We’re discussing otakus and swimsuits?!

“Kei-kun! Rise and shine like a sunflower!”

Those are the words that shake me out of my peaceful slumber. Koyori is already awake and cheerful - and it looks like she had the decency to dress herself up before waking me today.

“Morning…”

Yeah, I’m not much of a morning person. Koyori apparently stole my blanket to wake me up and now she’s dancing across my room in a whirlwind of yellow and brown.

Ah, there goes the sunflower outfit she showed me the other day.

Today she’s wearing a yellow tank top with a fairly short brown dress that reveals good portions of her thighs but isn’t short enough to be considered risky. With some vivid imagination and some spinning movement, Koyori indeed resembles the sight of a sunflower, and her character definitely contributes to this.

After drinking a coffee - not a black coffee this time, I feel properly awake and ready to take on whatever challenges Koyori may hurl my way today. To be honest, I haven’t really thought up a list of things we could do over the course of the next few days. Unless Koyori decides to become the first mate to steer the ship of our love story toward a new adventure or whatever, I’ll just have to wing it. Kinda like I’ve been doing it for the past two days. Then again, Koyori influenced me so much that you can’t really call this ‘making a decision by myself’.

Back in my room, Koyori approaches me with a most unusual question.

“Kei-kun, how did you become an, uhm, what was it called again? Otoko or something? I can’t remember, hehehe.”

The girl snickers at her terrible memory while I guffaw at how badly she managed to misspell it.

“Otaku is the word you’re looking for, silly,” I enlighten her. “And, no, that’s not really something to be proud of. Being an otaku, I mean.”

“What’s so bad about it?” she inquires, recollecting some memories of the previous day. “You’re playing games and you have a lot of stories that are either interesting or weird but you’re reading at least, right? Not everyone likes to read.”

Technically speaking, I don’t like reading either. However, due to how poorly most animes are made, consuming the source material is usually the superior choice. Regardless, Koyori’s picture of my ‘profession’ is slightly oversaturated.

“Well, you’re not wrong but it’s still a useless hobby from the standpoint of society,” I explain somewhat darkly as my self-consciousness resurfaces. Koyori has managed to bury a good chunk of it but our conversation digs some of these emotions back up.

“Playing games and immersing yourself in all kinds of virtual fantasy worlds that do not really exist is great but ‘normal’ people see people like me as a weirdo. I hardly leave my room most of the time when you’re not around, I hardly talk to anyone unless I really have to. In a way, you could say I’m escaping the real world, spending my allowance on all… this.”

I gesture around randomly to all the merchandise adorning my room.

“Others spend their money to sing karaoke, buy themselves nice clothes, or for their hobbies. I spend my money on this stuff. Unless you value stuff like this - as I do, this is practically worthless and a waste of money. Well, that’s the common view people have about people like me anyway,” I sigh while Koyori is mustering a game curiously that caught her interest. “If you think otherwise, I’m happy about it but don’t give me more praise than I deserve - and please don’t become someone like me, I beg you.”

“Haha, do not worry, I think most of these things are a little too weird for Yori-Chan anyway,” the girl chuckles, plucking the game from the shelves to observe it thoroughly. “Like this for example!”

Oh, good lord…

Koyori had to pick one of the most risky eroges from my shelf, shoving its cover into my face. Several middle school-aged girls are shown in rather questionable poses, wearing only swimsuits. It’s a dating sim I really enjoyed when it came out recently. Koyori is clearly weirded out by the cover, however, which is arguably still more safe than the content of the game itself.

"You really do like seeing girls in swimsuits, Keiichi."

I can hardly deny that, right?

Koyori’s words sound ambiguous enough to both act as an accusation and a fact. I feel embarrassed but I know it's futile to deny the obvious.

"Well, I'm a guy, I can't help it. It's not my fault girl swimsuits are designed like… this!" I answer, my face feeling like it’s about to grow a red hue very soon if the topic doesn’t change.

"Would you like to see me in a swimsuit then?” the girl prompts me with a pretty good impression of the main character’s pose on the cover.

What kind of question is that even!?

Now I’m definitely blushing as the yellow top and the short brown dress are replaced by a frilly bikini in the backspace of my mind before I can block the generation of such images. Koyori inquires me cutely, and she doesn’t care about the panic and anxiety the emergence of swimsuits in our conversation has caused. The way Koyori goggles at me, still performing that silly pose, I know for a fact that I’ve already lost before even playing the game.

“Do I really have to answer?” I moan but Koyori’s puppy stare leaves me with little choice. “Okay then… Maybe I do? Just a little though…”

“Yay!” the girl cheers though she quickly realizes that things aren’t as easy as they sound. "Yori-chan never really learned what Keiichi thought of her underwear but maybe a swimsuit won't make his nose bleed?"

Oh, how considerate of you, Yori-chan…

"Neither of them should be worn for the sake of showing them off, you know?" I deadpan, feeling really awkward. How did we even arrive at such a topic, seriously?!

“Clothes aren’t worn to show them off either but people still do it all the time,” Koyori riposts, taking this as a chance to showcase her cute outfit again.

“YOU want to show your outfits off,” I tell her in a chide though I’m making sure not to sound like I’m accusing her of having double standards. Perhaps that’s why I decide to give her a more thorough answer.

"Well, if I had to choose, a swimsuit would be easier for me. Panties are something you hide, swimsuits are… okay to look at? Actually, forget what I said!!!"

Can we stop talking about this before I die in shame?!

"Kei-kun is contradicting himself…" Koyori is making a thoughtful face, looking down on herself.

Could she have gotten the wrong idea? I should probably make sure she didn’t.

"Koyori, don't mistake my weird habits for something you should replicate!” I exclaim in an urgent manner. "You should value your, uhm, privacy more seriously. These are things you only purposefully show a very close person!"

"But you are a very close person, Keiichi," the girl riposts immediately.

Koyori’s words are like honey, sweetening my day in a blink of an eye. I pause momentarily, petrified by her brutally honest and correct statement.

"Someone even closer than…" I try to argue with her but that’s when a thought stops my line of reasoning. What are we exactly? Lovers? Hardly…

"Kei-kun, you wanted to marry me, remember? Isn't that the closest you can be?" Koyori prompts me, reminding me painfully of the silly carefreeness of my younger self.

"There's an entire ocean between those two things, and, besides, I was seven!" I exhale in an overdramatic fashion, making Koyori chortle at my exaggeration.

"Well, you did promise…" Yori prompts me cutely once she’s recovered.

Well, yeah. I did. Crap.

"A-anyway, about the swimsuit…” I’m well aware that I’m changing the topic from dangerous to even more dangerous but, right now, swimsuits seem like the lesser evil as opposed to the likes of marriage and all that crap. "I think a swimsuit would suit you well, Yori…"

At least, that’s my honest, unaltered opinion. Cute girls naturally look cute in a swimsuit, right? I’m not telling her, though.

“In that case, Yori-Chan will do her best to show that she looks cuter in a swimsuit than those girls in your weird game, hehehe!” Yori proclaims.

Guess she’s got that stuck in her mind now. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t actually mind going swimming with her. There’s a water park in town we could go to. Should I ask her? I went there a lot when I was little…

"Wanna go swimming then?” I ask her a little shyly. “There's a water park in the neighboring town…"

“Oh yes! Please take Yori-Chan out for a swim!” she celebrates with her stereotypical cheerfulness, wagging up and down in excitement before a sudden thought causes her to freeze.

"Kei-kun? There's just a tiny problem…” she admits somewhat nervously.

Wait, could she be unable to swim?!

Thankfully, her reason isn’t nearly as grave but nonetheless problematic.

"I do not have a swimsuit."