All Beautiful Girls Want to Stick with Me

Even now, when she thought back on it, Kotomi Izumi still felt rather helpless. Originally, she had not wanted Yukino Yukinoshita to learn about her relationship with Yui so soon.

There were many reasons for this, but the most straightforward one in Kotomi’s heart was—before successfully making Yukino fall for her, she absolutely could not let Yukino know she and Yui were dating. If Yukino found out, the difficulty of pursuing her would definitely double!

That was the simplest and also the most crucial reason.

Originally, Kotomi Izumi had planned everything perfectly. After successfully winning over Yukino Yukinoshita, she would find an opportunity to tell both Yui and Yukino, then slowly start trying to make them accept the fact that she was dating both of them at the same time.

As for why she had not included Megumi Kato in those plans?

Because Kotomi Izumi still did not want to die young...

There was no need to even guess the odds. Having already been ”axed” once by Megumi Kato before, Kotomi understood perfectly clearly that the moment she dared reveal her dream of building a harem to Megumi, she would instantly be testing whether she could survive death itself.

She probably would not even finish speaking before Megumi Kato swung a sharp woodcutter’s axe gleaming with cold light, a gorgeous spray of blood blooming through the air as Kotomi’s head and body separated.

Telling her eventually was inevitable. Kotomi Izumi’s ultimate dream was to openly embrace everyone she loved.

It was just that, for now, Kotomi still had not figured out a method that could both tell Megumi Kato about her desire to build a harem and make Megumi accept it... while also preventing herself from being chopped down halfway through the conversation.

Whether it was the first half of that challenge or the second half, both were equally difficult.

And extremely dangerous!

Before even considering whether it would succeed, Kotomi Izumi decided that, for the sake of preserving her life a second time, she should continue maintaining a strong survival instinct for now and avoid telling Megumi Kato about her harem ambitions.

She would wait until she found the most suitable method in the future.

”Trying to openly embrace everyone and build a harem really isn’t easy at all.”

Kotomi Izumi smiled faintly as she spoke, sounding like she was teasing herself. At the same time, she turned on the faucet and washed her hands. The skin on her fingers now looked as though she had soaked in a bath for far too long, wrinkled and puckered.

Although she had not actually been bathing just now, she had indeed spent a very long time in ”water”...

No matter how you looked at it, five hours was still five hours.

Thinking about this, Kotomi could not help giving an awkward smile. Looking at the wrinkles on her fingers, she suddenly recalled how, as a child, after soaking too long in the bath and seeing her tiny wrinkled fingers afterward, she had innocently exclaimed:

”My hands turned into peanuts.”

It was no wonder little Kotomi had made that comparison back then. Fingers wrinkled from soaking too long really did resemble the texture of peanut shells.

Although five hours of ”consumption” sounded like an extremely long time, because it had all been done through ”self-reliance,” the relief it provided against the side effects of the Queen of All Females physique could only be described as a drop in the ocean. Still, no matter what, it had at least helped a little. While washing her hands, Kotomi Izumi could not help yawning, finally feeling a slight hint of drowsiness.

”I just hope this time it can hold out for a day or two...”

Kotomi Izumi spoke with slight helplessness. All she could do was hope the side effects of the Queen of All Females physique would last a little longer, at least until she returned from Kyoto back to Chiba.

Kotomi had already made up her mind. The moment she arrived in Chiba, she would immediately go find Megumi Kato.

Kotomi Izumi currently had two girlfriends. One was Megumi Kato, and the other was Yui Yuigahama.

Although Yui Yuigahama was right beside her now, with Yui’s current ability to last less than a few seconds...

Kotomi Izumi looked at her little left hand and little right hand and felt that relying on herself was honestly more effective at relieving the side effects of the Queen of All Females physique!

”As expected, once I get back to Chiba, the first thing I’ll do is go see Megumi.”

Kotomi murmured softly to herself while turning off the faucet and preparing to grab a towel to dry her hands.

Even though it was already five in the morning, if she returned to bed now and immediately focused on building up enough sleepiness, she should still manage to sleep for at least a few more hours.

”I never expected that even someone with the Queen of All Females physique like me would one day start thinking about accumulating sleepiness as quickly as possible just to fall asleep faster...”

Kotomi Izumi twitched the corner of her mouth. Whenever she was alone, she loved casually roasting herself a few times. Sometimes internally, sometimes aloud like now.

Ding-dong.

At that moment, her phone suddenly emitted a notification sound.

The sound startled Kotomi Izumi, who had just been about to grab the towel. Who the hell would message her at five in the morning?

Kotomi Izumi had spent five entire hours handling things herself. Even though the side effects of the Queen of All Females physique had only eased slightly, the mental exhaustion was enormous.

The side effects clearly had not disappeared, yet her mental energy had already been drained heavily. That feeling was the worst.

To put it simply, because of the Queen of All Females physique, even though the side effects had weakened a little, Kotomi still felt restless inside. Under these circumstances, falling asleep would probably require some time to build up drowsiness.

But because of her earlier ”self-reliance,” more than half of Kotomi Izumi’s mental stamina had already been exhausted. Even without genuine sleepiness, she still desperately wanted to return to bed and lie down as quickly as possible. Whether she could actually fall asleep was another matter entirely. Right now, she simply wanted to lie down, even if she had to stare blankly at the ceiling with her eyes open instead of standing or sitting.

In the end, countless thoughts could be summarized into a single sentence—if she could sit, she absolutely would not stand. And if she could lie down, she absolutely would not sit.

And just when she was preparing to hurry back to bed and collapse onto it, her phone suddenly sounded with a message notification.

Alongside the slight shock and tension, irritation also rose in Kotomi’s heart.

Finally, while pulling out her phone, she muttered curses under her breath.

”I want to see who the hell is messaging me at five in the morning. If this really turns out to be some Midnight Ring or One Missed Call situation, then with the amount of Queen of All Females side effects I’ve built up right now, the female ghost should be the one feeling scared instead.”

After unlocking her phone and checking the message bar, Kotomi discovered it was not some supernatural cursed call.

It was a text message from Ayani Kika.

”...”

Even before opening the message itself, Kotomi Izumi stared at the timestamp—five in the morning—and immediately fell silent.

For a brief moment, she had the overwhelming urge to run outside, hail a taxi, rush straight to Gion’s red-light district, pin Ayani Kika against a wall, and thoroughly discipline her!

Most likely, Ayani Kika’s aggressive side toward little Kotomi only fully manifested itself through fantasy.

Still, regardless of anything else, when faced with a text message sent by Ayani Kika at five in the morning, besides confusion, surprise, and incomprehension, the strongest emotion Kotomi felt was irritation.

Even when sending text messages, shouldn’t you pay attention to the time?!

If it were during a proper vacation, it would have been fine. During winter and summer break, she always set her phone to Do Not Disturb mode. Forget five in the morning—even if someone started sending messages at one a.m. and continued nonstop until seven, as long as Do Not Disturb was on, no notification sound would wake her.

But right now it was not winter or summer break. Even though it was technically a short holiday, because it was not a full seasonal vacation, she had completely forgotten to switch her phone to Do Not Disturb...

Kotomi Izumi grumbled inwardly with a faint trace of resentment, and this was while she had not even fallen asleep yet.

If she had already been asleep and a notification sound woke her up, she would have had far more to complain about!

Not only that, for the entire following day she would radiate morning grumpiness and pass through the day wrapped in a low-pressure aura.

Of course, given Kotomi Izumi’s usual sleep quality, the possibility of a mere message notification waking her was actually quite small.

Still carrying that faint resentment in her heart, she rubbed her eyes and tapped open the message Ayani Kika had sent.

Ayani Kika: [Good early morning. If I’m not mistaken, you’re probably still awake right now. What a coincidence—I can’t sleep either.]

[But for me, insomnia and sleeplessness are practically routine. At least once a week, I fail to fall asleep. It’s nothing worth mentioning. You, on the other hand, seem like the type with excellent sleep quality—the kind who can fall asleep the moment your head touches the pillow. For someone like you to suddenly have a sleepless night is truly rare.]

As she read the messages from Ayani Kika, Kotomi walked out of the bathroom. After dimming her phone screen, she returned to bed and lay down.

For a moment, she hesitated. Should she reply or not?

If she replied, she was afraid that, if she was not careful, she would end up chatting with Ayani Kika nonstop—from five in the morning all the way to eleven before noon. Then she would have to start debating whether to take a nap.

If she napped, she might sleep straight until evening and ruin her nighttime schedule. If she did not nap, she would be unbearably sleepy.

But if she did not reply and pretended she had not seen it, planning to respond after waking up...

Well, the moment she finished reading the message, the interface had already marked it as read.

”Sigh...”

Kotomi Izumi let out a helpless sigh. In the end, she decided to respond with a few words and then claim that she had finally accumulated enough drowsiness and was logging off to sleep.

Kotomi Izumi: [The refined leisure of Gion’s number one oiran is truly beyond the quick comprehension of an ordinary girl like me. Not sleeping in the middle of the night and messaging me for fun—just because you’re suffering from insomnia, did it never occur to you that I might actually be asleep? Feeling lonely because you can’t sleep, so you insist on waking me up to suffer insomnia together with you?]

Kotomi typed out that long paragraph with a trace of irritation and sent it.

There was not a single swear word in the entire message, yet with a level of literary flair that made one wonder whether her talent was being misused, she composed the whole thing vividly and with formidable combat power.

Just as she sent the message and prepared to close her eyes to sleep, her phone vibrated again.

To avoid disturbing the deeply sleeping Yukino Yukinoshita and Yui Yuigahama, Kotomi had switched her phone to vibrate mode when she came out of the bathroom earlier.

Ayani Kika: [Humans are fascinating, aren’t they? I believe the human heart still has many undeveloped functions. For example, something like telepathy. When I was lying awake, you kept appearing in my thoughts. I felt that perhaps you were still awake too, so I sent you a message. I didn’t expect that you truly weren’t asleep.]

Kotomi Izumi: [Why don’t you consider another possibility? That I was asleep, but you woke me up.]

Ayani Kika: [That’s unlikely. With your personality, you either set your phone to silent when you sleep, or you sleep so soundly that message notifications cannot wake you at all. So there is only one possibility—you were tossing and turning with insomnia when you received my message.]

Kotomi Izumi: [Impressive deduction. Would you like to add a line at the beginning—”In the name of my grandfather, I bet everything—every mystery has been solved!” Or perhaps, ”There is only one truth!”]

Ayani Kika: [I prefer the first one. Compared to Detective Conan, I’ve read more of The Kindaichi Case Files. Another reason is that I really enjoy Seishi Yokomizo’s detective novels, especially The Kindaichi Mysteries. The protagonist, Kosuke Kindaichi, is the grandfather of Hajime Kindaichi. Have you read them? From our previous conversations, you seemed quite interested in detective fiction.]

Kotomi Izumi: [I read them often. The cases that left the strongest impression on me were The Honjin Murders, Queen Bee, and The Inugami Clan.]

Ayani Kika: [I read The Inugami Clan when I was in middle school.]

Come to think of it, when I was in middle school, the detective I read most was Kyosuke Kamizu...

Kotomi thought to herself. Then she shook her head and tapped on the keyboard again.

Kotomi Izumi: [You couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and decided to text me—surely it wasn’t just to discuss detective novels, was it? If that’s the case, I recommend you go read The Murder Case at Ijinkan Village from The Kindaichi Case Files right now. Not scary at all. Very relaxing. Guaranteed to cure insomnia.]

Ayani Kika: [If I hadn’t read it before, I might have believed you. Unfortunately, I finished The Murder Case at Ijinkan Village when I was in fifth grade.]

[Of course I didn’t message you this late just to talk about detective novels. If I’m texting you at this hour, it’s naturally for another reason.]

Kotomi Izumi: [What reason?]

Ayani Kika: [Smile.]

Kotomi Izumi: [...Your ”Smile”—should I interpret that as you wanting to send a smiling sticker but not knowing where to download one or how to send it, so you simply typed the word ”Smile” instead and used that as an emoji?]

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