Chapter 196: Under-the-Table Struggle (Patreon)

For reasons unknown, Yukinoshita Yukino's first glance went not to Isac but to Kaguya, sitting across from her. Only after she saw that Kaguya hadn't reacted did she turn her eyes on the real culprit.

Isac, meanwhile, acted as if nothing had happened. He took a sip of hot tea and kept flipping through his book, and when he noticed Yukinoshita Yukino looking at him, he even had the shamelessness to smile at her.

And then… the little movements under the table showed no sign of stopping whatsoever.

"You—" Yukinoshita Yukino was about to say "behave yourself," but it occurred to her that saying it out loud would give the whole thing away, wouldn't it?

What would Hayasaka Ai and Kaguya, sitting right there, think?

So the words on the tip of her tongue took a sharp turn. "Would you like some more tea?"

"Sure." Isac agreed without hesitation. In fact, since Yukinoshita Yukino hadn't exposed him, he grew even bolder.

No more rubbing. Time to go in from below.

His left leg stretched out, and just like that, he hoisted up Yukino's two straight, slender calves.

Yukinoshita Yukino's heart skipped, and she instinctively tried to pull her legs back. But there was only so much room under the table, and any attempt to retreat would inevitably bump into it.

And the table was covered in tea cups. Even a small bump would be pretty noticeable.

Pulling her legs back without touching the table meant changing how she sat. She'd been sitting there perfectly normally, so suddenly shifting posture would be an instant giveaway, wouldn't it?

Besides, all of that assumed ideal conditions. Would Isac, the man behind all this, just sit there and wait to be caught?

Obviously not.

So was she really just going to let him do whatever he wanted?

Well… it wasn't like it had been any different before.

Yukinoshita Yukino pressed her lips together and shot Isac a discreet glare. She privately decided that if he stopped here, she'd turn a blind eye. But if he dared push his luck, then she would…

She thought and thought and couldn't come up with a single way to punish the guy. Whatever it was, though, she was definitely not going to let him off easy!

Just as she was thinking this, she saw Isac suddenly change how he was holding his book.

Originally, both of Isac's hands had been on the table, his right pressing down the book and his left wrapped around the teacup. After Yukinoshita Yukino topped up his hot water, he'd mumbled that it was a little too hot, and his left hand had left the cup and settled on his left thigh.

Noticing the change, Yukinoshita Yukino felt a sense of foreboding, and alarm bells went off in her head.

Sure enough, as if to confirm her hunch, Isac's left hand stayed on his thigh for only a moment before it slipped under the hide cushion and landed on Yukinoshita Yukino's calf.

Yukinoshita Yukino: …

He wasn't even pretending anymore, was he?

She ground her pearly teeth, fully prepared to explode at him right then and there.

But Isac seemed to have seen it coming. His little hand slid upward and found the hollow behind Yukino's knee.

And that was exactly the key spot he'd discovered over these past few months of diligently massaging her legs.

One touch, one press, and Yukinoshita Yukino, who'd been about to blow up at him, went limp like a punctured balloon. A thin mist slowly veiled her gray-blue eyes.

The girl bit her lip without realizing it, two faint patches of red bloomed on her cheeks, and the words that had almost left her mouth went back down.

Of course, this was absolutely not because Yukinoshita Yukino had chickened out, or because Isac had her weak spot in his grip and she didn't dare explode. She had simply decided on a more direct and far more satisfying solution.

Thought and action as one, Yukinoshita Yukino reached under the table, unerringly found the lecherous paw still toying with her calf, pinched the soft flesh on the back of its hand, and gave it a twist.

The corner of Isac's eye twitched, barely perceptibly, but he stubbornly held in his yelp.

Mind you, Isac's body had been enhanced, but who at this table hadn't been? When everyone has it, no one does.

So Yukinoshita Yukino's attack counted as real, effective damage, and it locked Isac up stiff as a board.

Still, though he hadn't made a sound above the table, below it he patted Yukino's calf twice in surrender.

Yukinoshita Yukino gave a barely audible hmph. Seeing him behave at last, she let it go and called off her technique.

Isac hurriedly pulled his hand out from under the table. He didn't dare rub it, only picked up his teacup for a tactical sip, stealing a glance at the damage while he drank.

Yep. Red.

But worth it.

Because after punishing Isac, Yukinoshita Yukino hadn't moved her legs off him. They were still propped up there.

Truth be told, resting your legs on someone else's lap really is comfortable. Besides, Isac was one of her own, so there was no such thing as him taking advantage of her. If it weren't for the wrong time and place, she'd have let that touch slide anyway. It wasn't like he hadn't touched her before. He'd touched bare legs, never mind the two layers of pants between them now.

Of course, she was never going to tell Isac that. She'd already let him get this far without saying it. If she said it out loud, wouldn't the guy get even worse?

On the other side of the table, Hayasaka Ai had stopped stirring up trouble, but her attention never left Isac. And since her five senses had been specially enhanced, she might not have seen everything that happened under the table as clearly as if it were laid out in daylight, but she knew just about every detail.

The look she gave Isac was loaded with meaning.

Isac noticed it, of course, but his face didn't flush and his heart didn't race. He knew Hayasaka Ai. She wouldn't mind any of this. At most, she'd use it to wring a few favors out of him.

And the favors Hayasaka Ai wanted… for Isac, weren't those a kind of reward too?

A double indulgence, what do you say? Er, a double win.

"I'm going to the bathroom." Hayasaka Ai rose from her seat, stepped off the carpet, slipped on her slippers, and went to the bathroom.

Outside the window it was still a blur of white, but it was a lot brighter than before. It had to be nearly noon.

Which meant they'd gotten up later than usual today.

Isac figured the temperature was just too low and everyone had slept in. It was winter, after all. Sleeping in a bit was perfectly normal.

Besides, a blizzard was howling outside. Even if they'd gotten up early, there would've been nothing to do, and they'd have ended up huddled in front of the fireplace with tea and books anyway.

With temperatures like this, anything else was out of the question. It was cold!

Hadn't Hayasaka Ai calmed down too? She only dared to tease him a little under the table. She didn't dare try anything real.

Low temperatures really do help lower desire.

Even Isac only dared to get his hands busy now, and only over clothes at that. If he reached inside, never mind whether anyone was shy, he'd definitely get slapped.

The reason was simple: his hands were freezing.

Isac glanced at the thermometer in the middle of the table. Maybe because it was noon, the room had actually crept back up to around 10°C (about 50°F).

But that probably wouldn't last long. The blizzard outside showed no sign of letting up, and the wind was only getting louder. Isac wondered whether the glass windows in the house could take it.

They should be fine. The glass was pretty thick, and there were two layers of it.

It was just that the sealant around the window frames was showing signs of age and letting in a bit of a draft, but that wasn't a big problem.

Before long, Hayasaka Ai came back from the bathroom. She didn't sit down right away. First she added some charcoal to the fireplace behind her seat, then pattered downstairs and put more firewood in the central fireplace on the first floor.

And you know, when he'd been sitting in a chair he hadn't noticed, but now, sitting on the carpet, Isac could really feel what the central fireplace downstairs was doing.

Since heat rises, and their master bedroom sat directly above the first-floor living room, the floor wasn't nearly as icy as expected. With a carpet laid over it, it even felt faintly warm, like an electric blanket.

Once Hayasaka Ai came back and sat down again, the master bedroom settled back into stillness.

Isac's mind began to wander again. This time, his target was no longer Yukinoshita Yukino but Kaguya, sitting across from her.

Fairness above all.

As usual, he started with a probe.

Isac shifted his right leg toward Kaguya's side. The instant they touched, he clearly felt the girl's jade-white foot draw back a little. She probably assumed his legs were long, the space under the table was cramped, and he needed more room, so she was giving him some.

But as Isac kept pushing his luck, even Kaguya, slow as she could be, was bound to catch on.

She couldn't help glancing at Isac, as if trying to read something in his expression. Naturally, she found nothing.

The first time, he hadn't let Yukinoshita Yukino see through him. This was already his second time, so how could he possibly let Kaguya see through him?

What Isac hadn't expected, though, was that after failing to read anything from his face, Kaguya simply set her leg right on top of his. He didn't even have to make a move. She delivered herself to his doorstep.

Before, Kaguya would never have been so… well, unreserved. But they'd been together so long by now, and had done far more outrageous things than this. Merely resting her leg on Isac was hardly a problem anymore.

Really, it was mostly because of the time Hayasaka Ai's bathroom trip had turned into a group outing for three, which had raised Kaguya's embarrassment threshold considerably. Otherwise she'd still have kept up a little reserve.

Of course, delivering herself to his doorstep was one thing. She still got embarrassed when it was time to be embarrassed. It just wasn't as intense as it had been the first time they touched.

Isac took another tactical sip of water, and this time he put his right hand under the table and started the usual routine.

The instant he touched Kaguya's calf, Isac clearly felt the muscles in her leg tense. But the amazing thing was that not a single crack showed on Kaguya's face.

Earlier, when he'd massaged Yukinoshita Yukino's legs, her face had stayed mostly blank too, but her cheeks had at least gone a little pink.

With Kaguya, though, she managed to keep a perfectly straight face. Was that what you'd expect from the eldest daughter of the Shinomiya family?

Isac refused to believe it. He kneaded his way along the girl's slender leg a few more times, only to find she still didn't react much. She didn't even look at him, as if the leg he was squeezing wasn't hers at all.

But just as Isac was about to use the special pressure point he'd discovered on Kaguya earlier, she set down her cup, dropped a line, "I'm going to the bathroom," and pulled a flat-out bathroom escape.

Isac couldn't exactly stop her. He'd just have to wait until she came back.

Kaguya left fast and came back fast.

Once she returned, she slid back under the kotatsu and once again propped her legs on top of Isac.

As if she wasn't the least bit afraid that he'd make a comeback and pick up his unfinished business.

In that case, Isac wouldn't hold back…

Just as he was about to get back to work, Kaguya caught his right hand in a firm grip.

This time it was Isac's turn to check the expressions of the other two girls. Hayasaka Ai was staring at her book with great seriousness, as though she hadn't noticed a thing over on Isac's side. But Isac knew it was an act. She'd been watching him the whole time, her attention never straying.

Yukinoshita Yukino, on the other hand, had naturally seen what Kaguya was doing. Connecting it to what had just happened to her, she understood at once that Isac was running the same trick again and had gotten caught by Kaguya.

The corners of the girl's mouth curled up, though she had no intention of exposing him.

Yukinoshita Yukino even deliberately rubbed the leg she had propped on Isac, as payback for what he'd done earlier.

Honestly, that kind of "payback" was wishful thinking at best. Payback, how? That was clearly a reward.

Yukinoshita Yukino didn't care. Since Kaguya had Isac's right hand under control, she'd keep an eye on his left. The moment he so much as twitched, she'd seize it.

Isac saw the predatory glint in Yukinoshita Yukino's eyes and more or less guessed what she was thinking. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he was about to say something when his face suddenly changed.

A third party had jumped in to stir up trouble.

Er, or should that be the first party?

After all, if you were going by who came first, Hayasaka Ai was the first.

What Isac never expected was that Hayasaka Ai, who'd only just settled down, would see him trapped and immediately start kicking him while he was down, launching another assault.

And this time, she wasn't just rubbing like before, like kids playing house. She went straight for the enemy's headquarters.

Note that this is not a figure of speech.

Because of what Isac had just done to Yukino and Kaguya, he was now wide open, front gates thrown wide.

Hayasaka Ai didn't need to do anything. All she had to do was stretch out a leg and hit the vital spot.

Not hard, mind you.

Feeling his most sensitive spot come under attack, Isac instinctively tried to struggle. But the moment he moved, Yukino and Kaguya noticed and pinned him down on the spot.

Wait, what?

Isac never imagined he would one day drop a rock on his own foot.