After finishing buying what they needed, such as a styrofoam signboard and permanent marker, the two had come to a bus stop. Harumi would be taking the bus there home.
“From time to time, you are extremely cute, Sakuraba-senpai”
Koutarou recalled Harumi from a little while ago and began giggling. In response, Harumi's face turned red and she looked down.
“P-Please forget about that”
“No way. I'll remember that for a while whenever I need to laugh”
“Satomi-kun, you meanie...”
With her face dyed red, Harumi cast her glance upwards and appealed, before looking down again. Even her neck had gotten red, and since she was normally so pale, the vivid red really stood out.
I guess I bullied her a little too much... I'll stop it here...
With that in his mind, Koutarou decided to stop speaking, put his luggage on the ground and began spinning his arms in circles.
“What are you doing?”
Noticing those movements, Harumi raised her head. She chased after his arms with her eyes while having a confused look on her face. She was gradually turning back into her normal self.
“Actually, my shoulders have been feeling stiff lately”
Koutarou stopped spinning his arms and spoke to Harumi. He then formed a fist with his right hand and beat at the scruff of his neck.
Koutarou's stiff shoulders wasn't something he had made up for the sake of changing the topic. In fact, lately his shoulders had been getting stiffer. He had been getting in all kinds of trouble this year, so he figured that this was because of fatigue.
“Stiff shoulders...”
After looking at Koutarou's movements for a moment, Harumi finally showed a large smile.
“That's right, Satomi-kun, should I massage your shoulders?”
Harumi felt like her own idea was fun and she smiled as she began grasping the air in front of her.
Harumi's gesture this time around was even more adorable than when she had puffed up her cheeks and Koutarou almost burst out laughing. However, since she had offered to help, he didn't want to get on her bad side again and desperately held back his laughter.
“P-Please do”
“Then please sit down over there, Satomi-kun”
As she cheerfully moved her fingers, Harumi gestured for Koutarou to sit down on the bench by the bus stop. As he made his way there, Koutarou tried his hard to hold back his laughter, and if he let his guard down even for a moment, he would burst out laughing.
“You seem really stiff”
“Pff”
Harumi misinterpreted Koutarou's odd behavior and then moved behind him as he sat down. He was probably lucky that he couldn't see Harumi's expression at this time. If he had, he would almost definitely have burst out laughing and offended her.
“Here I go”
“Okay”
Harumi put her slender fingers on Koutarou's shoulders.
Satomi-kun's back...
Harumi stopped moving. With the stocky shoulders and wide back in front of her, she was driven by an urge to hug him. When she imagined embracing Koutarou and whispering into his ear that she loved him, Harumi's heart began racing and her face turned red. Her body stiffened and she was unable to move.
“Senpai?”
Confused that Harumi had stopped moving, Koutarou turned around to look at her. And his carefree glance freed her from her frozen state.
“Is something wrong?”
“Uhm, it's been a while since I massaged someone's shoulders... so I was wondering how I should do it...”
“Ah, feel free to be rough. I am built pretty sturdy”
Koutarou smiled and looked forward again. He didn't seem to have notice Harumi's situation at all.
“Okay, then...”
Seeing that, Harumi felt relief and she began to move her fingers. Since he said that she could put some strength into it, Harumi poured quite a bit of force into her fingers.
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“Sakuraba-senpai, that kind of tickles”