"She really, really needed a bath"

(chapter originally by doragom333 on writing.com)

It was a crisp, cool autumn morning, and Futaba Sakura was spending it the best way she knew how: with a marathon gaming session. There weren’t any pressing missions or requests for the Phantom Thieves at the moment, and with school having started up again for everyone else (she herself wouldn’t enroll until the next year due to personal reasons), she had a lot of free time to herself, especially if her friends were busy in the afternoon with other matters.

In fact, this had been the case for the past two weeks. So aside from daily mealtimes with her guardian Sojiro at Leblanc, she had squirreled herself away into her room and deeply dove into her video game backlog. However, today, as she was having her morning curry...

“*Sniff* Whoa!” Sojiro exclaimed, recoiling from over the counter. “What the-? Futaba, when’s the last time you had a bath?” he asked.

“Mweh?” Futaba grunted mid-curry. “Pretty sure I had one recently. Like, 3- no 5-? Wait, hold on...” she drew off, trying to recall the last time she had in fact cleaned herself.

“Days!?” Sojiro asked, shocked, then sighed. “You’ve been getting deep into those games again, haven’t you?” He said, more as a statement than question.

“Heck yeah, I’m on a roll!” she cheered.

“Well, when you finish up, you need to ‘roll’ on back home and take a shower or something. There’s no nice way to say this, but I can’t run this place with you stinking it up,” he said.

“What!?” Futaba gasped, feeling offended. “Rude! I do not stink!” she protested, then turned her nose to herself to take a whiff... and immediately regretted it as she almost retched up breakfast. “Ulp! Yeah, okay, it’s actually pretty bad...” she grumbled.

Sojiro gave a nod of assent with a reminder on maintaining basic hygiene that Futaba only half listened to as she finished her meal, leaving shortly after. “Baths are so inconvenient though, always interrupting me at the worst times,” she muttered to herself as she walked back home.

Once she was back in her room, she groaned again, seeing another hygiene-related hassle she had forgotten about that also could no longer be ignored: all of her clothes were lying in a crumpled pile on a corner of her bedroom floor. She had worn and gone through them all as she gamed and were no doubt as filthy as she was currently. “BO, laundry, why hasn’t anyone just invented a way to just have one big bath and be done with it?” she asked out loud, then sighed, slapping her cheeks with her hands. “All right, Futaba, time to get this over with. Then you can get back to your games!”

Deciding that she could handle the laundry issue after cleaning herself, Futaba gathered the necessary things to get ready for a shower. But in the middle of it, she paused, as pondering the efficiency of a bath reminded her of her friend and leader of the Phantom Thieves, the one they called Joker. On occasion he’d seem to be well, positively radiant. On those particular days he’d have smooth, immaculate skin, hair glistening like a romantic anime character. In that state, his looks would catch glances from every member of the Phantom Thieves. And when they’d ask him about it, he accredited this boost in charm to the local bathhouse, located practically right across the street from Leblanc.

Now with towel and soap in hand, Futaba considered the bold idea of trying out the public bathhouse herself. It wouldn’t be a bold idea in the groundbreaking sense, but for someone who had just spent years as a shut-in, it would be a new, possibly valuable experience for her. And if it went well, maybe she wouldn’t need to take a bath again for at least another 2 weeks!

But at the same time, actually taking the bath meant that she would be naked away from home, even if it was a place where one was supposed to be naked. Futaba began to imagine herself in a tub, filled chock-full with other women, all of them naked in the tub and only wearing towels outside. She shuddered at the image, feeling intimidated. This was definitely something that would be difficult to do alone, maybe she could rope a friend into doing it with her? Ann would be the obvious choice, she had to take care of her skin for her modeling career. But even so it might be too much to handle... maybe it would be better to stick to what she was used to, even if it meant shackling herself to a frequent bathing schedule.

As the cloud of thoughts and worries swirled within Futaba’s mind, she looked at her PC, full of games awaiting her, beckoning to her. Maybe she just needed some time to decompress and clear her head. After all, if she was already a filthy mess, what difference would a couple of hours make?

And so, Futaba made her choice, deciding to...