Chapter 10: Ase Shibuki, Yukapoyo
Ase was just sitting down on a park bench, enjoying the cool afternoon air while eating a ice lolly. Nobody was here in the park, but occasionally she'd sniff her sleeve. Smelled like sweat. But hey, nobody was here, so all she had to do is not hate her own sweats.
"Are you...Shibii?"
Ase looked at the asker. It was a brown-skinner girl, with bangs big enough to cover her right eye.
"I heard of you from Bagiko! Do you mind if I sit next to you?"
"No, go ahead," Ase said. Bagiko reminded her of Manbagi, so this gyaru must be one of Manbagi's friends. She sat next to her.
"I heard from Bagiko that you sweated a lot. Is that true?"
Straightforward! Manbagi was rather shy, but I guess she was a rare gyaru? Ase thought. "Err…"
"Clearly not, huh? You're sweating normally. Not the Super Soaker Sweater I thought you'd be."
"I don't like to sweat," Ase said. "So please excuse me if I don't sweat waterfalls." As she was about to leave, the gyaru clapped.
"Sorry! That came off really rude, huh? Didn't want to offend you," the gyaru said. She stood up and bowed her head.
Manbagi's friends couldn't be all bad, Ase thought. "I'm sensitive about that."
The gyaru began squatting and sitting up. In fact, she did that really quickly. Pretty soon she was breathing rapidly, her face flushed. But there was not a single drop of sweat. "It's pretty hard of me to sweat."
"Oh," Ase said. "But sweating a lot is bad too."
"Bagiko sweated a ton. Mu-tan and Gonzales, too. Gonzales can even sound sweaty, she's that good."
"I don't know if that's good."
"And now I heard of this Goddess of Sweats is Bagiko's friend, and I want to see."
"See...me sweat?"
"Yeah."
Ase was shocked. So far her friends had always been people who couldn't care less about her sweating, but this was the first time someone would like her for her sweat.
"But I totes get it if that's creepy. Sorry to ruin your afternoon! Ciao!"
"Wait," Ase said. "Promise you won't be put off."
"Promise."
"Okay." Ase put back the ice lolly back on its cover and placed it on the bench. She stood up, took a big breath, and willed her sweat to come out.
It was as if her face had melted. Streams of sweat poured from all over her face, but most prominently the top of her forehead. In a few seconds her facial features was hidden by a curtain of rapidly flowing sweat.
"W-wait, you can sweat on demand?"
"Only to make it flow faster. This is just 70%," Ase said. "But I only do 100% in the bath, so don't ask for it."
"Amazing! It was as if you're speaking through a waterfall! It was as if you put hose somewhere under your hair!" The gyaru ran around Ase, admiring the physical marvel. "Suugoi~you really are the goddess of sweating!"
"I can show you something better," Ase said. The sweat completely stopped coming from her head. Instead, from her elbows down, currents of sweat gushed down her arms, down to the ground.
"You can control where the sweat is coming from?"
"I just found out yesterday. There's a...little bit more," Ase said, now sweating not just from sheer mental manipulation of biological activities, but also from excitement. She reduced the sweating on her arms, and then pointed at the spot on the bench where the ice lolly was. There was a brief hissing sound, and a beam of water shot from the tip of Ase's fingers and hit the covered ice lolly, blasting it few inches away.
"Holy's hit," the gyaru exclaimed in broken English. "Girl, I'm calling the Av_ngers!"
[break]
"No way," Manbagi said.
"It's impossible," Isagi said.
Ase pointed to her left palm and shot sweat at it, causing some to splash. Her three friends looked so shocked they're speechless. Komi was the first to speak.
"How far can you shoot it?"
Ase looked around Komi's room and pointed at the small tub of hand cream by the window sill. "I can get there. Not the windows though."
"Do it," Manbagi said.
[break]
"So we spend the rest of the night challenging Ase to aim at multiple objects."
"What a sleepover," Tadano said. "What time did you actually sleep tho-oh, you didn't sleep at all, huh?"
Komi nodded, hiding her face behind her notebook. "It was so exciting. Anyway, about you and Sarutahiko's dog..."
Author's note: Chapter 345 of the manga promises that Chapter 346 will be about Ase and Naruse, but the actual chapter was about some other topic. Chapter 346 then promises the next chapter will be about Ase and Naruse. I'm just copying the Grandmaster Oda Tomohito with the broken promises.