Kazuya slowly closes his eyes and leans forward just enough that their lips meet.

Both of them feel as if a jolt of electricity passes through them as their lips connected. All Kazuya felt was gentleness and an unknown feeling that was similar to adoration for Chizuru. He held her with such gentleness that made her feel like she was some sort of fragile object being cared for and protected.

They kissed for a few seconds before Chizuru pulled back with her face completely red. Even Kazuya’s heart was pounding as he reveled in the feeling of her soft lips.

‘So amazing yet so fleeting.’ That’s all he can think about the kiss. The kiss wasn’t endlessly passionate as it was with Mami who invoked the desire to defile.

It was gentle and caring, which made Kazuya want to keep her all for himself without letting anyone ever even look at her.

‘Okay, buddy… That’s a dangerous thought process.’ 

He stopped himself knowing that Chizuru’s entire job was related to going on dates with other people.

Suddenly he felt a very bad taste in his mouth that overcame the sweet strawberry taste of Chizuru’s lip gloss.

‘Yeah… The rental thing is a pain to think about.’

Chizuru noticed his face going from blissful, to gentle, to protective, through a myriad of expressions before noticing an expression of possession along with irritation before his eyes turned back to her.

He pushes all those thoughts away and looks back at Chizuru.

She doesn’t ask about his inner dilemma and looks at him with a small but happy smile on her face.

“I’m glad that you didn’t turn your face away this time.” He smiles.

She blushes and buries her face into his chest.

‘Cute.’

They have some more fun around the ferry ride for the next hour as they enjoy their time together.

Finally, Kazuya gets the soft copies from the photographer who is giving the two of them a knowing smirk.

Chizuru blushes at the implication while Kazuya gives the guy a smirk while giving him some extra money since there were amazing pictures of his and Chizuru’s first real kiss.

He was planning to tease Chizuru with them later.

When the ferry’s finally done. Kazuya separates from Chizuru since she wasn’t going back to her room. She needed to get her disguise back on before she went back.

Kazuya reluctantly accepts her words as they part ways at the pier.

‘Couldn’t even let me get a goodbye kiss.’ Kazuya is sad as he walks back to his room with his shoulders slumped dramatically.

…

The trip went by uneventfully after that. Everyone left that afternoon after Kazuya and Chizuru got back from their cruise.

Kazuya didn’t get a chance to talk to Chizuru since she was going back with her friends.

While Mami avoided him as if not sure how to face him after her experience at the pool.

’She’s probably gonna start investigating Chizuru after this. I should pay attention to her actions.’

When Kazuya finally got back home he got a text from Chizuru.

‘Did she hear the sound of my door?’

-Can we talk?- 

‘Okay, this isn’t ominous at all…’

-Same place as last time?-

-Yeah.-

-I’ll get the whiskey.-

-No. No whiskey. Just you.-

‘Great, she’s having second thoughts. I am too tired to deal with this right now.’ He sighs and drops his bag on the floor.

Kazuya walked to the balcony and noticed Chizuru already there.

He doesn’t say anything but just jumps over to her side of the balcony.

“Hey, girlfriend.” He smiled at her.

“Hi…” She trails off as if she doesn’t know what to do.

“You wanted to talk to me about something.” Kazuya wants to go to sleep so he wants to finish the major conversation soon so that he could try to have a more romantic time with his girlfriend.

“Yeah…I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure, lay it on me.”

“How do you feel about me being a rental girlfriend?”

“…What brought this on?”

“Just… curious.” She averts her eyes.

“Well, won’t lie to you. I’m… not very comfortable with you going out on dates with other guys. I feel annoyed when you go on a romantic date with another guy when you’re my girlfriend. But it’s not that big-”

“I guess it’s a good thing that we aren’t truly together. It was just a provisional thing that we had going on. I enjoy what I do. And I’m not going to stop. It’s very crucial to my career and for me.” She isn’t facing him and is looking into the distance.

“…What if you succeed?”

“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if you become famous? What if you become an actress and get accepted by a good acting agency? Will you continue your current job?”

“…I haven’t thought that far yet.” She gets a guilty expression on her face.

“Forget it. I’m tired. If you don’t want to be with me, I can’t do anything about it. I could say that I’ll help you complete your dream to become an actress or that I’ll take you to Hollywood…”

“…” Chizuru is silent and is waiting for him to finish.

“…But I know that it’s not gonna change your mind. Far from it really. It’ll just make you grow to hate me for trying to control you.”

“…” She agreed with his words.

“So how about we just stay friends, actual friends? Not the kind that says that for the sake of saying that. What do you say?” He asks her with a sad smile.

“I’d like that.” She looks at him with a sad smile that mirrored his own.

“Okay then. I’m tired and feel like shit. I’m gonna go to sleep.” He walks into Chizuru’s apartment from her balcony and leaves through her main door.

Chizuru stares at his back confusedly, ‘If he did this now why couldn’t he have done this the last time?’

’This is good… It’s better this way.’  Chizuru has her reasons for what she did.

‘I can’t… Not you too…’ Her thoughts are cryptic as she trails off and hugs her pillow to sleep, not realizing that her pillow is slowly growing wet.

…

‘Well, I feel like shit.’ 

Although he played it off casually he was feeling like shit on the inside.

‘Where’s Mami when you need her?’ To him, fucking with Mami was the perfect distraction for this kind of situation. They didn’t even need to have sex. Her cute manipulation attempts that clearly show that she’s got some sort of feelings toward him were enough.

“Yo system… you got something to help me soothe my battered soul.”

As he expected there was no response from the lifeless system.

‘It’s at times like this that I feel like my ‘troublesome girl’ fetish bites me in the ass.’

‘Why can’t I just choose one of the average ones who aren’t so much trouble.’

A voice in his mind told him that he’d be bored out of his mind with them.

‘At least, I wouldn’t end up feeling like this at times.’ He counters the voice.

‘I don’t know what kind of shit is making her close herself off like this. It’s not that damn rental thing that’s for sure.’ He doesn’t have the energy to overthink much since he’s tired as fuck.

In his apartment, he turns off all the lights and lies down on his bed with only the glow of the moon through the curtains illuminating the place.

He doesn’t realize when but he ends up falling asleep.

…

The next day when Kazuya wakes up he isn’t bothered by the previous night’s events.

He just gets up and makes himself some breakfast before going to the gym.

After he got back he dived himself into his freelancing work. It was a weekday so he also had his MMA class in the evening.

He spent the rest of the summer uneventfully while maintaining his routine of gym, work, and then martial arts class.

This sort of grind had a whole lot of use for him. With so much time on his hands, he was already halfway done with the income quest that would get him more specialized knowledge.

The summer break wasn’t that long, but it was two weeks of completely free time which helped him get a lot done.

By the end of the summer, his stats looked like this.

{ <Status>

Name: Kazuya Kinoshita

Physique: 15

Mind: 13

<Skills>

Mastery Level Skills: Kissing

Knowledge: Haircare

Programming LVL 24

Cooking LVL 10

Mixed Martial Arts LVL 6

Business Administration LVL 2

…

}

There was no increase in his programming skill since it wasn’t going to be easy to level it up in such a short time. It was a high-level skill.

His MMA skill increased by three levels within those two weeks. 

His Physique and Mind status had surpassed that of a baseline human by a bit. He still didn’t know how much of a difference each stat point brought him. But he could tell that each stat point had an exponential increase. He had an Idea that if his physique stat hit 25 it would probably stop increasing since that would be the limit of a human. Either that or he would become a superhuman that could tank bullets.

At least he was sure that the daily quests will lose their rewards when he reaches 20 points for his physique.

He was glad that his body was still relatively lean with a much more defined physique and that’s it. He didn’t want to be some buff guy that has difficulty even wiping his ass.

Another thing that he’d done was spend some effort on his hair, He got all the dye completely removed using a nondamaging method and made his natural dye that would make his hair better in terms of silkiness and thickness. He’d gone for his preferred dark brown with a light tint of auburn.

He’d spent a while every day working a bit on his utterly horrendous hair and finally, by the end of the week, it was as silky as he wanted. And with time his hair would get silkier and better.

He and Chizuru didn’t talk that summer. She mostly avoided him. Nor did they text like usual.

Instead, Mami had been talking to him a bit. Nothing serious, just random casual talks. 

He knew that if Mami found out that he’d broken up with Chizuru, she’d stop trying to make any effort to talk to him, which amused him.

After he’d completed so many freelance projects that paid him very good money, he’d finally decided to get another apartment other than this run-down place.

Currently, he had the equivalent of about 100,000 USD in Yen which was more than enough for him to get a good luxury penthouse.

He wasn’t going to abandon this place but he was going to get another place close by so he doesn’t end up in trouble with Chizuru if he wants to bring back a girl to his place.

She wouldn’t say anything to him but she’d utterly close herself off from him which he didn’t want. She’d broken off any relations with him. It would be stupid to keep being hung up on her.

After spending half of that money as a down payment, Kazuya finally rented a 5-bedroom penthouse apartment with an amazing view. He wasn’t planning on telling his family about it because there was no need.

And there was always a certain sense of detachment for Kazuya when it came to his parents and grandma since they weren’t really ‘his’ parents and grandma.

He moved some of his extra stuff into that apartment and started living there twice every week. It had an amazing view and was one of the highest apartments in the area.

And that’s when the break ended and college started again.