Chapter 27 – SS Happy Halloween!

Satori was watching the news on the living room sofa with the white fluffy spirits. On the news, it was said that humans had made excessive commotion at the diagonal crossing in Shibuya to the point where someone was arrested yesterday. At the big crossing, a lot of humans dressed in weird costumes made a lot of commotion.

“It seems like tonight is called Halloween. While wearing a different costume than usual, if we… what was it again? Ah, right! …if we say “trick or treat”, it seems like we can get lots of sweets.”

In response to the word “sweets”, the white fluffy spirits jumped up and down. Seeing the two spirits that seemed like saying “We’re going to do it, right?” Satori was surprised and said “Huh? We’re doing it too?”.

*** 

As Sousuke left the TV Station, he noticed that the streets were more crowded than usual. Even though there were still two days left before the weekend, the area in front of the train station was so crowded as if it was a pedestrian zone on a holiday. On the way, he passed a parent and child. The girl who seemed to be an elementary schooler was wearing a costume that looked like a princess from a picture book. Sousuke then finally realized that tonight was Halloween.

Ah, that’s right, we’re almost out of shampoo.

Generally, Satori took care of everything around the house. Sousuke thought that whoever was available to do the housework could do it, and he also didn’t mind if he had to do it all at once on the weekends when he was on his day off. It wouldn’t hurt to skip cleaning the house for one or two days.

When Sousuke told Satori that he shouldn’t push himself too much, Satori had a puzzled expression on his face as if he didn’t understand what Sousuke just said. Well, Satori didn’t seem like he was pushing himself too much. On the contrary, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

When they had just reunited, it was true that Satori didn’t know how to do laundry and had messed up and covered the floor of the washroom with bubbles, but he had been steadily upgrading his housework skills through his efforts. Even so, Sousuke secretly decided that he would try to buy the heavy things by himself if possible. 

In the drugstore, Sousuke bought shampoo refills, tissues, and also toilet paper because it was on discount. It was a bit too bulky, but it couldn’t be helped. In his left hand, he carried a box of pudding from a store that had recently become a hot topic on social media, which he got from a girl at the TV station. The reason was that he was seen when he secretly bought baked sweets as a souvenir for Satori, because he had enjoyed the baked sweets that were served at a previous interview. The next day, there was a rumor going around the TV station that Sousuke actually liked sweets but usually held back from it. Since then, he started to receive sweet things as a present from time to time.

He bowed his head to the janitor at the entrance of the apartment building, then went up to the elevator.

“Satori, I’m home.”

“We-welcome back!”

He could hear Satori’s panicked voice from the back of the room, but there was no sight of him. Sousuke thought that it was weird that Satori, who usually greeted him at the door, wasn’t here. As Sousuke took off his shoes on the concrete floor, what he saw on the back of the room was—

“Sousuke, trick or treat!”

Satori was wearing a bright red costume, exposing his slender legs from the hem of his short pants, and squirming with a red face. In Satori’s hand were Sousuke’s socks being held tight as if it was something important, then the socks were being held out toward him. Next to Satori, the bouncing white fluffy spirits were wearing triangular hats like those worn at parties (but not the ones sold in the stores, when looked at closely, they were made from flyers by Satori).

“Sa-satori?!”

The Santa costume that Satori was wearing looked very familiar to him. It was from last year’s Christmas party where Satori went together with him. Satori was so cute in the Santa costume that Sousuke ended up buying it secretly after that. Since then, he had asked Satori several times if he wanted to try it on, only to be rejected by the embarrassed Satori.

(What the hell is going on here?!)

To tell the truth, Satori was so cute that he just wanted to push him down on the sofa right now, but that would be a bad idea.

“What’s with the outfit?”

Sousuke thought he should ask for the reason first. Then he put his hand around Satori’s waist and sat beside him on the sofa.

With Sousuke’s reaction that was different from what he had expected, Satori had a visibly confused expression on his face. It was as if Sousuke could hear Satori’s inner voice saying “Did I make a mistake again?”.

(Ahh, damn. He’s so cute…!)

“Trick or treat? ….H-huh?”

Satori’s eyes began to wander around restlessly and his cheeks gradually became flushed. The white fluffy spirits were jumping up and down furiously next to Satori, as if complaining about something.

“Argh…!”

(So cute! So fricking cute!)

Sousuke didn’t know how to describe how he felt at that moment. He picked up the two spirits with his finger and tossed them aside. Then he hugged Satori who opened his lips saying “Ah.”

“So-sousuke…? A-are you okay? Did I make a mistake again?”

Sousuke tightly hugged Satori, who wrapped his arms around his back in concern as if wondering if something was wrong. 

“No, you didn’t make any mistake. There isn’t anything wrong with this.”

Satori’s appearance was more of a cosplay than a costume. He had no idea how Satori could have misunderstood, but Satori’s misunderstanding was nothing but good luck for him.

(Ahh! Thank you, God!)

While inwardly shouting such convenient words, Sousuke kissed Satori who was blinking his eyes.

“Happy Halloween, Satori.”

“Happy Halloween?”

While a bit confused, Satori smiled and tried to imitate Sousuke’s words.

Needless to say, Sousuke then cleanly peeled off Satori’s costume, and he was able to taste the most delicious sweets of all.

END.

Note: Thank you all for reading until the end! Please check out similar novels such as Virtual Alpha and I, Don’t Call Me By My Username!, He Has a Sickness that Needs to be Cured, etc.