After making sure that their lips were locked correctly he tightens his hold on the back of her head and suddenly bends his knees, submerging them both in the water.

Mami panics a little and tries to pull back from him to get back up to the surface but his hold on her neck is stopping her from doing anything but passively accepting his actions.

She opens her eyes to look at him and notices his calm eyes looking at her soothingly. It was a bit unclear due to the water but they could see each other sufficiently for the feelings to be conveyed.

That seems to calm her down as she melts back into the kiss. She can feel him slowly passing some air to her through the kiss which gives her a strange kind of pleasure that she enjoys even more.

When it got too much for the both of them Kazuya pulled them both up. 

As he let go of his hand from behind Mami’s head, she recoils a little and coughs due to the water that went into her nasal tracts due to her panic.

Kazuya gives her a few seconds of respite while holding her tenderly, her arms and legs still wrapped around him.

She was still coughing lightly but Kazuya’s patience was only till here. He again pushes his lips against hers and continues their passionate makeout session.

They spent the next hour like that, without even a sliver of distance between them. 

They made out underwater a few more times and Mami got better at it after the first time and was able to reciprocate his actions even underwater.

Kazuya completely dominated Mami’s thoughts and body with his intense actions. Especially in the underwater makeout, he made sure that Mami was completely dependent on him for even her air supply.

He was planning to take advantage of these feelings of dependency that will slowly but surely grow within Mami.

He wasn’t planning to let her go and wanted her to belong to him, not as his girlfriend but as his object.

All he felt for Mami was possessiveness And he was going to act on those feelings.

They only stopped when Kazuya’s phone started ringing.

“Haah~ Hah~” “Haah~ Hah~”

Their deep breaths were mirrored as they stared into each other’s eyes.

“You should take that call.”

“I should take that call.”

They both say the same thing as they look at each other before Mami giggles while Kazuya smiled gently.

She unwrapped her legs from around his waist and stopped acting like a koala while he stepped back a little to let her stabilize herself.

He then swims to the edge of the pool and gets out.

“Kazu-kun have you been working out?” Mami who’s looking at his back while he got out of the pool notices the slightly defined muscles of his back.

He just smirks at her and walks to the pool chair where he threw his shirt and picks up a towel there.

Wiping himself he picks up his phone that he’d left on the floor before jumping into the pool.

Mami just keeps admiring his now slightly defined physique. ‘Feels good to be appreciated for your hard work.’

He looks at the phone and finds a missed call from Kibe along with a text.

-Yo, where you at, dude? Your girl’s phone has been ringing twice. It seems to be important.-

-Where are you? I’ll come and get it from you.- Kazuya replied to Kibe.

He turns to see Mami and notices that she’s also out of the pool and was wiping her hair while standing near the pool chair.

He notices her lifeless eyes that were staring blankly at her phone and smirks, ‘So she did plan on using it as leverage… Too bad for her I guess. I at the very least thoroughly enjoyed myself.’

As noticing Kazuya’s gaze she instantly turns back into her cheery self and looks at Kazuya with a blushing smile while wiping her bikini-clad body.

Kazuya walks to her to pick up his t-shirt.

There are no words exchanged between them. 

There’s a sort of tacit understanding that what just happened wasn’t going to be continued. At least that’s what Mami thought. 

Kazuya was still in a relationship. Mami was also still in a sort of nominal relationship.

Mami attempted to get leverage over him. Which she failed at, badly. At this point, Kazuya’s just going to let her be.

If she does something else, then he would deal with it accordingly.

'Those lips though… I could kiss her like that for a whole day without getting bored or tired.'

‘I’ll be keeping some distance from her for a while. At least until I make some concrete plans to deal with her. Let her stir in these feelings for a while…’

He leaves without saying a word to Mami who also doesn’t call out to him. Although she does look at him with a longing expression that she doesn’t even realize she has.

Kazuya’s plan to create feelings of dependency within her has already worked a little.

…

Mami’s feelings were also pretty conflicted at this moment in time. It was as if after their breakup, everything Kazuya did completely went off the rails.

She didn’t feel in control of the situation at all. Especially when she was with him. He just takes command of the situation so naturally that it astounds her sometimes.

‘Did someone replace him or something? No one experiences such a radical change in their personality so quickly. And that kiss…’ She genuinely blushes thinking about her actions with him.

The guy who used to do nothing but freeze at the notion of a kiss was taking so much initiative today.

She puts her hands over her face, ‘What kind of godly practice made him get so good, so quickly? Although he was good back then at the beach too, this time he was just far better.’

‘I want more… No Mami!’ She reprimands herself for even having that thought.

She was planning to get leverage by recording her actions with him. Although the tiny kiss she was planning escalated to extreme proportions she was still glad that it all got recorded.

As she was humming inwardly, knowing that she would finally be getting her toy back under control, she sees her phone covered by Kazuya’s t-shirt that he’d randomly thrown to the side and froze.

‘How lucky do you get? No… It wasn’t just dumb luck. He played me…’

After Kazuya went away, she looked through the recording only to see nothing but black for an hour and turns off her phone with a frigid look on her face.

‘Even the audio was muffled to the point of being unintelligible. The fuck kind of t-shirt was that?’ Mami is miffed at being bested by Kazuya.

She takes a seat on the pool bench with her arms wrapped around her legs and rests her chin on her knees.

“Damn it, Kazu-kun…”

…

Kazuya checks his phone to see if Kibe replied yet.

-My room.-

‘Good enough.’ Kazuya makes his way to the room that Kibe got. 

He was bunking with Kuri so it was on another side of the hotel since they had different kinds of rooms for different guests.

Kazuya had gotten what would be considered a ‘Couple’s room.’ Which had a single large bed for two people.

Kibe on the other hand got a bunking room that had two single beds.

On the way, he checked his system to see if something was going on.

He felt that this time the kiss with Mami was weirdly different. It was as if he’d known everything about the kiss perfectly. He was a good kisser no doubt but that was a whole different level.

He could even feel that Mami’s reactions were much more vivid.

‘Quests.’

{ <Quests>

[Main Quest: Entrepreneur]

[Side Quest: No lonely bitches here]

[Side Quest: Get that girl]

[Side Quest: She belongs on the streets]

[Side Quest: Income source]

[Daily Quest: Shape up]

[Daily Quest: Learn to defend]

[Completed Quests:

• [Hidden Quest: The lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch (Completed) (!)]

]

}

‘That’s an outdated as fuck reference.’ He thinks as he focuses on the hidden quest that’s under the completed section of the quests tab.

[Hidden Quest: The lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch (Completed) (!)

Your ex-girlfriend is a manipulative bitch who is out to control all aspects of your life. Show her who’s boss and knock her down a peg or two.

Objective: One-up Mami Nanami’s manipulation attempts (3/3) times and make her feel that she lost to you.

Rewards: Kissing Mastery Skill]

‘Three times already?’ Kazuya is a little surprised that he’s already beaten Mami’s manipulation attempts 3 times and thoroughly enough to make her feel like she lost to him.

‘First should’ve been the pub where I told her off when she tried to destroy my self-esteem.’

‘The second was probably the time on the beach when we kissed. She was probably planning a different outcome but ended up failing.’

’The third was now with the recording at the pool.’

Kazuya feels proud of himself and does a little dance in the corridor while walking toward Kibe’s room. A few people glance in his direction but he doesn’t care.

‘I can collapse this completed quests column… nice.”

{ <Quests>

[Main Quest: Entrepreneur]

[Side Quest: No lonely bitches here]

[Side Quest: Get that girl]

[Side Quest: She belongs on the streets]

[Side Quest: Income source]

[Daily Quest: Shape up]

[Daily Quest: Learn to defend]

[Completed Quests…]

}

‘This [Kissing Mastery] seems to me a different kind of skill from my usual leveling skills.’

’Skills.’

He summons the skill panel.

{ <Skills>

Mastery Level Skills: Kissing

Programming LVL 24

Cooking LVL 9

Mixed Martial Arts LVL 3

Business Administration LVL 1

…

}

‘Yeah, there’s a separate panel for the skills that I’ve mastered. Does this mean that I’m the best kisser in the world? Or is there a level further beyond? Is it possible to get the leveling skills to the master level?’

Kazuya has many questions running through his head but no one to answer them as he buries them inside his mind for later. He already has a few ideas about the skills.

‘Master level should be a basic threshold of levels for the skills where I’ve got all the theoretical knowledge for the skill. Now I only need experience. The more I utilize my master-level skills the better they’ll get. I’ll guess there may be a peak Master or Grandmaster level beyond the master level to add the experience aspect.’

That’s the best conjecture that Kazuya could come up with as he looked through the information on kissing in his mind.

‘I wish I had Eidetic memory. Currently, all my skills are based on the system’s database. I only perfectly remember skills that have been registered with the system. All of my other skills need me to get them registered into the system’s database. That’s where the problem lies. I have to repeatedly perform a skill to get it recognized by the system and that’s a pain.’

He got rid of his stray thoughts about the system as he arrived in front of Kibe’s room.

“Yo Kibe open up. It’s me.”