“Hiss~”
Inside Red’s yet-to-open shop, while he was moving furniture, an inexplicable chill suddenly crept over him.
It was as if some beast had its eyes on him, or a hunter’s gun was locked right onto his head.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Tos, who was huffing and puffing as he moved a cabinet nearby, noticed Red frozen in place.
He put down the heavy object with a puzzled look, wiped his sweat, and picked up a banana from the side.
Eating as he spoke, he said, “It’s broad daylight… You can’t possibly be running into evil spirits, can you?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Red shook his head, trying to dispel that strange feeling.
For now, getting the shop ready was more important.
Maybe it was just his imagination?
He mustered his strength to lift the shelf again, his tone full of genuine gratitude.
“Speaking of which, I really have to thank you, Tos. Without your help, I have no idea how long it would’ve taken me to move all this furniture… Hey, are you even listening?”
“Shoot!”
Tos took the leftover banana peel and, aiming at the trash can in the corner, made a dramatic long-distance fadeaway shot.
His form was cool—but he missed.
“What a shame…”
Clapping his hands, Tos flashed a wide grin and patted his chest with gusto, looking particularly generous.
“We’re brothers, no need to say thanks!”
He seemed magnanimous, as if the deep grudge from being sold out by Red at the Dream Club had already vanished without a trace.
Maybe the pleasure of winning that Platinum Succubus Card after a successful challenge had completely soothed the pain of his brother’s ‘betrayal’?
Tos moved closer, nudging Red with his elbow, his face lighting up with a mischievous, gossipy smile.
“Hey, seriously, what’s really going on between you and Litt… these days?”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“Don’t play dumb with me!”
Tos waved his arms dramatically, his expression a mix of disdain and envious jealousy.
“You’ve been living under the same roof for so long, always together like a sweet couple. That progress bar is moving so fast it’s blinding! Who’d believe nothing’s happened?”
Red sighed helplessly and rubbed his brow, his tone tinged with fatigue.
“I’ve said it a hundred times already, it’s not like that at all. Litt and I are just a landlord and tenant, nothing more. Please, stop making wild guesses. You’re just going to make trouble for her for no reason.”
Red didn’t want Litt to be troubled by these rumors.
The smile on Tos’s face instantly froze, and he was silent for several seconds.
His gaze shifted from disbelief, to sudden realization, and finally… to a deep, profound sympathy as he scrutinized Red up and down.
At last, he lowered his voice and spoke with genuine concern.
“Red… don’t tell me you can’t… you know, in that way?”
“…”
Red’s mouth twitched, and he nearly punched Tos’s stupid face when he heard that.
“Say that again and I’ll make you fly!”
“But it doesn’t make sense!”
Tos exclaimed, shocked and incredulous.
“You don’t go to the succubus shop to let off steam, and you have a beautiful roommate right next to you, but you don’t even have a single thought? Bro, those symptoms… what else could it be but a failure of manhood?”
“Bullshit!”
A vein popped out on Red’s forehead.
“I’m just keeping myself in check! Unlike you, whose head is full of nothing but perverted garbage!”
“Ohhh~”
Tos dragged out the sound with a knowing look, slapping his palm as if he understood everything.
“So that’s it! An oddball! The five-fingered maiden truly is the most eco-friendly and chaste lifelong partner! You really have it tough…”
By the end, Tos was even covering his face, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You bastard!”
“Either you’re lying to me, or you really are ginger! Pick one!”
Just as the two were about to come to blows, Red felt that chilling gaze again.
Before he could think about it further, the yet-to-open shop’s door was suddenly pushed open.
A girl in a black priest’s robe, with a sweet, neighborly smile, appeared abruptly in the blinding light at the door.
“Yah~ Red, what a coincidence.”
“This is literally my shop, how is it a coincidence?”
The moment Red saw Letia standing there, all his senses went on alert.
He was sure the predatory gaze from before was almost certainly her doing.
“What do you want?”
“Not much, really.”
Letia walked towards Red, who stepped back with each of her steps, until he was cornered against the wall with nowhere to go.
At that moment, she somehow produced a cup of tea.
“I mainly wanted to offer you some black tea.”
Looking at the cup Letia handed him, Red quietly stretched out his finger and dipped his makeshift detector into the “black tea.”
It was all little red flowers, not a drop of tea in sight.
Looking down again, Red saw Letia’s eyes sparkling with a wicked smile and a predatory glint.
Suddenly, Red broke into a cold sweat.
“You… what do you mean?”
Letia’s gaze grew ever more dangerous, her face inching closer.
When she was close enough, Red heard her whisper:
“What I mean is… your current situation makes it really easy for someone to take advantage of you.”
In that instant, Red didn’t hesitate at all—he turned and ran.
“Tos, save me!”
He didn’t know what Letia was up to, but he was very clear: if he didn’t run, he’d be the one in for a beating.
“Don’t be scared, Red! I’ll teach you—when a female pervert grabs your hand, use one hand up, one hand down, then spin, and after you spin out, give her a hip burst and kick her out! Now you try it.”
“Oh, okay… I’ll try… I’ll try your head! If I dared spin, she’d pull my pants down!!”
Looking at the cross in the center of his shop, then at the beaming Letia in front of him, cold sweat beaded on Red’s forehead.
He felt like he wasn’t facing some ordinary monkey, but one with eyes blazing with some strange light.
Is this thing in heat or something!?
“What do you really want?”
Red tried probing with his words.
For a moment, he felt like he was a weak girl cornered by a burly man, shivering, about to be pinned down and robbed of his precious innocence.
“Drop your feelings.”
Tos kept munching on his snack.
Brother in trouble, he watched on, laughing all the while.
“Um…”
At that moment, Letia suddenly grew bashful.
Her face turned crimson as she clasped her hands behind her back, looking terribly shy.
“Actually… actually, I just wanted to get closer to you, to nurture our relationship.”
Seeing Letia act so coy, Red froze.
The tension in his heart vanished without a trace, but he quickly sensed something was wrong—too late.
Letia, like an octopus, latched onto him with a sinister, creepy laugh.
“A one-night stand is a relationship too~”
“Help, a pervert!!”
Just as Red struggled, he suddenly felt his foot slip, as if he’d stepped on something… In the split second before he hit the ground, he saw it clearly.
A banana peel.
Damn?
Who the hell throws banana peels around the shop?!
Thud!!!
With a heavy thud, the two, still tangled together like conjoined twins, crashed hard onto the solid floor from sheer inertia.
“Ow, ow, ow…”
Red felt his forehead collide hard with the ground.
Clutching his head, he struggled to push himself up, desperate to break free of Letia.
However, when he tried to rise, the feeling under his hands and the sight before his eyes made him freeze instantly.
Huh?
Wait… this position?
At that moment, he was pinning Letia beneath him in a textbook “wall slam, floor version” pose.
His arms propped on either side of her, their faces close enough to feel each other’s breath.
The once rowdy Letia was now eerily silent.
Instinctively, Red looked down.
Her priest’s robe, tousled from the tussle, had several buttons valiantly sacrificed in the struggle, leaving the robe loose and—was that… a band-aid?
A band-aid?
A band-aid in that spot?
What kind of injury needs a band-aid there?
Driven by surprise and curiosity, his fingers seemed to move on their own, precisely pinching the edge of the little white bandage… and gently peeled it off.
Ssssk!
The faint sound of peeling echoed loudly in the shop’s silence.
And the moment it came off, the soft, springy, jelly-like bounce told him exactly what he was touching.
The star of death… seemed to be flashing above his head?
“Uh… uh…”
He moved mechanically, painfully slowly, inching his gaze up to Letia’s little face.
The girl beneath him was as red as a boiled lobster, her body trembling uncontrollably.
“Look! For the record, this was an accident! And it was you who started it…”
“Apocalypse!! (a kind of incantation)”
A dazzling sun slowly rose inside Red’s shop.
Several minutes later, Red’s jacket had vanished, leaving him in only a t-shirt, standing in front of Letia.
“Let me reiterate, I did nothing wrong.”
Although Red had definitely copped a feel, he remained righteously indignant.
After all, it really wasn’t his fault.
Letia had nothing to pin on him either.
Serves her right for trying to pull his pants down from the get-go…
She deserved it!
He turned his head and looked at Letia, who was still catching her breath, her blush lingering.
“Hey! We’ve messed around, we’ve fought, you’ve even unleashed holy light… Can we finally get to the point? Why are you really here?”
Letia composed herself.
No more joking around—she faced Red seriously.
“Alright, I’ll give it to you straight: The prince of the Sunmoon Empire wants to buy your first night.”
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hahaha posting soon!!