There wasn’t much room under the kotatsu with five girls crowded around it, but the closeness only bolstered the cozy atmosphere. Plastic bags rustled as everyone brought out their ingredients, and the table’s polished wooden surface was soon covered with a hearty spread of meats, spices, and side dishes. Outside, a raging winter storm battered and shook the windows, trying to force its way inside, but Kronii’s living room remained a bastion of warmth.

Tall glasses bubbled and foamed with hastily poured alcohol while the nervous hostess addressed the room. “Alright…everyone ready?” Kronii raised a brimming glass and looked to her friends' smiling faces. Today was a special occasion, arguably the most important of her career, and the light shaking of her hands betrayed her nerves. Kronii had hit one million subscribers last week and was now at the mercy of her past self's overeager promises– namely, taking on the spicy chip challenge. At least, that was the original plan before management talked her down to a heaping bowl of extra spicy noodles instead. It was much less hot, but still more than enough to coax out a satisfying reaction for the fans.

Touchingly, the rest of Council had agreed to suffer alongside her and they each had their own “additions” to liven up the event:

Sana sealed off the area around the kotatsu in a separate dimension, ensuring Kronii couldn’t freeze time and slowly dispose of her meal outside.

Bae, ever the prankster, sneaked some hot sauce into Kronii’s dish for a little extra spiciness.

Mumei had hauled a backpack full of caffeinated beverages to keep the party going as long as possible, or in her case, stay awake longer than midnight. Of all the participants, she was the sole member to cast off the “spicy” portion of the “spicy noodle challenge” and opted for a traditional miso ramen.

Finally, Fauna had carried over two cartons of soy milk to ease their inevitably searing tongues, as well as plenty of veggie side dishes to try out between the main course.

With everyone assembled and their meals steaming beside them, Council raised their glasses to meet Kronii and the satisfying clink set the night into motion.

“Kanpai!”

All five members eyed the dish below them with nervous excitement. Sana dove in immediately, while Kronii took great care in slowly unwrapping and splitting her chopsticks to stall as much as possible. The specific ingredients differed across the table, but each bowl (aside from Mumei’s) featured an intimidating bright red broth, and the dry heat coming off the top could be felt from across the room.

The first few bites passed with little fanfare. Council’s conversations remained light and fluffy as the girls discussed the train ride over and their favorite meals to curl up with on a dark winter day. The atmosphere was so utterly relaxed that chat started questioning the validity of the contest, worried that their oshi had secretly weaseled out on the agreed level of spiciness.

But the heat did set in eventually, and, through an exchange of worried glances, Council could communicate their mutual discomfort in silence. Kronii especially seemed to have a hard time finishing off what was in her mouth.

“W-wow, I thought this was supposed to be spicy,” Kronii mumbled through red-tinged lips. “This isn’t even…” She paused for a quick sip of milk. “This isn’t even that bad!” While the listeners couldn’t see Kronii’s haggard face or shaky hands, the pain was readable enough from her voice alone.

“You can slow down if you want to, Kronii,” Fauna offered from across the table. “The most important thing is to enjoy yourself. It’s supposed to be a celebration after all!” Every word was delicate and precise, like you could feel the movement of her lips and tongue on each syllable.

Kronii dismissed her friend’s concern and dabbed a napkin to her face. “No, no, I’m fine. Really!”

She guided her chopsticks over to the palm-sized saucers of cucumber and kimchi, and piled mouthfuls of cool vegetables atop her burning tongue. When chased with another glass of milk, her pain subsided and she could manage another bite of the lava masquerading as noodles.

This system worked to a point, but as the minutes dragged on, the rest of Council noticed a significant drop in Kronii’s engagement. Questions would bounce right off her skull and most of her responses were stuttered and irrelevant. The majority of her brain power was used up on managing the hellfire boiling in her mouth, though recently there was something far more dangerous brewing down below. Something that, when combined with the open mics, could easily cement this stream in infamy.

“-which is why she doesn’t keep the door open anymore. Right, Kronii?”

“Hmm? Um…could you repeat the question?” The warden was teetering on her knees and nearly snapping the chopsticks between her tense fingers in twain. Her left eye went blurry for a moment as sweat rolled down from her brow, but when she went to wipe it off with the back of her forearm, she only further smeared her features with perspiration. Indeed, every inch of exposed skin was slick and steamy after baking in the both the heat of the dish and the kotatsu’s sweltering embrace. Kronii could feel her stuffy armpits trickling sweat down the sides of her torso, small puddles forming in the recesses of her massive, wobbling tits, and her thick thighs sticking to one another whenever she adjusted her seating. The area between her butt cheeks was especially bad since her thong had been consistently steeped in a waterfall of ass sweat running down her crack; it was incredibly itchy and no amount of fidgeting or rubbing against the carpet bore any relief. This was the first time Kronii had felt such oppressive wetness tickling every fold and crevice of her body, and the nervousness from performing in front of thousands of viewers certainly didn’t help with her overactive sweat glands.

She reached for another glass of milk and a low, ominous rumble cut through her stomach. The sound was blessedly lost in the midst of the table’s crosstalk, but she knew the shifting in her guts heralded something much louder. Kronii slowly retracted her hand, a few drops of sweat tracing down her elbow, and contemplated her situation.

How she ended up like this wasn’t much of a mystery- piles of spicy noodles, kimchi, and cabbage, all washed down with a half gallon of milk had summoned a fierce amount of gas that was currently rampaging through her lower intestine. One way or another, this night wasn’t ending without her “releasing” the pressure.

Kronii scoured her surroundings. Leaving wasn’t an option thanks to Sana, and letting loose in a room so small was an enormous risk. There had to be something, somewhere she could use to covertly relieve herself.

Her eyes fell on Mumei.

The owl girl’s mouth was tantalizingly open while laughing along with Bae’s wacky theatrics. There wasn’t any time for Kronii to muse about the inhumanity of such an act, it was either this or forever staining her image as an entertainer.

“H-hey, Mumei,” Kronii cut in, her voice shaky and a bit too loud, “What’s that weird speck on the ceiling above you?” Not the most natural segue, but she wanted Mumei’s face at a good angle and this was all her overheated brain had to offer.

“Speck?” Mumei tilted her head back and gawked at the ceiling. “I don’t see anyth-”

A pale blue flash exploded from the heart-shaped gemstone on Kronii’s chest and time slowed to a standstill. The four girls around her froze, their expressions and gesticulations locked in place like obsessively detailed statues. Noodles pulled halfway from their bowl hung suspended in the air with rigid waves of broth clinging eerily off the sides.

In this dimension of absolute stillness, Kronii clambered to her feet and shuffled next to Mumei, taking care not to jostle her sensitive stomach too much in the process. Reluctance tugged once more at Kronii’s heartstrings as she regarded her designated fart cushion for the evening.

Nanashi Mumei was on her knees, seiza style, and snuggled up in a thin cloak that coddled her frame like the wings of a doting mother bird. Everything about her demeanor bled unbridled innocence, from her big curious eyes that gazed into the distance without a care in the world, to her perfectly pale skin, unblemished by any smudges or traces of sweat. Light auburn bangs draped carefully over the side of her face and a glinting hair pin adorned the left temple. She was for all appearances a life-sized doll, fresh off a sterilized assembly line, untouched by worldly detritus, and pristine beyond human measure. What right did Kronii have to force such a delicate flower into an extended lip-lock with her greasy shithole?

Grrrgllgh. Kronii’s stomach broke her trance with a compelling counter-argument. She shook her head hard enough to rattle the chains crowning her bangs in an attempt to physically whisk away her reservations. Don’t worry about it too much, she insisted, Mumei’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dancing gingerly in place, Kronii’s hands dove under her skirt to pull down her sodden thong. It was really stuck in there and took a couple of good yanks to liberate it from her sweaty ass crack. She then kicked her skimpy undergarments under the kotatsu and swung her shapely leg over Mumei’s skyward gazing body. Were Mumei still capable of processing the world around her, she would have seen nothing but the curvy white-striped backside of her friend’s miniskirt grow larger and larger as Kronii backed into position.

The cramping was only growing in severity and Kronii could feel her asshole start to loosen its hold on the bubbling fumes pressing from within. Small squeaks slipped out across Mumei’s nose and Kronii cursed under breath. Lining herself up correctly was hard enough without the time pressure and obnoxious sweat streaking down her face.

Alright, here should be fine. Kronii bent at the waist, easily exposing her bare ass due to the length of her miniskirt, and dropped nearly all her weight on Mumei’s time-frozen face.

The instant Kronii’s cheeks made contact, her bowels unloaded a horrible splutter of spice-tinged winds that battered the inside of Mumei’s cheeks with wave after wave of wet, flavorful farts like sheets of musky rain. The sound bounced and warbled around the tight confines of Mumei’s mouth, shaking her teeth, vibrating her small tongue, and producing a grotesque sonata that was both heavily muffled and undeniably vulgar. Kronii couldn’t help but notice how different the acoustics of her genmate’s tiny mouth were compared to the toilet bowl in her apartment.

Pulling one meaty ass cheek to the side, the voluptuous warden tensed her abdominals and finished off the first gaseous load of the night with a powerful, airy blast that fully saturated every molecule of its container, from the roof of Mumei’s mouth to the underside of her tongue, in Kronii’s heavy, rancid shitstink.

“Unghh…God, I needed that…” Temporarily relieved, Kronii fanned herself and leaned back on her heels, letting her doughy cheeks swallow Mumei’s face up to the ears. There was plenty more where that came from, so she might as well get comfortable. She bit her bottom lip and ripped another splattering fart across Mumei’s tongue, so hot and wet that she could feel it stinging her rim on the way out. Based on the sound alone, that one had assuredly painted the inside of Mumei’s mouth in spicy semi-liquid gas.

Since Mumei’s body was incapable of movement, her throat remained conveniently open. There was nothing to stop Kronii from pumping down Mumei’s esophagus until she hit full capacity; any retching, gagging, or throwing up would have to wait until the flow of time resumed and the warden was safely back in her seat. Kronii slicked her bangs back, rubbed her clammy palms on her thighs, and settled in.

–

The exertion was starting to take its toll on Kronii, who at this point had been using Mumei on and off for over ten minutes. She dropped her hands to her knees for support and shook off the sweat that had been running into her eyes.

“Hahh…hahh…okay, almost there…” Kronii’s outfit was a steamy, dripping mess. Particularly the top, which found a way to be even more immodest than usual. The consistent shuffling had slipped the cuts of cloth binding her chest further and further from their tenuous origins, and left the majority of Kronii’s fat, sweaty mammaries hanging bare in the humid air.

The white slingshot bands flowing down from her collar were hit the hardest, becoming dark and heavy with sweat, and were hardly appropriate to contain the generous multiple-handfuls of tit flesh that spilled over the sides. Countless salty pearls shook off Kronii’s pendulous tits every time they clapped against one another when Kronii tugged on her collar– a vain attempt to vent some of the sticky heat stewing around her collarbone and cleavage. Tragically, Mumei’s noodle bowl was right below Kronii’s heaving, mostly-uncovered bosom, and the broth endured a generous seasoning of boob sweat straight from the musky chasm of her genmate’s cleavage.

The only good news for Mumei was that Kronii’s session was in the homestretch. The last few bubbles of gas took a fair bit of straining to get out, however, and Kronii noticed an increased itchiness around her backdoor from so many hot farts racing past it. Mumei was already in a good position for it, so Kronii shrugged and simply smeared her asshole around the edges of Mumei’s mouth, letting the smaller girl's soft lips rub and smooch the tacky grime off Kronii’s sweaty rim until she felt suitably refreshed. The feeling was more than a little addicting, and Kronii had to reluctantly stop herself after the seventeenth rotation.

Her job done, Kronii sighed and stood back up, feeling much lighter on her feet. Mumei’s face stuck briefly to the warden’s sweaty backside on the way up, not unlike peeling out of a black leather car seat after a midsummer road trip. Kronii fixed her miniskirt and snuck a look back over her shoulder to assess the damage.

Whatever pristine quality Mumei displayed beforehand had been soundly obliterated under Kronii’s ass. One could easily assume Mumei had just finished rimming out all of Council based on the owl's pale red cheeks, messy soaked hair, and the layers of fart-scented sweat slapped across her features. Airy wisps of foul-smelling steam poured from her mouth, and puddles of anal refuse gleamed around her back row of teeth like she was halfway through gargling her morning mouthwash. Most egregious was the shiny coat of musk glistening off Mumei’s lips after being mashed, repeatedly, into an intimate kiss with Kronii’s asshole. And while the warden couldn’t see it herself, Kronii’s steamy pucker was similarly painted with a large smear of Mumei’s lip gloss.

Wretched as she was, Mumei’s state wasn’t entirely unexplainable. She was under a kotatsu with a bevy of steaming hot dishes all around her, so a little sweat and blush was only natural. At least, that’s what Kronii told herself.

More importantly, Kronii’s activities had given her some serious swamp ass that needed addressing. Without missing a beat, she grabbed Mumei’s currently unused napkin and dug deep into her sweaty crack, paying special attention to the light ring of hair rimming her anus since that would be the itchiest part if left alone. A dozen good wipes later, she placed it back next to Mumei’s side (face down so the stray anal hairs wouldn’t be visible at a glance), and returned to her seat.

Now was the critical moment. Once time resumed, Mumei would flash to a state of extreme distress for seemingly no reason. The question is whether or not any of the other three girls would notice, and how Mumei would handle the barrage of sensations.

Kronii meticulously arranged her hair, limbs, and everything else in her vicinity to how they were before the freeze. She took a deep breath and the gem pulsed once more.

“-hing?” Mumei finished her sentence twelve minutes in the making and suddenly lurched forward, slapping her hand over her mouth loud enough to silence the room. Her eyes went painfully wide while heavy drops of tears formed along the edges.

Fauna fumbled her chopsticks and raced to her genmate’s side. “M-Mumei! What’s wrong? Are you choking?”

Mumei slowly shook her head, gripping the table with tendon-straining strength and suppressing multiple dry heaves that nevertheless bobbed her entire torso. Some kind of revolting gas had teleported into her mouth and was busy soaking her tongue in its heavy flavor. The mics were on and thousands of fans were watching and listening to her every move, so Mumei had to deal with this threat in the least obstructive way possible.

The table watched with rapt attention as Mumei straightened up, grimaced, and swallowed with a disquieting glrrmp. Mumei’s body shivered in disgust as the bulge in her esophagus slid down below her collarbone before disappearing into her stomach.

“Gu-hahh! Oh gosh…sorry, everyone, that was spicier than I expected!” Mumei flashed a winning smile but tears were still leaking from her bleary eyes. There was so much leftover stimuli for her little bird brain to process.

“Oh, wow, isn’t that just regular ramen? Maybe you should switch to ice cream, Mumei,” Kronii teased, thankful that no accusations had yet come flying her way.

Mumei forced a half-hearted giggle and spooled up another helping of her ramen to help wash the awful taste out. The first mouthful, naturally, brought with it the thick tang of Kronii’s boob sweat, causing Mumei to scrunch up her face and nearly spit it back out. Such an act would only draw more attention, so she gulped it down all the same and winced as the salty grenade of musk careened down her throat.

Then there was the napkin, a camouflaged time bomb waiting to assault her senses as soon as she needed to wipe her mouth. When the time came, Kronii watched as Mumei lifted the damp cloth to her lips and pressed inwards, essentially smearing the inside of her sensitive lips with the bitter sweat that had been collecting in Kronii’s unwashed ass crack since last night. Mumei flinched and nearly gagged, but found the strength to diligently set the napkin back down, never to be used again. A few greasy anal hairs still stuck to her lips which she ignorantly slurped up with her next mouthful of noodles, much to Kronii’s relief.

Now, finally, Mumei had processed every remnant of Kronii’s time-based debauchery, and there would be nothing to fear from any inquiring parties. Even if Mumei or someone else put the pieces together after the fact, they had no way of proving it.

Kronii unclenched her fists and let her shoulders droop. We’re in the clear…we’re good! Her stomach was completely and pleasantly empty, so she could focus on finishing the challenge and engaging with the audience. And Mumei, though still in internal distress, was able to soldier onwards without interrupting the vibe. The rest of the stream was shaping up to be a normal night of fun and laughter…right up until Fauna started fidgeting in her seat.

The kirin’s vegetarian diet required a substantial amount of food to meet her nutritional and caloric needs, meaning she spent most of her waking hours with a stomach full of digesting greenery. This wasn’t an issue in the comfort of her own home where she could mute her mic, lift one cheek, and soak her streaming chair with another layer of her bubbly emissions, but meetups in real life were always tough to manage. Tonight, during this celebration, was proving to be the realization of her greatest fear.

Fauna’s flushed face, shifting hips, and rapid glances to non-occupied portions of the room were all too familiar to Kronii. But without the crutch of time manipulation on her side, Fauna looked to be on the brink of utter panic.

Kronii sighed and rested her hand on her broach. Extending Mumei’s “services” for another member would be cruel, yes, but considering all the effort Fauna put in to make this and every other day better for Council, she couldn’t just sit there and watch her squirm. I’ll give her a choice, Kronii reasoned, it’ll be up to her if she wants to go through with it…

The Warden of Time closed her eyes and plunged the world back into stillness, save for herself and Fauna. Their eyes met across the table and Kronii offered a sheepish wave.

“Huh? This…Kronii, did you do this?” Fauna hesitantly prodded her fork that was suspended by a column of time-frozen noodles.

“Well, yeah…I saw that you- ahem -needed to use the restroom so I thought I’d help out.”

Fauna was predictably flustered and her eyes snapped to the ground. “Oh…n-no, it was just getting a bit too hot so I was-”

“Relax, it’s fine, I was the same way earlier tonight. Anyone would feel like that after eating this stuff.”

“‘Earlier’..?” Fauna slowly raised her head. “But where did you…um…go?”

Kronii tented her fingers and puzzled over the best response. Ultimately, there were no words that could soften the blow, so she simply gestured to Mumei’s unmoving face.

Fauna’s features shifted rapidly from confusion, to revelation, to horror. She cried out, “Oh no, you couldn’t have-! Poor Mumei! I…I could never do such a thing!” Her voice was high-pitched and wavering like she’d just witnessed a murder.

“Yeah, I expected as much. Look, I’ll bring us back and we’ll pretend this never happened.” Kronii hovered over the gem and stared deep into Fauna’s eyes. “If that’s what you want?”

Tense seconds crawled by as Fauna wrung her hands and bounced her attention between Kronii’s broach, the mics, and Mumei’s oblivious smile. Multiple times Fauna opened her mouth, noiselessly, only to blush and bury her face in her hands.

Eventually, Fauna closed her eyes and exhaled. In a voice dripping with trepidation, she sealed Mumei’s fate.

“Wait. I’ll do it.”

In truth, the moral dilemma playing out in her mind was solved from the start. As much as she loved Mumei and the months of laughs they shared inside and outside of work, as strongly as she cherished Mumei’s sweet laughter and profoundly autistic tangents, Fauna could never live down airing out her own post-digestion during a live event. The thought of even a rogue stomach rumble interrupting an ASMR stream was enough to wake her up in the middle of the night.

Fauna stood up, her face awash in deep crimson, and walked over to where the owl girl was seated. In spite of the wretched temporal assault earlier, Mumei had renewed her bright eyes and heart-melting smile, convinced that whatever nightmare had transpired was over. That same optimistic gaze was now shadowed by Fauna’s enormous backside as the kirin straddled her face. She was going commando, with no leggings or underwear to speak off, and Kronii noted how bold a choice that was with a skirt so short and flutterly.

“So, where am I supposed to do it?” Fauna asked, heart pounding against her chest.

Since Fauna’s situation seemed so desperate, Kronii had hastily frozen time at a point when Mumei’s mouth was still closed. It was technically possible to resume time and try for a better set up, but Fauna already looked like she was seconds from falling apart.

“Just, uh, up her nose is fine,” Kronii stated flatly. There was certainly going to be some spillage, but she figured most of it should stay in there if the seal is good enough.

Fauna nodded and spread her thick, intensely sweaty cheeks, exposing the peach-colored tone of her musk-dripping asshole while an earthy aroma seeped into the air. Her grooming habits were best described as au naturale, resulting in a noticeable ring of seafoam green hairs around her rim and a dense forest of pubes spilling out from between her thighs.

“Um, like this?” Fauna cautiously lined up her flexing anus with Mumei’s nostrils and shoved her hips backward. She was right on target.

Her buttplug snugly inserted, Fauna released her cheeks and let them clap across Mumei’s face with a meaty slap. She laced her slender fingers together beneath her bosom, shut her eyes, and expelled a sharp breath.

Without any further warning, her slick asshole blared out a sloppy, low-pitched cacophony of fetid vegan farts directly up Mumei’s unguarded nostrils. The sudden rancid explosion quaked Fauna’s heavy pale cheeks hard enough to dislodge droplets of resting sweat, and quickly showered the smaller girl’s brow and forehead in Mother Nature’s musk. There hadn’t been an opportunity to excuse herself since the morning train ride, so Fauna’s uncomfortably backed-up bowels had an obscene amount of reserves to burn through. After five unbroken seconds of loudly gassing out Mumei’s nasal cavity, Fauna’s initial eruption spluttered to a stop.

Kronii cringed and quickly covered her mouth from the approaching miasma. The smell hung horrendously thick in the air, and she was reminded how Fauna’s lengthy bathroom breaks during off collabs would practically peel the paint on the walls when she was done. No one dared to walk through the irradiated wasteland her idol meetings left behind for at least 24 hours, and yet poor Mumei was taking the full force of it with nary a dress, skirt, or thong to absorb the blast.

Already Kronii could see liquid musk seeping down from where the underside of Fauna’s cheeks and thighs met Mumei’s face, and this was only the first batch! If Mumei were cognizant right now, Kronii reasoned, she would have certainly blacked out by now.

“Mnngh…hahh…” Fauna’s face was dripping from the effort and a small string of drool hung from her panting mouth. Relief was one thing, but the unadulterated satisfaction sparking through Fauna’s body from finally letting that out was borderline ecstasy. Across dozens of ASMR videos, ranging from Valentine’s Day simulations to decidedly steamier escapades, what crossed Fauna’s face at that moment was somehow the lewdest expression she’d ever worn.

When her dopamine receptors cooled off, Fauna was once again at the mercy of her bubbling gut. It was impossible to reconcile using her adorable genmate as a fart muffler, so Fauna’s only play at mercy was to be as thorough as possible, and make sure this was her one and only trip of the night. She drove her hips back, further burying the edges of Mumei’s nostrils in the smelly wrinkles of her rim, and prepared for the next round.

I’m so sorry, Mumei… Fauna clutched her stomach and pushed out a much wetter, much louder salvo that Kronii could practically feel through the floor. It was absolutely nauseating and the last thing one would expect to hear coming out of such a sweet, soft-spoken girl. What couldn’t pump down Mumei’s orifices splashed back against Fauna’s crack and funneled down to her trumpeting asshole, adding to the gurgling pool of juices collecting around the imperfect seal of Mumei’s nose. As the sound pitched lower and lower, Kronii knew that the inside of Mumei’s nostrils would be stained with Fauna’s rotten stink for days, if not weeks, to come.

Three more rumbling blasts followed, back-to-back, with mere seconds of downtime in between. Fauna bounced and squirmed to keep Mumei’s nose right where it needed to be to best soak her fumes, but the air quality of Kronii’s living room was still taking a dive. Her only hope was that, when this was all over, the others would be too drunk to notice.

–

Many, many nosefuls of noxious vegan flatulence later, the low gurgle between Fauna’s cheeks finally tapered off for good, replaced only by her breathy moans of satisfaction. Based on how juicy those last couple of seconds sounded, Kronii was convinced her friend had narrowly avoided messing herself.

“Okay, I think I’m -sniff- done.” Tears in her eyes, Fauna peeled away from her heavily abused cushion and locked out her trembling knees. A rogue, final blast thundered out from between Fauna’s fat cheeks and splattered across Mumei’s smiling face, coating her lips in a fine mist of the foulest gas the depths of Fauna’s bowels had to offer.

Fauna’s dainty hands landed upon what she thought was a nearby handkerchief to clean herself. In actuality, she had fumbled upon Friend, who had come out of hiding shortly after Kronii’s first use of timestop. Friend’s material was pleasantly soft, very different from what one would expect of a paper bag, and Fauna showed no hesitation crumpling them up like toilet paper and wiping the entirety of her disgusting muggy crack with their body. She folded Friend a few more times over to make the most of their meager surface area and really dug in there to soak up all the smelly, dripping refuse. Their usefulness outlived, Friend was then pressed into a sodden ball and tossed in the wastebasket alongside empty Styrofoam containers and paper chopstick wrappings. Viewers would take the better part of a year to notice their absence.

Fauna took her place next to Bae, shaking like she just escaped a house fire, and gave Kronii a solemn nod. There was nothing left for either of them but to witness Mumei’s reaction.

Hrrlck! Time resumed and Mumei’s conversation came to a terrifyingly abrupt end, as though invisible hands had rushed out from the beyond and closed around her throat. Her fingers twitched and groped at nothingness while fresh streams of tears wet her reddened cheeks. Inside, Mumei’s nervous system was a nuclear reaction of impossible sensations. Twenty minutes of snorting Fauna’s rancid gas straight from her hairy, sweaty asshole collapsed into less than a trillionth of a second and smashed into her senses like a fully loaded semi truck. The raw stench of rotten vegetables, fermented legumes, and highly concentrated body odor flooded her airways, somehow hitting every sensory organ in her nose and mouth at the same time. Her baffled nerves doubled back over each other and paradoxically commanded Mumei to breathe, throw up, and lose consciousness entirely.

It was all so unreal; in the span of half a blink, she went from joking around with her friends to writhing within an inexplicable hellscape of severe odor and choking gas.

Mumei’s vision swam with tears and nausea. Her slender limbs twitched like an amateur puppet show. She uttered a final confused gurgle before her body went limp, slumping backwards on the couch cushions to her rear and leaving only the soft rise and fall of chest to assure her friends that she was still alive.

Kronii knew she didn’t have much time before suspicions arose, so she awkwardly called out to her unconscious genmate. “Haha, whoa, Mumei! You weren't kidding about being tired! We need to get you some caffeine, huh?”

Bae set her drink down, clearly perturbed by Mumei’s sudden outburst and Kronii’s piss-poor acting. “Oi, everything alright over there? Mumei’s been acting kinda weird tonight.”

“Yep, she’s great! Like I said, I remember her saying that she was really tired on the ride over so I guess this a good time for her to take a nap. …Yeah!”

Bae narrowed her eyes. Kronii stared back with a goofy smile, sweat trickling down her neck, and hoped beyond hope that her genmate would let this final infraction slide without further questioning.

Just as Bae opened her mouth to retaliate, Sana slammed down a full can of Strong Zero and shook the table. “Aw, she’s fiiine~,” Sana slurred, “Let her sleep if off, mate, it’s more drinks for us!”

Sana's giddy comment managed to grab Bae’s attention, and the mood soon stabilized as the two Aussie's got caught up in discussing who could outdrink who. Chat wasn’t too happy about missing out on potential Mumei interactions, but the worst case scenario, at least in Kronii and Fauna’s minds, had been avoided. And while their stomachs were settled at the moment, the two girls couldn’t help but notice that the way Mumei had collapsed, head back and mouth yawning open, was perfectly suited for a return visit.