"PFF!!! PFF!!! PFF!!! PRIRI!!! PRIRI!!!"
It was the sound of a flute being mercilessly 'slaughtered'. The annoying sound was close to his ears. And he just wished it to stop.
Haruki opened his eyes and closed them by instinct, because of the light. The singer felt his head throbbing and flinched.
He tried a second time. Carefully, he opened only one eye to check who was producing this cacophony.
He spotted the soles of a student's black shoes less than two meters away.
"Enough! Stop this torture!" Haruki demanded before his head cracked like an eggshell.
The boy jumped in surprise, holding the flute as if it were some kind of weapon. Haruki calmly sat down.
"Calm down, don't be afraid, I won't hurt you. It's just… My head is going to explode, so please, can you practice elsewhere? Please?" Haruki got up slowly, putting his hands on his head. His vision was blurry, but returning as he blinked several times.
"Who are you?" asked the student with light hair and grey eyes. He'd never seen someone of his same ethnicity with such pretty exotic eyes. He was sure the boy wasn't wearing lenses.
'Where have I seen this before?' The singer questioned himself, searching in his recent memory, 'Ah, in the conceptual art of Covet and Temptation!' recalled Haruki, 'But how is that possible?'
"Who are you?" He insisted on knowing the senior student who seemed to be just a little younger than he was.
"I'm Takeda Haruki, but I have no idea how I got here," he said, still stunned, looking around to know where he was.
They were both in a room with large windows adorned with velvet curtains and silk ribbons, where the sea could be seen in the distance. A grand piano and other musical instruments denounced that this luxurious place was a music room.
"I'm Okane Hinata," replied the younger guy, bowing.
The singer bowed in return,
"Where are we?" he needed to know.
"In an empty mansion. On an island. Inside an Otome Game. You ended up here when plugging in your smartwatch, don't you remember?" the boy told him quite bluntly.
"Uh?"
"You are the Athlete," he said, pointing to the national team's emblem in the tracksuit.
Lowering his head, Haruki checked himself, discovering the boy was right. 'We are inside the otome game!'
It was the student's turn to ask for calm.
"Keep calm, panic is not the best response to it. There are other people here. I mean, actual people."
And he started walking towards the exit of the hall. "Come and meet the others," invited the boy when he reached the door.
As they left for the long corridor, full of closed doors, huge windows with curtains and ribbons like those in the hall, Haruki saw the man from the drawing!
The bad boy archetype suits him well. He moved with a sexy sway of a cat, and his assertive hazel eyes were fixed on Haruki. His striking eyebrows and defined jawline, as all his face, were a real version of the drawing Haruki saw in Kenta's studio. The 'Bad Boy' had a V-shaped line torso, broad shoulders, and long muscular legs, all clad in jeans, military boots, a worn rock band t-shirt, and a leather jacket. All his body screamed self-assurance.
The singer felt his body respond with longing for this predator.
"I found another one of us, Jun-san." The 'cute boy' was between them. "This is Takeda Haruki-san. This is my friend Sasaki Jun-san," Okane completed the introductions.
Haruki bowed, and Sasaki Jun returned the greeting. With only a penetrating look, he seemed to assess everything. Haruki's expressions, his body, and his posture. 'What does he want, anyway? Challenge me to a sumo match? ' thought Haruki a little apprehensively. He wasn't sure if it was an assessment of whether they could be friends or enemies.
The singer then pushed this matter away, and would decide later on which category he should put the 'bad boy'.
Jun Sasaki took them both to the modern kitchen, out of one of these decor magazines. He served the student a weird soup. It didn't smell good or look appetizing. Despite the dismayed face, the boy forced himself to eat, and Sasaki responded to the newcomer's puzzled look,
"He was the first to arrive in five days, and there's nothing but bamboo shoots to eat. When that damn game starts, we will let Okane make the first date so he can eat," coincidentally or not, Jun leaned close to Haruki's ear to tell him.
He just swallowed. First, knowing that they were starving in a scary house, tied to someone's whims.
Then a second shiver ran down his spine, swelling his lower body. He put his hands in his sweatpants pocket to cover it up. What was happening to him, who first got aroused about a drawing, and now, about the real version of the same drawing?
Sasaki noticed the athlete's situation, looking at him with a half-mocking smile. Haruki pretended it didn't happen. It was all he could do, anyway.
Okane finished eating and left the kitchen to check where the others were.
"And how long have you been here?" Haruki wanted to know more about this enigmatic bad boy.
"I arrived the day after Hinata-kun. And the others came later. The CEO arrived this morning. And now you," said Sasaki Jun.
It didn't take long for Haruki to meet the other members of the Otome harem.
The 'nerd' was actually called Noguchi Takashi, and he was an introspective and silent man.
The 'CEO' had the same dominating expression, but his name was Yoshida Saito. He was exactly as Kenta had drawn, in every detail.
And to his surprise, when he saw the 'artist' in person, he recognized him immediately. It was Yamada Daisuke, a digital influencer and a very famous DJ in his country.
The fact that they were all caught up in an otome game was scary and inexplicable.
Sitting on the kitchen counter, they talked a little about it. Noguchi asked, in his deep, kind of grave voice,
"The only thing that makes sense to me is High Tech Programming. We were drawn into the game by having our retinas scanned. The contract we signed authorized this," with a graceful arm movement, Noguchi covered everything around him.
They summed up and shared their conclusions with the newcomers.
Remembering the feeling of being sucked in shortly after having his retina scanned, Haruki agreed with Noguchi's conclusion, but asked, anyway,
"I have a question. Did you sign the contract with the ivory pen?"
The guys looked at each other.
CONTINUES