Chapter 8: The Move

“It seems you’ve been enjoying yourself with other women… without embracing me. I suppose a younger woman truly makes the heart race, does it not?”

That wasn’t the reason, Shiga Inui thought, shaking his head.

“No, th-that’s not it.”

Veins were popping on the foreheads of the senior members.

This man, Shiga Inui, was an outsider to begin with.

(Why in the world is Yuubi-sama so fond of this brat!?)

They were clearly not satisfied with Shiga Inui’s treatment.

Hiryuuin Yakumitsu, figuring that if he allowed Hiryuuin Yuubi to speak any further, two-thirds of her speech would become complaints about Shiga Inui, interrupted the conversation, addressing her in the tone of a child admonishing a parent.

“Haha-sama… we are still in the middle of a meeting. Please save your personal feelings for later.”

“…Well, regardless. You did take down one of our officers. In recognition of your service, what is it you desire?”

She cleared her throat, bringing the topic back on track.

Asked what he wanted as a reward, Shiga Inui thought for a moment.

“Ah… let’s see. Well… there’s this cheeky girl.”

A cheeky girl.

Hearing this, Mineki Shian turned her face toward Shiga Inui.

(Hey, don’t tell me you’re…)

“A girl named Abarabana Tenri. I’d like to have her for myself.”

A daughter of the Abarabana clan.

Shiga Inui announced his desire for Abarabana Tenri.

“Unacceptable! Rejected! Rejected!”

Hiryuuin Yuubi declared in response to Shiga Inui’s wish.

“No good, huh?”

She seemed unable to consent to Shiga Inui’s request for a single woman.

Hiryuuin Yuubi, dressed in a kimono, made a gesture as if supporting her own breasts from below.

“You should have just chosen me. Here, look.”

She jiggled her bountiful chest up and down, tempting him.

It was like a courtship ritual.

At Hiryuuin Yuubi’s action, all the men’s eyes went wide as they stared at her chest.

“Ooh… I can’t take it…” “Guh… ahem!” “Phew, it’s hot in here…”

After a few seconds, they came back to their senses, clearing their throats or adjusting their collars as they averted their gazes from her.

“No, it’s not like I want that woman for my own pleasure or anything… With her abilities, I can become stronger. Yes, to enhance my power! It’s all for the sake of this house!”

Shiga Inui claimed he needed her to become stronger, to improve his power flow.

Everything for the glory of the Hiryuuin clan.

Shiga Inui’s words were entirely untrustworthy.

“Mmm, ugh… For the sake of the Hiryuuin clan… which is to say, for my sake… If that’s the case, can it be helped? Is it…? Then… I shall permit it.”

But Hiryuuin Yuubi was on the verge of being swayed.

Shiga Inui stared at Hiryuuin Yuubi with unclouded eyes.

“…Haha-sama? You can’t be serious! Are you actually going to grant his request?!”

Mineki Shian cut into the conversation.

If Shiga Inui and a woman were left alone, they would undoubtedly end up having sex.

“His lust is monstrous! He’s the kind of man who would just keep pumping his hips without eating or sleeping! You must understand what would happen if you give a woman to a man like that!”

He would neglect his studies and even battle, Mineki Shian insisted.

So, what was to be done?

“Then… propose an alternative. But I warn you, now that I have given my word, I will not retract it.”

To disregard something Hiryuuin Yuubi had declared was a terrifying prospect.

Very well then, Mineki Shian offered her alternative.

“In that case, I will watch over him at my estate, within the Mineki territory. This way, Haha-sama, your word does not need to be retracted.”

“Huh?… HUH?!”

The alternative was to have Shiga Inui live at Mineki Shian’s house.

By making herself Shiga Inui’s warden, she could fix his degenerate lifestyle, and he wouldn’t be able to treat women so horribly.

“Hmm… If that is the case, it would be acceptable. Let it be so.”

Hiryuuin Yuubi had made her decision.

“Seriously?… Aww, for real?”

Shiga Inui wore a look of disgust.

He preferred being free above all else.

He apparently couldn’t even imagine living under someone else’s watch.

“Better to place him with Shian than to have him and Abarabana Tenri getting tangled up together.”

Hiryuuin Yuubi figured that having Mineki Shian watch him was better than letting him get together with Abarabana Tenri.

“Agh… I get it… sigh.”

Though Shiga Inui was reluctant, if Hiryuuin Yuubi had decided, he had no choice but to comply.

“Agh… and here I was, looking forward to ‘training’ her every night…”

He continued to mutter under his breath so no one could hear.

“Phew…”

Mineki Shian, while fidgeting, let out a heavy breath and placed a hand on her chest.

Though the decision was made in the heat of the moment, it meant she would now be living with Shiga Inui.

She slapped her cheeks with both hands, as if to scold herself for thinking it could even be called cohabitation.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she told herself, desperately trying to calm her breathing.

“Alright… I suppose I should pack my things for my estate.”

Several days later.

Starting today, Mineki Shian would be living in the Abarabana family’s territory.

The work of moving luggage and furniture from her home to the Abarabana estate began.

She had no complaints, but it was now a little farther from the school she attended.

Well, she could commute by train, so the only real problem would be that she’d to leave for school earlier.

“Why do I have to…?”

Shiga Inui grumbled as he loaded luggage onto the truck.

Since he was also going to be living with her, he had been roped into helping out.

“If you’re going to live in the house, it’s only natural that you help… Now, hurry up and move this stuff. We have to move your stuff later.”

As she chided the complaining Shiga Inui, she too channeled her power, enhancing her physical abilities to lift a dresser.

While she worked up a sweat, Shiga Inui looked around for something interesting.

He found a pile of cardboard boxes, separate from the furniture, and decided to see what was inside.

He opened a box and pulled out a piece of cloth.

“Ooh… This is…”

He held it up to get a better look.

It was Mineki Shian’s underwear.

Moreover, it was the same black underwear she had worn when he had been with her for the first time.

Seeing it, Shiga Inui felt a wave of nostalgia, his mind replaying their passionate night together.

(Heh, nostalgic… That first time, Shian cried so much…)

Shiga Inui’s trip down memory lane didn’t last long.

Mineki Shian, who had come up from behind, smacked him on the back of the head.

“Don’t just open my things! You idiot!!”

A dull thud echoed as Shiga Inui clutched the back of his head.

“Ow!!… What was that for?!”

“‘What was that for,’ you say?! Pulling out my underwear like that! What is wrong with you, you pervert!!”

Mineki Shian immediately retrieved the underwear from Shiga Inui’s grasp.

She blushed with embarrassment as she stuffed it back into the cardboard box.

“What do you mean…? I was just thinking about our first night together…”

As Shiga Inui looked at the underwear, he started reminiscing about their time together.

“Don’t get lost in thought over my underwear! Get to work!”

Finding it not the least bit romantic, she kicked Shiga Inui’s rear to hurry him along.

Reluctantly, he started moving.

He just wanted to get this annoying task over with as quickly as possible.

“Phew… That’s all of my luggage. Alright, you can go.”

Mineki Shian slapped the side of the truck driven by her attendant.

The truck then moved forward, heading toward the estate and leaving Mineki Shian and Shiga Inui behind.

“Ahh… I’m beat. Hey, wanna go grab a bite?”

“Don’t be an idiot. That will throw off our schedule. The priority is to head to your place and pack up your things.”

Shiga Inui and Mineki Shian boarded the other truck.

An attendant started to drive it toward Shiga Inui’s house.

As time passed, one man’s mood grew as heavy as a prisoner on death row.

“Haaah… I dunno, I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”

It was Shiga Inui.

For some reason or another, he wasn’t enthusiastic.

And this was despite the fact he was getting to live in a spacious mansion.

Even considering he’d have a housemate, he would still get his own room.

Living in an apartment, Shiga Inui couldn’t make much noise out of consideration for his neighbors, but at the Mineki estate, he wouldn’t have that worry.

“I’m totally… gonna get yelled at, seriously…”

Shiga Inui muttered to himself, as if chanting a Buddhist prayer.

“…? What are you mumbling about?”

Ignoring Shiga Inui’s muttering, Mineki Shian headed toward his house.

The trip took about ten minutes.

“We’re here.”

They arrived at the apartment building.

As they were about to enter Shiga Inui’s room, Mineki Shian told him to give her the key.

“Key?… Ah, I don’t have it.”

She tilted her head.

“What do you mean you don’t have it? You’d be in trouble if you didn’t have it when you go out.”

“I lost it. Besides, even if someone got in, it’s not like I have anything worth stealing…”

Shiga Inui twisted the doorknob.

The door opened. He truly had a careless personality.

Mineki Shian stepped inside the room.

And then, her face twisted in disgust.

“What is this?”

A rotten stench, as if a dead body had been left to decompose, assaulted her nostrils.

Shiga Inui’s one-room, six-mat apartment was filthy.

The tatami mats were discolored, likely from juice and booze being spilled and left there, and in the corner of the room, empty bento boxes were tossed aside.

The trash can overflowed with a mountain of used tissues.

Clothes were thrown about, with only the relatively clean ones evacuated onto hangers.

“Ngh!”

No matter how she looked at it, no matter what kind words she tried to use, it was, without a doubt, a filthy pigsty.

Mineki Shian’s body began to tremble.

“You… I told you to clean your room because we were moving… I told you… so many times!”

It was a disaster bad enough to kill a century’s worth of love.

Seeing her reach the pinnacle of her fury, he panicked.

“Hey, I was just busy with a bunch of stuff, you know? I’m a pretty high-demand guy… It’s not that I wasn’t going to clean it. I even tried to book a cleaning service, but I forgot. Haha!”

Grabbing the collar of the babbling Shiga Inui, Mineki Shian hurled abuse at him.

“Shut up, Trash-Dog! Close your mouth and clean! Got it? Clean!”

It sounded like a final ultimatum.

“Yes, ma’am!”

For once, Shiga Inui could do nothing but meekly nod his head.

With no mask, she covered her mouth with a clean white towel.

She decided to borrow a broom from one of the other apartment residents.

The great cleanup began.

“Alright, Dog, you’re on garbage duty.”

Shiga Inui took a garbage bag and began collecting the various pieces of trash.

“Hey, don’t just throw everything in the burnable bag! Sort it!”

Mineki Shian raised her voice at Shiga Inui’s sloppy garbage disposal.

“C’mon, think about it. If you light any of this on fire, it’ll probably burn… which means it’s all burnable trash, right?”

To that, Shiga Inui argued that since it all burns anyway, it should be fine to put it in the burnable trash.

“Do you not even know how to take out the trash…? Sigh, just sort it. You’ll be a nuisance to the neighbors.”

Though irritated by Shiga Inui’s careless attitude, Mineki Shian began cleaning methodically.

She gathered his clothes into a basket and handed it to him.

“Here, these are your clothes. Go wash them.”

She ordered him to go wash them at the nearby laundromat, and Shiga Inui gave a lazy, half-hearted reply.

“Yeah, yeah…”

After temporarily evacuating Shiga Inui from the trash room, Mineki Shian began cleaning in earnest.

In the middle of the room was Shiga Inui’s futon; since it had never been aired out, it was as flat as a seat cushion with its cotton removed.

“Haaah… Honestly, what a good-for-nothing.”

Though she grumbled, she kept cleaning.

When it came down to it, this was something she would never do for someone she didn’t have at least some affection for.

“Alright, that should do it.”

Just as she had finished sorting the trash and the cleaning was nearly complete, Mineki Shian opened the closet.

A mountain of books and videos poured out.

“Gah! Th-that… good-for-nothing…!”

Shiga Inui’s personal effects came crashing down onto the territory she had just cleaned.

A wave of exhaustion, as if she were right back where she started, washed over her.

Deciding to throw away anything that wasn’t needed, she picked up one of his books.

“…?! Wh-wha, this is…!”

She blushed.

What Shiga Inui had hidden in his closet were adult videos and pornographic magazines.

And not just any porn.

These days, with the spread of smartphones, information regarding sex could be viewed online.

However, there were limits to online information; out-of-print adult videos and discontinued porn magazines were often disposed of as waste without ever being uploaded to the internet.

Shiga Inui had been painstakingly collecting these vintage, unobtainable porn magazines and adult videos from secondhand bookstores and fellow enthusiasts, storing them carefully in his closet.

Some of the treasures in his collection depicted some rather hardcore acts.

“What is that idiot thinking, hoarding all this shameless stuff…?”

One of the magazines that had tumbled out in the avalanche had fallen open, and Mineki Shian’s eyes followed the contents.

She stared intently at the pictures before she found herself picking it up.

“Ugh…”

Seeing the ecstatic, twisted expression on the actress’s face in the photo, she couldn’t help but gulp.

For a moment, she thought to herself that she’d like to try something this intense, to scream her own voice hoarse.

And at that exact moment…

“Ahh, I’m exhausted.”

Shiga Inui came home.

In his hand was the laundry basket, its contents still unwashed.

“Whaaa?!”

She hurled the porn magazine in her hand right at his face.

“Ugyah!?”

The magazine hit him square in the face, and Shiga Inui fell over.

“W-wha—what the hell?! Weren’t you washing the clothes?!”

Lying on his back, Shiga Inui pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Guh, ghh… W-well, I didn’t have any money, so I was gonna ask for some change…”

So that’s why he had gotten to the laundromat and back so quickly.

That was bad for my heart, Mineki Shian thought, trying to steady her breathing.

“Finally, it’s done…”

Letting out a breath, Mineki Shian looked over at Shiga Inui.

“Whoa, my room was this big…?”

With all the trash taken out, Shiga Inui looked at his newly clean room in awe.

However, the room was covered in stains and scratches; he guessed he was probably going to be charged a hefty repair fee.

“Well… shall we get going?”

“Huh? Let’s rest a bit. I’m thirsty.”

Shiga Inui stuck his tongue out to show how parched he was, but Mineki Shian did not nod.

“We’re behind schedule. This was supposed to take an hour, but it’s been three. We have no choice but to work through our break. Now, hurry up and get in the truck.”

“I don’t think working nonstop is healthy, you know?”

Shiga Inui said to her.

“And whose fault do you think it is that we’re behind schedule?”

The root cause of their delay was, of course, Shiga Inui.

Without another word, she dragged him out of the apartment.

They said goodbye to the landlord, officially moved out, and the truck carrying Shiga Inui’s belongings headed for the main house of the Abarabana clan.

“That took a long time…”

And it was all because Shiga Inui’s room was so disgusting.

However, the servants who had come to help with the move were now unpacking the luggage.

“You’re late.”

As it happened, Hiryuuin Yakumitsu had also come and was apparently helping with the move; it seemed like things might finish sooner than expected after all.