Chapter 94: The NEET Princess Cosplays as Chino.
....
Spring — Day 27.
Warm sunlight spilled across the broad, jagged leaves, and the morning dew slid down vivid crimson stalks into the waiting earth. The last of the season's crops — rhubarb, always the slowest to ripen — had finally come into harvest.
Kihara drew his scythe in a clean arc. The stalk snapped with a crisp, satisfying crack, and juice the colour of fresh blood welled up from the cut, as though the plant were painting the soil with rouge of its own accord.
Akane Shinjo crouched nearby, watching in silence. When she noticed the extraordinary colour of the sap, she couldn't help herself — she extended one finger, dabbed a little, and raised it to her nose for a cautious sniff.
A clean, distinctly herbal fragrance. Curious, she touched the tip of her tongue to it.
The bitterness hiding beneath that vivid red hit her like an ambush. Her cute, doll-like face scrunched into a spectacular knot of betrayal.
"It tastes awful — Rikka, bring me a glass of sweet milk RIGHT NOW!"
Kihara kept harvesting, biting down on his smile. He'd seen the whole thing coming and said nothing. Watching his girlfriend fall victim to her own curiosity was, he had decided, one of life's finer pleasures.
By the time he finished bringing in the last of the rhubarb, a chime rang through his mind.
[Farming has reached Level 5. Please select a Profession.]
Rancher — Animal products worth 20% more.
Tiller — Crops worth 10% more.
"Tiller."
[Profession selected: Tiller. Future paths: Artisan / Agriculturist.]
On raw numbers alone, Rancher offered a bigger immediate bonus. But Kihara had always planned to build toward brewing, which made it a non-starter — and more to the point, the downstream Artisan profession boosted Artisan Goods by a staggering 40%. Wine was already expensive. Add forty percent on top of that and the profit margins became genuinely obscene.
Chores done, Kihara made the customary trip to the Scarlet Devil Mansion to serve as a blood source for Remilia and Flandre, then settled in to enjoy the meticulous, delicate ministrations of Izayoi Sakuya's elegant hands.
It seemed like an entirely unremarkable day drawing to a close — spring's final night nearly upon him — until he was with Tatsumaki and she picked up on something almost immediately.
Her fine brows pulled together. She smiled with her mouth but not her eyes, seized the culprit in a firm grip, and pressed her lips to his ear.
"Have you been sneaking food behind my back?"
"Mm..." He considered the question with genuine seriousness. "Solo practice shouldn't count as sneaking food, should it?"
"WHAT."
First came the shock. Then came the outrage — the deeply personal, affronted outrage of a girlfriend whose dignity had just been stepped on.
Tatsumaki planted both hands on his cheeks and forced him to look her dead in the eye.
"If you ever do that behind my back again," she said, her voice soft and absolutely glacial, "I will be very angry. Extremely angry. It is an insult to your girlfriend. I will dig through the trash if I have to — and I will find the evidence — and then I will make you eat it."
"No, no — I didn't do it myself."
"There's a girl doing it for you?!"
Her voice cracked clean off the note. "Who is she? What are you two?"
Kihara confessed without hesitation. There was no point hiding something this minor.
"Izayoi Sakuya. The head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. As for what we are... technically I'm an honored guest and she's the maid attending to me?"
"A maid..." Tatsumaki tilted her head, her pale neck arching with all the haughty elegance of a swan considering a lesser bird. "So you're into that."
"I wouldn't say I'm not."
Her chin lifted another degree. "Fine. Next time I'll wear the outfit. Then we'll see just how sincere you are."
"Yes, ma'am."
Kihara may have talked a big game about keeping his distance from Eientei and refusing to become Gensokyo's resident errand boy — but Kaguya's room was simply too good to stay away from. A top-spec gaming PC, a PS5, a Switch, shelves of manga and light novels stretching wall to wall. For any self-respecting shut-in, it was paradise made manifest.
Today happened to be the last day of spring. The seasonal crops and foraged items earmarked as tribute for the Great Fairy were already sorted and waiting. He had nothing pressing to do.
He declared himself on holiday and headed straight for Eientei.
Cuddling with his girlfriends at home was wonderful, of course. But sometimes a man needed to be alone with a game and the freedom to commit the most spectacular acts of virtual violence imaginable — ideally with Kaguya sitting next to him so they could bicker the entire time.
The NEET Princess was soft, fragrant, surprisingly competent at games, and never sent his blood pressure spiking. No one in their right mind would turn down a gaming companion like that.
"Shut-in! I'm here to play!"
"Who are you calling a shut-in?! You're the shut-in! Your whole family are shut-ins!"
Kaguya glared at him for walking in without knocking, then composedly drew a tissue and patted her fingertips dry. The faint flush on her cheeks told its own story about what she'd been doing just before he arrived.
Kihara didn't look at her. He made a beeline for her PC — highest specs money could buy, perpetually running at peak performance thanks to the Eternity concept she'd applied to it, with download speeds of 100MB/s that made the eyes water — and settled into the chair with the ease of long familiarity.
He switched to his own account, typed in his password, and then went very still.
He turned slowly and pointed at the screen.
"...Care to explain this?"
His desktop wallpaper — previously a tasteful selection of his favourite anime girls — had been replaced with a photograph of Kaguya herself, standing in the entryway in a full Chino Kafuu cosplay.
"Don't you like it?" she asked, her smile the picture of innocence and mischief in equal measure.
"I mean, I do like it — but — how do you know my password?"
"Please." She rolled her eyes. "I know your habits better than you do. Same username and password across every single game. And you always put a capital H after your birthday in the password. Every single time."
Kihara reached into his pocket and produced his phone — the one that had been completely useless in Gensokyo since he'd arrived — and held it out to her with both hands and an expression of solemn reverence.
"What are you doing?"
"Send me the photo. I want it as my lock screen."
Kaguya spun away, pumped her fist at waist height, and whispered a tiny "Yes!" at the wall. Then she turned back around with a carefully composed expression and took the phone. "I suppose that's fine. But won't your girlfriends be jealous?"
"Not a chance. I use slideshow mode — it cycles through randomly every thirty seconds."
He sat up straight with the bearing of a man announcing a significant personal achievement, eyes bright. "My love for each of them is perfectly, mathematically equal."
"...Suddenly I don't want to give you the photo."
"Come on — this cosplay is genuinely stunning, it'd be a crime not to let your friend appreciate it properly!"
Through the time-honoured art of relentless pestering, Kihara eventually obtained the photo. He raised his phone aloft like a man receiving a sacred artifact, making triumphant little ta-da noises with his mouth as his own personal fanfare.
"You have obtained the NEET Princess's Cosplay Photo. Compendium +1. Mood increased dramatically!"
Kaguya said nothing, but the warmth in her expression was unmistakable. She shot him a look of magnificent, performative disdain.
"Don't do anything weird with my photo."
"What kind of person do you think I am? Come on — let's clear Breakup Kitchen first."
"Fine."
They played for a while. Within minutes, the sounds coming from the room had escalated dramatically — a thunderous volley of controller inputs, raised voices, and the unmistakable chaos of two people who had been perfectly amicable thirty seconds ago now at each other's throats, faces flushed, fingers pointed.
"That last round — wasn't that entirely your fault?"
"How was that my fault?! You mixed up the ingredients!"
...
Thank you for reading.