By the time the woman pushed the school bus door open from inside, and Tsukiyomi Fuya stepped out clutching the white kitty blanket the girl had draped over her, dusk was already drawing near.
The woman's expression still looked rather drowsy.
Her moon-white locks were a touch disheveled, and those pale-purple eyes swept blankly over her surroundings and the sky.
For Tsukiyomi Fuya, that alone was enough to tell the time.
She'd practically slept through the entire day.
On any ordinary day that would have been no problem at all, but... today's circumstances were special.
Today was the first day of the investigation into Tokyo Bay that she was leading, and she'd gone and wasted a whole day of it.
Tsukiyomi Fuya couldn't help feeling a little guilty.
Su Yuzu watched Tsukiyomi Fuya.
After learning from Akiyama Yo just how much a mobile building-vehicle like this cost to build, and... that the mobile astronomical observatory beside her belonged entirely to the woman before her—
Tsukiyomi Fuya's image in Su Yuzu's heart was no longer as simple as a good-looking, powerful, XP-hitting big sister.
Rich... she's a rich big sister!
Even Tsukiyomi Fuya's dress, with its too-low neckline and its too-short hem, and that cream-white woolen overcoat—once Su Yuzu had found out the price, all she wanted to do was cling for dear life to Tsukiyomi Fuya's thigh.
Sure enough——
Big sisters who play with lenses... especially astronomical lenses, are all rich big sisters.
Although... in truth, for the Soga clan backing Su Yuzu, a number like that wasn't really all that outrageous.
It was just that, growing up in the Soga clan, Yuzu had never really paid much attention to such figures.
After leaving the Soga clan, Su Yuzu had once again fallen into hardship, having to pinch every penny within Keigunen Private Academy, buying all sorts of supplies with points and scholarships just to scrape by.
That was precisely why she felt a kind of 'longing' toward Tsukiyomi Fuya.
The girl gazed at Tsukiyomi Fuya.
The woman, freshly woken, still wore a half-dazed, half-awake expression.
Her long moon-white hair was lifted gently by the sea breeze.
The instant those slightly hazy, pale-purple eyes raised their brows always gave Su Yuzu a feeling of something almost tender and exquisitely charming.
On top of that... the cream-white woolen overcoat on Tsukiyomi Fuya was draped on only loosely.
The left side was held up almost entirely by the crook of her arm.
Beneath the slipping woolen coat, the lines of the woman's shoulders were rounded, her collarbone slender.
Because of the way she cradled the blanket... those overly soft contours were heaped up into a downright eye-catching shape.
However——
Even in such an unguarded posture as this.
The impression Tsukiyomi Fuya gave Su Yuzu still carried not the slightest hint of anything lascivious; on the contrary——
Like a gorgeously shifting, beautiful nebula, or the armless Venus de Milo bared from the waist up, the woman gave Su Yuzu the feeling of some art-house film of inscrutable meaning.
All right——
"I just lust after her body, lust after her Cash-Powered ways."
"I'm being honest."
"I want Tsukiyomi big-big-big-big-big-big sis."
Tsukiyomi Fuya sat down among the girls, still cradling Yuzu's blanket.
Soga Yura was tearing at her sleeve beneath the plain white tabletop—Yuzu... wuwuwu... Teacher Tsukiyomi's whole body... is slowly turning into Yuzu's scent.
"Thank you... for your blanket." Tsukiyomi Fuya held Su Yuzu's blanket and looked at the short-haired girl before her.
The girl's crimson eyes shone dazzlingly like gemstones, set off by the dusk sunlight.
Tsukiyomi Fuya had gradually come to recognize how to quickly tell apart her own students Soga Yura and Su Yuzu.
She just had to pay attention to the girls' figures and hair.
Very simple.
"Once I've washed it... I'll give it back to you."
"It's fine~ Tsukiyomi-senpai." Su Yuzu sat between Soga Yura and the little rabbit, propping her chin in both hands and tilting her head slightly as she looked at Tsukiyomi Fuya before her. "Just think of it as a little greeting gift for you, senpai—it's not anything valuable anyway."
There was about the woman a serene, easygoing air—of having watched the clouds roll and unfurl to the full, of a sky brimming with stars.
Tsukiyomi Fuya was momentarily stunned.
"Sen... pai...?"
Originally the woman had wanted to say that, by her age, being the girl's mother wouldn't be any stretch at all.
But... what woman would ever be willing to call herself old.
Unless——
The one across from her was a roommate.
Then there'd be nothing for it but a single "call me daddy."
The way Tsukiyomi Fuya saw it, even if Little Yuzu were to address her, she'd probably just call her "Teacher" directly, the same as Soga Yura.
Tsukiyomi Fuya did quite like that feeling of being earnestly called "Teacher" by a girl.
But... she looked at Su Yuzu.
[Senpai...]
She didn't seem to dislike it, either.
Seeing Tsukiyomi Fuya frozen like that, however, Yuzu instead broke into a smile. "Senpai..."
"Don't you like being called that?"
"Then... Sister Tsukiyomi?" Su Yuzu looked at Tsukiyomi Fuya with what seemed like an easygoing, breezy air.
She was frank——
She was honest.
She simply lusted after Tsukiyomi Fuya's character art, simply lusted after Tsukiyomi Fuya's body.
Had this been in a game... Su Yuzu would probably have already used her Cash-Powered ways to pull Tsukiyomi Fuya to full, then spent cash burning stamina to grind the Favorability Gift stages, all to max out Tsukiyomi Fuya's Favorability. To see the pretty big sister's bashful poses.
But this was reality.
Su Yuzu still... had a fair bit of self-control... right?
"Si... sister!!!" Before Tsukiyomi Fuya could even leap up, Soga Yura was the first to start morphing into a .°.(°).°· kind of shape.
But... upon seeing the wickedness in the girl's crimson eyes, Soga Yura quickly realized that the girl's heart was surely once again brimming with a bellyful of mischief.
Su Yuzu actually didn't much like calling her Sister Tsukiyomi~
It always made her feel too distant.
Once they got a bit closer, calling her Sister Fuya directly seemed like it would be a little more fun.
"Let's just go with senpai after all——" Su Yuzu's expression suddenly turned very solemn, and she bowed respectfully toward Tsukiyomi Fuya. "I, too, yearn for the starry sky, you know."
"Stars that twinkle with ten thousand rays of light."
"A vast, resplendent starry sky..."
"It's so very beautiful."
"I want... to possess the stars too."
Perhaps it was precisely because of the descent of the Catastrophe that the starry sky of this world was so incomparably brilliant and resplendent.
Such a brilliant starry sky, Su Yuzu had only ever seen before in long-exposure photographs at the planetarium.
But in this world... it seemed clearly visible even to the naked eye.
One of Su Yuzu's favorite things as a child was to nestle together with Soga Yura and watch the sky full of stars twinkle.
This was also... the reason Soga Yura would go on to take Tsukiyomi Fuya's course as an elective.
"There's no problem at all——" Tsukiyomi Fuya rose to her feet and unfolded the mobile base-vehicle beside the girls.
No matter how many times she watched it, Su Yuzu felt she'd never tire of it.
That feeling, as though heavy machinery were transforming, was insanely cool.
"Yuzu... can watch the stars together with me."
Then... Tsukiyomi Fuya cast a glance at Soga Yura beside Yuzu, who wore the look of someone worried her little sister was about to be lured away.
"Mm."
"Little Yura can come too."
Soga Yura nodded, and then suddenly realized something was off.
"Why is Teacher adding a 'Little' in front of my name!!!"
"I'm the big sister!"
"I am!"
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