After dinner, Suyan quietly loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher and left the machine to do its job.
Meanwhile, Shizuka scooped up the two YukimiBotamon and plopped down onto the living room sofa. She turned on the TV, casually undid the white bath towel wrapped around her body, and lay flat on her stomach. While watching whatever was playing on the TV, she directed the two adorable fluffballs to bounce up and down on her bare back, mimicking the effects of a light back massage.
The two YukimiBotamon happily obliged, treating the whole thing like a fun game. The trio seemed to be having the time of their lives.
Suyan's gaze briefly swept over Shizuka's smooth, milky-white skin before he asked, "Shizuka, you didn't forget to run the bathwater for me after you finished, right?"
"Huh?" Shizuka turned her head slightly to look at him. "No, no, I didn't forget! I started filling the tub with hot water right before I stepped out of the bathroom."
"If you go take a bath now, the tub should be just about full!"
"Good." Suyan nodded, satisfied with her definitive answer.
He headed to his room to grab a change of clothes before walking into the bathroom.
He tossed both his dirty clothes and Shizuka's discarded clothes into the washing machine and hit start. Since neither of them wore cheap, poorly dyed fabrics that bled colors, there was zero need to separate the laundry.
Honestly, Suyan had always found it completely baffling when people insisted on hand-washing their underwear separately. How could anyone possibly believe their bare hands could wash cleaner than a machine? He didn't dwell on the thought for long.
After quickly rinsing off under the showerhead, he slowly sank his body into the steaming hot water filling the bathtub. A comfortable sigh escaped his throat.
He had to admit, the Japanese really had a borderline religious obsession with bathtubs. Almost every single household in the country, regardless of how cramped the actual bathroom space was, they always had to install a bathtub.
But damn, it really was incredibly comfortable.
Relaxing in the hot water, Suyan reached out and grabbed his smartphone from the nearby shelf, silently searching for information on the internet.
In his past life, Suyan had read an infinite-flow web novel with a truly fascinating premise that stuck with him to this day. The story revolved around a central 'Main God Space' that deployed various teams into different cinematic universes to complete survival missions.
In a way, his current situation was somewhat similar. He had crossed over into an anime universe, though he luckily didn't have some omnipotent AI breathing down his neck and forcing him to complete suicide missions.
But the part of the novel he found most interesting was a specific world-building detail: to save resources, the Main God Space would occasionally deploy two completely different teams into two seemingly completely different movie missions, only for the teams to be actually occurring in different locations within the exact same universe.
For example, while a guy named Andy was meticulously executing his grand escape plan inside Shawshank Prison, a psychotic mastermind named Jigsaw might be simultaneously setting up a death trap in a neighboring city. And simultaneously, at a nearby airport, some man might be desperately screaming that their plane was going to explode, getting kicked off the flight for being a troublemaker.
Ever since he transmigrated, Suyan occasionally wondered if a similar phenomenon was happening here. While the Highschool of the Dead zombie apocalypse was ravaging Tokonosu City, were the plots of other famous zombie franchises simultaneously playing out in different parts of the world?
After all, before his transmigration, the zombie apocalypse was a highly popular genre that never lacked for material. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call some of those zombie works absolute classics.
There was the iconic Resident Evil film franchise, the sprawling The Walking Dead television series, and the brutal, super-powered carnage of the Prototype video games. Even back in his previous life, there were massive hits like the Zombie Brother comic.
Unfortunately, despite his extensive online searching, he hadn't found a single trace of the infamous Umbrella Corporation, nor any whispers of a bizarre viral outbreak. There were zero warning signs. It was exactly as depicted in the anime—a sudden, catastrophic outbreak that caused the entire city, the country, and eventually the entire world to completely collapse in a terrifyingly short amount of time.
Suyan shook his head vigorously, trying to clear the chaotic thoughts from his mind.
After doom-scrolling for a few more minutes, he placed his phone back on the shelf and fully submerged his head under the water.
"Holy shit!"
The moment he resurfaced, gasping for air and wiping the water from his eyes, he was startled to find Shizuka's face hovering right next to the tub. The American profanity slipped out automatically.
Taking a second to calm his racing heart, Suyan glared at her. "What the hell are you doing creeping in here? You scared the crap out of me."
"I came to scrub your back for you!" Shizuka blinked her large, innocent eyes. "Didn't I tell you earlier? I wanted to wash together with Little Suyan~"
Shizuka hadn't brought the two YukimiBotamon in with her.
Unless she wanted Suyan to take a literal ice bath, that would have been a disaster. YukimiBotamon were Ice-attribute Digimon; their bodies were naturally freezing cold. They were absolutely fantastic to cuddle with at night—way better than running the AC—but the moment they touched hot water, their instincts would immediately trigger, and they would rapidly freeze the surrounding water to protect themselves.
Looking deep into Shizuka's crystal-clear, entirely thought-free golden eyes, Suyan suddenly realized something.
She had claimed she was completely finished with her bath earlier, yet she had spent the entire evening wrapped in a towel instead of putting on clothes.
Wait. Was this your master plan all along, you sneaky blonde?
If reality functioned like a Galgame, a glowing dialogue box would have instantly popped up with three distinct choices:
Option 1: Accept Shizuka's request, invite her into the bathtub, and unlock a special, highly explicit CG event.
Option 2: Reject Shizuka's request, physically shove her out of the bathroom, lock the door, and continue soaking in peace, unlocking the "Iron-Clad Straight Man" achievement.
Option 3: Stare her dead in the eye and say, "You like scrubbing? Scrub my shoes, peasant," in a thick French accent, unlocking the "Sigma Male Grindset" achievement.
Unfortunately, reality wasn't a Galgame. Before Suyan could even form a response, Shizuka simply bypassed his consent entirely and squeezed her spectacular body into the tub with him.
The bathtub in Shizuka's apartment was luxurious and massive, easily accommodating both of them without feeling overly cramped.
They had been living together for over a year. Suyan hadn't exactly practiced the Sunflower Manual to castrate his desires, and Shizuka certainly wasn't unattractive. In fact, she was an absolutely stunning beauty with a mature onee-san figure, an incredibly busty gap-moe personality—and a literal canonical anime heroine to boot.
So, naturally, Suyan had conquered her a long time ago. Over the past year, they had basically done every single explicit, degenerate thing a couple could possibly do. They had already claimed countless 'firsts' from each other.
Sharing a bath at this point was practically mundane.
"Ahhh, taking a hot bath after a good workout really is the absolute best," Shizuka sighed contentedly as she settled into the water.
Suyan shot her a deadpan glare. Getting a massage from two bouncing furballs counts as a workout now? The ones actually exercising were the YukimiBotamon!
However, as their bare skin pressed intimately together beneath the hot water, feeling the incredibly soft, silky texture of her body against his...
"Yeah. It really is the best," Suyan agreed wholeheartedly.
Furthermore, Suyan came to another profound, mathematically proven conclusion.
Marikawa Shizuka was the kind of woman who, when fully submerged in a bathtub, visibly possessed three distinct heads...