just hanging out

Shiori Miyagi: at school, she sits not exactly at the bottom of the school caste, but pretty close. her mother is gone, and her father is always busy with work to the point of rarely being home. he probably feels guilty about this, which is why Miyagi is left with an allowance that's frankly excessive for a high school student. living in a mostly empty house for most of her formative years has really done a number on this girl, let me tell ya

Hazuki Sendai: according to Miyagi, she's not quite at the top of the school caste, but pretty close. she's not close to her family, even though they're close to each other. her parents will only bother to talk to her to nag her into following her successful sister's footsteps, and otherwise won't even reply "welcome back" when she comes home. she comes across as neat and proper at school, but it's not necessarily something that's in her nature, rather she goes out of her way to present this way to make life easier on herself. to her own admission, she's a people pleaser

their story begins in a bookstore, with Sendai attempting to buy a magazine she doesn't care about because her friend and local Cool Kid does, except she has forgotten her wallet at home, as she realizes once at the register. unfortunately for her, Miyagi is there to save the day and buy it for her (with a trusty 5000 yen bill!) before she can refuse. Sendai really doesn't want to accept the money, and Miyagi really doesn't care about getting it back. so they reach a compromise: Sendai can just work for it.

what was supposed to be a one time thing soon turns into a whole system. once a week (though it's actually more "whenever she has a bad day"), Miyagi will call Sendai over, give her a 5000 yen bill, and in exchange gain the right to order her around for the afternoon until it's time for dinner, at which point she will ask her if she wants to eat together, Sendai will say no, and they'll each go their separate ways. at first that only means making Sendai read manga out loud, or do her homework for her. Sendai doesn't mind, and she'd rather be in Miyagi's room than her own house anyway. until one day Miyagi issues a new order: to lick her feet.

from this point onwards Miyagi's orders swiftly change in nature, and though at a much slower pace, so does their relationship.

some things to keep in mind:

there's two translations out of this webnovel. one of them is frankly not good and i do not recommend it, but iirc it's almost caught up with the og. the other translation is good, but there's only 36 chapters out. still, it updates very frequently, so i do recommend it over the first one if you're patient

when i say slow burn, i do mean slow burn. while the physical intimacy and intensity of feelings grow relentlessly over the course of the story, these girls are not good at talking to each other. like, it took Sendai six months of being served soda every time she came over to finally decide it was time to tell Miyagi she doesn't like it. she gets tea from then on