Hey there. I’m Ryouta, your average gloomy otaku.
Normally, a guy like me spends his after-school hours hitting up Anumate or rotting in his room, playing games and watching anime. That was my life until recently, anyway... but well, a lot has happened since then.
"I need to... figure out how to reply to these LIMEs."
I was currently buried in the task of responding to messages.
The second I’d walked through the door and collapsed into the gaming chair in my room to scroll through my phone, I realized the notifications had been piling up. Usually, I only get LIMEs from my parents or my older sister, so I just ignore them. This time, however, the senders were a different story.
『Ichinose: Hey, I want to talk about the movie we're going to see.』
『Miyama: Look, Ryouta! I found a pill bug on my way home from work!』
『Kuroki sent an image.』
The messages were coming in one after another from the three girls who made up the Beautiful Girl Trio—the absolute peak of the school's social caste.
There was no way I could just ignore them.
『Ichinose: I was too embarrassed to go see Breast-Kyun the Movie alone... but you’ll go with me, right, Izumiya?』
『Miyama: Ah! This time it’s a tadpole! It’s gross-cute!』
『Kuroki sent an image.』
The notifications from the Beautiful Girl Trio showed no signs of stopping.
Until three days ago, the only person I ever exchanged LIMEs with was my otaku friend, Tanaka. Now, in the span of just seventy-two hours, I was in a situation like some kind of pick-up artist with three girls blowing up my phone.
(They say if you don't see a man for three days, you should look at him with new eyes—well, this was definitely that.)
Man, replying is such a pain...
Actually, it was more that I was a total loner and terrified of accidentally sending a creepy reply.
(For now, I should probably keep the emojis to a minimum. And I definitely shouldn't use anime stickers for anyone except Ichinose...)
Life is unpredictable. Who would have thought that three top-tier beauties would be acting like attention-seekers, spamming LIMEs to a gloomy otaku who can’t even hold a proper digital conversation?
『Ichinose: I want to go to Anumate after the movie. It’s hard to go in there alone, too.』
『Miyama: Waaah! Look! A rainbow! A rainbow! Can you see it from your window, Ryouta? The rain stopped, so there’s a rainbow in the sky!!』
『Kuroki sent an image.』
Let’s see... Ichinose was talking about our movie plans, and Miyama was stuck in a loop of elementary school-tier small talk. And then there was Kuroki... what was her deal?
Rui Kuroki had been sending nothing but images for a while now.
As if she didn't already have an ominous aura about her, why was she sending LIMEs like this? These weren't dangerous images or anything, were they?
(For now, I'll just long-press the chat so I can see them without triggering a 'Read' receipt... wait, what!?)
The moment I previewed the chat with Kuroki, my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
"W-What the hell is this...!"
The images Kuroki had sent were selfies of her wearing her track and field uniform.
Maybe she’d taken them after a meet; her usually loose black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was showing significantly more skin than usual. The tight green fabric of the track and field uniform clung to Rui Kuroki’s slender frame.
Due to the nature of the uniform, there was no fabric over her midriff, fully exposing the narrow waist and the incredibly beautiful curves of the "Perfect Superhuman," Rui Kuroki. Despite being in the track and field club, her toned abdomen was surprisingly fair, as if the sun hadn't even touched her.
And above all else—there was her belly button, peeking out.
I couldn't help but fixate on it.
If it had been a standard athletic photo, I wouldn't have cared, but this "belly-peek" made me gulp. It was because the vertical line of her navel had a certain... eroticism to it. It made me want to trace it with my finger. Since you don't usually see it, catching a glimpse of it felt no different than catching a glimpse of a nipple; it was only natural to find it sexy.
(W-What kind of lewdness is this...?)
I hadn't looked at Rui Kuroki sexually until now, but seeing this photo made me harbor some very strange feelings for her belly button. My teeth clenched as I stared at the beautiful line of her navel, which was playing havoc with my fetishes.
"N-No... if I get worked up over a selfie like this, I lose...!"
My finger, which had been long-pressing the screen, accidentally slipped and tapped the message, opening the chat room fully.
(Shit, the Read receipt!)
It was too late. A new LIME message from Kuroki popped up instantly.
『Kuroki: Ah, you read it ♡ How do I look in my track and field uniform? Am I cute?』
Kuroki sounded like she was in an excellent mood.
(Dammit... if I mark it as Read, I'm playing right into her hands. I messed up.)
Driven by her obsession with perfection, Rui Kuroki was trying to break me. Since I was the only boy from our middle school who hadn't confessed to her, she was determined to make me fall for her and surrender.
(Whatever happens, I can't let her realize that I’m getting excited over her belly button.)
『Kuroki: You can even save those three photos if you want. I have no way of knowing how you might use them, Izumiya-kun, so don't you worry ♡』
She was practically inviting me to use them for "personal time."
So, this was what people meant by a "lewd selfie," huh?
(...Setting aside whatever she thinks I'm going to do with these, for now, I'm muting her.)
I set Kuroki’s LIME to mute and tossed my phone onto the bed.
"Seriously... who would’ve thought the great Rui Kuroki would be this aggressive about trying to seduce me?"
To anyone else, just sharing an umbrella with her would have been a once-in-a-lifetime event. If Ichinose hadn't interrupted us earlier, I wondered how that conversation would have ended.
(Wait, come to think of it, I think Kuroki was about to say something before Ichinose showed up...)
"Ever since that day... or something like that."
What did she mean by "that day"? Did something happen back in middle school?
"I haven't the slightest clue... but wait. Tanaka might know something."
I decided I’d try asking Tanaka about it tomorrow.