A Post-Modern Literature Club (cont.) II

“I’m done with my bath.”

Yukimura stepped out of the bathroom.

With just a towel—wrapped around her waist.

“Ahhhhh!”

“What a shame, I don’t have a change of clothes,” she mused.

“Your towel, your towel is slipping!”

“Oh, is it?”

She threw a hand into her hair as she glanced downwards, spraying water droplets all over the place. And the scent of my shampoo.

“You’re a filthy liar, You-kun. The towel is clearly tightly wrapped around my maiden hips.”

“Doesn’t that mean it slipped from somewhere else?!”

“What drivel. So men can walk around like this, but not me? And just because I happen to possess double-X chromosomes?”

“This has nothing to do with gender equality!”

The half-naked Ice Queen ignored my comment, instead gesturing for me to move with her still-moist hands. I took this as her final warning that she did not care about modesty—and so I began to stare at the ceiling.

“Step aside, I'm going to the kitchen.”

“You mean my room.”

“How crude—absolutely not! That place has no food left.”

“That’s seriously what you’re concerned with?!”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve already washed my hands,” she said in a completely serious tone.

It seemed that her insatiable lust for chips had also short-circuited her brain—or perhaps it occurred in the opposite sequence. The chicken and the egg. Nevertheless, it was clear a compromise had to be made, and it wasn’t going to be on her end.

So I did. I gathered up all her clothes strewn around me, balled them up in a hurried manner, and then plopped them in her hands.

“Senpai, I’ll get you all the snacks in the kitchen, so please just put these on.”

“Not yet. First, explain why you're not looking at me.”

I wasn’t sure what she expected. 

Yukimura was right in my face—so any attempt to make eye contact would’ve resulted in looking at her assets… and I’m not an indecent person.

“Can't you tell?”

“It's rude to not look at someone while making a request.”

“You're telling me that? You of all people?!”

“If you don’t want to utilise your eyes, I will blissfully eradicate them from your person.”

If not from her tone, you could tell by the way she wedged in unnecessary synonyms that she was dead serious.

So only because she wanted me to...

“Fine, I’ll look at you.”

“That’s more like it. I was starting to think I shan't negotiate with a terrorist.”

“...Just give me a moment to prepare.”

I had to steel myself. Or rather, I had to avoid steeling myself.

So in an apprehensive manner, I brought my gaze to match hers—and it turned out the clothes I’d dumped onto her blocked out what should’ve been her bare chest.

Thus it wasn’t that bad.

Maybe that’s why she decided to drop everything on the floor, including the towel.

“Gaaahhhh!”

“Oh, you don’t like it?”

“What is wrong with you?!”

“You’re really on edge, huh?”

“Why would you ever do something like that?!”

“Maybe you should have set some rules first, then.”

“Not like you would have followed them!”

“Hmph. You’re such a—”

Beep.

Her insult got interrupted by something that wasn’t my voice, and it sounded eerily like an electronic lock opening via keycard. Probably because it was. That was a really bad attempt at building suspense.

So I reacted like how any normal person would react to their roommate coming back— 

I shoved her into the bathroom without restraint.

“Kyaaah!”

“I’m not sorry! Put your clothes on!”

Kicking in all the dropped articles after her, I slammed the bathroom door shut.

Then, with my back pressed against the entrance to Yukimura’s long-overdue jail cell, I looked towards my spartan living room—and there I saw a very handsome guy strolling in with a duffel bag strapped across his chest.

Watanabe Yousuke, Class 1-B.

“Yo, Mizuhara-kun.”

His arrival made me feel extreme anxiety.

Not because he was about to find out I trapped girls in bathrooms, but because the way he looked was exceptionally damaging to my self-confidence.

Watanabe was like a character designed for the sole purpose of ticking losers off. Everything from his soccer jersey, to his athletic build, to even his perfectly in-place hair was the antithesis to all modern rom-com protagonists out there… and me.

“You-kun, who’s that? His voice actor sounds ten times cooler than yours.”

Somehow—and also unfortunately—Yukimura was still conscious after my assault.

“Watanabe,” I said.

A response that flowed with either conversation thread.

It soon revealed itself to be a poor one, since it apparently triggered yet another primal instinct of Yukimura’s. Thank whichever architect that decided to make the doors in Kitazawa dorms outward-swinging.

“He sounds like a hunk. I want to see what your master looks like,” she said from the bathroom.

"No."

"You're so selfish, You-kun. But it makes sense, since your top has such an attractive voice. I wonder if the two of you have ever done this or that before..."

I mentally blocked out her fujoshi terminology for the sake of my sanity.

As the nymphomaniac rambled, the jock in question looked progressively more puzzled. “Is it just me, or do you hear a girl’s voice?”

“You’re just tired from training, probably.”

“Hmm. Maybe. It was a super tough 11-a-side versus the 2nd and 3rd years, dude. Hold on a sec, let me put down my gear.”

The man dropped his duffel bag and then started stretching his upper body.

The ‘dude’. The ‘gear’.

I had no time to feel impressed at his casual use of jock slang, because a mental outburst was taking place in the isolation ward behind me.

It somehow evolved to include threats—like how she was going to dunk my phone in water or run the taps until the bathroom flooded if I didn’t let her out. Just like how an actual terrorist would negotiate.

“Mizuhara-kun, my dude… I swear I’m hearing things.”

“We’re not. I mean, you’re not. Let’s all calm down. And by ‘us’, I really just mean ‘you’, since I am calm.”

“Right. Why are you all pressed up against the bathroom door, by the way? A new exercise?”

To Watanabe, it probably looked like I was doing something akin to an air-sit, with the added element of having my arms spread across the doorframe. Strenuous exercise indeed.

“Yes, and it’s called 'radical psychotherapy'."

“Sounds cool. Now I’m not trying to be unsupportive—exercising is good for your body—but could you do it using your door? I want to use the toilet.”

“I can’t move. The website said to hold this stretch for ten minutes.”

Whatever website I’d just imagined was evidently a terrible source of fitness advice.

“Oh, it’s a stretch? Ten minutes is definitely too much, then. And your form looks stiff—here, let me help.”

Then the jock started walking towards me. Slowly and confidently, as all jocks do.

I should’ve known better than to lie about exercising to a guy that just finished soccer training, but you couldn’t blame me for being flustered in that situation. I was caught between a set of rock hard abs and a metaphorically hard place.

And thus with no good decision in sight, I chose to steel myself.

“Actually, Watanabe. I suddenly feel like taking a dump now. Bye!”

I opened the door faster than he could say ‘huh’ for comedic effect and flung myself into the bathroom.