According to Shiina Mahiru, Hiroi Kikuri "spawned" at Asakura’s doorstep early yesterday evening. The other party had been tearfully pounding on Asakura’s door, looking quite miserable. This moved the kind-hearted girl to feel a sense of compassion—though part of the reason was that the wailing was getting louder and louder, and she felt that if she left it alone, it would disturb the other residents of the apartment...

"So then she just became a parasite in your home?" Asakura realized. This was exactly the process by which he himself had been victimized...

"Calling it parasitic isn’t quite fair; it’s just that when Miss Hiroi gets drunk, she gets so clingy that I really have a bit of trouble dealing with it."

Mahiru’s eyes looked inexplicably hollow, as if dealing with the drunken Hiroi Kikuri had drained all her energy. On the other hand, Kikuri looked like she had been well-cared for; her skin was glowing and hydrated, giving Asakura the feeling that she had literally absorbed Mahiru’s life force.

Wait, could this woman actually be some kind of mutated Succubus?

Asakura observed her carefully for a moment. Under his gaze, Hiroi Kikuri first looked curious, then broke into a wide, silly grin. Combined with her skin, which was flushed from the alcohol, she was certainly cute, but definitely nowhere near the level of a Succubus.

Asakura sighed. It seemed he was overthinking; she was just a common drunkard.

Since he didn’t have the contact information for Kikuri’s bandmates, he simply contacted Nijika and asked her to pass the message to Ijichi Seika. Then, Seika could reach out to Kikuri’s band members to have her properly "contained."

"Hmm..." Asakura murmured to himself for a moment after putting down his phone. He felt that Nijika’s tone when speaking to him today was a bit strange.

As expected, the cover-up method of "it was all just a dream" was a bit immature; it seemed there was still considerable room for improvement. Thinking of this, Asakura glanced at the girl beside him.

Well, clearly, burning the memory away directly was much safer. At least during these last two meetings, Asakura hadn’t noticed any issues with Shiina Mahiru.

"What’s wrong? Are you unable to contact her family?" Mahiru asked worriedly—not a pragmatic worry like "Oh no, if we can’t find her family, I can’t get rid of this trouble!" but rather a genuine concern for Kikuri’s own situation.

Understanding this, Asakura mentally slapped a "bleeding heart" label on the girl’s head.

"It’s fine, someone should be coming to contain her soon," Asakura comforted her. "Don’t worry, this is her normal state."

"This is her normal state?" Mahiru stared agape at the dead-drunk Hiroi Kikuri. "Then... is her liver function okay?"

"My physical exam six months ago was already quite bad!" Kikuri shouted happily.

"No, no, no, what are you getting so excited about? Since it’s already that bad, stop drinking so much. You really will die young..." Mahiru said with a frown, her tone sounding a bit like those strict Class Representative characters common in anime.

"Mahiru-chan, this is just a difference in values. Let me ask you," Kikuri said with narrowed eyes. In her drunken state, she had none of her usual social anxiety and spoke with the confidence of a total social butterfly. "Ten years of complete happiness without a single worry, or fifty years of miserable desolation—which do you choose?"

"I choose a normal life," Mahiru answered earnestly. "Regardless of how many years."

Though it seemed like she was avoiding the question, the girl was actually expressing her attitude toward life: she would accept both sorrow and joy equally. It sounded a bit idealistic, but Asakura, who knew part of her inner circumstances, understood she wasn’t just saying words.

Her current situation was definitely not great; her spirit seemed much more withered than during their last meeting (though being tortured by Hiroi Kikuri was part of that), and her clothes looked quite old, lacking the brightness a teenage girl should have. Yet, even so, she had no complaints about her life and even reached out to help someone as pathetic as Kikuri. This proved her words were no mere platitudes.

"Then I choose ten years," Kikuri said. "To me, fifty years of miserable, wretched life isn’t a blessing called ’longevity’; it’s just pure torture."

"Ten years... that’s too short..." Mahiru murmured.

"A rock musician’s golden years are only so long. I don’t want to grow old until my hands shake so much I can’t play the bass, and yet still have to go on stage to scam people for money," Kikuri chuckled.

"Don’t your hands shake because you’ve had a stroke from too much drinking?" Asakura retorted expressionlessly. "So, why did you want to come to my place in the first place?"

"Because I just got paid for a gig yesterday!" Kikuri shouted. "You helped me out a lot recently, so I wanted to come and thank you."

Mahiru looked somewhat surprised, seemingly shocked that this drunken mess actually understood the concept of showing gratitude.

"Oh? Is that so?" Asakura glanced at her, noncommittal. "So, where’s the money?"

"Right here." Kikuri took the massive sake bottle she had been clutching and thudded it onto the ground. "Over 80,000 yen for this bottle. Awesome! Asakura-kun, you can drink as much as you want!"

Asakura rolled his eyes with an "I knew it" expression, while Mahiru helplessly supported her forehead.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Iwashita Shima, the drummer for Kikuri’s band, rushed over. While apologizing to Asakura and Mahiru, she forcefully dragged Kikuri away. She even thoughtfully prepared an apology gift; clearly, this wasn’t the first time Kikuri had caused trouble. Her movements were so practiced that even Asakura felt exhausted on her behalf for being stuck with a captain like Kikuri...

Mahiru hadn’t even reacted yet. By the time she regained her senses, Iwashita Shima had already escorted Kikuri away.

"Um," she looked a bit uneasily at the beautifully wrapped gift box in her hand, hesitated, and asked Asakura, "Should I prepare a return gift for that Miss Iwashita?"

"No need. I heard from a friend (Nijika) that her family buys apology gifts in bulk wholesale; they have piles of them at home. Sending a return gift would just make her house even more cluttered."

"..."