I tossed the key of the house to Em because she was walking in front of us, she deftly caught it and walked up to the door, opening it with a slight push. As we all walked inside, I could suddenly hear Em laughing in front.

“What are you laughing at?” I asked.

“Look, look at the kitchen door.” Em lowered her voice.

I peeked past her. We left the lights on in the kitchen so we didn’t have to come home in complete darkness. This, however, created a pretty funny effect of what we saw in front of us.

Shima’s little head was poking around the corner, watching us enter. Her little head perfectly contrasted by the bright kitchen lights, furthermore casting a huge shadow.

Now both Ria and I started laughing too.

“Shima!” Ria called out. Shima immediately ran up to her and started swirling around her leg. Tail held high out of joy.

“You’re being pretty adventurous, aren’t you.” I petted my little cat. “Already snooping around the ground floor.”

Em walked back to give Shima a couple of pets too. “Must’ve gotten it from her owner.” She winked.

“Hehe.”

We got our coats off and Shima ran back into the kitchen.

“Would you mind if Ria and I go take a shower?” Em asked as we followed our cat along.

“Of course not. Go ahead. I’ll go take a shower after the two of you are done.”

Em smiled and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you when we are done.”

I nodded and off my girlfriends went, up the stairs. That’s when something suddenly came to mind. I squinted my eyes and looked at Shima, who had taken up a spot on the counter, just staring at me like cats do. “Do you think they are going to shower together, or are they just going to use both bathrooms?”

Shima just tilted her head at the strange human noises I was making and didn’t even bother to reply with a meow.

“I see…. I shouldn’t be envious either way… but still…”

Still no reply from my feline companion.

“Yeah…”

“...”

“Let me get some food for you, I think I have a can of sardines somewhere. Don’t tell Em I’m feeding you food that’s not from the feeder. But it’s almost Christmas for you, too, right.”

To this Shima did reply. “Meow!” And she jumped off the counter as I went on my search for the can of sardines.

“So that’s what gets a reply out of you, huh? Food.”

Shima meowed again, making me laugh.

“Alright, alright.”

I dug through the boxes for a couple of minutes while Shima was almost constantly headbutting them. Until finally I found the little can of sardines, which, before you ask, are cat-friendly. I had looked it up before when I was wondering about it while I was browsing the store.

With Shima’s prized possession in my hands, I quickly went to dig up a small plate I encountered before and then royally spread out some sardines on top of it.

I needed to keep Shima a bit back while I was putting her fishies on the plate, but I swiftly put the plate down before Shima might have gotten the idea to start biting my thumb or something like that, so she could get to her food faster.

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“There there, Shima, have a nice meal.” I petted her as she started on her food, she was purring pretty darn loudly. “Clearly enjoying it, I see.” I looked back behind me at the opened boxes and shrugged. “I might as well start unpacking while I’m waiting for a shower.”

With the use of my smartphone and the brand-new Wi-Fi, I put on some good old classic rock while I started unpacking. I mainly focused on unpacking kitchen stuff, as I was in the kitchen anyway. It was still a bit of a puzzle as I didn’t want to pack everything in this specific kitchen alone, especially the snacks would need to get packed upstairs as that’s where the main living room was. Ria wouldn’t be too happy to constantly come running downstairs for some snacks. And sadly, this house did lack one of those cool food elevators you’d see in old houses in the movies. That’d be a pretty darn amazing place to put your snacks. Can get your snacks on any floor without having to move.

Just when I started inspecting the wall to see if I could have such an elevator installed, I could hear Em’s voice ring through the staircase. “Auro, we are done showering!”

“Alright, I’ll be right up!” I called back and ran jogged towards the box I had been busy unboxing. I closed the lid and put the box on top of another one. As I assumed we wouldn’t be coming downstairs anymore, I shut off the lights and then proceeded to go upstairs with a couple of snacks in my arms so Ria didn’t have to come down by herself anymore today if she’d develop a small hunger.

I put the snacks in the kitchen on the first floor and then proceeded to look for my girlfriends. I peeked my head inside of the main bedroom. Ria was sitting on the edge of the bed, getting her pj’s on, while Em was standing next to the closet, hanging in some of my clothes already.

Ria noticed I was peeking in. “Rora!”

Em turned her head towards the door in a reaction. “Oh, hey there. Hope you don’t mind me hanging your clothes in already.” Em’s hair was still a bit wet, definitely more than Ria’s was. She was never really a fan of using the hairdryer for too long.

“You don’t have to. We can do this tomorrow.” Said the person who’d just been unpacking herself.

“Might as well, you don’t have that many clothes.” Em shrugged and just continued. “Now, go shower before the temperature drops too much. It’s nice and warm there at the minute.”

“Mhmm.”

Shima sweeped past my leg and jumped onto the bed to go and give some hugs to Ria. She was still licking her lips.

But before I left my girlfriend and cat to their own devices, there was still one question I just couldn’t leave alone. “Did… you two shower together?”

When I asked, I could see a slight blush appear on Ria’s cheeks. Em, however, stayed pretty pokerfacey. Her smile from before even turned into a grin. “That’s for us to know and for you to guess.”

“Booo.”

Em rolled her eyes and then walked towards me, taking some underwear for me with her, and put her hand on the door. “Here you go. This is fine, right?”

“Thanks.” I gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll be right back, so don’t you two run away, okay.”

“We’d never. It would cause Shima too much stress.”

“Yes! We’ll never leave Shima alone!” Ria said from the bed while petting Shima on the head.

“I guess I’m safe for now, then.”

“Definitely.” Em booped me on the nose. And after that, I was on my way to the bathroom.

I showered pretty quickly, the room was nice and toasty, as Em had foretold. I had to fiddle a bit with the shower to figure out how exactly it worked, but in the end it’s still a shower. A hot faucet, a cold faucet, and only one place for the water to come out of.

All washed up, I went back to the bedroom to chill with my girlfriends and hopefully have a rather relaxing evening together.

But when I came back into the room, both Ria and Em had a rather suspicious smile on their faces. I looked at them with squinted eyes as I threw my clothes in the laundry basket.

“What in the Goddess’ name are the two of you smiling about?”

“We were just having a good laugh before you came in, nothing more.” Em replied.

Ria just nodded along with that statement.

Em then patted the bed. They had left a spot for me in between the two of them. Shima had taken up a spot in front of the window, staring outside.

“Suuure.” I quickly crawled on top of the bed and jumped underneath the blankets as soon as I could.

That’s when Em sprung the trap on me. “Auro, can you see what’s hanging there on the ceiling?”

Now, with my back against the mattress, it was quite obvious what they had done. The two sly vixen’s had attached a mistletoe against the light fixture above the bed. Even though that tradition wasn’t really something well-observed over here, I still quite definitely understood the implied meaning.

“Oh well, could be worse, I suppose.” I joked as both Em and Ria scooched up to me.

It was Em first who took my attention as she used her index finger on my cheek to turn my head towards her. A long and heartfelt kiss followed.

Ria couldn’t really wait and started to crawl on top of me. Almost immediately after Em was done with me, for the moment, Ria took full control and started kissing me as well.

-That’s one heck of an early Christmas present if you ask me.-