The next day.
"Onii-chan, something terrible has happened!!!" Sogo Doma was jolted awake by the frantic shouting of a certain useless dumpling. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the rising sun outside the window.
"Umaru, today's a holiday, right?"
After Mai Sakurajima's successful comeback announcement, Ms. Sakurajima had invited everyone to a celebratory banquet. As the person who'd contributed the most, he'd naturally made the guest list. After he single-handedly got everyone at the banquet dead drunk, the Sakurajima mother and daughter had both thought, Do you even have a weakness?
Of course, they'd only said that in their hearts. What gave Sogo a slight headache was that Mai Sakurajima, whose virtue he'd taken, hadn't felt the slightest bit ashamed in front of him. What's more, as he drank with everyone, she'd seemed to be oddly protective of him. Did he look like someone who needed protecting?
Are you kidding me! Feeling underestimated, Sogo had immediately challenged the bunny girl to a bottle of Water of Life. If Ms. Sakurajima hadn't been quick to intervene, the first headline after Mai Sakurajima's comeback would probably have been Beloved Superstar Suffers Alcohol Poisoning at Comeback Banquet...
Mai Sakurajima had only wanted to say, "If I was protecting that Sogo, then I'll— I'll..." Just thinking about him holding out a bottle of 96-proof Water of Life and saying, "Come on, don't worry about whether this is too much for you. Let's have a drink. We're close, so bottoms up..." made the bunny girl grit her teeth.
If she hadn't seen the old hands her mom had invited trying one by one to get Sogo drunk, would she have stepped in? A 650-milliliter bottle of 96-proof Water of Life! Only an idiot like Sogo would hand it to her!
That frustration had lasted