Ai looked at the newly arrived ninth Espada, Yamamura Miki, clicked her tongue quietly to herself, and eventually acknowledged the girl's presence.
Not long afterward, she went looking for her husband to settle things. She beat Ryunosuke thoroughly.
He took the beating without saying a single word in his defense.
Ai grabbed him by the collar and said at full volume, "You're so talented at this? Why not just find one more while you're at it and make it a round ten?"
Ryunosuke, somehow, took this as a genuine suggestion and acted on it immediately. Within a single day he had brought Wang Meiyu, who was already at one hundred percent in terms of conquered heart, to meet his first wife. The number was now an even ten.
Meiyu and Ai looked at each other with the blank, mutual stare of two people who have been placed in a situation neither of them entirely agreed to.
Ai's breathing was not entirely steady. She was genuinely considering the logistics of ending this man.
Meiyu wasn't in a much better state. Ever since Ryunosuke had turned her world upside down that night, she hadn't been sleeping properly. Then he had come back and confessed directly, and she hadn't been able to hold out any longer. And now here she was: scene ten, where the husband introduces wife number ten to wife number one.
Both of them were right at the edge. Ryunosuke, sensing the atmosphere, crouched down and covered his head with his hands, silently offering that his face could be spared, and that he would accept whatever else was coming.
Ai and Meiyu looked at each other, and eventually accepted the absurdity of their situation. There wasn't much else to do. In certain circles, a powerful man having many wives was not considered particularly unusual. The upper classes had long treated it as unremarkable. The only complication was that only one could be registered officially. The rest were something else, legally speaking.
What was genuinely unusual was the gap between Ryunosuke and the women attached to him. Every one of them came from a background that placed her far above him. By any reasonable standard, he should have been grateful to survive as a dependent son-in-law. The difference in their social standings was striking.
Even Meiyu's background was far from simple. She just had no interest in making that known, preferring to be treated as an ordinary person. That story would come later. For now, Ryunosuke had no idea what kind of connections she carried.
Meiyu accepted the situation because she had accepted that she couldn't let go of this feeling. She turned to Ai and said with quiet sincerity, "Please look after me from now on."
The meaning was clear. She was agreeing to take whatever number she was given.
Ai crossed her arms and kept her expression flat, but gave a small nod, acknowledging this new "little sister." At the same time, she explained the rules to the newest arrival.
The rules remained unchanged: no intimate physical contact, maximum permitted being held hands and hugging. This was Ai's standing rule, and in truth it was something everyone silently wanted enforced, since no one wanted anyone else getting ahead of them.
Megumi had been completely contained by Ai at this point. She lay in her bed and watched Ai lying across from her with a flat expression, then said in a calm voice, "Do you really need to watch me this closely?"
She rattled the linked bracelet at her wrist, the other end of which was attached to Ai's arm.
Ai looked back with an equally flat expression. "Absolutely necessary. Out of everyone, you're the biggest threat. I don't mind if the others get a head start, but not you."
Megumi: 😐
◆━⊰✿✧✿⊱━◆
Elsewhere, Himeno felt she was approaching the edge of losing her mind entirely. She was even dreaming about that insufferable man.
"AAAAAAAAH!"
She grabbed her own hair in frustration, gripped her twin tails, spun them like propellers, and banged her head against the wall at intervals like someone who had lost the plot. Ryunosuke had genuinely driven her to this.
It had been 36 days, 17 hours, 24 minutes, and 58 seconds since she had last seen that infuriating person. The fact that she was tracking it to the second was itself alarming. Was there any coming back from this?
She didn't want to admit it, but honesty demanded it: she had fallen for him. Properly, helplessly fallen, with no visible exit.
Honami was in much the same state, shutting herself in and moving through school looking drained. Both of them were suffering because of the same unremarkable-faced man. Ordinary-looking as he was, he refused to leave their heads.
Himeno and Honami both exhaled at the same moment in their respective rooms. They had told themselves they would forget him. But love doesn't respond to commands.
Himeno was weighing it seriously: move forward, or don't?
She knew exactly what Ryunosuke was. He had been rowing ten boats at once, and the whole school had basically figured it out at this point. Anyone who paid attention and cared to look could see it plainly.
He spent every day with Hiyori reading in the library. He had been spotted on what looked very much like dates with the Nakano quintuplets, with Hasebe Haruka, with Karuizawa Kei. His official girlfriend was Sakayanagi Arisu, yet he was clearly entangled with Shiina Hiyori, the Class D leader, as well. He had quietly accumulated a reputation.
His new title around school: Casanova.
A number of male students had started wondering if they could learn something from him.
Himeno was genuinely uncertain whether she wanted to lower her pride and join a situation like this. Because the honest truth was that she couldn't forget him. She had tried and failed entirely.
She gripped the balcony railing. Heavy snow was falling outside.
She looked up at the sky with the expression of someone who had made a decision. She was waiting out here for someone.
A familiar figure appeared behind her and draped a large coat over her lightly dressed shoulders. His voice was mildly reproachful but obviously concerned. "Are you trying to catch a cold?"
It was Ryunosuke. He gently brushed the accumulated snow from the top of her head. Himeno pulled the coat around herself, her cheeks suddenly warm.
(Why is this person so annoyingly good at this!) Something inside her raged, because her heart was reacting in ways she hadn't authorized. Her pulse was too fast. She felt like she wanted to tackle him. She was fairly certain she had gone completely around the bend.
Himeno exhaled and faced the truth she had been circling for weeks. She had fallen for this man, and there was no realistic path back. She loved Ryunosuke.
She looked at him with her characteristic flat, fish-like stare. Ryunosuke, under the weight of that stare, shifted uncomfortably. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Himeno exhaled again. She leaned her arms on the railing, rested her head against them, and spoke with a tone that managed to sound both resigned and slightly accusatory. "Because of you, I've gone and fallen desperately in love with someone I had no business falling for. Honestly I want to beat you senseless."
She gripped the railing and let herself lean back until her twin tails hung down toward the floor, looking up at him from this angle.
"I like you. What do you have to say about that, Akasaka-kun?"
She confessed directly, and her face was entirely expressionless while she did it.