“Enough about that, shall we? A normal kiss is fine, isn’t it? You enjoyed that, didn’t you, Mashiro?”
“Well, yes, I did enjoy it…”
“Then that’s settled. More importantly, how much can you afford to pay today?”

Deep kissing still seemed to be something she hadn’t quite resolved herself to.
Amamiya Tōru tried to cut the conversation short.

She’d learnt her lesson.

　If she showed even the slightest resistance, she shouldn’t push too far.

I’d be the one to suffer.
So I obediently dropped the subject.
Personally, I wanted that deep kiss too, and being teased just made me hornier. But being choked off and wetting myself in front of her again? As a young lady, I’d rather avoid that.

“Thirty thousand yen again today, eh?”
“………”

Amamiya Tōru fell silent instantly. The room grew quiet.

“…You’ve been giving me quite a lot of money for a while now. Are you… alright?”

It was true my savings were dangerously close to running dry.
But that was something I didn’t want Amamiya Tōru to know. Something I didn’t want her to know.
　So this time, not wanting her to press further on this topic, I forced a thin smile and replied.

“It’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Hearing that, she fell silent and backed off without protest.
This is how we manage – by carefully discerning the lines we can cross and those we mustn’t.
We’re managing well.

Not interfering too much in each other’s affairs must be the right choice.

　But that’s precisely why we’ve both stopped moving forward, and can’t stop either.
We live our lives pretending not to see this reality.

“Anyway, what shall we do today? A hug? A kiss? …Or shall we finally take things a step further?”

I deepened my smile, trying to play the fool.
Amamiya Tōru frowned again, looking displeased as she regarded me.

“Today… I want a hug.”
“What about your hair?”
“……… Stroke it.”
“Understood.”

After that exchange, we moved onto the bed and began undressing each other’s uniforms. There’s no set rule, but on days I pay over twenty thousand yen, we implicitly agree to end up in our underwear like this.
I finished undressing first.
Amamiya Tōru had already removed her skirt, but her shirt was still half-buttoned.
　Climbing the sheets, I moved behind her.
Then, wrapping my arms around her chest, I stopped her hand as she reached to unbutton her shirt.

“What? Mashiro?”

The obvious question came flying.

“I want to undress you.”
“…Hm?”

As if unsure of my intent, Amamiya Tōru tried to turn around, but I held her back with a hug from behind.
　Then I whispered in her ear.

“Please let me undress you too, in return.”
“……”

The word ‘return’ held immense power only when I was purchasing her time. It allowed me to make Amamiya Tōru obey me like this.
She released her hands from the buttons.

　She’d been unbuttoning from the top, but I did the opposite.
I undid them one by one, starting from the bottom.
The black bra was already visible. And the cleavage.
The shirt obscured what lay beneath, but undoing the buttons from below revealed something else rather lovely.

First, Amamiya Tōru’s beautiful navel came into view.
Though partially obscured by her chest, I shifted the angle to capture it.
　As I undid the buttons, I traced my middle and ring fingers down and up around her navel, mainly circling it.
Her shoulders flinched.
She couldn’t reprimand me now, as I revelled in such subtle reactions.

As I steadily undid more buttons, the black underwear reappeared.
A single button strained to hold back the most prominent part of her body.
I popped that last button off too.

　As I pulled off her shirt, I saw sweat trickling down, as if drawn into the space between her breasts.

I had a brilliant idea.
This was naughty.
I grew even more excited by my own lewdness.

She always tells me this, but I really am a rather ‘naughty’ woman.

“Amamiya-san.”
“What now?”
“May I lick your sweat?”
“Hmph.”

Her body stiffened.
　Her body jerked violently.
She must understand too.

When we shared our first kiss.
It wasn’t me who made the move, it was Amamiya Tōru.
What flipped her switch was probably me licking the sweat from her neck.

Is being licked an addiction?
I don’t know what part of it flips her switch, but once it’s triggered, there’s no stopping us.

　Even so, we’d grown too accustomed to kissing.
We’d lost our innocence to that kind of stimulation.

Then—

All that remained was to fall.

We’d come to crave ever greater stimulation from each other.

That’s the nature we possess.