Life after Harem

Joker labors.

Sojiro was still working at Leblanc, so Akira knew Futaba would be alone when he'll visit her. Given all the things that he did with other girls through the last few months his mind already imagined some scenarios, but he did his best to remind himself why he's there.

He left Morgana in his room before going out, so they wouldn't be disturbed. After arriving at her place Akira ringed the doorbell and before he could put his hands back in his pockets and wait the door already opened. 

- Were you that eager to see me? - He said teasingly while grinning at her.

She got embarrassed, and turned her gaze to the ground beginning to blush slightly.

- L-Look who's talking, you are 15 minutes before the time I wrote you to be here!

- That's because I was that eager to see you. - he reached his hand to pat her on the head, but remembering that she's got all the reasons to be angry at him stopped it in the middle of the movement. She looked at him with one of her eyebrows raised wondering what he's doing, before he asked:

- Can I give you a head pat?

She lowered her gaze on the floor once again and grabbed his reaching hand guiding it and placing it on her head.

- Go on. You'll have to do this a lot in future as a part of your "labors", that I spent entire morning thinking about.

Akira expressions soured a bit hearing that because part of him was hoping that she might forget about it, but he quickly smiled again while continuing to caress her heir with his right hand.

- So, what did you come up with? I'll do anything as long as it is in the realm of possibility.

Now she grinned playfully.

- We will see about that, but it won't be easy. Glad to hear that you're not chickening out though, given how you were to scared to confront us all before the day after the Valentines.

Smooth and cheeky idea came up to Joker's head, and because of his last few months of being playboy and Casanova, he acted on it before thinking if he should. He stopped patting her head and playing with her hair, and placed the hand that was doing this with his palm open on her cheek very gently rising her head to make her look up at him, and then he said while looking her in the eyes:

- I care about you too much to run away.

It took few second of absolute silence and Futaba blush getting even more visible than before while looking him at him with her eyes wide open, till both of them realized what they are doing and backed away a bit, with Futaba turning away from him and grabbing her cheeks in her hands.

- Ugh... You absolute player! I thought my heart was gonna jump out of my chest, no wonder you were able to make everyone fall for you...

She slowly turned back to him and - to her surprise - have seen Akira scratching the back of his head and looking down on the floor seemingly in embarrassment, similar to her own behavior from few moments ago.

- Heh, don't act all shy, knowing you, you probably said much more embarrassing lines during your many dates with everyone.

- Yeah, sorry I guess it was my player side showing, but it's not an act - they both looked each other in the eyes again - I guess it's embarrassing to say those kind of things while actually meaning it.

Both very quickly broke eye contact slightly flustered.

- A-anyway, I've got an actual list on the pc in my room, so follow me.

- Aye-aye captain.

When they entered Futaba's room one of her pc monitors had open word document, and it looked like a list with a lot of dashes, though most of them being rather short in term of text.