June Story - Dagashi Kashi: Sugar-Free Love (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Kokonotsu sighed heavily once the last customer of the day left. He put up the “CLOSED” sign and admired the empty shelves in the store. This year’s Valentine’s Day had been busier than usual. Ever since Kokonotsu managed to revitalize and reinvent the store, all sales have gone up over the years. He had actually made Pops proud and made a ton of cash while doing so.

A last-minute stray customer knocked on the door. Kokonotsu jumped out of view before whoever it was could see him. They rapped faster and faster until they gave up. They might have shouted something, but by then Kokonotsu had slipped back into his office.

There on his desk was his unfinished manga series.

He flipped through it, thinking maybe tonight he would finish another volume. After all, he did save up a lot of money, and could afford taking some time off and have Hajime look after the store. She had taken Valentine’s Day off to see her boyfriend. Kokonotsu shook his head smiling at the thought. A lazy person like Hajime actually finding a boyfriend? What was the world coming to?
 Good for her though.

Meanwhile, Pops himself was seeing someone. It had been forever ago since Pops dated anybody. He wasn’t getting any younger and that realization probably motivated him to date again. Of course, he hadn’t the courtesy to tell his own son. Kokonotsu woke up that morning and yelped when he found a strange woman brushing her teeth in the bathroom. Despite his age, Pops still acted like a teenager – doing whatever he wanted to do without giving a heads up.

Kokonotsu couldn’t say much about his love life.

After trying to go out for three years, he and Saya split up. So much had happened in those three years as they grew up and became young adults. If it wasn’t one thing, it was the other. He decided to stay in town and honor Pops to run the store, while also working on his manga whenever he had downtime. That first year with Saya was nothing short of blissful. She wholeheartedly supported him in his endeavor, and they had tons of fun together.

But Kokonotsu’s conscience got the better of him. In the end, truth would always come out. He felt awful having fantasies about Hotaru lurk in the back of his mind during his entire relationship with Saya. He liked Saya. Even loved her. But he wasn’t fooling anybody – he was still wildly enamored with Hotaru Shidare. There was no beating around the bush. The writing was on the wall. And when Saya finally realized that…well…there was a lot of crying and screaming. Even the friendship between him and Tō, Saya’s brother, became strained.

Kokonotsu wondered if he had made the right choice. Saya and he grew up together, but that didn’t mean they were soulmates, no matter how much they forced it.

There was also the fetish that Kokonotsu developed when he was in college.

It started when he and Saya went out drinking for the first time. Saya was a lightweight and got hammered two drinks in. He was helping her walk back to her dorm when she belched out loud. Kokonotsu thought nothing of it at first, until she did it more frequently throughout the night, even complaining about the gas in her belly from all the beer. She hiccuped and slurred and giggled.

Kokonotsu stayed over her dorm that night. When they were asleep together in the same bed, Saya farted really loud. It sounded like a foghorn. If Saya were awake and sober, she would have died from sheer embarrassment at the thought of farting. She was still sound asleep, and snored. She mumbled in her sleep and continued to let off loud, abrasive farts that Kokonotsu never imagined her doing. She was always so girly and tame and proper and shy. The thought of her doing something so… “manly” unlocked something in Kokonotsu that he never thought possible.

It took many nervous attempts for him to come clean to Saya. It was such a weird thing about him that he was worried she would freak out. He finally said it when she was drunk again during a night out with friends. He should have mentioned it when she was sober, because while she found it amusing at first, she started to get a little weirded out after that.

“I just find it so embarrassing!” she said. “And plus, I’m not much of a farter.”

“You seem to be when you drink.”

“But you want me to keep drinking then? Is that the only way to turn you on?”

Kokonotsu scratched the back of his neck. He fumbled his words before saying, “No, of course not!”

They found compromises here and there, but Kokonotsu found himself dissatisfied. Saya would be tired after drinking. She also had a boundary when he wanted to engage her in his fetishes. She always felt too uncomfortable when he asked too many questions about her gas. Kokonotsu respected that, but deep down it kind of bothered him. As someone who knew him since he was little, Saya seemed so close but also so far away.

He found himself wondering about what Hotaru’s farts were like. That was one of his deepest secrets yet. Hotaru was always dressed nicely, so he liked to imagine her ripping a very grotesque fart that would surprise everyone. It would be a dream come true to see her rip a loud fart while dressed in that skirt and those stockings. Or were her farts weak and dainty? He was careful not to hype up his imagination. That was how things ended with Saya. For all he knew, Hotaru could have found farting gross, much like Saya, but he couldn’t help but always imagine that Hotaru wouldn’t mind farting.

In the end, it was Kokonotsu’s pent-up feelings that ended everything.

Saya accidentally stumbled upon Kokonotsu’s secret stash of erotic drawings of Hotaru farting.

That happened a little over a year ago. It still lingered fresh in his mind. He shivered thinking about revealing to Saya how Hotaru inspired his manga. He closed his eyes and started tearing up at how Saya reacted. Saya kept prying into it and when he did confess that the main character of his manga was modeled after Hotaru, that was the last straw.

“SHE LEFT LIKE ALMOST FIVE YEARS AGO!” Saya screeched. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? IF YOU LOVED HER SO MUCH, WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST GO FOR HER INSTEAD OF RUINING MY LIFE?”

The words rang in his memory and pierced the pit of his stomach. It made him miss Saya, but at the same time he knew going back was a very bad idea. Here he was, 23 years-old, and he had ruined someone’s life. Saya never wanted to see him ever again. He never tried to get back with her. The pain was too great. Pops, as annoying as he could be, had a point.

“You have to rip it off like a band aide, kid,” he said, after Kokonotsu told him that they broke up. “Don’t text her back. Don’t visit her house and wonder what she’s up to. The minute you go down that road you won’t come back.”

Kokonotsu let out a long sigh. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. He completely lost track of time sitting there in his office daydreaming and reflecting on the past.

The air conditioning wasn’t working well. With the sun beating down in his office through the window, a greenhouse effect had started. He opened it for some fresh air.

A face greeted him.

He blanked out, wondering if the heat had gotten to him.

The face that was in front of him was the same face in his manga.

Kokonotsu screamed, falling to the floor on his back.

“THERE YOU ARE!” said a familiar sinister voice, with flashing menacing eyes.

Kokonotsu flailed.

This couldn’t be happening. How—why--

The figure crawled over the window like something out of a horror movie – a woman with a crazed look in her eye. The tension broke as she struggled to get through the window. Her butt was stuck in the window frame.

The woman looked up at him, her face red from all the blood rushing down from hanging upside down. “Don’t just sit there, Coconuts, HELP ME!”

Kokonotsu was at a loss for words.

“H-H-HOTARU????!!!!”