Resource Optimization: The Mage and Cleric's Almost-Kiss

The first rule of survival for a retired player is to never let your guard down, not even when you're offline. Sora learned this the hard way.

The sun was just beginning to show itself through the windows. That was the signal for disaster to make itself present in the house.

In Sora's bed, which until a few days ago was normally cold and lonely, was beginning to feel unusually... heavy and warm.

He could feel something soft and nice-smelling pressing against his right side, while at the same time feeling warm breathing against his neck. That sensation sent a chill down his spine.

With fear running through his system, Sora slowly turned his head to the right. There, Shiori was fast asleep, using his arm as a pillow. However, what Sora could see was that she was wearing one of his spare shirts, so big that it revealed more than the coexistence protocol imposed by Mochi would allow.

"W-well... I highly doubt Mochi would permit this situation, right?" Sora thought, trying to avoid panicking due to Shiori's proximity.

"But... if she's here, why do I feel something heavier on my left arm?" Sora, growing more worried about the situation, slowly moved his eyes to the other side, and his heart suddenly raced.

There was Mochi. The household administrator, the girl who last night had set a boundary between Shiori's zone and ours.

Mochi was clinging to his left arm as if it were a valuable video game item she didn't want to let go. She slept with a triumphant smile, murmuring something about "husbands and breakfast buffs."

Sora, barely trying to understand when he had gotten into this mess, thought: "Is this some kind of reward or curse? If Mochi wakes up and sees Shiori in this situation, there could be a confrontation with me right in the middle."

Sora started breaking out in a cold sweat. His mental resistance bar was dropping simply from the stress of the situation he found himself in. He needed to execute S-rank evasion maneuvers.

"Both girls are vulnerable. I have to seize the opportunity and escape with the boss that I am," he thought to himself while begging for some mental peace.

Slowly, Sora began to slide his arms outward. First the left, replacing it with a long pillow that Mochi immediately hugged with a satisfied sigh. Then the right; for Shiori, he used a small cushion that she pressed against her chest, murmuring something about the warmth of her laptop.

Finally, after much effort, Sora managed to roll out of bed and position himself on the floor without making a sound. And without looking back, he crawled slowly to the bathroom and then gently closed the door.

[In the Bed - 10 Minutes Later]

The sunlight was beginning to illuminate the room more strongly.

Mochi remained submerged in a dream of the perfect wife while feeling that her beloved's warmth was beginning to move. Meanwhile, Shiori unconsciously began searching for her source of human heat that kept her warm.

However, with Sora out of the way, both girls had gotten so close that their heads were almost touching.

"Sora... You smell different," Mochi whispered while slowly opening her eyes with a tender, sincere smile, which only made her try to get closer to her future husband's lips for a good morning kiss.

"Tank... the heat you emit feels so soft," Shiori whispered while beginning to move by pure instinct in the direction where Sora was supposed to be.

Both girls' faces were mere millimeters apart. Mochi had closed her eyes and leaned in, waiting for contact, while Shiori did the same. Just as their lips were about to brush, the smell of broccoli and shampoo (Mochi) collided with the smell of cold coffee and ramen (Shiori).

Both girls opened their eyes instantly.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH?!" The scream was so intense that the birds outside the building flew away.

Both Mochi and Shiori jumped back with absolute terror, while Shiori wrapped herself in the sheet like sushi, and Mochi pulled out a wooden spoon from who-knows-where.

"K-k-k-knockoff Mage!" Mochi shouted, wiping her mouth with her pajama sleeve. "What were you doing trying to take my lips?! That's Sora's private territory and no one else's!"

"Y-you were the one who got close, perverted Cleric!" Shiori replied, adjusting her glasses with trembling hands. "M-my system detected a proximity threat and activated the defense protocol! I almost died from fright because of you!"

"THAT'S MY HUSBAND'S CLOTHES!?" A scream echoed throughout the house.

For his part, Sora, who was already in the shower, tried to ignore the chaos that had formed in his room.

20 Minutes Later, the newly formed Sora guild walked through the streets toward Shinomiya Academy.

The atmosphere was... tense, to say the least.

Sora walked a few steps ahead, pretending not to know the two girls following him to maintain his low profile. Behind him, Shiori walked with her head down and one hand holding a large bump on her head, courtesy of Mochi's Purification Spoon.

"I can't believe I took a critical hit from that perverted cleric," Shiori whispered under her breath. "She caught me with my defenses down."

"You deserve it for being a husband-stealing knockoff mage!" Mochi shouted angrily, walking with her uniform impeccable but at the same time emanating an aura of contempt toward Shiori. "I demand a logical explanation for this before my patience bar hits zero and I exterminate you with my staff!"

Shiori adjusted her glasses while letting out a long sigh. "I already told you... it was a location error," Shiori tried to explain while glancing sideways at Sora. "Around 3 in the morning while I was using my computer, my body suffered an error and I spilled some coffee on my only clean clothes."

"And you think that's a good excuse to sneak into my beloved's room!?" Mochi protested with an intense look while pulling what appeared to be a wooden spoon from her bag.

"No... it's just that I didn't want to make noise using his washing machine and wake up the cleric's judgment," Shiori continued talking while remembering everything she had been through during the night. "I had entered to get one of Sora's shirts so I wouldn't sleep dirty, but when I tried to leave the room, my energy dropped to zero and my system felt like it was leaving my body, so I had to throw myself onto the tank's bed. It wasn't a planned attack, it was just... resource optimization."

Sora, who was listening to everything from ahead, felt a twitch in his right eye and thought to himself: "Is she really expecting me to believe that? I perfectly remember how tightly you were clinging to me like an albino sea otter... Well, at least Mochi didn't disintegrate her right there. I guess that bump on her head is a small price to pay for infiltrating at night."

As soon as the group crossed the entrance gate, Sora activated his invisibility protocol and separated from both girls instantly, hoping each would go to their classroom. He just wanted to reach his seat and disappear among the crowd.

However, the server of reality had other plans.

In the distance down the hallway, a group of girls was watching from around the corner without Sora noticing.

A girl who was neither Mochi, nor Shiori, and to his bad luck, wasn't the student council president either, but someone far more chaotic who would make his life even more impossible.