The Beautiful Kuudere Woman Who Always Reads Books While Standing Next to Me at the Laundromat Turns Out to Be the Vice President of One of Our Clients
It was the promised Saturday afternoon. I arrived home and sat on the floor in front of the most expensive piece of furniture I had ever owned, waiting for Tsukishima with a sense of unease. In my sparse one-room apartment, the black leather sofa sat proudly, as if it were the master of the space.
The doorbell rang cheerfully, and I flinched. She was here.
On the intercom screen was Tsukishima san, dressed in her usual casual hoodie.
I said, “Come in” through the intercom and let her in.
Less than a minute later, the doorbell rang, and Tsukishima san entered the room.
Her gaze was fixed on the sofa that had just arrived that morning.
“Hey, Minato san. Greeting me on all fours? You’ve gotten a bit darker, haven’t you?”
“Over here !?”
“Oh, really.”
Tsukishima san smiled at me. She was holding a bag, which seemed to contain something.
“What’s that?”
“Shingen mochi.”
I silently smiled at Tsukishima san, who was standing behind me, grabbed her shoulder, and guided her away from the sofa to the single dining table.
“Can we eat it here?”
“….What about over there?”
She asks, looking at the sofa with a mischievous expression.
“Absolutely not !”
“If you care that much about the sofa, Minato san, you must care about it too. At least in the early stages of a relationship.”
“If she’s an Italian beauty.”
Tsukishima san puckers her lips and says, “Hmm.”
“What about Japanese women?”
“About the same. Well, unlike the sofa, I wouldn’t throw her away just because she threw up on me.”
“Hmm. That’s the model answer.”
Tsukishima san placed a bag of Shingen mochi on the table and declared, “Let’s start the UAT (user acceptance test).”
First, we sat down on the sofa side by side, cautiously, as if we were facing an artifact we had never touched before. The two of us were intoxicated by the feel of it.
“Ah…it’s firm yet has just the right amount of elasticity, gently enveloping the body. It’s like the skin of a young woman.”
“This is a nice sofa, so please stop using such vulgar metaphors !”
I noticed that I was sitting close to Tsukishima san. But she didn’t seem to mind. Maybe I’m just overthinking it…
“Next, we’ll verify the performance when watching entertainment content.”
Tsukishima san said that, took the remote control, and skillfully launched the video streaming service.
“Minato san, what do you want to watch?”
“What should I choose…”
“Then, this.”
While I was undecided, Tsukishima san quickly chose a movie.
“Mr. Bean…?”
“Yeah. That’s right…heheh…”
Tsukishima san burst into laughter the moment she saw my face.
We spent the time laughing together at the universal humor. Occasionally, when I looked over at her, our eyes met, and Tsukishima san teased me with a playful expression.
“Tsukishima san….you’re laughing too much.”
“Well, the only people who can make me laugh are Rowan Atkinson and Minato san.”
“Am I that funny !?”
“Fufu…I wonder.”
Despite being teased by Tsukishima san, the two of them spent several hours discovering that they shared the same sense of humor.
When the movie ended, without either of us initiating it, we naturally picked up books. Tsukishima san also took a book that caught her eye from the bookshelf in my room and began reading it. And on the same sofa, we quietly turned the pages.
It was the same scene we had repeated many times at the laundromat. But even though the location was different, the meaning felt completely different.
Instead of the mechanical hum of the washing machines, the soft afternoon light streaming in through the window enveloped us. It felt like a sign that our “daily life” had entered a new phase.
How long had we been like that? Tsukishima san suddenly looked up and said,
“…Minato san. We should also test performance under high load conditions.”
Saying that, she took out a portable game console from her bag.
“Eh? A game?”
“Yes. A puzzle game where we compete. It requires both short-term judgment and long-term strategy. It’s perfect for testing the sofa’s performance.”
Without hesitation, a controller was handed to me as well.
“Minato san, which are you better at, Puyo or Tetris?”
“Tetris, I guess…what about you, Tsukishima san? You brought this, so I assume you’re an expert.”
“Hmm. I’ve won the company’s Puyo game tournament before.”
“Then I’ll definitely lose…”
“Don’t worry. It’s not about winning or losing. The point is to play on the sofa. Besides, I’ll go easy on you.”
Tsukishima san winked as she said that.
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From there on, a fierce yet incredibly fun battle unfolded. Every time I lost, I gave Tsukishima san a handicap, so by the end, she was sitting on the sofa with her legs stretched out, counting prime numbers from the smallest, and using only her left hand to operate the controller, and I finally managed to win.
“Fufu…I finally won.”
“Tsukishima san is just too strong…ah, it’s already evening…”
Our long “user test” which had started in the daytime, continued until the sky outside the window turned orange.
The room was filled with the aroma of coffee, a gentle sense of fatigue, and a satisfied silence between the two of us.
I leaned forward to drink my coffee, placed the cup on the table, and asked.
“So…how was the sofa today? Tsukishima san. Did the test pass?”
Tsukishima san slowly surveyed the entire room, then looked straight into my eyes and smiled softly, the softest smile I’d ever seen.
“There’s still the final test left. The one thing you want to do most on the sofa.”
“Hmm… ? What else—uh !”
Tsukishima san lay down on my thigh as a pillow at lightning speed.
“The number one thing to do on the sofa is taking a nap.”
“A nap is when you fall asleep without realizing it, right? Tsukishima san, are you planning to sleep there?”
As I was teasing her, I heard Tsukishima san’s quiet snoring.
Isn’t it a bit too fast for her to fall asleep like that? Feeling curious, I gently poked Tsukishima san’s ear.
She let out a cute “Hyah !” and her body twitched.
Then she turned onto her back and glared at me.
“Can’t you wait until I fall asleep?”
“If I fall asleep, can I touch you…”
“Well…if it’s just touching my ears…”
Tsukishima’s face turned bright red, and she turned her head away from me.
“Um…Minato san, wake me up in 30 minutes. Then let’s go eat…”
Tsukishima san’s voice had already grown sleepy, and she began to snore.
After waiting five minutes, I touched her ear, but she didn’t move at all. She seemed to have fallen asleep completely.
I caught Tsukishima san as she rolled over and almost fell off the sofa, pulling her toward me. She skillfully spun around and lay on her back with her eyes closed.
Looking at her sleeping face, I couldn’t help but smile. No, maybe I’m just laughing at Mr. Bean.
Even though no one could hear me, I said that to myself in my mind.
Maigetsu