The Amphisbaena Read Online Free PDF Page A

clothes echoed all about. Kojou forced himself to make imaginary free throws inside his own mind in an effort to fend off the sounds that stimulated his baser instincts.
    After several exceedingly long minutes, Asagi said, “It’s all right now,” giving his shoulder a pat. “Now you can’t complain, can you?”
    Kojou turned and looked; right before his eyes, Asagi was wearing a family restaurant waitress’s uniform. The outfit served to exaggerate the swell of her breasts, with a frilly apron on top. It came with knee-high socks and an unnaturally short skirt. It wasn’t that the outfit was especially exposing, but the unusual situation—a classmate wearing clothes like this on school grounds—bewildered him.



“…Why a waitress outfit?”
    “I thought you’d like it, Kojou. You’re always staring at the waitresses at family restaurants, after all.”
    “I am not!”
    “Now, now. I’ve given you quite a freebie, so it’s time you changed clothes, too. Here.”
    “You’ve totally forgotten why we’re doing this in the first place, haven’t you? What happened to your artistic dilemma?”
    Steadily complaining all the while, Kojou peered into the cardboard box. He pulled out the sanest outfit he could see, which turned out to be the butler outfit. Asagi regarded it with great interest before turning toward the wall. Kojou yielded to the inevitable and began to change. Fortunately, the size wasn’t a problem. Apparently the drama club outfits had been made to have a certain degree of flexibility.
    “Yeah, this actually looks pretty good on you, Kojou.” Looking at Kojou after he’d changed, Asagi smiled with what looked like admiration.
    “That doesn’t make me the slightest bit happy.”
    Looking at his own reflection in the mirror, Kojou’s face scowled in irritation. The “butler” clothes were black with a tailcoat. Whether Kojou liked it or not, he looked like a classical vampire. He was the spitting image of the terrifying demons that had terrorized mankind in the great war before the Holy Ground Treaty was signed.
    Even as this fact made Kojou distinctly uncomfortable, he muttered, “There, happy now?” as he checked with Asagi.
    …Click!
    His eyes met Asagi’s as her stupidly high-end smartphone took a picture of him.
    “Wh-what are you taking a picture for?!”
    “Mm? Reference photo for my sketch.”
    “Stop, delete that. Delete it right now!” Kojou shouted in a shrill voice. Here he was, after classes had ended, wearing a butler outfit, and
not
preparing for some kind of school festival. Plus, he had that weird “makeup” on his face; he thought it was a fairly painful situation to be in.
    But for her part, Asagi filled the air with the sounds of her camera shutter on full rapid-fire.
    “It’s all right. It’s not like I’m gonna send them all to everyone in class.”
    “That’s exactly what I don’t trust you not to do! Aw, crap…!”
    In a desperate counterattack, Kojou whipped out his own cell phone and photographed Asagi in her waitress outfit. Seeing that, Asagi let out a cute yelp. Apparently even she had some sense of shame.
    “Hold on… Why do I have to get photographed too?! It’s indecent.”
    “It’s not indecent. These are reasonable countermeasures!”
    “Oh, good grief…!”
    Asagi made a rough, seemingly defiant sigh. Suddenly, she stood right beside Kojou and wrapped herself around his arm. She proceeded to snuggle against him while getting both of them into the camera frame.
    Click
, the shutter reverberated. The two-shot was displayed on the smartphone’s screen: a butler and a waitress. It was a bizarre situation, but the image was picture-perfect.
    “And? Got it out of your system?
    “…Well, it’s not really a matter of getting it out of my system or not…,” Kojou said in a tired voice as he glared at the oddly satisfied Asagi.
    Right after, a long chime rang throughout the school. The school day had come to an end.
    Asagi