Hearing Hikari's compliment, Ruri smiled happily with narrowed eyes, and then casually leaned into his arms.
Her soft hair brushed his chin lightly, a little ticklish. Hikari looked down and noticed that Ruri, whose hair had been loose earlier, had somehow already tied it into twin tails.
Seeing Hikari's eyes on her, Ruri pretended to be shy and lowered her head slightly, first giving a quick kiss on his collarbone, then raising her head and, with a very cute tone, asked, "Hikari-kun, Ruri wants to play a game with you. Will you play a knight roleplay with me~?"
Hearing Ruri's coquettish, bashful request, Hikari's head lifted high; he nodded lightly, "Okay."
Without dawdling, the two of them started a round of royal knight roleplay on the tatami.
Excited, Ruri sometimes played the knight, sometimes the horse.
Not a professional actor, but Ruri performed with earnest energy.
When playing the warhorse she was wild and untamed, leaping up and down as if running a thousand miles a day.
When she played the royal knight she showed strength and bravery, unfazed by jolts, skilled in riding.
As for Hikari, after many trials and having seen countless warhorses and tamed many wild ones, the knightly instinct was long ingrained in him.
You could say that once he took the reins he instantly entered a state of unity with the mount.
Seeing that Ruri was earnest and enthusiastic but a little lacking in technique, Hikari decided to teach her more.
"Ruri-chan, you learned a set of spear moves a while back, want me to teach them to you?", Hikari asked.
"Hmph~ Mm… okay… okay," Ruri, playing the warhorse, tilted her head back and happily agreed.
"All right, listen carefully," Hikari rested one hand on the long spear and made a flourish with it.
"I started practicing the spear at seven. From the first moment I held it, body and spear became one; I couldn't put it down."
"At nine I mastered the Thirteen Deadly Thrusts."
"First thrust: longing and dependence, short longing is endless, longing!"
With a swoosh, the spear in Hikari's hand suddenly jabbed forward.
"Awooo!", Ruri, acting as both warhorse and enemy, obliged with a cry of pain.
"Second thrust: longing for one night, how much love, though far apart on earth and sky, heartbroken!"
Hikari retracted the spear and thrust out again swiftly.
"Argh!", Ruri again responded with a wail.
"Third thrust: the world roams on a single thread, the moon like a hook, hard to part, blind dragon!"
Several thrusts followed in succession as Hikari demonstrated the power of the Thirteen Deadly Thrusts.
Ruri studied intently.
Just as Hikari and Ruri were having fun, Yukina and Reina, who had been showing Hikari the rooms earlier, noticed the pair's actions and immediately felt uneasy.
"Wow, Ruri-chan snuck off to play with Hikari-kun behind our backs again!"
"We want to play too!"
They shouted and pounced over to join the fray.
So the four of them played the childish but fun roleplay together.
Mostly it was taking turns with Hikari: Ruri, Reina, and Yukina each alternated, but none of them felt fully satisfied with just 1v1.
"This doesn't feel like a party. If we're going to play, we should all play together," Ruri said, even though she had started the secret game, as hostess, she spoke up.
"Okay, you all come on up," Hikari felt the 1v1 format was lacking too.
Hearing him, Ruri got up to turn on the game console.
She handed out controllers to everyone.
The four of them played Dragon Slayer together.
As the best gamer among them, Hikari naturally played the evil dragon first, facing the three young women playing the hero squad, just like that first party.
The battle was fierce.
Compared to their very first party with Hikari when they were inexperienced novices, these three had since gained quite a bit of gaming experience and their skill improved a lot.
But Hikari's improvement was even greater, strength, technique, game strategy, all had leveled up.
So the gap in skill actually widened.
Thus even as a single evil overlord against three heroines, Hikari quickly achieved a decisive victory.
Completely defeated, the three young women lay sprawled and breathless on the floor, all looking a bit battle-worn, and their minds began to wander.
"Ruri will join Hikari-kun's team to fight you two!", Ruri was the first to declare a defection, switching sides to join Hikari in tormenting the other two heroines.
With the numbers evened up, Yukina and Reina naturally lost faster.
Soon Yukina also switched sides, joining Hikari and Ruri to pick on Reina.
Left alone, Reina naturally became the evil overlord.
But having the title of overlord didn't mean she had overlord power.
Alone and feeling powerless, she was quickly overwhelmed by Hikari and the other three, crying until tears wetted the carpet and begging to change sides.
Reina joined Hikari, and Yukina was pushed out to be the overlord, attacked by the other three.
After seven or eight minutes, Reina couldn't hold out either and swapped, dragging Ruri out to be overlord while she joined Hikari's overlord team.
So at the big party, the four took turns playing different roles and had a great time.
They occasionally opened the costume rack and changed into pretty outfits.
Perhaps they hadn't played together for a while.
The three young women were very excited, and Hikari was catching the enthusiasm; the four of them played vigorously, spending the entire morning on various games, still crazy at lunchtime.
———
"I just started work a few days ago and they already have a mixer tonight, boring. But for work, I'll go along with it tonight…", Hamazaki Risa put down her phone with displeasure and returned to her yoga mat to start exercising.
Though she had graduated and entered the workforce, not having dated or married yet, Risa still paid close attention to her looks and figure.
Every week she set aside days for fitness to maintain her graceful figure.
After all, although she was naturally blessed with long beautiful legs, if she let them go unused, people would stop complimenting her, and that would be a shame.
"My advantage over Reina, Ruri, and Yukina is this. If I don't work harder, how can I get a handsome boyfriend like Hikari-kun~", Risa muttered as she stretched after her workout, consoling her tired body with daydreams.
Thinking of Hikari's young, handsome face, she did seven or eight more sit-ups in one go.
"Phew~ time for a shower…", Risa, drenched in sweat and her yoga clothes soaked, got up, rolled up her mat, grabbed her clothes, and headed to the bathroom.
But when she turned on the faucet, nothing came from the showerhead, not a single drop.
"Oh no, really? The water's out?"
"Now I have to go to that stupid mixer, and the water's out too. Did I forget to pay the bill? Can my luck get any worse?"
Risa, sweaty from exercise, was furious.
"Well, Ruri-chan's room is next door. If she has water, I can probably borrow her bathroom. I'll wash there first," Risa thought, grabbed her clothes, put on a light jacket, and headed toward Ruri's room.
But when she reached Ruri's door she suddenly heard strange noises from inside.
Her hand, about to knock, froze in midair.
"Hmm… ah…? What are those sounds, Ruri-chan?"
"Wait… I hear Reina's voice, Yukina's voice too…"
"Right, the three sisters invited Hikari-kun to play today, wait… Hikari-kun?"
Still a bit puzzled, Risa's mind flashed to the handsome face of the young man and she instantly guessed what the frantic noises inside were.
'No way? They're playing a game that intense? All together?'
'From these sounds, it sounds like Hikari-kun is alone entertaining all three of them? Seriously? He's that good?'
'Hikari-kun alone holding three people? He's not that young in skill, he must be a legendary player!'
The increasingly raucous noises beyond the door stirred vivid mental images in Risa's head; her fair face flushed red.
Having just exercised, her heart was already racing; now it pounded wildly as if it might leap from her throat.
Admittedly, the sounds from the room were hypnotic.
Even someone like Risa, who'd never been in love and had little experience playing with guys, felt stirred and impulsively wanted to join in. To dive into the fray.
Like her sister Reina, Risa had a strong playful streak, but only for a guy who made her quietly swoon like Hikari did.
Still, excitement aside, Risa controlled herself and didn't knock.
After all, they were in the middle of a game. Bursting in would be like barging into an ongoing team battle, obviously rude.
And she wasn't that close to Hikari; although Reina had spoken of him many times, today was their first real meeting.
So…
"Better not," she said, patting her flushed cheeks, and quietly returned to her own apartment.
She tentatively turned on her own faucet, this time water came.
Still hot from exertion and the brief outing, Risa stripped and darted into the shower, lifting her flushed face to enjoy the cool spray.
"Ah… that's nice," Under the cool water, her overheated body instantly felt relief.
She squeezed some body wash into her palm and began to lather and wash.
Perhaps to fill the idle time while scrubbing, or because the water sound was vaguely familiar, Risa's thoughts drifted back to the intense noises she'd heard at Ruri's door.
She couldn't help exclaiming, "He looks so delicate… but he's like a famed warrior, one against three, terrifying, beastlike. Hikari… Hiroshi… from now on call him Silver Hikari or Cannon Hikari…"
"Thinking more… though Hikari-kun's face is beautiful and handsome, his body under the clothes seems solid, filling his clothes out nicely…"
She hadn't noticed before, but in hindsight, the fitness-minded Risa began to appreciate Hikari's physique.
As she thought, she scrubbed herself briskly.
"Damn, I didn't touch the temperature, why's the faucet getting hotter? Ruri-chan should give me a rent discount. This place either has no water or the temperature's wrong; it's killing me with the heat…"
Because the water was so hot she couldn't help recalling the manual transmission driving course she often practiced for… a class she'd studied through many times but never driven on the road in the car portion.
———
Evening fell and the sun set.
The sunset light filtered through sheer curtains, illuminating Ruri, Reina, and Yukina sprawled across the floor in various positions, and Hikari sitting calmly propped on the sofa.
"Want to keep playing?", Hikari looked at the three young women twisted and lying about, and asked.
"Stop… stop for now!", the three girls hurriedly shook their heads.
Maybe they hadn't had a party together in a long time. Since morning, ever since Hikari arrived, Ruri and the others had been clinging to him to play games.
They'd played from morning till evening, only pausing at lunchtime to eat a bit and replenish their energy and fluids, then diving back into gaming.
The three girls knew Hikari, beyond them, also knew many pretty girls like Natsuha and Akane, and so on.
So originally Ruri and the others had planned to wring Hikari dry today so he'd spend more time with them and come to their gatherings more often.
To achieve that they practiced separately at home and sometimes trained together to perfect three-person combo moves.
You could say their confidence to win Hikari over for this Saturday was full, before it officially began.
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