Mister Fox rolled his eyes at Chou’s recount of the previous night’s events. “So nothing happened with you and Inugami in the alley?” he asked. “Then why do you think you’re pregnant? Was there some other guy in there with you? Did he leap out from behind some loose garbage bags and pay you to be part of some alley-rat gang--”

“I’m getting to that part!” Chou blurted-out, rushing back to her editor’s desk red-faced and slamming her paws down on the desktop.

The previous night, Chou returned to her apartment after her discussion with Fumihito. Remembering his advice, she grabbed an otome eroge from off her games shelf and popped the CD ROM into her laptop. She never cared much for the dating-simulator’s story, finding it way too difficult to figure-out how to wow virtual bishounen. But, luckily, the game allowed her to skip through previously-seen dialogue strings, so it wasn’t long before she got to the juicy parts and got to work.

It wasn’t long before Chou lost her concentration. She couldn’t look away from the screen long enough to open another tab and get to writing. How did Fumihito pull it off? Did he have dirty magazines instead of PC games? Or maybe he preferred naughty VHS tapes? Whatever the case, Chou figured a break was in order. After-all, she was still on pace to finish her novel before the deadline that Mister Fox had given her. She grabbed at the zipper on the side of her skirt in preparation to quell an urge that compelled her in that moment a little bit more strongly than the desire to finish her manuscript.

…Then it hit her. Skipping the romance to get to the sex? That wasn’t going to work! At the end of the day, her novel was supposed-to be a romance, not just a porno! With no other choice, she pulled her skirt back up over her pink- and white-striped briefs, reset her game and resigned to having to play through the entire game again for inspiration. …Except… she had a better idea. She’d already built-up a “romantic” connection already! And the guy in-question had seemed pretty eager a few hours prior, when he thought that she wanted to mate with him.

Chou grabbed her cellphone from her nightstand and shot Fumihito a quick text. “Meet me outside at the love-hotel.”

“Uh, Chou,” Fumihito said, scratching his head, “why did you wanna meet me here, again?”

“Your tip… didn’t really work.”

Fumihito’s heart sank. Would Chou realize he was full of bullshit?! Or worse – would she realize what actually inspired him when writing the sex scenes in his novel?! Fumihito bit his long tongue as he waited to hear what Chou had to say next – what her answer to his question would be.

“What I’m about to ask you is only a one-time thing, got it?”

Fumihito nodded, even though he wasn’t quite sure what Chou was about to request. The first place his mind went was to intercourse, but he knew that would be ridiculous! Still, when Chou asked him to meet him outside a love-hotel, he had slipped on some protection before stepping out of his front-door. Whatever his coworker requested, he was ready for it.

“Could, you, uh… I mean, you don’t have to, but it would h-help with my story…” Chou’s tone got quieter as she spoke, almost as if she didn’t even want Fumihito to hear what she said next. But Fumihito was a cavalier King Charles spaniel; he had phenomenal hearing. “D-Do y’wanna… s-screw?”

“Do I want… a screw?” the dog asked, puzzled.

“N-No! Do you want TO screw? Mate? Have sex? Copulate? Fuck? Do the nasty?” the bunny clarified.

Try as he might to keep his cool, Fumihito’s rapidly wagging tail gave away his true nature. The dog boy couldn’t believe his ears! Did this mean that Chou was ready to start a real relationship with him? Was she going to make things official?

“Now, Fumihito…” Chou stammered. “This doesn’t mean that our relationship’s becoming ‘real’. We’re not making things official, got it?”

Ouch, rejection. Still, Fumihito wasn’t going to turn down the offer to make sweet love with the girl of his dreams. And it wasn’t as if Chou wanted to do it just for her story, either. While she didn’t harbor any romantic attraction towards Fumihito, she would never deny that she found him INCREDIBLY sexually attractive. If all of her male coworkers had confessed to her at the same time, she still would have chosen Fumihito to carry-out her “fake-boyfriend” plan. And if a female coworker admitted to having feelings for Chou… Well, that didn’t happen, so she didn’t have to think about whether she would’ve gone through with the plan using a girl as her romantic inspiration or not.

Briefly regaining his composure, the cavalier King Charles spaniel gave the rabbit a quick nod and cleared his throat. “Y-Yes, I’d like to. But if this isn’t to further our relationship, then… what is your goal here? Because if it’s just to help you write your sex scene, I think you might want to reconsider hopping so hastily into mating.” For as much as the canine wanted to bed his colleague – and as much as he hoped it would end up increasing his chances to become romantically involved with her, despite her insistence to the contrary – he didn’t want to agree selfishly to something that Chou might come to regret if it was just a rash decision in the heat of the moment. He needed to know that she was seriously prepared to lose her virginity to him.

“Well, y’know… we’ve been friends for awhile, right?”

“So… you want to become friends-with-benefits with me?” the spaniel raised one of his distinct orange eyebrows which clashed with his otherwise monochromatic coat. “Is that it?”

Chou glanced to a side, breaking eye-contact with her friend while shyly rubbing the left arm by her side with her right hand. “Y-Yeah. Even if this doesn’t end up helping me write my novel… You’re my friend, Fumihito. And… I can make it up to you for rejecting you.”

“Woah, woah, woah! Listen, Chou, if that’s what this is about, you don’t have to worry about it! Just being able to ‘fake date’ you is more than enough! I don’t want you feeling like you have to go through with… losing your virginity to me.”

“…I want to.”

Fumihito’s eyes widened.

“I… I’ve never done it before. And… if it’s anything like you describe it in your novels… if it’s anything like in my eroges…” Chou nervously gulped. “Then I want to try it. Not just for my novel. But because you’re my friend. And I… don’t exactly have any other guy friends I’m close enough with to do it.”

Being aromantic, Chou would never have a real boyfriend or even a husband to do it with. For her, sex was just the ultimate gesture of friendship. Of-course, she knew the romantic connotations of sex – that many people would never have sex with someone unless it was their significant other. Likewise, she also knew about the negative stigma of just hooking up with some rando and losing your respective virginities together; she didn’t agree with the notion that there was anything wrong with doing that, but she also didn’t want the reputation of being a desperate bunny girl who’d mate with anything that moved. Sure, she knew that was a load of garbage – she knew that any consenting adult could make love with any other consenting adult that they desired – but she wasn’t willing to lose her virginity to a stranger just to be able to finish her manuscript. It HAD to be Fumihito Inugami.

And so, the two of them checked into the love-hotel, ready for a night that neither of them could ever forget…

To be continued…