Back to the familiar image of white hair, speaking to a small boy.
"Remember this, Ryunosuke-chan. When a girl is heartbroken and comes to lean on you, it means you already have a place in her heart, or at the very least, you're her backup plan."
"But the real point is this."
"A girl's heart at a moment like that is when it's most open to being entered."
"If the girl is still, shall we say, untouched, then don't hesitate. Full speed ahead."
His mother's tone was completely serious.
Back to the present.
Ryunosuke had both hands pressed against a large tree and was repeatedly thudding his forehead against the bark.
"What was I thinking? Why did I just go full speed ahead and kiss her?"
He stopped.
"Whatever. Just let it go."
He gave up trying to reason through it. He had nothing left.
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Meanwhile, Wang Meiyu was at home, buried under her blanket. Replaying everything that had happened, her face burning, she pulled the blanket down just far enough to breathe and pressed a hand to her racing heart.
She was panicking. She was pretty sure she had caught feelings. For Ryunosuke.
She hid back under the blanket and cried. "Uwaaaa, what kind of person am I? I just got rejected by Hirata-kun and now I like Akasaka-kun? How am I supposed to face him after this?"
She cried for a while, genuinely at a loss. Ryunosuke had appeared at exactly the moment she was most fragile, most hollow, most in need of something to hold onto. The timing had been precise enough to slip right through every wall she had. In blunter terms: he had exploited an opening.
And Meiyu hadn't been completely without feeling to begin with, even if it had been faint and unacknowledged. In the end, neither of them had pulled back, and the kiss had simply happened.
It hadn't been intentional on Ryunosuke's part. His mother, whoever she was and wherever she had come from, had spent his entire childhood filling his head with strange and questionable wisdom until it had become pure reflex. And now everything he said and did carried that particular energy, whether he meant it to or not.
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Meanwhile, trouble had surfaced in Class B.
Hashimoto Masayoshi had turned on Sakayanagi Arisu. He wanted to switch allegiances to Yuuki Asuna's side. Class B had always had two centers of gravity: Arisu on one side, Asuna on the other.
Support for Asuna ran significantly higher. She had the natural pull of a leader, and Hashimoto was far from immune to it. The girl known as the Flash was someone he was perfectly willing to follow. She had earned that nickname at the sports festival, where she had run the 100-meter sprint in under ten seconds, faster than any Olympic gold medalist. The title suited her.
Asuna herself was miserable about all of it. She had been pushed back into that position again. All she had ever wanted at this school was to play games in peace. Being made a leader for no clear reason was already inconvenient enough, but now the people beneath her were trying to remove Arisu from the picture entirely, and they hadn't even waited for her to give any kind of order.
She just wanted to play games. Why had things developed in such an unexpected direction? She covered her face with both hands and lay face down on her desk, questioning her existence.
Her followers had shoved her onto a throne and made her their puppet emperor. What they didn't know was that their emperor had absolutely no ambitions toward world domination and only wanted to touch her console controller.
The situation kept growing. Hashimoto had obtained, from somewhere, a video of Masumi stealing a can of drink, and handed it directly to the school administration for processing. Left uncontested, Masumi faced expulsion. Since she was Arisu's right hand, Asuna suspected this was yet another case of her people acting without her knowledge.
Her followers really were just doing whatever they assumed she wanted. She finally understood what Ainz Ooal Gown must have felt.
Ryunosuke's first suspicion fell on Arisu. She and Masumi had been the only two at the location when the theft occurred. There were no outsiders. So he went straight to her.
"Was this you?"
Arisu's hand, mid-move over the chess board, paused briefly. She feigned innocence and looked away. "Why do you immediately suspect me, Ryunosuke-kun?"
She seemed faintly put out. Under the table, she nudged him with one small foot, the best she could manage given her limited mobility.
Ryunosuke hesitated. Maybe it really wasn't her. On reflex, he apologized.
"I'm sorry. I was wrong."
Arisu looked satisfied. "Seeing you admit it so readily, I suppose I'll forgive you. But." She stood, came around to him, and showed him that composed little smile of hers, "it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for a small amount of compensation."
She settled herself into his lap and leaned back against him. "Just keep me company for a little while, and then I'll forgive you."
With that, she closed her eyes and went very still, as though she had simply drifted off to sleep. The words Ryunosuke had been about to say caught in his throat. He looked around at the rest of Class B with a resigned expression.
Everyone was watching. His face went warm. Being openly affectionate in the middle of the day like this was exactly the kind of thing that kept gossip alive, and there was nothing he could do about it. As far as anyone knew, he was Arisu's boyfriend.
He had no choice but to indulge her.
Arisu wasn't actually asleep. She had done this specifically to stop him from asking any further questions.
Because the situation with Masumi had, in fact, been entirely her doing.