He'd probably given up on himself entirely!
As far as she knew, Lin Ye had already confessed to Yukino Yukinoshita three times, and there were likely more instances she knew nothing about.
Under those circumstances, it wasn't impossible that Lin Ye had simply accepted the fact and stopped entertaining any further hopes.
When a goal is plainly unattainable, not many people keep chasing it forever.
How many boys at Sobu High quietly pined for Yukinoshita, how many had told her they liked her, that they had feelings for her — and how many of them had kept it up for any real length of time?
Someone who had persisted the way Lin Ye had, all the way to now, was probably one of a kind.
If Lin Ye gave up, stopped pursuing her, and kept things at classmate and friend, he'd probably have a far easier time of it.
No extravagant hopes meant no pain, and no grinding himself down from the inside.
Still, if that was really how it was, Shizuka Hiratsuka felt the smallest pang of regret.
Lin Ye aside, she genuinely hoped Yukino Yukinoshita could have one romance while she was still in high school.
Once university came around, from everything she knew and everything she could guess, the Yukinoshita family would start arranging suitable prospects for Yukinoshita to meet.
Men with agendas that obvious would never be as simple and friendly as boys in high school.
But she also knew the decision belonged to Yukinoshita herself, and that all her thinking about it amounted to nothing.
"You really aren't afraid Yukinoshita will start hating you!" Shizuka Hiratsuka grumbled at the Lin Ye on the other end of the line.
She knew it wouldn't do any good, but some things still had to be said.
"She won't hate me. My relationship with her is what it is. From here it'll only get better, never worse."
Lin Ye said it with such assurance that Shizuka Hiratsuka wondered where on earth that assurance came from.
But when she thought about it, Lin Ye and Yukinoshita were nothing more than ordinary classmates. As long as he didn't break the law or deliberately hurt her, it really would be difficult for him to earn any real revulsion or dislike from Yukino Yukinoshita.
So there wasn't much wrong with what he'd said.
His attitude really was enviable. Not the slightest worry about causing offense, not the slightest fear of losing Yukinoshita over it — hence all that composure.
Shizuka Hiratsuka wanted that composure for herself. She wanted that calm.
But her time — ah.
Age was the one thing she could do nothing about. Gone was gone, with no room left for regret.
Looking back over her own life, Shizuka Hiratsuka had known impulses, and there had been men she'd felt something for. But she never made the first move, and the men who approached her were, one and all, frightened off.
Some of them she had actually liked. In the end they all passed each other by.
And now everything had come back around to zero.
Nothing at all. She was still alone.
Sometimes Shizuka Hiratsuka truly envied these young boys and girls in their brief springtime. Why hadn't she given herself even one rose-colored youth back when she could?
"And if things do go bad, won't you be the one crying?"
"They won't. You can rest easy on that, Sensei."
Shizuka Hiratsuka glanced over at Yukinoshita beside her, and seeing that Yukino Yukinoshita showed no particular reaction, she let the subject drop.
She'd said what she came to say anyway. There was no way she was getting Lin Ye to come back.
Knowing the boy was fine was enough.
"Fine, suit yourself. I've said my piece. Next week, brat, you are not allowed to take leave."
"That's…"
"If you dare take leave, just you wait."
Even through the phone, Lin Ye could feel the pressed-down threat coming off Shizuka Hiratsuka.
She would absolutely make him pay a heavy price if he really skipped another week of Sobu High.
"I'll do my best! As long as nothing comes up."
These past few months, he'd run into a Strange event practically every week.
Lin Ye simply couldn't promise that next week would pass without incident, that nothing at all would happen.
"Heh. Don't show up and see what you get."
Shizuka Hiratsuka wasn't having it. She tossed out one more threat and then hung up.
The call was officially over.
"Here." Shizuka Hiratsuka held the phone out in front of Yukinoshita.
"Mm." Yukino Yukinoshita took it back.
"Next time you see Lin Ye, tell him you've started to hate him."
Since Lin Ye was so brimming with confidence, she wanted to see what entertaining reaction he'd produce once Yukino Yukinoshita hated him.
She was sure Yukino Yukinoshita would play along on this one.
But Shizuka Hiratsuka noticed that Yukino Yukinoshita did not give her the answer she wanted right away.
"Yukinoshita, you… don't want to?"
There was a thread of hesitation in her words.
And even a thread of disbelief.
Watching from the sidelines, Yui Yuigahama and Iroha Isshiki had their eyes on the pair as well, both waiting for Yukino Yukinoshita to offer some explanation.
"I haven't come to dislike him," she said seriously.
"Er."
Shizuka Hiratsuka could accept that explanation, but it still rankled. "He's off to Tokyo to ogle pretty girls, you know. Mai Sakurajima, Ai Hoshino, all those cute, gorgeous girls."
"I'm aware," Yukino Yukinoshita nodded.
"Even knowing that? He likes you. He's a boy who has confessed to you more than once. And you can accept it?"
"I can."
Yukino Yukinoshita gave her answer.
She could accept it.
She had accepted it long ago.
Mai Sakurajima had already become Lin Ye's girlfriend right alongside her.
As for Ai Hoshino, Yukino Yukinoshita had taken rather more notice there. Next time, she intended to question Lin Ye in detail about everything concerning Ai Hoshino.
"You… never mind. You don't like Lin Ye, so of course you don't react." Shizuka Hiratsuka gave up and let it go.
"Though I am a little curious what sort of boy you'll end up liking someday, Yukinoshita."
She was curious, and so were Iroha Isshiki and Yui Yuigahama.
What kind of man would Sobu High's unreachable blossom fall for?
"Sensei, perhaps you should concern yourself with your own situation first."
A critical hit.
One instant, one critical hit, and Shizuka Hiratsuka was thoroughly not okay.
If Lin Ye had said it, she could have answered with her iron fist, served hot. But coming from Yukino Yukinoshita, the damage was doubled, and she sank into a gloom she couldn't pull herself out of at all.
Shizuka Hiratsuka left.
She left with sorrow and loneliness written all over her face.
That retreating back was enough to make even Yui Yuigahama feel a little melancholy.
"Yukinon, maybe from now on we shouldn't bring up age and boyfriends around Hiratsuka-sensei," she cautioned.
Nobody likes having their sore spots poked.
Hiratsuka-sensei clearly didn't enjoy anyone raising marriage, romance, or age. For a Hiratsuka-sensei of her current age, those were taboo.
Better left unmentioned if it could be avoided. There was no telling when it might genuinely anger Sensei, and getting on her bad side and having her make life difficult wouldn't be pleasant at all.
"Hiratsuka-sensei doesn't use violence on girls," Yukino Yukinoshita said.
She had grounds for saying so. She understood Shizuka Hiratsuka well enough by now.
Shizuka Hiratsuka's violence was reserved for men.
"Even so, isn't it still not a very nice thing to do?"
"As a rule, I don't poke at people's sore spots," Yukino Yukinoshita added.
But when Sensei said something inappropriate, she didn't mind doing exactly that to needle Hiratsuka-sensei a little.
"That was a well-meaning reminder. A reminder that Hiratsuka-sensei could start looking for someone sooner rather than continuing to take her time about it."
That was well-meaning by no measure at all.
But since Yukino had put it that way, Yui Yuigahama didn't have the nerve to say anything more.
Iroha Isshiki, for her part, didn't care in the slightest.
Yukinoshita-senpai holding no aversion toward Lin Ye-senpai was good news as far as she was concerned. Only a Yukinoshita-senpai who cared nothing at all about him, whose heart didn't stir in the least at anything he did with other girls, would react the way she just had.
It meant Yukinoshita-senpai truly had no feelings for Lin Ye-senpai. Purely the attitude of a classmate and a friend.
With Yukino Yukinoshita, her single most formidable rival, out of the running, how could Iroha Isshiki not be delighted?
But she knew her difficulty didn't lie with rivals. It lay with Senpai himself, who had no great interest in her as a woman. Otherwise, forward as she'd been, she would have landed him ages ago.
There'd be no dragging it out until now.
Thinking back on all the times she'd made a move on Senpai — any other man would have fallen for her advances long ago and been kneeling at her feet by now.
The road ahead was long.
That was what Iroha Isshiki thought.
Meanwhile, on the other side of things.
Meguri Shiromeguri left Sobu High and headed for the location Sis Haruno had sent her.
It was the apartment where Yukino Yukinoshita lived.
An older sister being at her Sister's apartment struck her as nothing out of the ordinary.
"Ding-dong…"
The elevator reached the right floor, and Meguri Shiromeguri checked the numbers on the doors before stopping in front of one.
"Knock, knock, knock…"
She knocked, and it wasn't long before the door opened.
A familiar figure appeared in front of Meguri Shiromeguri.
It was Haruno, the Senpai she had always looked up to.
From the moment she'd met Haruno after enrolling, she had become Haruno's devoted little fan.
In her eyes, Haruno was that strong, that full of charm, someone she admired and was eager to learn from.
"Meguri, you came!"
"Mm-hm. Sis Haruno, have you had lunch?"
"Not yet."
"I bought you a sandwich. It's nothing special."
"The thought alone is plenty."
Haruno looked at the underclassman who had come to see her, a faint smile at the corner of her lips.
Today she wore loose loungewear, the long, flowing garment covering the skin of her body, keeping the marks that hadn't yet faded out of sight.
But she knew Meguri Shiromeguri would discover them sooner or later.
Being discovered was precisely what she wanted.
What sort of reaction would Meguri Shiromeguri have once she saw the state of her body?
Haruno was curious. Curious about what entertaining reaction this underclassman of hers would give.
Anger, certainly. As for anything beyond that, how would that go?
Haruno waited for what Meguri Shiromeguri would do next.
Before long, Meguri Shiromeguri had followed Haruno's back into the living room.
Only, she kept feeling that something about Haruno was a little off today.
She couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong with her.
"Sis Haruno, what happened afterward with you and Student Lin Ye yesterday?" Meguri Shiromeguri asked.
"Nothing. It's all settled," Haruno said calmly.
She even raised a soft smile, a signal for Meguri Shiromeguri to set her mind at ease. But how could Meguri Shiromeguri possibly be at ease?
"Did you talk Lin Ye around, Sis Haruno?"
"Mm. I talked him around."
Haruno admitted it outright.
But the crispness of that answer only made Meguri Shiromeguri more suspicious.
"He… didn't demand anything outrageous?"
"No. Facing me, Haruno Yukinoshita, where would he find the nerve or the confidence to demand anything outrageous?"
There was nothing wrong with that answer either, because Meguri Shiromeguri had thought the same thing. She didn't believe Lin Ye had the standing to go up against Sis Haruno. He held some leverage, sure, but not nearly enough to force her into concessions.
The more Meguri Shiromeguri thought it over, the lighter she felt. But then she caught it — the problem. She noticed the marks on Sis Haruno's wrist.
Hm?
"Sis Haruno, what happened to your arm?"
"What — nothing."
Haruno pulled back on reflex, which only drew Meguri Shiromeguri's attention all the more.
Not normal.
Sis Haruno's reaction was anything but normal.
So Meguri Shiromeguri sat down beside her at once and reached over to push up Haruno's sleeve.
The next second.
The red bruises came into view.
"Sis Haruno, who did this?"
In that instant, alongside the ache, anger rose in Meguri Shiromeguri.
Yes, she was furious. She wanted justice for Sis Haruno.
"It's nothing. I was careless."
"It was Lin Ye. It was Lin Ye, wasn't it…"
"It has nothing to do with Lin-kun…"
"Nothing to do with him? Then how did you end up like this, Sis Haruno? That's simply impossible."
Meguri Shiromeguri didn't believe a word of it.
The thought struck her and she moved again, and despite Haruno's struggling she pulled the fabric aside a little more, leaving that soft, delicate skin bare to the air.
She saw more marks.
In that instant, a film of tears blurred Meguri Shiromeguri's eyes.
She understood now what had happened to Sis Haruno.
An agreement had been reached with Lin Ye last night, and the substance of that agreement could only have been Sis Haruno sacrificing herself, letting Lin Ye do as he pleased. Otherwise how could her body have carried so many marks?
That bastard.
"I'm going to kill that man."
Yes.
In this moment, even Meguri Shiromeguri had the urge to kill.
She would rather have endured that treatment herself than let the Senpai she respected suffer something so cruel because of her, for the sake of protecting her.
In this moment, Meguri Shiromeguri's heart was bleeding.
"Don't go."
Haruno wrapped her arms around Meguri Shiromeguri and held her tight, with no sign of loosening her grip.
She knew her plan had worked. Everything was moving forward exactly as she'd intended.
Judging by her reaction, this underclassman of hers truly did care about her.
What came after this, though.
That she wasn't quite certain of.
And right now, what she wanted most was for Lin Ye to come back at precisely the right moment.
She had planned out the timing, after all.
After that, what would Meguri do?
And how would Lin Ye handle it?
Haruno Yukinoshita was curious about how it would all unfold.
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