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From the time dinner ended until ten o'clock at night, the master bedroom door of the suite remained firmly shut.
Beyond the tightly drawn curtains, darkness had long since swallowed the outside world. Inside the bedroom, the short, labored breaths of the girls rose and fell in turns.
Maria lay limply sprawled across the bed, her skimpy outfit of black leather strips barely holding together anymore. She was face-down, her legs split apart like a gymnast doing a perfect split, arms dangling weakly off the bed. Her fingers, having long lost their strength, hung loosely, and the sheets beneath were twisted and dampened by the sweat of desperate gripping.
Maria looked utterly defeated—thoroughly conquered, from every possible perspective.
Yet even in this exhausted state, Maria mustered enough strength to throw a triumphant "V" sign towards the equally exhausted redhead next to her.
"Haa... haa... Well, Mio-sama... that makes our scores tied now, doesn't it?" she gasped between breaths, offering a shaky, victorious grin. "Hehe, Just one more round and I'll overtake you...!"
Her voice came out fragmented, the words barely coherent.
Beside her, Mio Naruse wasn't in much better shape. She turned her head slowly, a heated blush still coloring her face.
"What are you... talking about, Maria…?" she gasped, clearly indignant despite her exhaustion. "You... haven't overtaken anything. If... haa… if you hadn't barged in right after I'd already done one round with... with Bokue, then right now, I could handle at least one—no, two more rounds! Which means… even if you had another turn, you'd only barely catch up to me!"
"Oh my~ Is that so?" Maria stuck out her tongue playfully, adopting a sweet, innocent smile to gloss over her miscalculations. "Well then, it seems my absolute limit today is tying with Mio-sama... Eh?? Wait—wh-what are you doing?"
Before Maria could finish speaking, she felt a pair of firm hands suddenly lifting her waist again. Her previously flat little belly sloshed heavily like it had been filled completely with water, producing an audible glugging sound as she was lifted.
The one holding her waist from behind was naturally Bokue himself.
At Maria's panicked squeak, Bokue paused, glancing at her from the side.
"What do you mean, 'what am I doing?' Didn't you just say that you wanted to tie Mio's score?"
"Ah, well... I did say that..." Maria's lips twitched slightly at the sudden heavy sensation sloshing around inside her. She quickly adopted an adorably pitiable expression, glancing over her shoulder pleadingly. "But, you see, since Maria just finished her turn, shouldn't it now be Mio-sama's turn again...? If we stick to the one-turn-at-a-time rule, then…"
Bokue calmly reminded her: "But then the scores would never truly become equal, would they?"
"Huh? Oh, right… I guess that's true," Maria realized belatedly, a large bead of sweat rolling comically down her forehead as she noted the flaw in her logic. She weakly held up one finger, timidly bargaining: "Then… maybe Maria can take just a teensy-weensy five-minute break first—?"
"Nope," came a firm response. But this time, it wasn't Bokue who said it—it was Mio, slowly rising on trembling arms beside her. Mio's magnificent, snow-capped peaks shifted dramatically as she lifted herself, hanging beneath her with irresistible allure. Her crimson eyes flashed teasingly.
"If you really need a break, Maria, I'll happily take my turn next. Are you sure you still want to rest?"
"Ah," Maria hesitated, trying to stall for time by pretending indecision.
But behind her, Bokue had already moved into position, having no intention of giving her the chance to escape.
Realizing it was already too late, Maria urgently squeaked out, "W-wait, wait a second Bokue-san! If you just go straight ahead right now—!!"
Yet it was exactly like those physics experiments in school, where a larger test tube was forced into a small beaker already brimming with water, defying surface tension and common sense alike—
Instantly, the already sweat-soaked bedsheets became further stained with splashes of white, as if a sudden snowfall had blanketed the entire bed in mid-summer.
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Maria paid an unimaginable price for her determination to tie the score with Mio.
Twenty minutes later, after the most intense climax of the night finally subsided, silence and calm gradually returned to the bedroom.
Bokue now leaned comfortably against the headboard, arms casually wrapped around the shoulders of the two thoroughly spent girls nestled against him.
"So," he smiled lazily, "you're officially real sisters now?"
"Uu," Mio blushed fiercely, embarrassedly averting her gaze.
Honestly, when Maria first appeared in the bedroom doorway earlier and declared "let's become real sisters," Mio hadn't immediately grasped what she meant. It wasn't until things truly heated up that she finally understood Maria's playful suggestion.
"Hehe, of course we are~" Maria giggled lightly. Her breathing had steadied somewhat, but she was so thoroughly exhausted that even her normal voice came out shaky, sounding oddly like someone who'd just finished crying.
Which, given what just happened, wasn't exactly far from the truth.
"Mom used to say," Maria continued warmly, smiling softly, "real family means you accept each other's imperfections. Or rather, it's precisely because you've seen each other at your absolute worst so many times that you just become immune to embarrassment."
"To put it more bluntly, family members embarrass themselves countless times in front of each other until eventually there's nothing left to hide."
Maria flashed a playful smile.
"And tonight, Mio-sama saw me at my absolute messiest. So, you see, we're officially real family now~!"
"Um… yeah, I guess…" Mio replied hesitantly, slightly overwhelmed. She couldn't shake the feeling that Maria was eloquently framing an incredibly embarrassing and borderline perverse situation as something heartwarming and sweet—but nonetheless, Mio found herself reluctantly nodding along.
Maria's smile gradually faded into thoughtful contemplation.
"As for Mom, well, obviously things won't become perfect overnight. But I think, if we keep spending time together, eventually she'll accept Mio-sama as a real daughter too. And then, finally, we'll all be a true family."
"Ah… yeah," Mio murmured quietly, clearly touched.
Wait a second—!
Suddenly, as if recalling something crucial, a golden exclamation mark popped up above Bokue's head.
"Hold on just a moment," he frowned, confused. "Maria, when you entered earlier, you said you overheard Mio and me talking before you came into the room, right? But I clearly remember setting up a soundproof barrier around the bedroom—so how on earth did you hear us?"
"Oh, that's easy," Maria tilted her head, smiling innocently. "That barrier stopped working ages ago~"
"What??" Bokue's casual confusion quickly escalated into outright alarm.
"Mom actually realized earlier that Mio-sama wasn't feeling well emotionally," Maria explained sweetly. "She was worried, so she secretly dispelled your soundproofing barrier around the bedroom door."
"!!!"
The golden exclamation mark hovering over Bokue's head instantly multiplied into three enormous, bolded versions.
This meant, for the last several hours, while Bokue had been thoroughly messing up Sheila's own daughter in here, Sheila herself had been sitting right outside in the living room, hearing absolutely everything loud and clear??
Oh, crap.
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