[Premium-Novel]Revenge on the Penny Pinching Miser of Millennium High (Patreon)

[Novel]

The dorm always smelled faintly of printer ink and cheap instant coffee. That was Yuuka’s doing. Every receipt taped to the mini-fridge, every highlighted line in the shared expense notebook, every sigh when I came back with a convenience-store bag. Millennium’s budget committee vice-president did not believe in “just this once.”

I used to think sharing a room with Hayase Yuuka would be convenient. Same floor, same building, same late-night study hours. I was wrong. She treated the dorm like a second Seminar office. My romance-comedy tankōbon vanished from the nightstand one Thursday and reappeared in a labeled envelope marked Non-essential leisure — confiscated pending review. She had even written the yen amount I had spent on volume twelve in the corner, as if the number itself were an accusation.

That was the night I stopped arguing and started planning.

The idea arrived the way bad ideas always do: while I was half-asleep, staring at a webtoon panel of a girl trapped inside a giant soap film, the heroine on the outside poking and rocking the bubble just to watch the other girl flail. I closed the tab. Opened it again. Closed it. Then I searched for industrial-grade bubble solution that claimed it could hold a person’s weight without popping.

I told myself it was only a reminder. This was not school. This was our room. She did not get to audit my existence.

The cookies were easier. A small batch, chocolate chip because Yuuka never refused chocolate. I mixed in the over-the-counter sleep aid I kept for exam week, crushed fine, folded into the dough the way she folded spreadsheets. I left the plate on her desk with a sticky note: Peace offering. Stop lecturing me for one night.

She ate three.

I watched from my bunk while she tried to finish a budget revision, blinking harder and harder, calculator slipping from her fingers. The last thing she said was, “You’re still over by two hundred yen on snacks this month—” and then her forehead met the desk with a soft, undignified thump.

Getting her off the chair was the first problem.

Yuuka looked slim in her Seminar uniform. In an oversized white T-shirt and sprinkle-print panties she looked like someone who had never skipped dessert. I hooked my arms under hers and heaved. Her head lolled against my shoulder. The T-shirt rode up. I got her as far as the edge of the bed before my knees buckled.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I muttered to the empty room. “The rumors were true. All of it goes to her ass.”

It was not a kind thought. It was an accurate one. I had to sit on the mattress and roll her, inch by inch, until she was face-down enough that I could get my shoulder under her hips and stagger toward the clear space I had cleared in the middle of the floor. By the time I lowered her onto the big pink soap bubble I inflated earlier (makng sure she didn't see this) I had inflated earlier, my arms were shaking and I was sweating through my own sleep shirt.

The outer bubble came next.

The solution worked better than the listing promised. I painted a wide circle on the floor with the applicator wand, then another, then a third, building the film upward the way the tutorial video showed. It rose like a slow glass bell. When it closed over her it made a sound like a wet kiss. The inner pink globe sat underneath her like a ridiculous throne. Her weight settled into it; the sphere deformed, glossy and taut, and stayed.

I sat on the carpet for a long time, catching my breath, looking at what I had done.

Yuuka slept through the first hour. Halo dim, ponytail spilled over one shoulder, white socks still on because I had not had the heart—or the strength—to pull them off. The T-shirt with the chocolate-bar print had ridden up her stomach. The sprinkle panties were the only thing keeping the scene from being completely indecent, and they were doing a poor job of it. From behind, the curve of her was exactly as advertised by every unofficial ranking thread I had ever pretended not to read.

I should have felt guilty.

I felt awake for the first time in weeks.

She stirred when I pressed my palm to the outer film. The bubble gave like warm gel and sprang back. Yuuka’s lashes fluttered. Blue eyes focused on the curved wall in front of her, then on her own hands, then on the pink sphere she was kneeling on.

“…What.”

Her voice was hoarse from sleep and leftover cookie.

I leaned in until my breath fogged a small patch of the film. “Good morning, Treasurer. Budget meeting’s cancelled.”

She tried to stand. The big pink soap bubble rolled under her knees and she sat down hard, a startled sound punching out of her. The outer bubble barely trembled. She slapped both palms against it. The film stretched, held, and threw her own reflection back at her: messy ponytail, chocolate graphic, bare thighs, the faint imprint of the sphere against the underside of her ass.

“This is—this is a violation of dormitory regulations—”

“You confiscated my manga.”

“It was a waste of funds!”

“You audit the toilet paper.”

She went still. Then she started calculating, I could see it, the little twitch at the corner of her mouth that meant she was adding up materials cost, time cost, opportunity cost. “The solution alone—”

“Already bought. Non-refundable.”

Yuuka made a noise I had never heard from her. It was not a scream. It was the sound of a girl who had just realized the ledger would not save her.

I walked a slow circle. The bedroom was dark except for the blue night-light and the glow of her halo against the inner surface of the bubble. From the side she looked almost composed, one hand braced on the pink sphere, the other still pressed to the wall, profile sharp. From the back the T-shirt had ridden high enough that the sprinkle pattern disappeared into the crease where her thighs met the inflatable. I reached out and gave the outer bubble a little shove.

The whole assembly rocked.

Yuuka yelped and grabbed for purchase. The big pink soap bubble sloshed under her. She ended up on all fours for a second, then scrambled back to a kneel, cheeks coloring in a way no budget meeting had ever produced.

“Stop that.”

I shoved again, gentler. The bubble chimed. She slid forward, knees spreading for balance, and the T-shirt slipped off one shoulder. The chocolate bar graphic stretched across her chest.

“I said stop—”

“You labeled my hobbies inefficient.” I put both hands on the film and pushed until she had to lean her weight into it to keep from tumbling. Her palms met mine through a millimeter of soap. “This is inefficient. Look at you. Can’t even sit still without a cost-benefit analysis.”

She glared. It would have been more effective if she were not breathing hard and if the pink sphere were not slowly rotating under her, forcing her to make tiny, helpless adjustments with her hips.

I remembered the webtoon panel. The heroine outside, the other girl inside, the way the bubble turned every small motion into a spectacle. I rocked it left. Yuuka’s ponytail swung. I rocked it right. She made a furious little sound and tried to plant her socks against the inner curve, which only made the pink bubble deform more, swallowing her from the knees down.

“Hayase,” I said, almost kindly. “You’re going to wrinkle the shirt.”

“Take this down. Right now. I will— I will file a complaint with the dorm supervisor—”

“After you wake up from the cookies you ate without reading the ingredients? Sure. File away.”

Her mouth opened. Closed. The realization landed behind her eyes like a dropped calculator. “You—”

“Peace offering,” I quoted.

For a moment I thought she would cry. Yuuka did not cry. She got quieter, which was worse. She sat back on her heels on the pink globe, hands braced behind her, and looked at me through the film as if she were seeing a new line item she had never budgeted for.

“This is revenge,” she said.

“This is a reminder.”

I walked around to the front. From this angle she was framed perfectly: halo, frown, oversized shirt, the pale strip of stomach where the hem had given up, sprinkle panties stretched over the place where she met the sphere. I raised both hands and pressed them to the bubble the way the last reference image had shown, fingers spread, as if I could reach through.

Yuuka flinched, then matched the gesture without meaning to, palms to palms, a parody of a greeting.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

I jostled the bubble anyway. Not hard. Just enough that the pink soap bubble bounced and she had to catch herself with a roll of her hips that made the T-shirt ride up another inch. The sound she made was not a lecture. It was small and startled and went straight down my spine.

“I could do this all night,” I said. “You took my manga. I took your evening. Seems fair.”

“Fair is a balanced ledger.”

“Fair is you spending one night not telling me how to live.”

I kept my hands on the film and walked it in a slow circle, turning her with it. Yuuka had to crawl and shift and finally sit astride the pink sphere the way she had in the last picture, legs open for balance, socks braced, arms out like she was on a ridiculous glass horse. Every time the outer bubble moved, the inner one answered. She bounced. She flushed. She bit her lip so she would not make another of those sounds.

I thought about the webtoon again. About the panel I had told myself I would not copy. About riding and humping and all the words I had scolded myself for even considering.

I did not do that.

I did rock her until her ponytail came half undone and the chocolate graphic was twisted sideways and she was breathing through her mouth, glaring at me with the particular helpless fury of a girl who had just discovered that some problems cannot be solved with a spreadsheet.

“When this pops,” she said, voice unsteady, “I am adding the cost of this solution to your personal ledger. With interest.”

“When this pops,” I answered, “you’re going to remember that I can do it again.”

I gave the bubble one last, lazy shove. Yuuka slid forward, caught herself on the inner wall, and ended up chest-to-film, the pink sphere pressed up under her, the sprinkle panties a bright, ridiculous flag. Her halo buzzed faintly against the soap. For a second she looked less like the terror of Millennium’s budget committee and more like a girl in borrowed sleep clothes who had been caught doing something she could not explain.

I sat down on the carpet outside the bubble, chin in my hands, and watched her try to find a dignified position that did not exist.

The cookies would keep her groggy until morning. The film would hold. The pink bubble would keep offering her that slow, humiliating bounce every time she moved.

I smiled, small and mean and satisfied.

“Sleep well, Yuuka. Try not to think about the unit cost.”

She pressed her forehead to the curve of the bubble and closed her eyes.

I stayed where I was, listening to the faint creak of inflatable plastic and the sound of a treasurer learning, at last, that some expenses cannot be cut.