Book 4: Chapter 3: Patch 1.0: Settling In

“So, are you sure that you don’t want us to get a stair lift installed?” Ryouta asks Alice.

Alice turns red and shakes her head. “Certainly! I would never be caught riding one of those until I’m covered in wrinkles! Furthermore, they are rare and expensive these days, so I am sure that you would not want to cost my father even more money for something I would hate!”

“You’re only bringing that up since you don’t want one.”

“I am! That doesn’t affect my point! Why would I need one of those in the first place when I have you and Cassandra to carry me up and down the stairs?”

“Isn’t that just inconvenient and selfish?”

“It is, but I shall make it up to both of you.”

Cassandra sighs and shrugs. “I don’t really care either way,” she says. “You’re light,” she tells Alice, “and I doubt you’d want to constantly be going up or downstairs.”

“See! Cassandra has no issue with it, so neither should you,” Alice tells Ryouta.

“Such a selfish girlfriend. But, alright. I honestly don’t mind. We’ll just make it work,” Ryouta says while Serra pokes his chin from his lap. “Yes?” he asks, looking down at her.

Serra sticks her tongue out at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Serra shrugs.

“You’re like a needy kid who just wants attention.”

Serra nods.

“By the way, Cass, don’t you have an appointment for something tomorrow?”

“Y-yeah,” Cassandra answers, looking away.

“Are you still keeping it secret?”

She nods, but when he looks at Alice, he sees her smiling and looked excited.

“What do you know?” he asks Alice.

“Oh, nothing,” Alice answers in a totally-not-suspicious manner.

“Do you know anything?” Ryouta asks, looking down at Serra again.

Serra shrugs.

Ryouta sighs and gives up. Whatever Cassandra’s appointment is tomorrow, he’ll just have to wait until then to find out. “It’s not nice to keep secrets, you know,” Ryouta tells them.

“Consider it revenge for not letting us meet Oleander yet!” Alice tells him.

“I… technically met him before, but yeah, I want to meet him and actually know who he is this time,” Cassandra says.

“Oh, yeah, right. We went together to that bar you worked at,” Ryouta says.

“Yeah, the one where you tried getting into a fight while drunk, you dumbie.” While Cassandra may try her best not to call him a bastard anymore, she still gives him some playful and much-more-innocent sounding insults at times.

“He was asking for it. Probably. I don’t really remember it.”

“He was, but you’re still dumb for trying to fight some guy that was twice your size. What if there was nobody there to break it up and you got beaten up?”

“Uhh… I’d get the satisfaction of knowing that people were going to judge him for beating up somebody who’s technically crippled?”

While Serra slides her arms underneath Ryouta’s shirt to get some warm, skin-on-skin contact, Cassandra sighs due to her boyfriend but then looks like she just thought of something. “We need to split up chores,” she says.

“Right! How should we split them?” Alice asks.

“I’m used to doing them all myself, so I’ll just do whatever you all hate the most,” Ryouta says.

Cassandra and Alice look at each other and smile.

“I hate doing dishes,” Cassandra says.

“And I hate taking out garbage! Not that I have ever done so, but the thought of it is not a pleasant one!” Alice says.

“And you? Which chore do you hate doing?” Ryouta asks, looking down at Serra.

Serra signs that she hates all of them.

“You really are a kid. Pick one you hate the most.”

Serra puffs out her cheeks but gives in and signs that she hates doing laundry.

“What did she say?” Alice asks.

“She hates laundry,” Ryouta answers.

“Oh! I could do that. I love doing laundry and folding all of the clothes afterward! It is very therapeutic. I do not mind doing dishes either, but I am very slow at them.”

“I just refuse to do the dishes. I’ll do pretty much anything else,” Cassandra says. “The guys in the back needing help with washing dishes on busy nights was enough to ruin my shifts.”

“You guys didn’t have an automatic dishwasher?” Ryouta asks.

“The asshole boss was too cheap to buy one.”

“Fair enough. So, I guess I’ll take the trash out then and just help out with whatever anybody else needs done. Besides, taking out the trash is usually a guy’s thing to do, right?”

“I wish. All those guys at my job were too weak or too grossed out to take the trash out. Even the boss refused to change the trash in the women’s bathroom since he was too cheap to buy bags that weren’t transparent, and seeing used tampons and blood in the bags made him want to throw up. He actually sent me home early one day because he got pissed off that I was carrying a bloody bag through the back and he saw it.”

“I mean, that’s kind of understandable since I’d think it’s gross too, but seriously? That’s just overreacting.”

Alice laughs. “It sounds to me that the man whom prided himself on being a tough pirate was actually quite the little boy,” she says.

“Tell me about it,” Cassandra says with a sigh.

“So, we got everything inside, and now we know who’s going to do the chores, but there’s one more thing we all have to take care of,” Ryouta says.

Everybody looks forward.

So. Many. Boxes.

“Maybe they’ll just unpack themselves if we ignore them,” Cassandra suggests.

“I am quite tempted to bring one of my previous maids from father’s over here just to take care of this matter for us,” Alice admits.

Serra raises her hands and tries to shoo the boxes away but, alas, she fails to dismiss them.

“I’ll unpack everything for sexual favors and a homemade dinner of whatever I want for a week,” Ryouta half-assedly suggests, not expecting anybody to take him seriously.

“D-deal,” Cassandra says.

“That is fine by me!” Alice agrees.

Serra gives him one of her signature thumbs-ups.

Ryouta honestly wasn’t expecting any of them to take his offer seriously, and now he’s going to be stuck doing all of this work by himself in exchange for sex and food.

Then again, that’s really all a man needs.

“I want macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes tonight,” Ryouta tells them. “And I’m going to be way too tired to actually have sex later, so a blowjob will be enough for me tonight.”

While Alice and Cassandra may blush from his blunt demand, Serra nods and gives him another thumbs-up as she’s eager to accept his request.

Maybe having to unpack all of these boxes won’t be such a bad thing after all.

With the group coming to an agreement, Ryouta lifts Serra off of his lap and then drops her back down once he’s off of the couch, resulting in her head landing on the couch cushion with the rest of her body still sprawled out over Alice’s and Cassandra’s laps.

“My hero! Do feel free to remove your shirt so that we can see the sweat glistening upon your skin as you work,” Alice tells him as he opens up the first box.

Ryouta blushes and tries to focus on the box.

Part of him is tempted to actually do it just to see how she reacts since he doubts she’s seriously expecting him to do it. The other part of him is too embarrassed by the thought of doing such a thing to ever go through with it.

But, they agreed to his deal when he wasn’t expecting it, so he might as well try to surprise them as well.

Plus, it is pretty hot since his girlfriends all prefer setting the thermostat higher than him.

Ryouta summons what courage he has and lifts his shirt off.

The few scars on his torso from childhood fail to draw as much attention as the fact that he’s actually gotten a little bit muscular. From going on daily runs to improve his legs, carrying Alice around and giving Serra piggyback rides, and now moving, he’s gone from being skinny fat to actually being kind of toned.

Needless to say, the sight is even better than Alice was expecting. All it takes then is a single bead of sweat to roll down his torso for her to start internally fangirling.

Ryouta has always been skinny, but now that he’s actually trimmed down his fat and built a bit of muscle, he even has some very subtle abs.

Cassandra and Serra are both watching with great interest as well.

Ryouta hasn’t even noticed the changes to his body himself. Walking around has gotten easier, and he doesn’t feel as easily tired as before, but just a month of being more active has increased to a much healthier body than before.

It also helps that his girlfriends don’t let him live off of alcoholic beverages and chips anymore.