Chapter 99 – Extended Babysitting

"Hm, something seems to have come up. Can I leave you two with Shiori for a bit while I go deal with some business?"

At the present moment, Shiori's mother received a phone call from her husband and was notified that something serious had happened.

She needed to go deal with it immediately, but she didn't want to leave Shiori alone.

Luckily for her, there were two able-bodied personnel here who could easily take care of her daughter for her.

"Sure, we don't mind."

Takei swiftly accepted the request since he was all caught up to his homework which resulted in time that he needed to kill.

Shiori's mother thanked him and then immediately left the house.

As a result, it was just him, Akari, and Shiori left now.

After having sat on Takei's lap for so long, Shiori finally began to get antsy.

"Big brother, can we play a game?"

It seemed that the limits of her attention span had been reached.

"I'm here too, you know?"

Akari pouted since she was feeling lonely due to Takei getting all of the attention.

"It's okay big sister, you can play with us!"

After hearing Shiori's purely good intentions, Akari's expression immensely brightened up.

"Oh aren't you a good girl?"

Shiori's cute appearance and fully pure intentions helped dispel Akari's worries and fully converted her to the side of cuteness.

Akari then ruffled Shiori's hair with an increasingly widening smile.

Watching the two get along warmed Takei's heart like no other.

They look just like mother and daughter. If that's the case, does that mean I'm the father?

While he was thinking about something weird, Shiori pulled out some controllers from under the table.

"I want to play that racing game together!"

She handed a controller to both Takei and Akari and proceeded to turn on the television and game console.

Once the game finished loading up, Shiori clicked on the multiplayer option and selected party games as their mode of choice.

Everyone selected and customized their own cars and were finally ready to race after a few moments of customization.

Surprisingly, Akari had gotten faster at customizing and no longer was hung up on small details.

After all of the participants lined up at the starting line, the artificial intelligence racers appeared to fill in the blank positions that were empty.

"Are you two ready to lose?"

Takei asked both Akari and Shiori if they were ready to experience his long years of gaming experience firsthand.

"You're going down!"

Shiori proudly stated that she was going to beat him, while Akari only warmly smiled at the situation.

Once the rest of the map finished loading, a countdown began to signal the start of the match.

"May the best racer win."

***

"Ugh... how did I lose?"

In contrast to his expectations, Takei was monumentally crushed by Shiori's superior driving abilities.

Out of the three games that they played, Shiori managed to best Takei in all three of them.

As a result of that, Takei was now depressingly balled up in a corner while Akari stroked his back after having crouched down next to him.

Feeling victorious in her victory over an older opponent, Shiori was standing on the sofa doing a guts pose.

Deciding to change the status quo, Akari proposed they go get something to eat.

"Why don't we go put something in our stomachs since it's almost dinner?"

No one knew how long it was going to take Shiori's mother to come, so Akari decided to take the initiative when it came with dinner.

Since it was in a house that Akari had never been in before, she proposed that they go out to get food today.

"Can we get pizza?"

Shiori readily agreed and put in her own suggestion.

Finally recovered from his quick flash of depression, Takei realized that he was extremely hungry.

"Pizza sounds great, let's go."

After unanimously deciding, the three left the house after Akari had helped Shiori in getting dressed.

They walked to the nearest pizza place with Shiori in-between both Takei and Akari.

The sight of her holding both of their hands made the onlookers think that they were a beautiful family.

Putting aside the weird assumptions for now, they got to the pizza location and sat down in a small boothe.

Scanning over the menu, Takei decided to get a whole pie and have the flavors divided into three sections in order to allow everyone to have a choice in what flavor the pizza is.

He asked what flavors everyone wanted and made a mental note inside of his head.

Once the waiter came to serve them, Takei explained their order.

After marking down their order, the waiter left and returned back 10 minutes later with their custom pizza.

For their respective toppings, Takei had chosen plain pepperoni and cheese, Akari had chosen meatballs and sausage, and Shiori had chosen pineapple and pepperoni.

Each person got a slice of the pizza and took a bite out of their respective flavors.

"It's good!"

"Delicious..."

"Yum!"

Apparently, the pizza shop had hit the mark on all three flavors which resulted in high praise from Takei, Akari, and Shiori.

All three continued to happily munch on their pizza, until Takei got curious about Akari's toppings of choice.

"Can I have a taste?"

"!"

In contrast to Akari's understanding of him, Takei knowingly asked her a bold question.

It took Akari a second to recover, but she agreed without a second thought.

Akari got a slice of pizza and held it out towards Takei's mouth.

"Open wide~"

Takei did as instructed and opened his mouth wide as Akari slid the pizza in.

He then took a bite and analyzed the flavor that he was tasting from the pizza.

"It's actually really good! The delicate balance between the meatballs and sausage ensure that one doesn't overpower the other!"

Takei excitedly explained why Akari was a one in a billion genius as she had chosen a beautiful mix of flavors that worked well together.

Once he calmed down, Akari leaned in and whispered into his ear.

"You can taste me next, no?"

As expected, Akari wouldn't let such a great opportunity to tease Takei slip away.

---

Idiot Couple Meter: 33 -> 37%

They took Shiori home after this and had a very fun time snuggling up to each other at Takei's house after the fact.

Sugar-san: That sounds nice...

Serious-san: I would do it with you if you wanted to?

Sugar-san: W-w-wha... Idiot...