Published: September 9, 2025
Satou here. In stories, you often see the wonderful urban legend where you wake up in the morning to find an unfamiliar person of the opposite sex sleeping next to you, but I've never encountered that in real life. However, it seems to be a common sight in another world...
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The soft sensation enveloping my face makes me reluctant to open my eyes and wake up.
Ah, bliss. But this feeling isn't from Nana, and Lulu isn't this big. Could it be that Aarize-san barged in?
If it’s the last case, I better wake up quickly or I might get into serious trouble, so I escape from my drowsiness.
Huh? This is an unfamiliar room.
Half of my sight is filled with a soft body wrapped in off-white cotton, but the other half shows a cramped room stacked with various unfamiliar furnishings. Mixed with a faint scent of sweat is the smell of cheap alcohol.
That’s right, I remember now.
“Big sister! It’s morning!”
“Wake up quickly. I’m hungry~”
“Starving~”
I wave gently at the kids who have rushed into the room.
Damn, I chose the wrong option. This was the scene where I was supposed to activate my stealth skill by sticking to the ceiling the moment the door opened.
“Wow~ Futsuna-nee brought a young man home~”
“Mom, big sis is so promiscuous!”
“Big brother, are you going to marry Futsuna?”
The children started buzzing like a disturbed beehive.
Some of their remarks were a bit worrisome, but just to be safe, I checked my clothes and body. Yeah, all good. I was just sleeping. Ever since I started traveling with Arisa, my standards for checks have somehow gotten weird.
Last night, I had sneaked into the Duke's Capital under cover of darkness, but it was too late and no usual inns were open. I know many people in the capital, but suddenly showing up late at night would be rude, so reluctantly and with little enthusiasm, I sought a place to sleep in the night district...
What was supposed to be a fun night out unexpectedly dragged me into a little commotion.
Such disturbances are common in the night district. A somewhat busty female charm caster in her twenties was being extorted for protection money by the criminal group called “Gray Bats.” That was all. Because she couldn’t pay, she was about to suffer sexual assault, so I couldn’t just abandon her and intervened. That woman was Futsuna-san.
The criminals were led to the patrolling guards, and as they passed nearby, I used my “magic hand” to intervene slightly. The members who had assaulted the guards were taken straight to jail. Some tried to escape, but I grabbed their legs with the “magic hand,” so all were definitely arrested.
While guiding the criminals and keeping a tense distance, right after the guards came to help, Futsuna-san collapsed. I had no choice but to carry her back to her apartment, where we unexpectedly ran into some prostitute women who seemed to know her. They had just finished their work and returned.
After teasing me humorously about my relationship with Futsuna-san, and on hearing how I had saved her from the “Gray Bats” and how the guards had caught them all, the street prostitutes cheered. Apparently, the “Gray Bats” were a worthless group preying on street women.
Originally, better men had protected them, but before I came to the capital, a demon race incident in the downtown area had seriously injured the leader, weakening their force and allowing the “Gray Bats” to run rampant.
Anyway, a celebration party began to mark the destruction of the “Gray Bats,” and I ended up drinking all night. The prostitutes, determined to get me drunk despite my resistance, pressed their bodies close and offered me cups of cheap liquor. It couldn’t compare to the sake I drank with the black dragon, but for some reason, it tasted delicious. It was truly a fun drinking party.
They drank a lot, so I worried about their pockets. I thought it would be tacky to just hand over cash for the drinks, so I planned to arrange delivery of some good barrels of Shiga liquor later.