"."
"Then can't you just wait for me to come home?"
"The food I make, can you even eat it? In the end, you just throw it all away, wasting ingredients."
Entering the house, Hoshino Jun changed into slippers at the entrance and looked at the beautiful woman in front of him, wearing a plain white dress with long hair draped over her shoulders, her hands proudly on her hips.
Hoshino Jun was speechless.
"Since when did not knowing how to cook become a symbol of pride?"
She was almost thirty, and a girl at that, yet her cooking was either burnt or undercooked.
Because of her, Hoshino Jun started learning to stir-fry by himself in elementary school, and in less than a week, his cooking skills had already surpassed Asu Mei's.
Since then, the kitchen at home had been used by Hoshino Jun.
Hoshino Jun once suspected that Asu Mei kept him around just to have a chef to manage her life.
No!
Not just a chef, but also a laundry person, a cleaner, and a trash manager.
"How will you live without me in the future, huh?"
Hoshino Jun raised his hand and ruffled Asu Mei's hair.
It was very much like an old father worrying about his daughter.
"Rebelling, are we? I raised you, and now you want to abandon me, is that it?"
Asu Mei stood on her tiptoes, trying to reach back, and Hoshino Jun also stood on his tiptoes.
At one-eighty against one-sixty-two, Asu Mei was utterly defeated.
Then she started to get angry.
"Quick, bend down and let me touch you back."
"No."
Hoshino Jun decisively refused, threw his bag on the sofa, and then carried the large and small bags of ingredients from the table into the kitchen.
Asu Mei chased after him, her fair, tender feet, clad only in slippers, lightly kicked Hoshino Jun's calf, scolding him:
"You unfilial child!"
"Watch me kick you to death!"
Hoshino Jun took the opportunity to turn around and touch her head again.
"Stop messing around, go play somewhere else, be good!"
"What kind of tone is that?!" Asu Mei shouted, puffing out her cheeks, "Just because you're a little taller, what's there to be so arrogant about?"
"Little kids, out! The adults are going to cook."
"Unfilial child, you ungrateful wretch!" Asu Mei was almost driven mad, she pounced and hugged Hoshino Jun's waist, biting his back fiercely.
While biting, her mouth was still muttering: "Just a mere Jun-chan, daring to disrespect Mama, I'll bite you to death."
"Stop taking advantage of me!"
"A mere aunt with no blood relation, daring to impersonate my mother, take that!"
Hoshino Jun was actually enjoying her hug, but hearing that sentence, he couldn't hold back, and with a backhand, he restrained Asu Mei and pushed her out of the kitchen, then quickly closed the kitchen door.
"Bang—!"
The moment the kitchen door closed, Asu Mei's expression suddenly changed, with no trace of anger left.
"How strange."
"Didn't they say that boys in the new era all like to be sons, and when they're intimate with their girlfriends, they like to call them Mama?"
"Why does Jun-chan seem a bit angry instead?"
This afternoon at work, Asu Mei saw a magazine report on a supermarket counter, the cover of which stated that the romantic trends among teenagers in recent years had begun to lean towards older sisters.
This topic caught Asu Mei's attention, so she went into work-slacking mode and squatted by the shelves to study it for a while.
The magazine described many cases, detailing how older women could leverage their charm.
Among them was the observation that contemporary young people in the island nation, due to a severe lack of affection, resulted in girls liking to call their partners 'Papa' and boys liking to call them 'Mama'.
"Is it my problem, or the magazine's problem?"
Unable to figure out why, Asu Mei didn't dwell on the matter. She lightened her footsteps and quietly left home, heading to 403 next door to find Takayanagi Yuki.
Asu Mei still felt that Hoshino Jun coming out of Takayanagi Yuki's house was a bit strange.
Her departure was very quiet.
But Hoshino Jun still noticed it.
Even with the door closed and his hands still operating his phone, Hoshino Jun still heard the slight sound of Asu Mei quietly opening the front door.
"Did my hearing get stronger because my stamina increased by one point?"
It must be.
Otherwise, there's nothing else that could explain it.
"However, even if I hadn't heard it, Auntie is destined not to be able to do anything to me today."
Hoshino Jun's phone screen showed his conversation with Takayanagi Yuki; the moment he chased Asu Mei out, he immediately took out his phone to contact Takayanagi Yuki.
He told Takayanagi Yuki that Asu Mei would very likely come to question her.
And to prevent Takayanagi Yuki from letting anything slip, Hoshino Jun specifically taught her how to explain things to Asu Mei.
Don't listen to Asu Mei's nonsense, just stick to saying that Hoshino Jun went to help her unblock the drain.
Nothing else.
"Ding-dong!"
Suddenly, his phone showed that another person had sent Hoshino Jun a message on LINE.
He withdrew to the message interface to check; it was Kato Nana, Takasaki Yusuke's girlfriend, with whom he had been quite intimate today.
"Hoshino-kun, are you there?"
Starting with "Are you there?" usually means trouble.
But Hoshino Jun was a good person, he didn't want someone else's cute girlfriend to be troubled, so he replied to the message.
"Mm."
A seemingly very cool word.
But in reality, Hoshino Jun had carefully considered Kato Nana's personality before replying this way.
"Is anyone else around you?" Kato Nana asked.
"Get to the point."
"Hoshino-kun, you're a bit fierce."
Hoshino Jun intended to be even fiercer.
The next second, a selfie taken with the front camera appeared.
In the photo, Kato Nana's face was slightly red, her brows and eyes looked pitiful, as if she had suffered a great grievance, her slender body clad only in Cardcaptor Sakura printed underwear.
The bra was not only large but also lightly padded, visibly not thickened with inserts.
Her legs were fair, full, and firm, and her small, delicate feet were as cute as bamboo shoots after rain, with ten clear, round toes painted with red nail polish, like thumb wraps.
Those who appreciate such things would likely want to hold them and taste them.
"Satisfied now?"
Following the photo was Kato Nana's text.
She said: "Hoshino-kun, now that you've received the photo, don't be so fierce next time, okay?"
A woman who says one thing and means another.
If I weren't a bit fierce, it would be a miracle if you sent me a photo.
After a moment of thought, Hoshino Jun saved the photo in his album app, then locked the app, and placed it at the bottom of a hidden folder.
Having done all this, he deleted the photo from the chat history.
Just in case Asu Mei might accidentally see it if she played with Hoshino Jun's phone.
"Didn't I tell you to send me the photo at eleven o'clock?"
"Huh?" Kato Nana seemed a bit surprised: "Didn't Hoshino-kun say it had to be sent before eleven?"
It's not even six o'clock yet.
Is it a bit too early for eleven?
Moreover, Hoshino Jun only asked Kato Nana to send something a bit sexy, but Kato Nana actually took a picture wearing only her underwear.
"Has your boyfriend seen photos like this of you?"
"No." Kato Nana replied: "Yusuke, he would never bully me."
Tsk tsk.
Yusuke wouldn't bully you, so that's why you ran home right after school and immediately sent intimate photos to the fierce Hoshino Jun?
Hoshino Jun suddenly found it amusing, his lips curved slightly, and in a commanding tone, he typed a reply to Kato Nana's message.
"This one doesn't count. At eleven o'clock, remember to send a different one on time."
"You decide the level of exposure."
A friend's book.
Purely for entertainment.