NouCome: Volume 2 Interlude 2
Interlude 2: A Certain Possibility's Story[edit]
“I’m home-!!”
An energetic boy about ten years of age dashed into the living room of his house. He squeezed his nipples as he did so.
“Oh, you’re back?”
The boy’s father smiled and welcomed him. He squeezed his nipples as well.
“Daddy, I have something to ask.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“Why do we have to squeeze our nipples when we greet others?”
“I didn’t think you would ask something like that. Well, it’s an ancient custom.”
In twenty-third century Japan, squeezing one’s nipples when greeting another was a well-known and widely practiced custom, considered polite in society.
“Hmm? Why is that, why is that?”
However, the father’s reply was unable to satiate the curiosity of his son.
“Haha, you sure are hard to satisfy. Fine, let’s go search for the reason online.”
With a snap of his fingers, a semi-transparent spherical object appeared in front of the father.
“Greeting, nipple, squeeze, origin.”
The father uttered some search keywords, after which the spherical object shot out a laser beam, projecting the results of the search directly onto his cornea.
“Let’s see...’This custom originated from the twenty-first century, over two hundred years ago. A student’s actions when resolving an argument inspired the heir of a multinational company who was coincidentally at the scene, and she included this action within one of her company’s advertisements, receiving an overwhelmingly positive response. This action soon became extremely popular, even becoming a commonplace practice in society. Over the years, it has become a custom for people to perform this action when greeting one another.’ That’s what it says.”
“Really...I don’t really get it, but from what it’s saying, people never used to squeeze their nipples while greeting each other?”
“That seems to be the case.”
“Were the people back then idiots?”
“Oh, don’t be so mean. Customs change along with the times - oh? We seem to have a guest. We’re coming over, welcome~”
The doorbell rang halfway through their conversation, causing the father and son to walk briskly towards the front door.
They squeezed their nipples as they did so.
