After Reaching the Happy Ending, I Was Locked up by the Extremely Possessive Heroines I Had Conquered - Chapter 27: Becoming a Married Couple with the Scheming Junior

Chapter 27: Becoming a Married Couple with the Scheming Junior

Satori had become the head of the Jindaiji family.

It was a good thing that she had achieved her goal, but the sudden change in leadership had thrown the Jindaiji family into chaos, and it had been quite a ordeal.

From Uncle’s perspective, he had suddenly lost his position at the gathering, and even though he had handed it over himself, he probably had not accepted it. He had subjected me to a fierce barrage of questions.

After the gathering ended, I had been thoroughly grilled until the sun set, and exhausted as I was, I staggered my way home.

As for Satori, she was apparently staying at the Jindaiji family’s annex tonight due to the family’s mess.

That was why I was heading home alone for once.

“My feet…”

The numbness in my legs had not worn off from sitting in seiza for so long.

In that condition, I was descending the hill, which made me feel terribly unsteady. I could have tumbled at any moment.

I proceeded slowly, leaning on the fences of the houses along the way.

“…”

Then I noticed a shadowy figure moving in front of the house.

“Senpai.”

The one approaching with a sweet voice was Toa. She wore her school uniform with an apron, and she held a frying pan in her right hand.

She looked just like a housewife, but the contrast with her uniform was so striking that my eyes were glued to her.

“You’re late. I made lunch and waited…”

“Sorry, sorry. There were just a few things.”

“If you weren’t going to eat, you should have contacted me beforehand.”

“I didn’t expect to get grilled for five hours either.”

“Five hours?”

I peered at Toa’s expression as she tilted her head, rubbing my feet where they stung and prickled.

…For some reason, it was reassuring.

I had been surrounded by faces from the three great families and the island’s influential figures—people who were like yakuza—so my heart had grown rough.

Just gazing at Toa’s face calmed my heart.

“Senpai, don’t stare at me like that. It’s embarrassing.”

Even as she said that, Toa leaned in close to my face. In this intimate distance, I found myself feeling utterly at ease.

Because, look. She was sniffing at me, and I was not avoiding it at all—I was accepting it.

“You smell like Satori.”

“Huh?”

“By the way, where is Satori?”

For a moment, her expression seemed to stiffen, but Toa quickly composed herself and asked.

“Satori won’t be coming home because of family matters.”

“So that means it’s just the two of us today?”

“Two? What about Mahiru?”

“Mahiru-chan was up all night yesterday, so she probably won’t wake up today.”

“I see.”

I was dying to know why she had stayed up all night, but I understood well enough that it was effectively just the two of us.

“So! Senpai.”

Toa grinned and pulled my hand, then whispered in a sweet, sweet voice.

“We are a married couple today!”

※

These days, words like marriage, dating, and husband and wife—terms that ordinary high school students rarely used—were flying around one after another.

If I settled for just a senior-junior relationship, it seemed like things would get complicated—

“Just to confirm, this is pretend play, right?”

“We are a married couple?”

After we got home, I was checking with Toa as she started cooking in the living room, but…

“It’s couple pretend play, right?”

“We are a married couple?”

“It’s that kind of setup, right?”

“We are a married couple?”

Toa kept repeating the same line with a smile on her face.

At this rate, I had plans to marry Satori in the future, but this would lead straight to a daytime drama plot with Toa as my wife, so I desperately wanted to deny it.

“House play is something you feel like doing sometimes, right? I used to do it alone a lot when I was little. I’d use dolls to fight and stuff—”

“Senpai.”

As I desperately tried to deflect with some random topic, Toa asked while setting a daikon on the cutting board with a knife in hand.

“Are you that fond of duct tape?”

In that instant, the daikon was sliced clean in two with a thud.

The sharpness of that cut made my spine freeze, and I pleaded while suppressing my trembling voice.

“…P-Please spare me that one thing.”

“We are a married couple, a married couple.”

“…I get it.”

I would just go along with it.

I did not want to experience the edge of that knife on my own body. Married couple or whatever, bring it on!

“…”

Well, when Satori got back, it would almost certainly turn into a battlefield, but I decided not to worry about the details.

Worrying would not help anyway—it was already too late.

“The bath is ready, so please go ahead and take it.”

As I pondered what to do next and observed Toa’s knife skills for a while, the melody signaling that the bath was hot echoed through the living room.

“Then I’ll take the first bath.”

With the numbness still lingering in my feet, I wobbled my way to the bathroom.

I undressed in the changing area and sank into the tub, and finally, the fatigue of the day began to melt away.

“Haaaaah…”

Come to think of it, today had been a whirlwind of a day.

It had started with the gathering, followed by Satori’s unexpected declaration, and then five hours of questions from Uncle, among other things—plenty to fill both the good and the bad.

On top of that, there was Toa’s married couple remark, so it had been possessively intense right up to the end.

“Hmm? I’m supposed to head to the mainland, but am I just getting more and more tied down to this island?”

I had thought the situation would improve once Satori became the head of one of the three great families, but before I knew it, things had gotten even worse.

Why did my actions always backfire like this?

It was truly baffling. If anyone knew, I would love for them to tell me.

“…”

As I closed my eyes in the tub and let my thoughts swirl around,

“…”

I suddenly noticed a small black object in the corner of the ceiling.

For a split second, I thought it was mold or something, but the glossy surface was not natural. It had an artificial shine, like a lens.

“…What is it. A surveillance camera?”

Lately, I had been noticing camera placements more often. Maybe it was because Uncle had been so vigilant that I had naturally become aware of them.

Still, installing cameras even in the bathroom—it was amazing how advanced this information society had become.

Until recently, the saying had been “If it’s not there, it’s not there!” but now the number of surveillance cameras in this house was abnormal.

One per family… no, ten per family.

“Time to get out.”

For some reason, lingering felt dangerous, so I covered my private area with my hand and rose from the tub.

I left the steamy bathroom and changed into pajamas in the washroom.

Then I noticed a suspicious-looking camera next to the mirror. Upon closer inspection, there was one next to the breaker box as well.

“…You don’t need this many in the washroom.”

I wished they had at least limited it to one.

But it was already too late. At this point, it did not matter what they saw. The key was to become mindless about it.

“Alright.”

After drying my hair with the blow dryer, I headed to the living room, glancing briefly at the camera in the hallway.

Just as I reached for the door, a question popped into my head.

“No way… the reason Mahiru stayed up all night is related to all these cameras, isn’t it…”

I did not want to think my own sister was that impure, but unfortunately, based on her usual behavior,

“…It’s possible.”

In fact, the odds were high.

It seemed Mahiru had just a tiny bit of a criminal streak.

“Just a tiny bit?”

Well, by this island’s standards, she was still on the better side.

There were countless utterly insane people living here, after all.

“Sigh…”

I really needed to escape this island as soon as possible.