Prince Manwhore II

Before long, Haruto had completed the journey from Akihabara to Itsuki’s apartment. When he rang the doorbell, he was greeted by Itsuki and some delicious aromas inside whetting his appetite.

“Hey,” Haruto said.

“Yo,” replied Itsuki, acting completely casual. They had last met around ten days ago, not long after SisterLeaks, and Itsuki was clearly depressed. Haruto opted against asking point-blank if things were okay as he went inside. There were a few other pairs of shoes by the door, he noticed; the rest of the gang must have already been there.

Chihiro was in the kitchen, carefully monitoring a simmering pot.

“Happy New Year, Chihiro.”

He turned toward Haruto and gave him a smile and a polite bow.

“Happy New Year to you, too, Fuwa.”

It was polite, but still relaxed. When they first met, Chihiro was just the brother of Haruto’s friend; they said hello to each other but didn’t try to go beyond that at all. But when they began their RPG campaign last March, Chihiro became part of the party—and he even joined Haruto on the mixer he’d set up the other day. Whether Itsuki was around or not, Haruto firmly considered Chihiro his friend now.

Peeking into the inviting pot, he saw a bright red soup with meat, sausage, carrots, potatoes, and more.

“…Wow. That looks really spicy.”

Chihiro chuckled. “It’s borscht, so it’s not at all. It’s red because of the beets in it.”

“Oh. Borscht, huh…? I don’t think I’ve ever had it. Sounds like fun.”

“I hope you brought your appetite,” Chihiro confidently replied.

In the living room, Miyako and Nayuta were at the low kotatsu table, enjoying a two-player board game.

“Happy New Year, guys,” he said.

“…Oh right. Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year!”

Both of them were too focused on the game to give their greeting any more thought than that.

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……… How about this?!”

After some extended agonizing, Miyako gave a cylindrical peg to Nayuta, who placed it on the game board—a four-by-four square grid.

“Okay, Quarto.”

“Wha—?! …Ah…! Oh nooooo!”

Miyako wailed over something she had missed on the board.

They were playing a game called Quarto, a simple one where the object is to line up four pieces in a row that share the same attribute—height, color, shape, and whether they’re hollow or not. The twist: Players take turns choosing a piece from the lot for the other player to place on the board. There was no random element at all, and since the pieces you give your opponent are what decide the game, you had only yourself to blame if you lost.

“Nya-ha-ha! I win again.”

“That was… I just wasn’t paying attention for a sec, that’s all!”

“Oh? Are you planning to say the same thing if someone cuts your head off on the battlefield, Myaa?”

It was a rather cynical, almost staged reaction to Miyako’s frustration.

“So, Myaa, I now get to do whatever I want to your boobs five times.”

“You get to do what?!” exclaimed Haruto.

Itsuki explained with a sigh. “They played a few games before Quarto, but Miyako’s so bad at them that Kanikou got bored and said that whoever wins gets to do anything they want to the loser’s breasts. Then Miyako got all frustrated and said yes.”

Miyako had tears in her eyes as she groaned. “Ohhh… Why can’t I win anything…?”

“There’s no way someone who’s lost their cool can win a game with zero randomness,” an exasperated Itsuki told her.

Nayuta flashed her own sinister grin. “Weh-heh-heh! I can’t wait! I’ll taste Myaa’s boobs for the first time in a while tonight. I don’t even need to pretend it’s for research; it’s just for fun this time. Ah, bliss…!”

“What, whatever you want…with Miyako’s boobs…?” Haruto swallowed. “Um, can I join in?!”

“No, of course you can’t,” shouted a blushing Miyako—but Haruto held out hope.

“If you win, Miyako, you can do whatever you want with my breasts!”

“I don’t want to do anything with them! Why are you being so silly, Fuwa?!”

“Hee-hee-hee! If you want free rein over Myaa’s boobs, you’ll have to beat me first.”

“All right. Time to get serious about this…”

Nayuta and Haruto had a fairly even record against the other in board games; Nayuta was the clear favorite in titles involving luck or hunches, and Haruto was better at games that didn’t emphasize those things. If the game was Quarto, Haruto would hold the advantage.

“Okay, Prince Manwhore, here we go.”

“You got it! Miyako’s boobs are all mine…!”

“I’m not giving them to anyone! Knock it off, you two!”

Haruto began to regret acting a little too villainous to the tearfully protesting Miyako. He was acting like a perverted male student in a classroom comedy, but in part, that was to remind himself that he loved Miyako, not Ui. He wouldn’t have minded the opportunity, of course, but regardless.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just kidding. I won’t ask for your boobs if I win.”

“Really…?”

Haruto flashed a brisk smile at the doubtful Miyako. “Really, really. Besides, I want to get the right to do that legitimately, not as a prize for a game.”

“………You can act as cool as you want saying that; it’s still sexual harassment.”

“That’s really gross, Prince Manwhore.”

Miyako and Nayuta gave Haruto cold stares.

With everyone’s boobs off the board, Itsuki joined in the Quarto game as well. Haruto wound up in first place, winning all three games he played. Nayuta was second with a 2–1 record, Itsuki third at 1–2, and Miyako lost every time. Nayuta challenged Haruto to another game after that, and he beat her soundly.

“Mm… Not bad… You really are Prince Manwhore.”

“Ha-ha! This is just what talent looks like. And can you quit it with that nickname already? It’s been forever.”

Haruto grinned at the frustrated Nayuta—and before long, Chihiro started bringing in plates, kicking off the New Year’s/Volume 5/Anime Announcement Party.

“Well…I know I had some trouble with that idiot KenKen leaking the news right on New Year’s Day, but today the new volume’s come out and the official anime site is online. I haven’t heard much feedback yet, but people seem to like the voices in the teaser and drama CD. The screenwriting’s going well, too. But I got a lot of work let to do, so here’s to this year being good to all of us! Cheers!”

Itsuki lifted his beer mug up high as he gave the toast.

Steam was coming out of the glasses, so nobody was clinking them, lest any of the hot liquid inside come splashing out. He, Haruto, and Miyako were drinking Liefmans Glühkriek, an almost-black beer that looked like mulled wine at first glance. This was a rare beer, designed to be drunk warm on wintry nights, and while it was a nice bittersweet drink when chilled, heating it up like coffee softened the sourness and emphasized the thick sweetness of the cherries for a gentle, warming effect.

“Huh. This is good. Never had a beer like this,” Miyako said, blowing on it.

“Nyah. It smells pretty good. I wish I could have some.” Next to Itsuki, Nayuta brought her face close to his mug to smell it.

“Hang in there. You need to be a grown-up first.”

Miyako’s observation made Nayuta pout. “I’m already grown up. We have all kinds of sex and everything.”

“Brff!”

Itsuki spat out the beer in his mouth. Haruto, Miyako, and Chihiro all blushed. They all assumed as much, of course, but having it spelled out so clearly for them was a first.

“K-Kanikou! You can’t just… Please don’t say that,” Itsuki muttered, his face bright red, as Haruto awkwardly looked away from them. Even Nayuta seemed to regret it a bit, giving the group a vague sort of smile.

“W-well, anyway, isn’t this dinner really great?!” Haruto ventured, trying to dispel the awkward atmosphere with a bright smile.

In addition to the borscht, there was a big plate of beef stroganoff, as well as a selection of piroshki stuffed with ground beef, seafood, potatoes, and chili sauce. It paired well with the mulled beer, warming them all to the core.

“Thank you very much, Fuwa. I’ve never really made Russian food before, so I’m glad you like it.” Chihiro gave a bashful smile.

“I know I’m repeating myself, but seriously, this is way better than your average restaurant.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far… That Italian place we went to the other day was really good.”

“Yeah, pretty much everything was great in there, wasn’t it?”

“The other day?” Itsuki said, interrupting Haruto and Chihiro’s conversation. “Oh, that mixer?”

Miyako’s eyebrows rose up. “A mixer? Wait, you and Chihiro went to a mixer together, Fuwa?”

“It—it wasn’t a mixer! It was just dinner with some other novelists to help us get to know each other!”

Miyako gave the panicking Haruto a reproachful look.

“…If it was an industry thing, why did you take Chihiro along?”

“Well, um, just to even out the numbers…”

“Between genders? Doesn’t that make it a mixer?”

“No, it’s not like that! We just went out for drinks; that’s it! I had no ulterior motive at all! Right, Chihiro?!”

“Huh? Um, right,” Chihiro nodded. “…Oh, but Ashley was really keen on scoring with a guy, because it was her last chance before Christmas or something.”

“Ha, ha-ha-ha… Well, she sure had the wrong idea about that party, didn’t she?”

Miyako coldly stared at Haruto as he continued trying to talk his way out of this.

“By the way,” she asked Chihiro, “who else was there?”

“Well, for the men, it was Mr. Kaizu, a novelist. On the girls’ side, there was Ms. Aioi and Ms. Kasamatsu, Both authors are making their debut soon.”

“…Okay. So it was basically a mixer, right? Because if you drew that scene as a color spread in a light novel, I think most editors would caption it ‘The Mixer,’ you know?”

Haruto looked frantic as Miyako flatly pleaded her case.

“L-look, I respect Mr. Kaizu a lot, okay? And he asked me to set things up like a mixer for him! I couldn’t turn him down!”

Miyako turned her eyes away, annoyed. “It’s not like it matters to me if you go to a mixer or not, Fuwa. It’s just that you…saying what you said to me, then going to a mixer? I’m just wondering about that.”

“…?! Myaa, are you jealous?!”

Nayuta’s eyes were as wide as saucers as Miyako blushed at her.

“N-no I’m not! I just, um, I don’t think that’s a good thing! As a general rule!”

“You gotta believe me! I’m still all about you, Miyako!”

“Well, don’t shout that out loud, please!”

Haruto looked dead serious, while Miyako was now yelling at him, blushing even harder.

“Um, Miyako?” Chihiro timidly stated. “Fuwa really didn’t act all lovey-dovey around any of the other girls. He just talked about serious stuff with them, is all. Me and him and Mr. Kaizu talked about building Gundam model kits for a while.”

“Chihiro…!” exclaimed Haruto, saved by the young man’s backup.

“Oh, did you?” Miyako said.

“What kind of sorry mixer did you attend if the guys talked about Gundam kits?” Itsuki jabbed.

“I can’t say what happened after I left, though,” Chihiro added, making Haruto tense up ever so slightly.

After Chihiro and Aoba headed for the train station, Kaizu and Ashley immediately disappeared together, so he wound up going to the café alone with Ui. Not that they talked about anything exciting in there, however—just industry talk between two writers.

“Ah-ha,” interjected Nayuta. “So Prince Manwhore isn’t whoring so much after all, huh?”

“You’re the one who gave me that nickname,” lashed Haruto. “You all already know I’m a virgin, so can you please stop calling me that?”

“Mm-nngh… If you put it that way, you have a point…”

A thoughtful look appeared on Nayuta’s face.

“Besides,” Miyako said, “why does Nayu call Fuwa, um, that nickname anyway? …Just from his looks?”

“Oh, you don’t know where that came from, Miyako?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” Chihiro added.

Haruto grinned at them both. “Well, it comes from a game.”

“A game?” Miyako asked.

“This was back when Nayu had just gotten published, I think. We wanted to get to know more writers, so me, Itsuki, Nayu, and two others who debuted alongside her played a board game called Moteneba, or ‘Gotta Be Popular.’”

“Uh-huh.”

“Basically, you win the game by becoming the most popular guy in school among the girls, and I won by a landslide. She’s been calling me Prince Manwhore ever since.”

“That was one fearsome battle,” Itsuki wistfully recalled.

“I’ll never forget the humiliation of Prince Manwhore taking all the girls I had my sights on,” Nayuta added.

“It’s just a game! And it’s super unfair to give me a nickname like that because of it.”

“What are you talking about?” Nayuta turned toward the grinning Haruto. “Love is a battlefield, whether it’s a game or not.”

“Well, sure, I’ll admit that I was playing for keeps, but…”

“That sounds like a neat game. I’d like to try it sometime.”

Now Chihiro was getting interested.

“I have Moteneba here…… Why don’t we break it out? It’s been a while,” Itsuki offered.

Haruto and Nayuta put on their game faces.

“…Yeah. It’s a good game. I’m up for it.”

“It’s time to get back at Prince Manwhore for what he did to me…”

“Um… I have a feeling this won’t end well…”

Miyako’s concerns were ignored.

Once they cleared the table, they opened the Moteneba box and prepared to play, Haruto kicking things off by reading the instructions for everyone.

“Um… ‘The prime directive for human beings is to become popular during their three years of high school.’”

“The prime directive?!”

“‘Human beings’…?”

Miyako and Chihiro both seemed surprised at the intro text.

“Yeah,” Nayuta laughed, “no matter how many times I hear it, it sure leaves an impact.”

“Yeah, it’s our prime directive, after all. It sounds so powerful, you just have to accept it,” added Itsuki.

“‘Approach the women in your school with academics, sports, fashion, conversation, and money to win them over! Grasp popular trends in school, polish your skills, even control the student body itself to become more popular than your rivals. When graduation comes, who’s going to make the girls swoon the most?!’”

As the text Haruto read out loud suggested, Moteneba asked players to approach girls in assorted ways to earn hearts (points), with whoever had the most hearts in the end being deemed “most popular” and the winner. Seven girls featured in each game out of a pool of fourteen. Each participant received a certain number of cubes representing their abilities in five stats: academics, sports, fashion, conversation, and money. Placing these cubes by the cards representing the girls could get them to like you more, and players liked enough by the girls could receive hearts from them at the end of each school year. Different girls provided different amounts of hearts; some would give hearts to the three players they liked the most, while others only gave them out to one.

“So it’s up to the player to strategize. You can either focus on approaching girls with lots of points to give out, or you can try approaching multiple girls for insurance.”

“Isn’t it mean to flirt with multiple girls at once?”

“Yeaahhhh,” a sneering Miyako said, unnerving Haruto.

“Hey,” Itsuki countered, “some girls give out hearts to the top three players. They’re playing the field, too. It’s the same with both genders.”

“Maybe, but… I dunno. It’s kinda weird.”

“Well, Miyako, if you think so, you can try to approach a single girl instead. But this is just a game, so I don’t think it’s worth empathizing with them too much.”

“…Maybe not, no…”

Haruto saw fit to add that warning, but Miyako remained unconvinced. It made him laugh a little.

“By the way,” he continued, “each of the five popularity stats go in and out of style as time goes on. The more trendy the stat at the moment, the stronger you’ll appeal to any girls you approach. On the other hand, stats that are out of style will be harder to grab hearts with.”

Chihiro looked at the area of the game table showing current trends. “So at this school, players good at sports are the most popular, but academics are pretty much worthless?”

The current setup had sports as the hottest trend, followed by conversation, fashion, money, and academics.

“That’s right,” Haruto said. “But players can play their cubes to change the order of these trends, too.”

“Messing with things behind the scenes, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe you’re spreading rumors like ‘oh, it’s way more modern to go after intellectual guys!’ or something. But anyway, the cubes you use to appeal to girls never disappear, so if you were approaching him with a low-value stat, you could become super-popular out of nowhere if the trends change. But the more cubes you use adjusting those trends, the fewer you’ll have to approach girls with—which helps other players with the same kinds of stat cubes, so you need to be careful.”

In a five-player game, each person starts with six cubes picked at random. They take turns placing one cube either by a girl or in a type of stat trend, and once all the cubes are used up (after six turns from each player), that’s the end of a school year. Players popular with girls earn hearts from them, and then everyone draws more cubes for the next year. This continues until the end of the third year, and whoever has the most hearts by then wins.

“Shall we get started?”

With the rules squared away, it was time to begin. Turns were taken clockwise around the table, but:

“The rules say that whoever came to school earliest when they were in high school goes first.”

“Board games love creating weird rules to decide who goes first, huh?” Miyako remarked to Haruto.

“Yeah,” added Itsuki, “you see things like ‘whoever enjoyed school life the most,’ or ‘whoever most recently went on a trip,’ or ‘who can trace their family tree back the furthest,’ or ‘who’s the most hungry right now.’”

“How are you supposed to tell who’s the hungriest?”

“Ah, it’s just the designer having fun,” Haruto said with a chuckle. “So who out of us got to school first?”

“I always made it before the opening bell with seconds to spare.”

“I quit school.”

“I have a lot to do in the morning, so I always show up around ten minutes before class began.”

“I was usually between ten and fifteen minutes before class, too.”

Itsuki, Nayuta, Chihiro, and Haruto revealed their answers. That just left Miyako.

“Well, I guess I’m first, then. I always had morning practice.”

So Miyako went first in Year One, followed clockwise by Haruto, Nayuta, Itsuki, and Chihiro. Each player took turns drawing cubes, and when they all had six, the game moved on to the action phase.

“So, should I start approaching them, or work on gaming the trends…?” Miyako said as she checked on the girls.

The girls on the table were:

Seven appeared in the game overall.

“Okay, I’ll go with this girl. She seems a lot more earnest than the others.”

Miyako placed a “sports” cube by Reiko with the long hair, the only girl on the board who gave hearts to her top favorite and no one else.

“You sure about that, Myaa? The aura around her is so…heavy. She sort of looks like Yozora from Haganai, too.”

“It’s fine!” she said to Nayuta. “This is the kinda girl I want to be friends with.”

“…You’re just like yourself in the game world, too, Myaa.” Nayuta gave her a gentle smile.

Next up was Haruto.

“Now, who should I aim for…?”

He looked over the seven girls, sizing them up, as Itsuki blurted out:

“…Hey, don’t you think Saki here is kind of like Miyako?”

“…?!”

The eyes of Haruto and the other three players turned to Saki. Her hair was brightly colored, her skirt short. She had a little stuffed-animal keychain on her backpack, and she was applying lip balm to herself—the picture of refinement.

“You think she looks like her?” a confused Nayuta asked.

Miyako laughed. “Ahh, yeah, I did look kind of like this in high school. I had that same kind of teddy-bear keychain, too.”

“Ohhh… Wow, so this is the high-school version of Miyako…!”

Haruto peered intently at Saki, then groaned at Itsuki in frustration.

“Nngh…!”

Thus Haruto’s “sports” cube was placed next to Saki. Honestly, he wanted to carefully gauge the number of hearts at play and his strength over other players before deciding who to aim for. But if one of the characters looked like the girl he was after in real life, he had to go with her.

This was a common trend to see in a game with “love” elements like this. If Reiko’s card had a picture of a building or some crops for trade instead, any player could easily make the right choices to maximize their profits. But this game was themed around girls—girls without any backstory apart from their name and portrait, but still varied enough that players would cultivate favorites for themselves. Plus, the lack of backstory let players freely think along the lines of “resembling Miyako” or “has a heavy aura.” Making girls the subject matter creates complex issues that gives Moteneba its unique play style.

Next up was Nayuta. “I won’t let Prince Manwhore take you, Myaa!” she shouted as she placed her own “sports” cube next to Saki. Haruto’s face tensed up. It was now accepted fact that Saki looked like Miyako, so he predicted Nayuta would be gunning for her as well.

“Heh-heh-heh… Have fun destroying each other, guys…!”

Itsuki, who had seen this coming from the start, shot the group a devilish grin.

“Right! Who should I am for?”

Cube in hand, Itsuki breezily compared the girls. Then Nayuta cupped a hand over her mouth, whispering to him.

“…‘You’re the main heroine of my story. And any good story needs weight.’”

“~~~~~~~!!”

Having his own line whispered back to him made Itsuki blush intensely.

“Y-you, that… Kanikou! That’s, like, so unfair…!”

“Hee-hee-hee! All’s fair in love and war…”

But Nayuta was just as red.

“Ugh! You… Nngh…”

“Nya-ha-ha!”

Haruto, Miyako, and Chihiro gave them weird looks, totally unaware of what this conversation meant.

“…Arrgh, all right! I like earnest girls! Heavy or not!”

Resigned to his face, Itsuki placed his cube by Reiko.

“Itsuki?! Hey! Don’t put your hands on my Reiko!”

“I’m sorry, but Reiko’s mine.”

“Not, not if I can help it!”

“Take your hands off her. Can you bring Reiko salvation?”

“And you shouldn’t touch her unless you really mean it, either.”

This squabbling over Reiko on the card continued for a while longer.

“Itsuki and Myaa are fighting over a girl other than me… Ooooh, this is so depressing…” Nayuta frowned, even though she was the instigator.

“Okay, my turn.”

Chihiro picked up one of his cubes, pondered the situation a little, then placed it by Chizuru, the girl in glasses cradling a cat in both hands.

Itsuki grinned at this. “Oh, you got a thing for glasses, huh?”

“What? No.” Chihiro half-sneered at him. “I was wavering between the two girls who give six hearts, but I figured I ought to score one of those event cards.”

“Ohhh, right…”

It was a perfectly rational strategy. Itsuki felt a tad embarrassed.

“By the way, Chihiro, ignoring any of the game elements, which of these girls do you like?” Nayuta asked.

“Which do I like…?”

Chihiro sized up the illustrations of the girls.

“Hmm… Koharu looks like she’s into sports; maybe I’d like to play some volleyball with her. Fumi, on the other hand, looks like she’d appreciate my food a lot, which is nice. I’d like Mitsuki to teach me whatever’s in her book, too. Oh, and I like Saki’s sense of fashion.”

“Which one would you want to date, though?” asked Miyako, looking oddly agitated.

Chihiro scowled “Um… I’m sorry. If that’s the question, I’m not really sure. I think it’d be more fun just to hang out with all of them.”

“Itsuki! Doesn’t Chihiro sound like the protagonist of a harem light novel to you? Surrounded by hot girls all the time, but never so much as getting an erection?”

“Well, maybe he’s just laid-back that way,” Itsuki replied. “One of those ‘herbivorous men’ you hear about.”

Nayuta frowned. “I think the idea of herbivorous men is just a bunch of crap invented by the media, but even saying it’s not—if a herbivore gets hungry enough, it’ll chow down on even more food than the equivalent carnivore, you know? Like, it’ll graze and graze until it eats up the whole forest. In a way, the term’s perfectly fitting.”

“…So you think Chihiro’s gonna turn into a starving elephant or giraffe someday?”

“Oh, come on, guys!”

Chihiro blushed, pouting at them, as Haruto stared off into space.

“You know,” he said, “I kind of get that. Like, thinking it’s more fun to just hang out with everyone instead of officially dating someone. That’s really true sometimes, you know? Like, in real life.”

“Wow. For someone who wrecked his college gaming club, those words hold a lot of weight.”

“I didn’t wreck it!” Haruto spat out at Itsuki. During college, he was a member of an RPG club that fell apart thanks to fallout over a woman—the lone woman in the club, in fact, who was dumped by Haruto in part because he was much more interested in gaming than having a romantic relationship at the time. But even now that there was someone he had his eye on, enjoying time off with everyone like this seemed just as irreplaceable as love.

Regardless, this ended everyone’s first turn. Miyako wasted no time using a second cube to approach Reiko. This was followed by Haruto, who resisted the urge to strategically target other girls and put another cube on Saki. Nayuta did the same thing, and Itsuki made a second approach to Reiko as well. Only Chihiro changed his move for turn two, placing a cube next to Koharu on the volleyball team.

Things proceeded apace until everyone had played six turns, marking the end of Year 1—and after a tense battle, it was Haruto who emerged victorious in the scramble for Saki’s emotions.

“All riiiiight!”

The victory caused Haruto to whoop out loud before he could stop himself. He sheepishly picked up three hearts and an event card.

“Hmph… But I’m only getting started,” a sullen Nayuta said as she grabbed three hearts of her own.

“So Haruto’s her main squeeze and Kanikou’s her safety pick?”

Nayuta nodded at Itsuki. “…I suppose so.” She turned to Miyako and sighed. “Ah, so fickle.”

“Wh-why’re you looking at me when you say that?! She’s not even my girl!”

Miyako blushed, but she had reason to be happy after winning the fight with Itsuki for Reiko’s love. Itsuki didn’t have as many “sports” cubes as Miyako did at first, so he tried to adjust the popularity trends to boost the value of his own cubes, but the single cube this cost wound up making all the difference. He failed to catch up to Miyako, so all eight hearts were hers—and Itsuki, as the loser, got nothing.

“Dammit! After everything I’ve given to her, she gives me nothing back…!”

Itsuki stared at her card, crestfallen, mulling over all the wasted effort as Nayuta gave him a gentle smile.

“Aw, don’t worry, Itsuki. If you don’t give up and stay on the attack with her, I’m sure she’ll look your way eventually. Just like how I got your heart. I stuck it out no matter how many times you brushed me off.”

“S-stop saying embarrassing stuff like that!” Itsuki shouted, blushing, as Miyako watched their banter with mixed feelings.

But as the four of them engaged in this close-quarters combat, where real romance was intermingling freely with the lovers on the cards, Chihiro was the lone player actually making an attempt to win the game.

“Hmm… So I got five hearts and an event card from Chizuru, four hearts and an event from Koharu, six hearts from Mitsuki, six from Kaoru, and six from Fumi, for a total of twenty-seven points and two event cards.”

He had placed a cube next to every girl besides Saki and Reiko (both subject to an intense bidding war). It earned him the maximum number of points with the least amount of effort.

““““…………””””

The other four players stared at the small mountain of heart chips and cards in front of him, looking disgusted.

“He’s a harem master. There’s a true-blue harem master among us…,” Itsuki muttered.

“You sure are popular, Chihiro.” Haruto laughed.

“N-no, I’m not! These girls are just my friends!”

Chihiro was stammering, like a man whose wife just found him at a club with his mistress.

“Wow, Chihiro was the real Prince Manwhore the whole time.”

Nayuta’s analysis made Chihiro blush.

“I-I’m not a man…whore or anything close to that, okay?!”

He had to quickly scramble to cover for the lethal confession he almost made.

Either way, Chihiro’s gigolo-style gameplay shocked the other four enough to realize that there was no time to let their real-life obsessions affect their performance. For Year 2, the wasteful, inefficient bidding wars were abandoned, and the players shifted their focus to making themselves more popular first.

“I like volleyball a lot, too, you know. Maybe I should join the team.”

Miyako placed a cube next to Koharu.

“What was that?” Haruto said. “You want to be a writer, Mitsuki? Well, I made my pro debut in high school, so how ’bout I give you some advice?”

This was all in Haruto’s imagination, of course; nothing like that was written on Mitsuki’s card or in the rules.

“Is it all right if I tell Aioi what you just said, Fuwa?” Chihiro teased.

“No, please, no!” Haruto begged.

“Kaoru’s good at playing the trumpet, isn’t she? Maybe she’d like to put her mouth on the one in my pants, geh-heh-heh…”

Nayuta didn’t exactly keep it high-brow as she placed a cube on Kaoru.

“Look, girls aren’t into musclemen who are only good at sports! This year, it’s all about money, money, money!”

Itsuki, who had drawn a large number of “money” cubes this year, decided to use one to boost the value of the “money” trend.

“Ha-ha-ha! Look out, girls! Prepare to fall to your knees when you see how rich my anime made me!”

The results turned Reiko’s heart (and her hearts) from Miyako toward Itsuki.

“What?! You’re going to trick my Reiko into loving you for money?!”

“Ha-ha-ha! That’s the power of makin’ it rain, baby!”

His laughter rang loud across the living room. But:

“Oh, that’s good! I have a lot of ‘money’ cubes, too.” Chihiro smiled and placed one of them next to Chizuru.

“Huh?! Oh crap…!”

“Now he’s using the power of money to conquer them all… He’s acting even more like the true Prince Manwhore…”

Itsuki grew forlorn as Nayuta became concerned. But even as the other four players fought and schemed to catch up to Chihiro, Year 2 ended without anyone coming close. Even when Haruto managed to put some pressure on him in Year 3, Chihiro broke ahead once more with some well-played event cards—letting him trade a cube with another player and control popularity trends. The game ended with him well ahead of the pack.

Frustrated, Haruto looked at Miyako and Itsuki. “I can’t believe this! We could’ve had a chance if we all worked together to take Chihiro down, at least…”

“Wh-what could I do? I just wanted to keep Reiko under my protection…”

“All I did was follow my heart. I regret nothing!”

In Year 3, when it was clear to them Chihiro couldn’t be beat, the two of them waged war over Reiko, refusing Haruto’s offer to form a team. Victory in Moteneba required a knack for knowing when to cut your losses if your investment wasn’t paying off, but since the stakes were for “love” instead of stocks or bonds, it could prove difficult to work strictly off gains and losses.

“Chihiro truly is the only one worthy of the name Prince Manwhore…” Nayuta was impressed.

Haruto nodded with her. “Congratulations, Chihiro. I hereby pass my title on to you.”

“Thanks, but no thanks!” a blushing Chihiro protested.

“That’s the rule,” replied Itsuki. “Whoever wins gets to be called Prince Manwhore. But if you really don’t want to…”

“If I don’t want to…?”

“Then you need to pose like the protagonist of a romantic comedy anime and shout ‘I’m sick of having a harem!!’ Then you can forfeit that title.”

“Um, that’s the rule?”

“Yep,” a serious-looking Itsuki replied.

“Really…?”

Chihiro gave Haruto an anxious look. “Uh-huh.” Haruto nodded back.

“Oh… Well, okay then…”

He stood up and bashfully lifted both arms high in the air.

“I… I’m sick of having a harem…”

“Louder!” Itsuki shouted.

“I’m sick of having a harem!!”

“Good, good.”

Chihiro’s red-faced, desperate scream was greeted with warm applause from the rest of the room.

“Not that that rule really exists,” Haruto revealed with a smile.

“Oh, you guys…! I knew it!”

Chihiro sat back down, pouting, as Itsuki laughed at him.

The five of them put the Moteneba box away and were enjoying some cake for dessert when the doorbell rang.

“Who’s that…?”

Itsuki stood up and opened the door, and found a familiar-looking man with a very unfamiliar-looking head.

“Eeep?!”

Itsuki let out a shocked yelp at the newly bald Kenjiro Toki.

“Uh, what happened to your head…?”

This was the first time Toki had revealed it to him.

“I shaved my hair off, out of shame for the anime leak.”

“Um, oh… Oh.”

Itsuki stared blankly at him first. Then he winced, looking peeved.

“…Shaving your head isn’t gonna make that leak go away, you know,” Itsuki mumbled.

Toki nodded meekly. “I know. This is just something for my sake.”

“…Well, as long as you’re aware. So what’s up tonight?”

“This.” Toki presented Itsuki with a paper bag.

What, did he get a box of apology chocolates? Itsuki wondered. But when he looked inside, he found it contained a file folder with a single sheet of paper in it. He took it out. On the sheet was an illustration of the main cast of All About My Little Sister, hands in the air in a “yippee” pose. The words “Congrats! Anime Project Kicks Off!” were written above them.

“Is this…from Hoshiimo?” Itsuki asked as he stared intently at it.

“Yeah. This is the art we were gonna release with the launch of the anime website.”

“I thought you called that off…”

Itsuki was confused. Toki had told him a few days back that Hoshiimo was so mortified by the leak, they wound up calling off the commemorative art piece they had planned. This sheet of paper here didn’t look like it came from someone all heartbroken. In fact, it was one of the greatest All About visuals he had ever seen from him.

“Well, I managed to get Hoshiimo back on track. This image will be released on the website tomorrow.”

“You got him ‘back on track’? What’d you do?”

“I invited him over to Tokyo and gave him the best possible time I could think of,” Toki replied, looking oddly sorrowful about it.

“The best possible time…?”

“………………I took him to a brothel.”

“Wha—?”

“There’s this first-class girl that not even I can call on all that often, and I begged and pleaded with her to entertain him. If I wasn’t a platinum member of that club, it never would’ve happened, lemme tell you.”

“………”

The cold disbelief was plain in Itsuki’s eyes, and Toki withered before it.

“D-don’t look at me like that! The company won’t cover that sort of thing, so I paid for it myself! …Well, okay, my boss paid for half of it, but… Oh, but let me tell you what this girl looks like—”

“I don’t care!” Itsuki sighed, cutting him off before he could go into further detail. “Well… If that’s what it took to make Hoshiimo feel better, then great, but…”

He looked back at the illustration. It was the best work Hoshiimo had ever done; the female characters were even more attractive than in any previous piece. Thinking about how he had Japan’s sex industry to thank for this left Itsuki with mixed feelings.

But hey, an illustrator he was worried about had gotten his groove back, and while this artwork came a little late, it was now fully complete. Itsuki’s heart, heretofore clouded by SisterLeaks, was finally basking in the sun once more.

“Right! Time to start celebrating this anime for real! Let’s finish up all the booze we have left! Join us, KenKen!”

Toki smirked a bit at Itsuki’s bright smile. “I only came to give this to you, but…all right.”

He entered, promptly shocking everyone.

“Ah…?! Mr. Toki?!”

“What happened to your hair?!”

“That looks cold…but it works for you, actually.”

“Yes,” Toki said with a sheepish grin, “well, I’ve still got a lot to learn in my job, so…”

“Would you like something to snack on, Mr. Toki?”

“…!”

The sound of Chihiro’s voice made Toki shiver from head to toe.

“……”

He nervously looked at Chihiro’s face, then his chest, then his hips, failing to find somewhere to park his eyes as Chihiro stared at him.

“Um, Mr. Toki?”

“N-no, uh, yeah, that’d be great if you had something!”

“…?”

The overexcited reply puzzled Chihiro as he went to the kitchen. Toki inspected him further—his ass in particular—and broke out in a cold sweat.

—Ah, another fun day…

After leaving the rest of the gang at around nine that night, Chihiro replayed the day’s events in her head during her bus ride and smiled. Toki’s odd behavior stuck out in her mind, but today really was a blast.

She had first hung out with Haruto, Miyako, and Nayuta during an RPG meetup last March, and ever since, she had gotten to join in their game sessions. They even crowned her “Prince Manwhore” tonight. All of them being so unreserved around her—merciless, some would call it—made her happy. It felt like she was a full-fledged member of the friend group, not just Itsuki’s younger sibling.

That was true with Haruto in particular. They had gone to a mixer together without Itsuki, and they were now talking about building robot kits. None of Chihiro’s school friends were into that sort of thing, so it was a lot of fun chatting with Haruto about it.

Her smile deepened as she thought about it… She was so happy, she even forgot about the massive secret she was still keeping from them all.