He had confessed.
Lin Ye had confessed.
Lin Ye had confessed — to empty air.
What was happening?!
The onlookers were, for a single instant, completely dumbstruck.
The confession was the very thing they had been waiting for all this time. Miss Sakurajima was the figure they were dying to lay eyes on.
Both things had now happened. Both had unfolded right in front of them.
But why — why was it like this? Why was Lin Ye's confession aimed at nothing but empty air?
The shock of it was so overwhelming that everyone stood there with their mouths slightly parted, words frozen in their throats. Their minds went blank for a moment, and not a single person knew what to say.
Meanwhile —
Lin Ye's eyes were filled with the figure of Mai Sakurajima, a faint light flickering in them — a stirring, a swell of emotion, a tremor born of deep feeling.
He ignored the strange silence that had taken over the scene, and simply stood quietly, watching the young woman before him with a smile — the young woman that only he could see.
Mai Sakurajima stared blankly at Lin Ye, her bright eyes veiled in a thin, indescribable mist.
Stirred? Excited? Moved?
All of those —
But at the same time, the trace of regret in her heart was sharpening, growing stronger.
This was a script. All of this was just a script.
If only it were real — how wonderful that would be.
The thought rose unbidden in her heart.
The distance between them was less than a meter, and yet it felt like a chasm — the distance between two hearts that could not cross to one another.
Lin Ye realized it. Lin Ye felt it. He understood that Mai Sakurajima still had not stepped past the hesitation in her own heart.
Senpai,
With you like this — what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to pull you out of this abnormal state?
You can't actually be planning to live like this for the rest of your life, can you? Letting only the one person who can still see you take care of you for all eternity.
I'd be more than willing, but… I can't go an entire lifetime without sleeping.
The moment my Devour superpower gets updated and replaced by some other superpower, I won't be able to hold out anymore. I'll be forced to sleep — and then forget you. That's the only ending I'd have.
And once even I have forgotten you, no one in this entire world will remember you anymore. That kind of future surely isn't the ending you're hoping for. So… so…
Lin Ye pressed his lips together, and his weary heart slowly hardened into resolve.
It hadn't failed yet. It wasn't time to give up.
By now —
The crowd had finally snapped out of it, climbing back out from beneath the shock.
"What's going on?"
"How is our leading man confessing to thin air?!"
"This… this can't be acting, can it?"
"Were we all played for fools? Is there even any "Miss Sakurajima" to begin with?"
"This guy isn't seeing hallucinations, is he?"
...
The crowd's reactions came out as a tangle of shock, suspicion, and confusion. To a person, they all felt as though they had been deceived.
The eager, curious hearts they had brought to this moment had been mercilessly shattered by Lin Ye.
They had come to see Miss Sakurajima, not empty air!
Hurry up and bring out their Miss Sakurajima already!
Mai Sakurajima took in every word from the surrounding crowd. Every strange look, every hostile glare — all of it converged on Lin Ye.
She knew she bore part of the responsibility for this.
It was because of her that Lin Ye was facing this scene.
If he hadn't agreed to help her, Lin Ye would never have had to stand here and endure any of this.
The guilt inside Mai Sakurajima only deepened.
"I'm sorry — let's just go back!"
She had given up.
She wasn't going to continue with this.
Let it end here.
"I won't blame you for any of this, and you don't have to take responsibility for it. Student Lin, let's go!"
She began urging him, hoping he would leave this glaring, painful spotlight as quickly as possible.
But —
Lin Ye remained rooted to the spot, not moving an inch. Not even his expression shifted.
Once again, he ignored every word Mai Sakurajima said.
"Miss Mai Sakurajima, I like you. Please go out with me!"
A single sentence rang out once more across the entire scene, and the buzz of discussion in the crowd dropped away on instinct.
Bathed once more in the gazes of the onlookers,
Lin Ye spoke again: "From the very moment I knew of you,"
"I fell for you."
"I fell, deeply, for that beautiful girl with long black hair."
"I imagined, countless times, the scene of meeting you again in reality — but I also knew it was a certainty fated never to come true."
"You and I — the distance between us went beyond the Blue Planet, beyond the moon. It was a distance I could never cross."
Lin Ye's smile was sincere, his eyes carrying a trace of remembrance.
He gazed at her, his thoughts surging like the tide, his words turning the longing stored in memory into reality.
"Until one day, I came to this country. I came to this place. And once more, I heard news of you."
"The yearning in my heart, once extinguished, kindled into flame all over again."
"The hope in my heart, once set down, started beating wildly again,"
"And that thread of absolute impossibility between you and me vanished completely. Between us, something now existed — something called 'possibility.'"
The crowd listened quietly, taking in the inner thoughts of this young man.
"The first meeting I had been hoping for, all this time,"
"I came to Tokyo. I came to Akihabara,"
"All because, on that day, you were here. Your figure would appear here. I wanted to see you. I wanted to hear your voice."
"And surprises always come so suddenly —"
"A bowl of ramen at noon turned out to be the very chance that gave me my first meeting with you."
"We met. We met at the ramen shop."
So it really is true!
This ramen shop was the place where Lin Ye and that Miss Mai Sakurajima first met.
For the two of them, it was a place of immense preciousness, a place that held deep, lasting memories.
The onlookers couldn't help but think so.
"Surprise, the unexpected, happiness — and joy and bliss as well. In that moment I thought my luck really wasn't bad at all, that I could share such a coincidence with you."
Mai Sakurajima remembered.
In her mind, the scene of her first meeting with Lin Ye replayed itself.
Back then, what she had been curious about was Lin Ye's relationship with Ai Hoshino.
But seeing it now — Lin Ye had clearly already been drawn to her even then, and that fondness had possibly even surpassed his feelings for Ai Hoshino.
Fickle.
That was Mai Sakurajima's verdict in her heart — but the only thing inside her now was joy, without even the slightest trace of dislike.
"I felt our wheels of fate begin to turn directly,"
"That there was a connection between us,"
"That perhaps, in the future, we could be together."
"We came to know each other, came to meet each other,"
"Came to understand one another, and walk by one another's side."
"Until one day, you disappeared."
"Your figure no longer appeared."
"But I realized I could no longer be apart from you."
"I wanted to find you."
"I wanted to bring you back."
"I want you to put on that pure white, brilliantly bright long dress once more, that lovely figure of youth and beauty. I want to take your hand and walk beside you down a green tree-lined avenue. I want to wrap an arm around your slender waist and hold you in my embrace. I want…"
"To kiss your lips, and set the shape of what we are between us in place once and for all."
"Every bit of this is sincere. Every word comes from the bottom of my heart."
"Please, answer me!"
"Entrust your future to me!"
"I love you, Mai Sakurajima."
This time,
Lin Ye stretched out his hand, holding out the beautiful bouquet of red roses to the girl with long black hair.
In that moment,
The girl with long black hair pressed her red lips together, her eyes coming to rest on Lin Ye.
Was everything he had just said still part of the act?
She actually held the opposite view.
She was certain that everything Lin Ye had just said was real — that it had come straight from his heart, and not from the script they had planned at the start.
She could feel the genuine tremor in Lin Ye's heart in that moment.
So that was it —
Lin Ye had quietly liked her, had carried a quiet love for her, from very early on.
Mai Sakurajima hadn't expected that.
"Confessing to empty air again."
"A solo-act confession. What a letdown."
"He might as well have hired an actor to play the responding role — that would've gone viral and pulled in tons of attention."
"Becoming a hot internet personality, pulling in a massive wave of traffic — totally doable."
"How boring. To think I wasted my time standing here."
...
...
No matter how sincere and heartfelt Lin Ye's confession was, with the target of that confession being nothing more than empty air, the whole thing had lost all meaning.
Rather than the brave young man delivering a confession, he was more like a clown at the center of a joke.
At this point, in the eyes of more than a few of the onlookers, Lin Ye had already become a clown.
This was especially obvious in the live stream comments section, where the abusive remarks were even more vicious.
He had wasted their time, wasted their energy. He had wasted hearts that had been full of hope and anticipation.
The bullet comments were utterly one-sided.
From the initial passionate anticipation, they had now turned into furious cursing, the viewers practically wishing Lin Ye would drop to his knees right then and apologize.
As for the two at the center of it all — face to face, eye to eye.
Lin Ye stood there with a faint smile, watching the girl.
The girl bit down on her teeth, pressed her red lips together, torn beyond words.
Lin Ye's arm stayed extended, perfectly horizontal, the roses in his hand stirring in the evening breeze.
The seconds ticked by, one by one.
A trace of sorrow surfaced on Lin Ye's face, his smile dimming until it was almost desolate.
"Am I really… so unworthy of your… trust?"
A single sentence — and it struck straight at Mai Sakurajima's heart like a bolt of lightning.
She lifted her bright eyes, and what they caught was the grief and sorrow on Lin Ye's face.
No. It shouldn't be like this.
She didn't want Lin Ye to wear an expression like that. She didn't want to see him in grief and pain.
Her heart was twisting, aching, bleeding.
"Goodbye, Mai Sakurajima… Senpai, in the future, we…"
He didn't finish. He only let that sorrowful expression linger as he turned to leave.
But in that very instant —
Lin Ye's motion came to a halt.
His wrist had been caught.
A girl's slender hand gripped Lin Ye's wrist tightly.
"I trust you."
"I believe you."
"I… accept."
With that,
Mai Sakurajima stepped forward, came to stand directly before Lin Ye, and — face to face with him — took the red roses from his hand.
She brought them up to breathe in their scent. A faint fragrance of roses wrapped around her, and a gentle smile bloomed on her face.
"I love them."
"Next time, give me white roses."
"Okay."
Lin Ye agreed without a moment's hesitation.
But at that moment,
What the onlookers saw was the red roses in Lin Ye's hand vanishing all at once, gone without a trace.
Bear in mind, Lin Ye was currently surrounded on all four sides, with no blind angles whatsoever.
How could a bouquet of roses that large just disappear like that?!
"Please go out with me."
"Mai."
As the crowd stood there bewildered, Lin Ye spoke once more.
Mai.
Who was Mai?
Mai Sakurajima.
Why does that name feel so familiar?
A faint sense of familiarity grew in countless onlookers.
A certain impression was rising, unbidden, in their minds.
"Mm."
Mai Sakurajima made a small sound of assent. She lifted her eyes, her long lashes trembling faintly.
The next moment,
Under Lin Ye's startled gaze, she rushed forward a step, rose up onto her toes, and leaned up to press her red lips to his.
In a flash of an instant,
Softness met softness.
Those were the red lips of a young woman — the red lips of one named 'Mai Sakurajima.'
Lin Ye's expression went blank with shock, but he recovered quickly, responding and pulling the girl into the kiss.
The two of them sank, briefly, into the closeness of that moment, forgetting themselves, oblivious to their surroundings.
The crowd of onlookers went wide-eyed.
Every set of eyes was fixed on the two figures at the center of their vision, locked together in that kiss.
Shock. Only shock.
Japan's wildly popular major star, Mai Sakurajima, had just been confessed to — and the confession had succeeded.
And now, in the middle of a public crowd, the two of them were kissing.
"Aaaargh! KILL HIM!"
"Mai — our Mai!"
"Give our Mai back to us!"
"My goddess has a boyfriend now — how are we supposed to live?!"
"Kill, kill, kill! Kill that man!"
...
...
Bitter cries, furious shouts, angry screams — they kept ringing out, one after another, without a single pause.
All the anger and malice came pouring toward Lin Ye. They wanted to tear him apart, draw and quarter him, reduce Lin Ye to a corpse.
But even so, no one stepped forward.
Not by a single step.
The crowd stayed where they were, watching, emotions tangled together in every shade — and the fury kept rising.
"So it was Mai Sakurajima…"
Somewhere a little further away,
A young woman with shoulder-length black hair spoke softly.
Her eyes too were filled with the figures of Lin Ye and Mai Sakurajima.
Unlike the oblivious onlookers around her,
She had been able to grasp exactly what had happened in that single instant.
The girl who had been impossible to see, impossible to perceive, had appeared in that very moment.
She knew very well: had it not been for her earlier conversation with Lin Ye, which had given her access to more information, she too would have been like the rest of these onlookers — completely unable to catch the problem, and unable to retain any memory of the "air-person" who had been there earlier.
"Pull up the footage for me. Roll the time back."
Haruno spoke to the staff beside her.
There were camera operators stationed at every angle, filming.
She wanted to see what the cameras had recorded during the time leading up to this moment.
After a moment,
The video rewound to the time point one minute before,
And Haruno saw the two figures displayed on the screen.
The video was, in silence, telling a single truth.
Mai Sakurajima had been present from the beginning.
But Haruno still had her doubts, and put forward a hypothesis.
"What if the video actually didn't capture her at the time, but because Mai Sakurajima's existence has now been perceived, the relevant records have been retroactively completed?"
If that were the case,
The sheer magnitude of that unknown power would be beyond imagination.
The other possibility was that, in reality, Mai Sakurajima had always been recorded — only that these people had been unable to perceive her. Even though the cameras and phones had been recording the real information all along, they themselves had simply been unable to see it.
But to be able to influence hundreds of millions of people across the entire world —
That power was, in itself, still immense.
"So this is the world of the Strange?"
Haruno felt, deeply, the danger of that world.
Mai Sakurajima had lost her existence due to a Strange influence and been forgotten by countless people. If it weren't for Lin Ye, who still remembered her and had done everything he could to bring her back into existence,
She would have had to live in a world of total loneliness and isolation.
Haruno put herself in those shoes for a moment, and felt that she herself would find it very difficult to keep holding on indefinitely.
At some point in the future, she would surely choose the easier path and put an end to her own life.
Haruno's gaze fell upon Lin Ye.
She knew that she, her Sister, and the entire Yukinoshita family, had pinned everything about the future on Lin Ye.
This world, going forward, would inevitably be subjected to more and more Strange influences. Incidents like this would only multiply, one after another.
And Lin Ye was the expert in this area.
He had been willing to help Mai Sakurajima — so when problems came to the Yukinoshita family, he would surely be willing to help as well.
The Yukinoshita home and Lin Ye were already in a relationship of cooperative alliance now. In the future — who could say — they might even be in-laws.
...
Their lips parted,
And the first thing Mai Sakurajima did was lower her head and press her small face into Lin Ye's chest.
She had realized that her abnormal state had vanished. She had returned to normal. The passersby around her could see her now — and they had also taken in the entirety of the scene that had just played out.
Embarrassment.
Her fair cheeks flushed with a vivid red glow.
This was going to spread very soon.
No — it had already spread.
After all, there were several specially hired streamers running live broadcasts right at this very moment.
The news — major star Mai Sakurajima accepting a man's confession, the two of them officially in a relationship — was going to spread at lightning speed to every corner of the country.
Her many, many fans were about to face a massive wave of impact.
"I just hope the haters are at least a little fewer."
Mai Sakurajima knew that, as a major star, the moment a relationship was confirmed and a boyfriend named, she would face an enormous amount of pressure.
She might even, because of this, end up retiring from the entertainment industry entirely.
But even so —
Even if she could no longer be an actress —
Mai Sakurajima would not regret today's choice for an instant.
Without Lin Ye,
She would have been forgotten by the entire world. She would have become the only solitary existence left behind.
"Thank you…"
Mai Sakurajima offered her thanks softly, sincerely.
Lin Ye only stroked her long black hair, the smile that rose to his face the best answer he could give.
He had succeeded.
He had kept his promise.
As for what came next —
Lin Ye looked at the enraged, raving fans, and felt that his prior judgment had been shrewd indeed.
If he hadn't put on the disguise and makeup,
He would absolutely be beaten to death by those fans.
"Thank you,"
"Thank you, everyone."
Lin Ye called out his thanks aloud to the crowd.
"It is precisely because of everyone's sincere blessings,"
"That Mai has finally appeared before me, accepted my confession, and joined me."
The crowd: "..."
This was murder of the heart!
Right now, they really did want to kill Lin Ye, just to vent the resentment churning inside them.
"Today,"
"The help everyone has given — I will never forget it."
"Thank you."
At the end, Lin Ye closed with thanks.
That smug, showing-off posture of his sparked the crowd yet again.
"You bastard!"
"Still showing off,"
"He stole our goddess, and now he's just standing there flaunting it, rubbing it in our faces —"
"I can't hold back anymore — I'm going to beat that bastard to death."
"Pay with your life — give Mai back to us — CHARGE!"
...
One person broke from the crowd and surged forward,
And others surged forward too.
Their furious posture formed a mountain-toppling momentum.
Countless onlookers responded with shouts of encouragement.
Several people came together into a charging formation.
"Wait —"
It was Mai Sakurajima who spoke. She had grasped the situation the moment it began and tried to stop it, but by now reason had long since lost its hold.
Mai Sakurajima had completely lost her ability to persuade them, and the onlookers were no longer paying her any attention at all.
"Don't worry. Let's go."
Go how?
But Mai Sakurajima quickly let out her breath. With those few words from Lin Ye, all of it was enough.
Lin Ye had never once let her down.
Her wrist was caught — and when Mai Sakurajima came back to her senses, she realized her location had changed.
Ahead of her was the crowd, still pressed together in their tight ring.
Without realizing it, she was already outside the crowd.
Magical.
But Mai Sakurajima had long since come to accept these things, and she certainly wasn't going to start asking questions now.
"Let's go!"
Lin Ye gripped the girl's wrist and started walking outward. Mai Sakurajima, pulled along, hurried to keep up with quick steps.
"The — the people — where are they?!"
"How did they just disappear?"
"They've escaped — quick, find out where they went!"
"Behind — they ran that way — everyone, after them!"
...
Finally, someone spotted Lin Ye and Mai Sakurajima moving away in the distance and shouted, the chase beginning.
Lin Ye and Mai Sakurajima broke into a run in that very instant.
Beneath the night sky,
A young man and a young woman were sprinting through the streets.
Tiring. Their breaths grew sharp and quick — but Mai Sakurajima could not keep the smile off her face.
In this moment, she felt like the happiest girl in the world.
Is this what affection is? Is this what love is?
This feeling — she didn't hate it. In fact, she liked it very much.
The girl with long black hair watched the profile of the man holding her hand, pulling her forward — and the happiness and joy in her heart grew deeper and deeper.
"This way —"
Lin Ye tugged Mai Sakurajima around a corner and broke into a sprint. Their figures disappeared.
The pursuing onlookers did not give up.
But they could no longer find any trace of the two.
"Where did they go?"
"Find them — catch them!"
"We have to make that man pay the price."
"Wuuuuhhh, my goddess Mai! Why did you have to say yes to that confession?!"
...
Amid countless words of rage, bitter sobs surfaced every so often.
Meanwhile, online,
The news of what had happened tonight at the Akihabara ramen shop was spreading at a frantic, exponential pace.
News of major star Mai Sakurajima's new relationship shot straight up the Trending search, and within moments had taken the number-one spot in the headlines.
Countless fans were left dumbfounded, openly crying out that it couldn't be true.
But faced with on-the-scene video footage — and even live streams — the fans could only wail and cry, expressing the sorrow, despair, and rage in their hearts.
They too, like the onlookers at the scene, wanted to track down that man and hack him apart with countless blades.
Mai belonged to everyone.
How could that man monopolize her?
And the digging for information about the man's identity continued nonstop.
But no matter how deeply they dug, they couldn't find a single useful piece of information about him.
It was as if this person were nothing but a phantom.
A number of explanations began surfacing online, one of the more credible being: "The man's status and position are quite high, and his information is being protected," which was why the netizens couldn't dig up any of his real information.
But even so, there were still those who refused to give up.
On the other side of things,
A young woman saw the news that had climbed onto the Trending search, and watched the video to the end.
"Why…"
She was not in a good state at all.
...
...
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