Summer days were hot. Summer evenings were still hot. A girl could go mad in this kind of heat, Shinka Nibutani reflected. But then again, her circle of friends was mad enough already, and she had a willing and eager distraction in her lap that was beckoning the cooler night-hours very pleasantly indeed.
Nibutani sighed. Her phone, hitherto blissfully quiet, started to vibrate on the side table. Reluctantly, Shinka pulled away from the person she had been kissing. "Huffff... just a moment," she sighed. Flustered, she fumbled with a blind hand, rescuing her phone from the blank embrace of her furniture.
A text message. Hurray. Nibutani reluctantly flipped her phone open.
"It's from Togashi," she began, apologetically. "Wonder what banal thing he's asking me about now."
Sanae Dekomori, the Mjolnir Hammer and fellow makeout artist, began to pout; discomfitted by the loss of Nibutani's face against hers. "I have no deathly idea what the Dark Flame Master could be asking you for," she muttered.
Shinka looked from Sana to her phone, moving her fingers practisedly to open her phone, swiping past the passcode to show -
"Oh," Shinka muttered, her cheeks deepening further crimson from the light red they had been.
"What is it?" Sanae asked.
Nibutani tried to suppress her surprise. "Yuuta-... Rikka-" Shinka's attempts to suppress a smile failed, and a small one reached her face.
Sanae quickly aligned herself alongside Shinka, peering over her shoulder so she could look at the phone screen. Her jaw dropped.
"M-Master has finally bound herself to the contract of lovers with the Dark Flame Master..." Sanae said. "Finally..."
Shinka laughed. "Yeah, finally is right!"
The image on Shinka's phone showed Yuuta and Rikka in the midst of a substantial kiss. They were both still in their schoool uniforms, but the picture had clearly been taken in Togashi's bedroom. Nibutani clasped the phone shut.
"I can't believe that loser took so long to get on with things," Shinka said. "Even we managed to start kissing before they did."
Dekomori blushed. "My Master was clearly waiting for the right moment to engage!"
Shinka scowled. "Why did Yuuta send me a picture of it though..."
Sana looked up in thought. "Maybe he thought you wouldn't believe him? But how he convinced Master to pose for such a lewd photo... I have no idea..."
Nibutani smiled at her girlfriend. "I have an idea. A better one."
Dekomori looked quizzical. Nibutani leaned closer. "Maybe we ought to send them a picture back."
Sanae's mouth dropped open."E-Eh?" she stammered.
Shinka brushed her face up against Sanae's. "We definitely should," she whispered.
Sanae closed her eyes. Shinka pressed the attack. Her lips met Sanae's, Then her tongue met Sanae's, too.
*click*
Yuuta dozed in the relatively cooler night. Rikka's arm was in his face.
Bleary-eyed, he opened his eyelids at the noise of a lowly-vibrating phone.
"Ahhhh," he groaned to himself.
Yuuta glanced over at the alarm clock on his side table. The time glared balefully back at him. 01:34 am. The night might have been pitch black, but his sleep had been interrupted by the thrumming of his damn phone.
He levered himself out of the duvet cover as gently as possible, Rikka sleeping softly next to him, in the single bed against the wall. Yuuta groped tiredly towards his phone, biting back a yawn.
"1:00 am," he muttered, tiredly. "1:00 am, 1 message from Nibutani," he yawned. "This is because we sent her that message, probably." He rubbed his eyes as the fingers of his other hand worked to unlock the phone and open the message.
"Nice pic," the message began. "Took you long enough. Now beat this. X," it continued, the text above a picture of Nibutani and Dekomori in the throes of an embrace, back; both of them passionately kissing each other, open-mouthed, eyes closed, faces extremely red.
Yuuta could feel himself blushing at the sight. He closed his phone quietly.
"Hey, Rikka," he whispered.
Nibutani woke up to her own phone vibrating.
"Ehhh..." she groaned quietly, to nobody in particular. She blindly groped for her phone, Dekomori's vice grip around her waist not making things particularly easy in that regard. She fumbled her phone off the sideboard.
Her source of waking shone brightly on the flat screen.
"Jeez, why is Yuuta messaging me back at 2am," she muttered. "This is because we sent him that dumb picture."
Shinka made the same, tired motions to open her phone and read the message.
"Beat this? Okay," Nibutani mouthed, silently reading out the text. Then, she scrolled down.
And then bit down on her tongue.
"Ahh," Nibutani gasped, her thighs tightening involuntarily as she looked at the image.
The picture was remarkably lewd, and clearly taken from Rikka's perspective, which was also a surprise. The chuuni had taken the photo from her neck downwards, her body resting against something, or rather someone. Shinka didn't have to guess it was anyone but Togashi. Rikka's pyjamas were becoming quickly dishevelled as a hand reached under them; a hand up her shirt and (Shinka guessed) squeezing her breast, whilst the other hand was down under her pyjama waistband... Shinka didn't have to guess what was happening there, her thighs shifting gently against each other to the sight. These might have been her best friends, but this image was hot.
Shinka gently closed the phone. She glanced down at Dekomori, who was still soundly asleep. It was going to be difficult to get back to sleep, now... let alone tell Sanae of this in the morning...
Neither Rikka nor Yuuta were in the club room the following day. Come lunch time, Nibutani and Dekomori were completely alone. Even Kumin had disappeared off somewhere, eschewing the usual lunchtime nap in the corner. Yuuta and Rikka had both been in class, but had quickly disappeared at the end of the period, before Shinka could ask if they were ready to go to lunch.
The two girls in the clubroom sat opposite each other at the kotatsu, lunches open in front of them.
"I hope," Nibutani began, before lowering her voice to a whisper and leaning in, confidentially. "I hope those two aren't avoiding us because of that text."
"Master could be tracking any number of etheric energies during this period," Dekomori whispered back. "To say that she is not here because of..." her face blushed, "... that message... is a bit presumptive..."
Nibutani sighed. "Is it? You know what those two are like. It took them all this time just to kiss each other! This was probably a big step for them. Let alone the fact... well, they are our friends... its probably awkward..." Shinka tailed off.
Dekomori poked at her lunch, her face coming to a half-smile as she caught an idea. "It's a good thing that the mystic Mori Summer is well versed in the divine providence of Love," she said, completely seriously. "Besides..." Sanae's cheeks blushed, "that image was hot, right?"
Nibutani's face flushed too. It seemed almost perverse to be admitting it about an image of their friends, but then again, Rikka and Yuuta had presumably agreed to send it to her. "Right..."
Dekomori smiled. "Right! So we make them feel less bad by sending them something back!"
Nibutani was loath to admit, this almost made a certain kind of sense. "E-Eh?" was all she could articulate.
Sanae put down her lunch, almost leaping over the table to put her lips in Shinka's ear. "Something even hotter," she whispered.
Yuuta and Rikka were in the middle of the walkway outside the main school buildings, the Japanese summertime mercifully cooler today; just bearable to be outside, where the two of them chose to eat their lunch on one of the outside school benches.
Rikka's face was utterly passionless, concerned only with staring at her boxed lunch with the occasional panicked glance around every thirty to forty seconds.
Yuuta pushed his hand over the wooden bench top to touch Rikka's. She looked guiltily up at him.
"I know," Yuuta smiled back.
Rikka sighed. "It's just... really awkward..." she murmered, her free hand coming up to cover her face and eyepatch.
"Isn't it more awkward for us to be avoiding the others?"
"No..." Rikka replied. "I can't believe we sent them that image..."
Yuuta sighed. He halfheartedly put the lid back on his own lunch, and moved round to Rikka's side of the bench. His arm went around her waist. Rikka sighed and put her head on his shoulder.
"We both wanted to do it, right," Yuuta said, lowly. "What's embarrasing about it?"
Rikka screwed her eyes shut. "That we sent the evidence to Nibutani..."
"She did kind of ask us to," Yuuta said. "She was friendly this morning in class. I don't know why we're avoiding her and Dekomori." He sighed. "They've probably done more with each other before anyway..."
Rikka scowled. "Probably."
Yuuta's phone went off in his pocket. He unhugged Rikka in preparation to pull it out.
He opened the phone. "See, here's Nibutani now," he said. Yuuta unlocked the phone and opened the message.
"Where are you? Missing you at lunchtime!"
If attached pictures spoke a thousand words, Shinka Nibutani was a god-damn novelist.