Itsuka-kun's rampage had come to an end, and he was now hospitalized as a precaution in case anything happened.
At his bedside, Rinne was teaching Tohka how to peel an apple.
Rio was listening to Rinne's lesson and making her own pitch that she wanted to peel one too.
What a peaceful everyday life.
And the shadow that had kissed Itsuka-kun... .
"Good work."
"You fucking bastard... ."
With tears in its eyes, it raised its middle finger and returned to the darkness on the spot.
The expression it had made then was really... .
"It was horny, wasn't it."
"Yeah, horny—what the hell do you mean, horny! Stop messing with my thoughts without permission, Miku!?"
Miku interrupted while I was reminiscing and manipulated my impressions.
Out of nowhere she said it was horny right next to me, so I almost blurted out the same thing without thinking.
There was no way that could be right. It was me.
"I was, though. Darling's tearful face!"
"Why are you like this, Miku... ."
"But! Darling is usually not in a woman's body, and you don't usually look like you're about to cry, either! That's what makes it such a gap!"
Sure enough, as Miku said, I was usually in a male body, and I didn't cry much.
Not that I never cried, but rather that I didn't really get teary-eyed.
When I first arrived, I had gone a little crazy, but that was black history, so let's skip it. And when I met Miku, I hadn't shown that kind of side of myself.
So I could understand why she felt a gap from seeing my female shadow tear up like that.
"Do you really have to say that out loud? And right in front of the person involved?"
I wondered what her intention was, saying that right in front of me.
"Can't you make that same expression for me?"
"As if."
At her shameless request for that disgusting expression, I frowned before I knew it.
If she wanted it done, she should call the shadow back and have it do it. There was no way in hell I was doing it myself.
The shadow had the same thought process as me, so if I asked it, it would obviously hate it too, but if I forced it, maybe it would still do it.
"That's too much~! It's a request from your one and only darling's idol!"
"No, if you're going to call yourself an idol, at least remove the filthy words from your vocabulary. What kind of idol says horny, horny?"
"Fufu, it's fine. I only say that in front of darling."
"Haah... ."
How I ended up tangled up with someone like this, life really was impossible to predict.
******
The next day, under Murasame-san's instructions, Itsuka-kun moved to the examination room.
From what I heard, they were going to check the state of his path and any abnormalities left in his body.
"So what do I do now?"
There was nothing wrong with my body, and I had nothing to do until Itsuka-kun's exam was over, so I was bored.
Since school was off too, it was a pretty ironic situation where I really had nothing to do.
I could play games, sure, but if I spent all my free time doing nothing but games, I felt like I'd turn into a hopeless human being, so it seemed better to find another hobby too.
"Okay, let's ask around."
Since nothing came to mind if I thought about it alone, I decided to ask other people and left the room.
The first place I visited was Yoshino's room.
"Yoshino, are you there?"
-Huh? Hii-san...?
"Ah, would it be all right if I came in?"
-Oh, yes! Come in!
After getting Yoshino's permission and entering, the room was, how should I put it, pretty clean.
There was nothing particularly special in it, just a display of gifted dolls on top of the dresser beside the bed.
'This really is a room that feels like Yoshino.'
As I looked around Yoshino's room and had that impression, she was sitting at her desk, staring blankly at me.
"U-um... Hii-san, why are you in my room...?"
"Ah, I was curious about your hobbies, Yoshino."
"H-hobbies...?"
Yoshino tilted her head with a puzzled expression, unable to understand what I was getting at.
『Why are you suddenly asking about hobbies~?』
"Ah, I was thinking of trying to make a new hobby."
After I explained why I was asking, Yoshino gave a small nod and said,
"I-in that case... my hobby is watching dramas."
"Dramas, huh."
Come to think of it, Yoshino did often watch dramas.
They were mostly about romance between men and women, if I remembered right, but for a girl in her prime, those were definitely the kind of things she'd watch.
Still, dramas weren't really my thing.
『Hii-kun doesn't really watch dramas, does he?』
"I guess not. I don't really like just watching things."
『Well, with women all over the place around Hii-kun right now, there'd be no way a drama could catch your eye~!』
"Yo, Yoshinon...!"
"Ahaha... ."
At Yoshinon’s spot-on comment, all I could do was laugh it off.
It wasn't that dramas didn't catch my eye because there were so many women around me, but the fact that there were a lot of women was true enough.
"Drama, huh. Yes, I'll keep it in mind for now."
"Ah, yes!"
Saying that, I left Yoshino's room.
Behind me, Yoshinon was shouting to be let out with her mouth covered, but I ignored it and decided to look for someone else's room.
"Next is the Fire Keeper... but she's obviously into cooking."
The Fire Keeper had already said cooking was her hobby, and I could also say cooking was my hobby aside from games, so I passed.
"Then Kaguya and Yuzuru, maybe."
Since they were the ones who'd fought so many battles, they probably had a lot of hobbies. Maybe I could get something useful out of one of them.
With that expectation, I knocked on their door.
...Nope, doesn't seem like anyone's in there.
There was no sound coming from beyond the door at all.
They must have gone out.
It was a shame, but there was nothing to be done, so I decided to ask them later and headed to someone else's room.
"Mayuri, are you there?"
The place I visited was Mayuri's room.
-Huh? Oh! Come in!
"Ah, yes. I'll come in."
With her permission granted, I carefully opened the door and stepped inside.
Mayuri's room was filled overall with colors similar to her own hair.
The bedding had gold in it, and the wallpaper was a pale yellow, so it was clear how much Mayuri liked yellow.
"What brings you here?"
"Ah, I was curious about your hobby, Mayuri."
"Hobby? Out of nowhere?"
"Well... ."
I told Mayuri, just like I had to Yoshino, that I was asking around about other people's hobbies because I wanted to make a new one.
After hearing my circumstances, Mayuri nodded as if she understood.
"If that's the case, sure. My hobby... ."
Maybe she didn't have one, because Mayuri closed her eyes and seemed to think deeply for a moment before quietly muttering,
"Maybe looking at the high collection Maria and Marina put together."
"Huh?"
What did I just hear?
"Ah, never mind that! Um, in my case, I read books."
"Hmm, reading, then."
Come to think of it, I had seen Mayuri reading books a lot.
She had even been reading when she woke me up this morning.
Maybe reading could become one of my hobbies too.
"Do you happen to have any books you'd recommend?"
"Recommend? Honestly, nothing comes to mind. I'll tell you later. Is that okay?"
"Yes. That's more than enough. Then I'll be going now."
"Y-yeah! Take care."
Leaving behind Mayuri, who was sweating oddly, I headed next to Natsumi's room.
"Natsumi?"
-...What?
"What, why do you sound so sleepy?"
-...Ah, I stayed up all night playing games.
"Oh, uh-huh. If you're tired, sleep. That wasn't a big deal."
-...Mm.
But Natsumi was in no state to talk, just like the Yamai sisters.
Those two were out, but this was the complete opposite: even though she was in her room, she was too exhausted from an all-nighter to hold a conversation.
As someone who knew exactly how hard it was to endure an all-nighter gaming session, I sympathized with Natsumi and moved on to Marina and Maria's room.
-Marina! That's mine!
-So what! It's not like using it wears it out!
Even before I reached the door, I could hear the two of them arguing.
Even though they shared a room, they were always fighting. It made me think that maybe that was what a real close friend looked like.
"Marina, Maria!"
-...
The room went abruptly silent at the sound of my voice.
-thud thud thud!
Then I heard the sound of someone hurriedly tidying something up, and after a little while Marina opened the door.
"W-what is it?"
"No, nothing much. I was just curious about your hobbies."
"Hobbies?"
"Yeah. I'm asking other people so I can try out different hobbies."
"Ahh, I get what you mean. Come in first."
Following Marina, who nodded at my words, I stepped into the room and saw an interior with a somewhat unusual layout.
I hadn't been here before, so I didn't know, but the room was split exactly in half down the middle.
No, to be more precise, it had been made to look completely identical like a mirror.
"Now that's novel."
"Ah, Hii-kun. Our room layout is a little unusual, isn't it?"
"Yes. Very unusual."
It was honestly the first time in my life I'd ever seen a room like this, so I didn't even know what to say.
How had they managed to make it this perfectly identical?
Just as I was about to ask why they'd gone to the trouble of arranging it like this, Maria must have guessed what I was going to ask, because she spoke first.
"Marina and I have a lot of overlaps, so we ended up buying two of everything. That's how it turned out."
"Ahh... ."
So that's why the room was like this.
Hearing Maria's explanation, I could understand why it had ended up that way.
Still, it was impressive.
"So, you asked what our hobbies are, right?"
"Ah, yes. That's right. I'm curious about both of your hobbies."
"Hobbies, huh."
When I asked, the two of them seemed unable to answer easily.
For a moment I wondered if they didn't have any hobbies, but that wasn't it. Marina soon revealed hers.
"I like anime. There are a lot of sweet anime shows these days."
"Anime is good too."
"So that's why you plan out date routes every time you watch one."
"W-what are you talking about!!"
Marina's face turned red as her secret tendency was exposed and she snapped at me.
Well, I was the type to respect people's tastes, so I decided not to say anything to Marina about it.
"Marina, you have to separate reality from fiction, okay?"
No matter how you looked at it, using anime to plan date routes was a bit much, wasn't it?
"I'm not doing that!"
"By the way, what about you, Maria?"
"I've recently started reading novels."
Maria's hobby was reading novels.
It seemed similar to Mayuri's reading, but according to Maria, she mostly read web novels.
She said the site she used was something like No-whatnot, and there were a lot of pretty interesting stories there.
"Hmm, that's good reference material."
"Right?"
"Good? More like while reading novels you were going, Hii would be like this, or that, and spinning a whole kingdom of delusions."
"M-Marina...!"
"..."
With the thought that maybe the two of them had similar tastes after all, I was left speechless.
Why are you doing this to me?
"...I'll be going now."
I had heard a lot of weird things, but I'd gathered enough information, so I decided that if the result was good, then good was good and left Marina and Maria's room.
And just then, it was about time for Itsuka-kun's exam to end.
"They said it would be about now, so... ."
Thinking I might as well ask Itsuka-kun about his hobby too, I headed to Ratatoskr's secret base beneath Tengushi City.
******
If you press the numbers in a certain order in the elevator of a certain building, you can move to the secret base.
It was a route that really made it feel like you were going to a secret base, so I personally liked it.
I'd come to the secret base, but there was one problem: I didn't know which examination room Itsuka-kun was in.
"The second examination room... is this it?"
Well, if not, it would be somewhere else, so I decided to check inside first and think later, opening the door to the second examination room.
And then I saw an incredible sight.
"Stay still! It's hard to take off if you keep moving!"
"Aaaah!"
On the examination table, the commander was caught trying to strip Mana of the clothes she was wearing.
"C-Commander?"
"Hiki?"
"Hii-san?"
The two of them turned toward me when they heard my voice.
Even then, the commander's hands still hadn't left Mana's clothes, so maybe the commander liked both Itsuka-kun and Mana.
"Well, how should I put this. I respect your tastes, but is this really the place for it?"
"W-what are you talking about! I'm the victim here!"
"You, what kind of delusion are you having?"
Fortunately, it didn't seem to be anything like that.
I knew neither of them had that kind of personality, but still, there was always the possibility, so my suspicion was justified.
As I nodded while rationalizing that, I heard the sound of the door opening behind me.
"Eh, Hieta? What is this... ."
The person who came in was none other than Itsuka-kun, who had finished his exam.
But somehow, Itsuka-kun stopped mid-sentence and looked over my shoulder, his expression freezing as a faint killing intent leaked out.
"Oh, did the exam go well? But why are you making that face... ."
Wait, let's think about this.
One woman on the examination table with her clothes being stripped off, another woman holding onto those clothes, and I was the only man present until Itsuka-kun arrived.
This was the kind of situation that made it easy to misunderstand as me trying to strip Mana while the commander was putting her clothes back on.
"...Hieta, now you're going after Mana too?"
Yeah, exactly like that.
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