule’s pretty packed.」

          I was being honest when I said that prep school kept me quite busy and disrupted most of my summer plans this year. Plus, having to visit Miyagi’s place three times a week further crowded my schedule.

          As the conversation progressed, Umina expressed her desire to go to a bunch of different places, then asked me to clear my schedule for those plans. I agreed, but whether I’d actually do it or not remained uncertain. However, this seemed to improve Umina’s mood.

          「Oh, right. Have you finished your homework yet?」

          She asked, suddenly remembering it.

          「I’m almost done.」

          「Cool, lemme take some pictures of it.」

          「Sure. Do you want to do it tomorrow?」

          「Oh, in that case, there’s somewhere else I wanna go while we’re at it.」

          Umina said, though the place she wanted to visit had nothing to do with homework.

          I didn’t really want to hang out that badly.

          If this were the me from last year, I probably would’ve been more excited.

          But that wasn’t the case right now.

          However, meeting with someone would help me take my mind off things, so I ended up making plans to hang out with Umina.

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