After dinner, Shuya quietly loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and let the machine handle the cleaning.
Meanwhile, Shizuka Marikawa carried the two Snowball Beasts over to the living room sofa. She turned on the TV, casually untied the white bath towel wrapped around her body, and lay face-down on the couch. While watching whatever was playing on screen, she ordered the two little fluffballs to hop up and down on her back like living massage tools.
The Snowball Beasts seemed to enjoy it too. The owner and her two pets were having the time of their lives.
Shuya's eyes casually swept across Shizuka's milky-smooth skin before he asked, "Shizuka-nee, you didn't forget to fill the bathtub after your shower, right?"
"Huh?"
Shizuka turned her head to look at him. "No, no. I started running the hot water right before I came out of the bathroom. By now, the tub should be almost full if you go in."
"Perfect." Shuya nodded.
After getting confirmation, he went to his room, grabbed a change of clothes, and headed into the bathroom.
He tossed both his and Shizuka's dirty laundry into the washing machine and started it. Since neither of their clothes were cheap stuff that bled color, there was no need to wash them separately.
Sometimes Shuya was genuinely confused by people who insisted on hand-washing their underwear. Who actually believed their hands could clean better than a machine?
He didn't dwell on it though.
After rinsing off in the shower, he sank into the full bathtub and couldn't help letting out a deep, satisfied groan.
Japanese people really had a special obsession with bathtubs. No matter how small the bathroom was, almost every house had one installed. Still, he had to admit—it felt damn good.
Lying in the hot water, Shuya reached over to the shelf, grabbed his phone, and started browsing the internet.
Before he transmigrated, he had read an infinite flow novel with an interesting setting that stuck with him.
It was about a Main God Space sending different teams into various movie and anime worlds to complete missions.
In a way, it was similar to his current situation—transmigrating into fictional worlds. The difference was he didn't have a Main God or any missions to complete.
What he found fascinating was how, in that novel, to save resources, the Main God would sometimes send two different teams into what appeared to be separate worlds… only for everything to actually be happening in different parts of the same world.
For example, while Andy Dufresne was planning his escape from Shawshank Prison, somewhere in a nearby city, Jigsaw might be setting up his next trap. Or in another city, there could be a man who had a premonition that his plane would explode and got kicked off the flight.
So after transmigrating, Shuya sometimes wondered: when the zombie outbreak from Highschool of the Dead started, would other zombie stories be happening at the same time in different parts of the world?
After all, before he crossed over, zombie apocalypse stories were extremely popular. Some were outright classics — Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, Prototype, and even excellent works like Corpse Brother.
Unfortunately, no matter how much he searched, he couldn't find any information about Umbrella Corporation or anything related to zombie viruses. There wasn't even the slightest sign or rumor.
It really felt like the zombie crisis would just explode out of nowhere, swallowing the city, the country, and eventually the entire world in an extremely short time.
Shuya shook his head, tossing all those random thoughts aside.
After surfing the net for a while longer, he put his phone back on the shelf and submerged his head underwater.
"Fuck!"
The second he came back up and opened his eyes, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Shizuka's face was suddenly right next to the bathtub.
After calming down, Shuya looked at her and asked, "Shizuka-nee, what are you doing in here? You scared the hell out of me."
"I came to wash your back, of course~" Shizuka blinked innocently. "I told you earlier I wanted to bathe with little Shuya, didn't I?"
She hadn't brought the two Snowball Beasts in with her.
That would've been a terrible idea unless they wanted an ice bath.
Snowball Beasts were ice-attribute creatures. They felt wonderfully cool to hug while sleeping — better than air conditioning. But if you put them in hot water, they would instinctively use their ice powers to cool everything down around them.
Looking into Shizuka's clear golden eyes, Shuya suddenly realized something.
She had already showered earlier but deliberately stayed in just a bath towel instead of changing into clothes.
So you planned this from the very beginning, huh?
If this were a galgame, a choice menu would've popped up right about now:
Option 1: Accept Shizuka's request and invite her into the tub → Unlock special CG scene.
Option 2: Reject her and push her out of the bathroom, then lock the door → Unlock "Iron Straight Man" achievement.
Option 3: Say "You like scrubbing things? Then go scrub my shoes" (in a thick French accent) → Unlock "Close to God, Far from Humans" achievement.
Unfortunately, real life wasn't a visual novel.
Before Shuya could even answer, Shizuka happily squeezed herself into the bathtub.
Thankfully, the tub in Shizuka's house was huge. There was more than enough room for both of them without feeling cramped.
After living together for over a year, Shuya obviously hadn't trained any weird eunuch techniques, and Shizuka definitely wasn't ugly. On the contrary, she was a stunning, airheaded beauty with an incredibly seductive older-sister body — a proper 2D heroine.
So honestly, Shuya had already "conquered" her long ago. Over the past year, they had done pretty much everything that could be done… and even taken each other's first times in several ways.
Taking a bath together was really no big deal at this point.
"Taking a bath after some exercise feels so good~" Shizuka sighed contentedly once she settled in.
Shuya gave her a sideways glance. Massage doesn't count as exercise. The ones who actually worked were the Snowball Beasts.
Still, as their bodies pressed together and he felt her smooth skin against his…
"Yeah… it really does feel nice," he admitted.
At the same time, he came to another conclusion.
Shizuka was the type of woman who revealed three heads whenever she got into the water…