いとしいこと

Previous   TOC “I don’t think I get along with Itsuki-san…” Miyamoto spoke with a serious expression, sinking her teeth into a thick slice of Japanese-style hamburger steak. It was just past 7 p.m., and the family restaurant near their office was about seventy percent full. The crowd was diverse—high schoolers in sports jerseys just back from club, older salarymen, and everything in between. It was May, but the heat had people in short sleeves. The off-site meeting had run long, and Kusuda hadn’t returned to the office until a little after six. Miyamoto was still there, tidying up the ledgers. He handed over his taxi receipt, wanting to get it out of the way before he forgot, and that’s when she’d said, almost offhandedly, “There’s something I’d like to talk about…” Thinking it might be a long conversation, he offered to grab dinner while they talked. “I don’t want to walk too far,” she said, so they ended up at the family restaurant down the block. Kusuda had already suspected the...

Previous   TOC   Next It was just before five in the evening when a complaint call came into the office: a customer claimed the zirconia had fallen out of a ring they’d just purchased. At first, Kusuda thought maybe the final inspection had been lax—but the conversation started to take a strange turn. The customer insisted the ring was a recent purchase, but it was actually from a lineup released two years ago and had been sold at a select shop in Fukuoka three months earlier, with no further stock movement since. Without placing blame, Kusuda calmly relayed the facts based on their records. Eventually, the customer confessed they hadn’t bought the ring from an official retailer, but from a secondhand store. There was no warranty card either. With a used item, there was no way to know at what point the defect had occurred. Technically, CRUX had no obligation to provide aftercare—but Kusuda, wanting to show appreciation for someone who had chosen a CRUX product, offered the mos...

Previous   TOC   Next When Kusuda peeled the clinging man off him and sat up, the bed let out a groaning creak. Two adult men on a semi-double… it was pushing things to the limit. Sunlight spilled in through the window, dazzlingly bright. No wonder—it was already past eight. The air had that vaguely overcast heaviness, despite it being what should’ve been a fresh morning. His body was damp with sweat. Kusuda climbed out of bed and hurried into the bathroom. The hot shower cascading over his head felt like it was washing everything away—refreshing and cleansing. His mouth felt a little sore. Akizawa was big—he couldn’t take all of it in, and just sucking it had left his lips worn out. Putting a guy’s dick in your mouth—what kind of punishment game is that? Kusuda had always thought of it as the final line he could never cross as a man, something on par with full-on sex, and had refused again and again. But four days ago, trying to comfort the devastated Akizawa after getting d...