Kana and I were leaving school when he suddenly got a text from Hacchan. He got real excited to answer back, and even giggled to himself like an actual schoolgirl when returning a message.

"You two have been getting close. Is there something I should know about? Maybe you had a gyaru fetish all this time?" I teased him, poking the side of his stomach.

He jumped back, clutching his sides and nearly dropping his phone in the process. Seeing him get all flustered was cute. Too cute. When he was a boy, I was the one who got all embarrassed. It became the other way around with him as a girl.

"That's not it!" Kana blushed. "I just update her about my compensated dating stuff. Thanks to Hacchan, I'm becoming a lot more confident about myself. And… hehe… I've been getting a lot more gifts and compliments from my dates now because of her advice."

"So you're still doing that after all? Does that mean you're done being mine and Mio's boyfriend to be someone else's girlfriend?" I asked, the snide remark turning him redder than a tomato.

Kana covered the lower half of his face with his phone.

"There's no way I could ever want to be with anyone else…" he replied, glancing off to the side.

My heart skipped a beat. If we weren't in public, I would have assaulted Kana right then and there. This urge must be what Mio has to fight on a daily basis. 

"Saeko!"

A girl with dark brown hair done up with pigtails raced out of the school building to catch up to us. Mio trailed behind her, walking without the same urgency. In fact, she yawned into her hand and looked like she couldn't be bothered.

"Thank god, I caught up to you…" the girl said, hands on her knees and panting.

"Oh, aren't you… from the drama club?" I asked.

"Yes! Takagi assigned me to be part of the stage crew. Second year Ame Shiraishi. I'm looking for Hana, have you seen her?" The desperation Ame's voice was palpable.

"Apparently she hasn't shown up for practice in days. Man, I was hanging out Yumi. This girl comes barging into the nurse's office looking for me when we were just getting to the good part," Mio groaned.

"We?" I glared at her.

Mio cracked a smirk and shrugged.

One whiff and I caught the scent of lust hanging around Mio from Naruse, the school nurse. Sounded like Yumi's tenure as assistant nurse was more involved than I expected.

"I thought Mio might know where Hana's gone to, but she doesn't know either. Please, tell me she's at least okay. Takagi's getting impatient that we've lost our Mercutio," the poor girl said.

"Hana's the truest definition of a free spirit, but she's usually committed to the things she puts her mind on, right? It's weird that she would abandon the drama club's play," Kana added.

"And I've been wondering why school's been a lot quieter lately. It's because Hana's gone missing, huh. At the very least, I don't think she's in danger…" I pulled out my phone to text Hana and received a response in an instant.

Less of a response and more of a LINE sticker of a bear mascot sticking its tongue out.

"See, that old squirt's still around!" Mio cackled.

"Old?" Ame glanced at Mio.

"Ahh— Mio means old friend!" I chimed in.

With everyone surrounding me and my phone, I sent Hana a text asking where she was and that the drama club needed her.

Hana responded a few seconds later with the answer buried under a convoluted mess of emojis and stickers.

Apparently, she was downtown this entire time and was currently too busy to return, but assured us that she had her lines for the script down.

"What?! That's still no good. She might have her lines down, but she needs to rehearse blocking and lines with the rest of the cast!" Ame cried. "Ask her how long she's going to be busy for?"

I texted as Ame asked.

We waited with bated breath on the 'Hana is typing…' for two whole minutes.

Then I got this stupid text from her: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

We all stared blankly at the face with a mixture of disbelief and bafflement.

I sent an angry text at her to stop screwing around.

Hana sent this in reply: ( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°)

"They're multiplying," Kana said.

"Guess we're going to bring her back by force." Mio slammed a fist into her palm.

We assured Ame that we would bring Hana back, but it probably wasn't enough to convince Takagi unless she was right in front of him. The drama club member thanked us and returned to the school building where she likely to meet the club president's wrath.

"You coming with?" I asked Kana.

"Nah. I'd only slow you two down. Good luck finding that troublemaker." He waved and left ahead of us.

Mio and I flew into the city in search of Hana. It wasn't long before we sensed her aura in the business district of Tsukiji, and zeroed into a single-story office building with anime posters plastered on the windows from the inside.

I'd like to think I was in the know when it came to the latest and popular animes in otaku culture. When I looked at the posters, none of them were familiar to me. Almost all of the characters were women, and the men had shaded out faces from the nose up.

"This place totally doesn't look shady!" Mio remarked.

"Let's hope we won't actually have to force her back." I sighed.

We entered into a boxed room of a lobby where several women sat patiently on chairs against the wall, reading magazines or fiddling with their phones. There was another door across from us, and a standing sign with a note that said, 'Wait until your name is called. Thank you for your patience.'

Unsure how to proceed with this situation, we took a seat and watched the door. Mio leaned over to a young woman to look her up and down.

"How's it going, toots?" She purred at her.

The woman swallowed hard and cleared her throat, now having a hard time keeping her posture while reading the magazine.

The other door swung open so hard the door knob indented the wall. Hana marched out with a stack of papers under her arm, wearing a business suit and sunglasses, and chewing obnoxiously loud on a piece of gum.

"Alright, everyone except the two JKs get outta here! Scram! I got no need for the rest of ya!" she shouted, chasing the stragglers out.

"Hana, you're—"

Before I could utter another word, Hana raced up to us like she had found a diamond in the rough.

"Boy, am I glad to see you two! You know how hard it is working with people who can't even inflect their voice? Like come on!" Hana groaned. "Now let's get inside and get to work!"

Everything happened so fast. Mio and I ended up in a recording booth. Black acoustic panels lined up and down the walls behind us. A television was paused on an anime that I wasn't familiar with or likely not released yet. Before me was a stand that had a script of dialogue.

"Damn it, Hana! Explain yourself!" I demanded, going up to the glass pane where she and several other people sat and watched us.

"I found a new calling in life—" she began, her voice coming through an intercom at the top of the room.

"Not this again…" I groaned.

"And that's voice acting! Not me voice acting though, nope. From the moment I came to Japan—"

"You've only been here for like six months!" I interjected.

"—I've been a lost soul, wandering the cosmos like a meteor waiting to crash into a celestial body!"

"What the hell kind of a metaphor is that… " I rubbed my head in anticipation of an ensuing headache.

"BUT NOT ANYMORE!" Hana screamed so loud her voice feedbacked. "It's important to know what you want in life, and I found it when I was searching for a way to improve my acting for the play. So I would really appreciate it if you guys helped my dreams. Pweeaaseee?"

I glanced over to Mio who was reading the script. She had a hand to her chin and another flipping the page.

"Are we really going to humor Hana?" I asked her.

"Sure, why not? Sounds like fun to me. When life gives you lemons, roll with the punches, right?" she said, reading ahead of the script.

"That's two different idioms, but you have a point…"

A huge sense of deja vu hit me like a truck. I was suspicious at first given Hana's track record, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We were in a normal recording studio, with a professional set up and everything.

"Fine. I hope you know what you're getting with me though. You remember the last time I tried to act!" I reminded Hana, thinking back on the porno shoot she made me and Mio do.

"Whaddya saying? It worked out great!" she exclaimed.

Great, she said. Like she had completely forgotten about losing all the data from filming us. All that work went to waste. Hopefully our efforts wouldn't be wasted this time around.

"People are eating up girls' love shit, especially when a guy turns into a girl. The premise of this story is a high school drama, where the boy becomes a girl and falls in love with the woman who changed him," Hana said.

"Eh? Wait… Isn't that—" 

"We're starting from scene 9, line 12. Action!" The intercom cut off immediately and the red light above the glass pane turned red to show we were being recorded.

"What do you mean you don't want to see me anymore?" Mio began with her line, then shot me a look to cue mine.

"I-I mean what I said! Ever since meeting you, it's been nothing but trouble. I never wanted to be like this, but you did this to me without ever considering how I felt. It's better if we don't see each other again…" I started getting red in the face.

Some of these lines hit too close to home and were somehow familiar…

"Excuse me for being selfish, but I'm not about to give up. You can't tell me you hated everything we've done up until now," she said, voice full of hurt. 

Mio would have been a great fit for the drama club's Romeo and Juliet play. She was a natural at acting. Or maybe some of these lines resonated with her. 

I was so captivated by Mio that Hana made a hand gesture for me to continue. My next line made my face hot.

"Then… t-take responsibility… "

The line that followed was action prose: The heroine runs up to the MC and they kiss.

Uh.

I didn't realize Mio had walked up to me until she was by my side. We stared each other in the eyes. Hana and the people in the other room watched intently.

Are we really going to…?

Without another word, Mio planted her lips on me. 

"Mmm…"

Mio's kiss was tender at first. At least until I got a mouth full of her tongue shoved down my throat.

"Mmmph! Hahh… Wait, I— nnh! Shhllrrp… shllrrrp… gulp…" I tried to push her away, but Mio had her arms firmly wrapped around me. She deepthroated me with her tongue, and tilted my head back to slide her saliva into my mouth.

The longer she held me, the hotter my body became. Our breasts rubbed together underneath the school uniform. Groping hands slipped down my back and into the skirt. Mio grabbed two handfuls of my ass, squeezing them until I let out a yelp.

My own hands found purchase on her hips. Instead of going for her ass, I rubbed the small of her back and her belly just above the crotch.

"Heh. You're getting full of yourself lately. Maybe I need to be more assertive from now on?" Mio asked.

I blushed and buried my hot face into her chest. "How about t-toning it down…?"

"Aaaaand— cut!" Hana's shrill voice came through the intercom. However, Mio wouldn't let go. Our lips continued to remain embraced. "Okay, guys, we got enough material to work with. You can stop kissing now. THE DIRECTOR SAID CUT!"

Mio finally let me go and winked. I wiped the saliva from my lips.

"You could have at least warned me…" I mumbled.

"But you like it when I surprise you. Your eyes say no, but your tongue was telling me hell yes!" She grinned.

"Alright, lovebirds. It's time for the climax," Hana said.

Mio returned to her stand, and I flipped to the next page to read ahead.

The next line was another action prose: The scene transitions to a love hotel where the heroine and MC have steamy hot lesbian sex.

My first line was supposed to be, 'Oh, god. I can't believe how good it feels to have my pussy eaten,' and a whole lot of moaning.

"WHAT IS THIS, A HENTAI?!" I threw the script on the ground.

The answer was on the front cover on the script which read, 'Based on a true story.'

"Hey, that's not in the script! Stick to the script!" Hana shouted.

"Yeah, we're getting to the good part where I fuck you with a strap-on!" Mio exclaimed.

I stormed out of the recording studio and into the sound mixer room where a bunch of people had their legs squeezed shut or covering their crotch, faces red from watching us make out earlier.

Hana was about to make a complaint, but I knocked the script out of her hands.

I grabbed Hana's neck and raised her off her feet. "The make out scene is all you're going to get. Now for your end of the bargain— it's back to school with you!"

"O… kay…" she croaked.

We dragged Hana back to school and made her apologize on her knees to the drama club.

"Uwaahhh! But my voice directing career!" Hana wept into her Romeo and Juliet script instead of the hentai one.

"You can go back to it once you fulfill your prior obligations to the drama club," I said, folding my arms.

"And after that, Hana has to help her class with the Halloween and Culture Day events." The class rep and several other students from Hana's class had entered the auditorium, looking no less pleased that she had ditched them.

"Eehhhh? But I don't wanna!" Hana wailed.

"Ya reap what ya sow." Mio sneered.

Mio and I could finally go home after finding Hana. It was getting late in the afternoon, and both of my hunger levels were beginning to hit their limits for the day. However, as we flew across the city, Selene intercepted us from behind.

"Ending the day early?" I asked her.

"I might have overworked the club. They would do well to rest for the next two days. Now I have found myself with more free time than I know what to do with. So I figured I should fulfill the request you made of me a while back," she said.

"What'd you ask?" Mio turned to me, a hint of jealousy glistened in her eyes.

"Oh, right! I asked her to help train me further in magic. Since we have time, we can do that now. Want to join us?" I asked Mio.

"Nah, I'm chilling. I'll head back first to get me some grub from Hatsumi." As she was about to fly off, I reflexively grabbed her hand. She grinned at me. I realized then, looking into her eyes, she had begun to trust me even if I went out with Selene. "Buy me some mango habanero chips while you're out. Potato chips, not the corn chips! There's a difference!"

Mio kissed me on the nose and smirked.

"Okay, but I'm definitely not eating them with you!" I shouted to her as she flew off.

The clouds were dyed a shade of orange and red from the sun coming down. We didn't have much daylight left.

"How come you two are allowed to have a relationship, but I cannot so much as court your sister?" Selene asked as soon as Mio was out of sight.

"Don't push your luck," I warned her.

"Y-Yes, my queen." She lowered her head. "What shall we begin with?"

"Hmm. I want you to teach me how to fight better with my magic," I said.