Eventually, everybody fell asleep on the couch. It might not have been the most comfortable arrangement, but none of them wanted to be apart from one another, so Kris and his harem of maids managed to somehow all use the couch for their rest.
Of course, it took the maids quite a while to fall asleep given just how excited they were about being with Kris and technically sleeping with him for the first time, but they eventually managed to pass into slumber.
And eventually, Kris woke up. His training to wake up early in the morning still kicked in even though he was so exhausted the night before, and he still felt pretty tired. He also felt pretty… sore. And constricted.
It took him a moment to figure out what was going on, but once he did, he saw and remembered how he fell asleep. And now, he was surrounded by all of his sleeping girlfriends.
And one other.
“I’m ready,” Lucy said, sitting on her knees in front of Kris with her eyes locked onto his own.
“Uh… morning?” Kris said. It was all he could think of saying when it came to his friend standing in front of him, staring into his eyes, first thing in the morning.
“I’m ready. I’m ready. I can handle it. I’m ready. I’ve prepared myself.”
“But what are you ready for?”
“You. Us.”
“Us?”
“You said you’d ask me out once I’m sober. I’m ready. Do it. Ask me out. I won’t let this opportunity get away from me.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Lucy’s expression went from one of determined excitement to betrayed shock, her eyes starting to water. “You—you don’t remem—”
“Sorry, it was a joke. Don’t cry.”
“A… a joke?”
“Yeah, I remember what I said.”
“Then… it wasn’t a dream?”
“You weren’t even sure it wasn’t a dream?”
“I wasn’t, but I figured I would take my chances anyways.”
“Well, it wasn’t. You came here, got drunk, then we talked about stuff and I said I’d ask you out in the morning once you’re sober. Are you sober now?”
“I am! I swear! I—”
“Your breath smells like alcohol.”
“That’s because of last night still! I—I haven’t brushed… I haven’t brushed my teeth yet…” Lucy’s face got redder and redder as she explained the scent.
“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Promise it’s from last night and not this morning?”
“I do! I’m not that much of an alcoholic! I only drink after eight!”
“I’ve seen you drink earlier than eight before.”
“I mean eight in the morning.”
“Oh.”
Lucy giggled and scratched the back of her head before refocusing her attention. “An-anyways! Ah, wait… I probably shouldn’t be shouting.” She looked at each of the maids who were still all asleep on the couch around Kris. “Honestly… I’m amazed they’re still sleeping.”
“That’s the power of being a maid,” Kris explained.
“What? What does being a maid have to do with sleeping?”
“They’ve explained it to me before. To a maid, having a schedule is extremely important. Getting enough rest and waking up at the same time every day allows them to perform at peak efficiency, or something like that. So to sleep and recharge as efficiently as possible, they’ve become really heavy sleepers. They can sleep through anything.”
“How’d you even find this out?”
“I said they explained it to me before.”
“But like… how does that even come up?”
“Oh. I was really tired and didn’t pay attention to what time it was and tried calling Iris to ask her something about food. Normally she’d pick up right away, but she didn’t, so I tried calling the others and nobody picked up. I got pretty worried and thought they might have died or something. But because time zones and stuff, they were actually asleep and it was later for them than I realized. I ended up being worried all night until they called me in the morning and apologized a bunch and explained how they slept through everything.”
“That sounds kind of… bad actually. Like… what if something serious happens and they need to wake up?”
“It’s okay. Rachel told me they trained themselves.”
Lucy blinked a couple of times. “What?”
“They had me send them voice clips of me saying their names and telling them to wake up. I don’t know how they did it, but she told me they trained themselves so that they’ll wake up instantly whenever they hear me say their names and to wake up. They even set their phones up to automatically switch to that voice message as their ringtone during night hours. Oh, but Abigail is deaf, so it doesn’t work for her. She just gets woken up by shaking her hard enough.”
“I see… being a maid is intense.”
“Yeah, and that’s not even the most intense thing they do.”
“A-anyways… me. Girlfriend me.”
“Girlfriend you?”
“It’s supposed to be a cute way of telling you to make me your girlfriend.”
“But how do I even do that?”
“What—what do you mean how do you do that?”
“I don’t know how to make you my girlfriend. All I know is how to offer it to you and then you make yourself my girlfriend.”
“Kris… okay. I’m ready. Offer it.”
“It feels kind of awkward now. Like… isn’t there supposed to be more buildup and romance and stuff before? Are you sure you’ll be satisfied if I offer it that easily?”
“Yes, Kris. I promise that there has been more than enough buildup.”
“Alright, if you say so. I’ll trust you. So, uh… want to be my girlfri—”
“Yes!”
“But I didn’t even finish yet. I don’t think it’s official if I don’t get to finish saying it because then it would be like you signing a contract that you didn’t even read all of first.”
“It would still be legally binding so that’s okay.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Lucy nodded, her eyes practically full of sparkling excitement at that point. “So—so I’m your girlfriend now!”
“Yeah.”
“And—and that means you’re my boyfriend now!”
“Yeah.”
“So… now—now what?”
“I don’t know. I barely know what I’m doing with my first girlfriends. I just kind of do whatever seems right.”
“That… might be a problem… because I have no idea what I’m doing either. The only boyfriend I’ve ever had… was in fourth grade… he asked me out and we dated for a week… then he dumped me for a different girl in our class… and we never even talked or anything after he asked me out…”
“Don’t worry, I know we’ll talk at least.”
“That’s strangely a huge relief. Oh! I—I know something we can do.” Lucy’s face began to shift to a shade of red as she wiggled her fingers against each other. “Ca-can we… m-maybe… h—hold… hold hands?”
Kris reached forward and took each of Lucy’s hands into his own. “Like this?”
Lucy might have looked nervous before, but that nervousness vanished as soon as he held her hands. Instead… she began drooling. “Heh… heheh… I’m—I’m holding your hands… and you’re actually awake and doing it all on your own this time… it’s so much better this way…”
Kris then let go of Lucy’s hands, causing her to look shocked and betrayed once more, and leaned back before saying, “Go brush your teeth. You can use my brush.”
“Is—is my breath really that bad?”
“Yeah. It stinks.”
“If I do it… will you hold my hands more?”
“Yeah, but later. I want to make breakfast for everybody.”
Lucy gulped when she heard his plan. “Are… are you sure? If you want, I could go pick up breakfast for us from somewhere…”
“It’s okay. I’ve got this.”
“Are… are you sure?”
“Trust me.”
Lucy sighed but gave in and nodded. “Alright. I—I trust you. I’m going to go brush my teeth now.”
With that, Lucy got up and left the living room to help herself to Kris’s toothbrush… and she was probably a bit too happy about putting his toothbrush inside of her mouth.
Meanwhile, Kris looked his original girlfriends over and saw that, surely enough, they were all still asleep despite all the noise that him and Lucy were just making.
They all looked so peaceful—so happy and content. He wanted to just stay there and watch them forever. However, he figured that might be weird, plus he wanted to make sure that breakfast would be ready before any of them woke up, so he carefully maneuvered his way out from between them and stood up.
Even though they were asleep, his girlfriends didn’t waste any time in consuming the freed-up space that his absence created.
After brushing her teeth, Lucy joined Kris in the kitchen where he was getting all the ingredients out still and carefully measuring each one using a scale to pre-proportion everything.
“Woah,” Lucy said. “I’ve never seen you cook like this. I didn’t even know you had a scale.”
“I bought it a couple weeks ago,” Kris replied. “And I guess I used to be a pretty bad cook, so I studied a lot to try and get better. Like, I used to think eggshells were supposed to be included in scrambled eggs, because I thought eggs were healthy for you. I found out you’re not supposed to actually include the shells even though they’re actually kind of healthy and some people do include them, but most don’t. That was how I learned whenever I got eggs at restaurants and stuff why their eggs weren’t as crunchy as when I made eggs.”
“Kris… I—I love you, but sometimes I’m amazed you’ve made it this far in life. Then again… I guess I shouldn’t really be that surprised.”
“What do you mean?”
Lucy leaned over the kitchen counter with her chin resting on her hands as she watched him. “Well, you’ve always given your all to things. Sometimes you might not realize you’re on the wrong path, but you still give it your all. And every time you realized you had something to improve on, you worked your hardest until you mastered it. You never let failure stop you. Any time you weren’t good enough or you failed, you doubled down and worked even harder until you left everybody in the dust. You’re a bit awkward sometimes… but nobody works harder than you.” Lucy then paused and looked over her shoulder toward the sleeping maids in the living room. “Except them, maybe. Hmm… I wonder… maybe that’s why.”
“Maybe what’s why?”
“Why you got so many girlfriends who are hard-working maids. Maybe they could sense that you’re like them, and that attracted them to you. People who work hard tend to like others who work hard, right?”
“I guess that makes sense, but I don’t really think I work that hard or anything.”
“Of course you don’t think that. You never have. Because you’re one of those lucky people who just has fun doing whatever it is you do, so nothing ever feels like work to you.”
“Woah… I’ve never looked at it that way before. Does that mean it’s impossible for me to work hard? Because nothing ever really feels like work?”
“I’m kind of happy that out of everything you’ve worked on, your common sense is all that hasn’t improved. You’re cute like this.”
“I kind of think that sounded bad, but it also sounded like a compliment. But you’re my girlfriend now, and you called me cute, so I’m guessing it’s good?”
Lucy nodded. “Mhm. It’s good. Anyways, this is more proof that I need to work even harder from now on.”
“Why do you need to?”
“To not get left behind, obviously. Even if I’m finally your girlfriend, I don’t want to be outdone. I might not be that great at cooking or cleaning or anything, but I am pretty good at handling your connections and plans for you. Plus somebody has to understand your vision enough to pick up for you whenever you get distracted by a new project while in the middle of an unfinished one.”
“Oh, that reminds me. You should work with my bro, Shogun. The two of you would be an unstoppable management duo.”
“Your home assistant?”
“He’s like, an actual AI, you know. I’ll have to properly introduce you two sometime. But yeah, if you worked together, it’d probably be great for both of you.”
“Well, when it comes to the sort of high-stakes stuff you work on, I wouldn’t mind some help if you vouch for his ability.”
“He’s great. Anyways, let me get this cornbread in the oven, and then I can hold your hands some more.”
And just like that, Lucy went from being serious and calm to practically drooling at the thought as her eyes lustfully watched his hands’ every movement.