Chapter 95 – Time for Donburi (Patreon)

"Kashiwagi Eri?"

"Marin-san, you really know your stuff!"

Standing in line behind Marin, Shinju Inui turned to read the name on the booth, surprise evident in her eyes.

Marin looked back at Shinju, her own eyes sparkling. "You've read Kashiwagi Eri-sensei's doujinshi too?"

Shinju glanced a little guiltily over at her sister Sajuna Inui, who was absorbed in her own world off to the side, then lowered her voice. "Yeah, I've read some... I heard her art's been getting more and more polished lately, and she's been getting a lot of praise..."

"Exactly, exactly! Kashiwagi Eri-sensei's recent stuff is seriously the peak of ero!"

"I heard there was a booth with her authorization at this convention, so I came specially to buy from it!"

Whenever Marin brought up something she was passionate about, her exquisitely pretty face always filled with excitement, and her voice couldn't help but rise in volume. Shinju hurriedly made a flustered shushing gesture, signaling her to keep it down. After all, she wasn't nearly as bold yet pure-hearted as Marin, who could even openly cosplay a character from an eroge.

Shinju looked at the length of the line and then compared it with the neighboring booths that had only a smattering of people and couldn't help but sigh. "Kashiwagi Eri's popularity really is something else!"

Marin followed the line with her eyes as well. "It's mainly because that new release of hers from a couple of days ago is amazing! It shot to the site's trending chart in a single day!"

"That succubus onee-san and the sho[ta] one?"

"Yep! I've already decided—next time I'm cosplaying that succubus onee-san!"

Shinju searched her memory, her beautiful eyes sizing Marin up as she imagined such a transcendentally beautiful high school girl wearing such a seductive outfit. She spoke with some shock.

"Tsk... that outfit... it's a little too erotically charged, isn't it? Could it even really be worn outside?"

A faint blush bloomed on Marin's stunning face. "It'd definitely be for taking photos at home, of course. Shinju-chan, what were you even thinking!"

"Still, even if it's a private cosplay, I want to reproduce the character as perfectly as possible," Marin said earnestly.

As perfectly as possible? Shinju tilted her head slightly and looked toward the booth at the lady cosplaying Hasshaku-sama. Beside her, she could faintly make out a young boy sitting sideways.

"If you're going to reproduce the character as perfectly as possible, wouldn't you also need a sho[ta] for your succubus onee-san to step on?" Shinju teased.

Marin's expression went blank for a second. Unconsciously, the image of the young boy she'd encountered in the changing room earlier surfaced in her mind. She blinked her beautiful eyes and suddenly felt that the boy from the changing room seemed somewhat similar to the one in Kashiwagi Eri's work?

Shinju noticed Marin had fallen into thought and immediately waved her hands in a fluster. "You're not actually thinking about finding a sho[ta], are you? I was kidding, hey!"

"No, how could I..." Marin shook her head, then murmured in a voice only she could hear, "That young boy disappeared too..."

A few minutes later, the line steadily shortened. Before long, Marin was standing right in front of the booth. She looked at the alluring lady cosplaying Hasshaku-sama and spoke.

"Hello, could I get a copy of Kashiwagi Eri-sensei's new work?"

"No problem. That'll be 1280 yen. Here you go!"

Marin handed over 1500 yen and received a tankoubon volume from the alluring lady. Printed on the cover were words like "Insatiable Succubus Onee-san Forces Sho[ta] Into..."

Marin flipped through it briefly. The print quality was high-grade, the art style just as erotically charged as ever. Judging from the thickness, it had to be over a hundred pages. The first part of the succubus onee-san series had been posted online, only twenty pages.

Putting the first installment up on a website or personal account and then selling the rest offline at a convention was the standard promotional approach for most doujin artists, and Kashiwagi Eri was a pretty generous one among them—this tankoubon volume probably had three installments packed into it.

A casual flip landed Marin right on a page where the succubus onee-san's beautiful face wore a flushed, almost sickly smile as she played an edging game with the sho[ta]. Looking at the sho[ta]'s reddened face as he bit down and endured, Marin mentally placed herself into the succubus onee-san's role. Before cosplaying a character, she would always study them in detail and immerse herself completely—only then could she reproduce the character's aura more perfectly.

But the sho[ta]'s face in this doujinshi felt increasingly familiar to Marin. Halfway into immersing herself, she couldn't help but recall that scene in the changing room.

"He really does look like him..." she said unconsciously.

As her gaze drifted, her beautiful eyes suddenly met a pair of pure and clear ones. In an instant, Marin froze, an indescribable flutter stirring somewhere deep inside her.

"Found you!"

The stunning beauty bent forward, leaning in right in front of the young boy, an excited blush coloring her lovely face. "I'm going to cosplay this succubus—will you be the male lead?!"

Practically without hesitation, Marin blurted out the thought that had just surfaced in her mind.

The words landed on the ears of those around the booth, and the air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Hah?!

The first to react was Sayuri. Sitting across from Marin, she had been staring straight into the abyss the moment the girl leaned forward. The sheer magnitude, directly annihilating the scale of a mature lady like herself, made Sayuri's gaze flicker.

A face of transcendent beauty, exquisite makeup, a fantastic figure, and boldly cosplaying a character from an eroge on top of it all... The combination of factors instantly set off alarm bells deep inside Sayuri.

"Miss, this young boy has already been claimed by Hasshaku-sama, you know!"

Sayuri pulled Kouma into her arms, her long, narrow eyes narrowing slightly.

Marin paused for a beat. For some reason, seeing Sayuri embrace the young boy stirred a faint twinge of jealousy in her heart.

"M-M-M-Marin-san, didn't you just say that the sho[ta] thing... was impossible!" Shinju was so startled she could barely get the words out. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that Marin would invite a young boy so boldly and openly.

"He's different..." Marin said softly, her beautiful eyes still focused on Kouma.

Shinju paused, then turned to look at Kouma as well. A look of wonder immediately surfaced in her eyes. This was the first time she'd ever seen a young boy this beautiful.

He really was different... but! This was a cosplay of a doujin character! Was this really okay? Wouldn't it be a case of getting reported for... you know? Shinju was starting to panic.

By this time, Eriri, who had been making change for Marin, finally registered what was happening. Her beautiful face, sealed up behind black-framed glasses and a baseball cap, instantly clouded over.

Reading her own doujinshi, planning to cosplay her character, and then inviting her crush to join her? Eriri felt that despite being blonde, she was looking an awful lot like the cuckolded husband in a doujinshi.

"Do you know Kouma?" Her lovely face full of suspicion and caution, she fixed Marin with a harsh tone, trying to intimidate her.

Kouma? Marin blinked and silently repeated the name in her head. Just as she was about to answer, she heard the young boy's slightly exasperated voice.

"I know this onee-san! And Eriri-nee, she just bought your work, you know. Using that kind of tone probably isn't great."

Kouma's words fell on Marin and Shinju's ears, and they both turned to look at Eriri in astonishment. Baseball cap, oversized black glasses, tracksuit... Even though she'd piled on a lot of camouflage, they could still tell at a single glance that she was absolutely a super beauty.

"You're... Kashiwagi Eri-sensei?" Marin's beautiful eyes glimmered with admiration.

Being stared at by a stunning girl—her own fan, no less—with that kind of gaze, Eriri instantly couldn't keep up her hostile expression. "Kouma actually went and exposed my identity..." She bit her little canine tooth and immediately backed down.

Just then, as Marin was about to greet Eriri, her favorite doujin artist, something suddenly occurred to her. She looked at Kouma in astonishment.

"Just now... you said you know me?" she asked.

Kouma nodded, then opened up his social media app and pulled up an account named "Marin" from his following list. "I was following your account, Onee-san!"

Well—he had just followed it.

He'd recognized Marin back in the changing room. After leaving, he'd searched for her account and found it, even seeing her post about coming to the convention today. That confirmed it.

"Marin-san, that really is your account!" Shinju leaned in to look and let out a quiet exclamation of surprise.

A strange light shone in Marin's beautiful eyes. Right now, she was just a nobody of a cosplayer, yet by sheer coincidence Kouma had been following her. What a wondrous twist of fate...

She glanced at the increasingly impatient customers in line behind her, quickly followed Kouma back, and then stood up.

"Kouma-kun, when I do my succubus onee-san cosplay, I'll definitely contact you!"

Having secured a line of contact, Marin felt reassured and turned to leave, but after only a few steps, she suddenly remembered something. She lightly bit her cherry-blossom lip, felt the marker in her pocket, and doubled back.

A moment later, Shinju watched as Marin jogged back over and asked curiously, "Did you just give something to that young boy?"

Marin pinched the edge of her black skirt and nodded. "Yeah... I gave him the marker," she said softly.

Shinju's lips parted slightly in response, a shocked expression overtaking her lovely face.

Beside them, Sajuna looked at her in confusion. "What's the matter? It's just a marker, isn't it?"

Shinju's eyes flickered. Giving away a marker was, of course, nothing on its own, but Marin was currently cosplaying the character Shizuku.

Shinju vaguely recalled that in Shizuku's eroge storyline, after the act was over, there was a dialogue option to return the marker you had used to write the tally marks on yourself back to your partner. It meant you were very satisfied... and that you'd come again sometime.

"Marin-san... was that not just a spur-of-the-moment impulse? Is she seriously interested in that young boy...?"

Shinju looked at Marin's breathtakingly beautiful face, unsure what to say.

"Oh, right—the day you do your succubus onee-san cosplay, let me come be your lewd photographer!" After a moment of hesitation, Shinju proactively offered. Whatever happened, she couldn't just stand by and watch Marin walk down a criminal path. At the very least, if she was there when something really was about to happen, she could step in and stop it.

Marin blinked and nodded without the slightest hesitation. "Sure!"

Sayuri had not expected the doujinshi to sell out so quickly. In under two hours, all five hundred copies of the new release were gone.

"Looks like the quality of this new work really exceeded expectations! The comments section is full of people sharing the volume they just bought, too."

Hearing her mother's words, Eriri's lips unconsciously curled upward a bit. "Hmph, who do you think I am? This was totally expected!"

Despite saying that, Eriri still secretly opened her phone and scrolled through the comments praising her in the section.

"Grabbed it in person to support Kashiwagi Eri-sensei this time!"

"So jealous... I don't have the money, so I'll catch it next time for sure!"

Eriri recognized that commenter's ID. Back when she frequently asked for votes, tips, and support, this person had always posted "next time for sure" in the comments, and today here they were, still at it.

"Hmph, monthly votes and all that... I don't care about them at all!"

"Want to eat some donburi?" Sayuri asked from the side.

Eriri was just about to nod when a soft, slightly quavering voice full of suppressed excitement sounded from ahead of them.

"Um... excuse me, are you Kashiwagi Eri-sensei?"

Eriri looked up in surprise. Standing in front of the booth were a tall and a small figure—a silver-haired mother and daughter pair.

Prev    Chapters   Next