Some time had already passed since Yuuji told Lala the truth about his identity. After that, telling her other things became much easier.
Yuuji's plan was basically to repeat what his parents had done before, traveling all over the world to accomplish achievements and gain more abilities.
Only, of course, on a much larger scale, a universal scale to be exact. Something that obviously required Lala's help, so he decided to tell her how his abilities worked and how he obtained them.
Lala, naturally, accepted everything immediately and agreed with his plans, calling it an early honeymoon, something Yuuji didn't deny.
With all of that settled, Lala had spent the last few days even happier than usual, smiling at everything and laughing at anything as if every happy moment reminded her of her own happiness, which in turn only made her even happier in an endless loop of happiness that only someone like Lala could create.
However, perhaps because they were in the universe of a romantic anime, everyone seemed to immediately recognize her state as that of a girl deeply in love, ignoring any other possibility.
Lala wasn't the best person to ask at the moment, so the easiest way to find out the reason was, of course, to ask Yuuji. Setting aside the embarrassment of continuing to hear certain terms said out loud, he eventually told everyone about his plans after a great deal of insistence, mostly from Risa.
"Wait, just like that?" Risa reacted. "You're simply going to leave school and go traveling without any warning?"
"We'll only be gone for two months at most, so it's not a big deal" Yuuji explained, downplaying it. "And it's not out of nowhere. I still have a few things to take care of, so we'll leave this weekend."
"You weren't even going to say goodbye to us?"
"Isn't that what we're doing?" Yuuji raised an eyebrow.
"Only because we asked, and I had to insist a lot before you finally talked" Risa complained with her usual dramatics.
Hearing her, Yuuji looked up, held her gaze, and smiled in amusement.
"I trusted you, Risa. Good job"
"Mio, he's taking advantage of my personality to feed his laziness" Risa complained as she threw herself onto her friend.
"No, I think he's just teasing you" Mio denied.
"If you're leaving, what will happen to the hotel?" Yui asked, changing the subject. Run nodded vigorously beside her.
"Oh. Don't worry about that" Yuuji reassured them. "Even though the hotel was originally my idea, it's actually completely under my family's control. They even offered it to me once, but I turned it down. Too much trouble.
The point is, even without me here, it'll keep running normally, so you can keep doing what you usually do there."
"'Doing what we usually do'? We work" Run corrected indignantly.
"That." Yuuji nodded without really caring. He couldn't understand why anyone would want to work when neither of them actually needed to.
As if she had read his thoughts, Yui explained.
"I don't really need the money, so I don't consider it work. I just think it's... fun, getting to know new races and their customs" Yui hesitated a little before saying "fun" as if she feared the reaction to a word that normally didn't seem to fit her at all.
"Right?" Lala nodded enthusiastically as she grabbed Yui's hands and moved them up and down excitedly, completely ignoring her concerns. "Meeting other races is so much fun. That was my childhood."
Yuuji smiled in agreement as well.
"In that case, I guess I understand a little."
After all, besides accomplishing several achievements, he also had personal reasons for taking this trip, and they were basically the same as Yui's.
'I don't think she'd want to right now, but maybe in the future I could offer to take her to visit other planets' Yuuji thought as he looked at the others. 'Maybe all of them, something like a group trip.'
"Um... Yuuji, I have a question."
"What is it?"
Yuuji looked at Rito, who wasn't stuttering or hesitating nearly as much as he had two months ago, though he still did it. Even so, Yuuji realized once again that although Rito wanted to move forward, it wouldn't be easy for him.
"About Yami..." Rito began.
"I know what you're going to say" Yuuji replied before he could finish. "You don't have to worry about that. Yami already knows more about the universe than even Lala does, so she didn't want to come with us.
Besides, she said she wanted to stay with Mikan."
"That's good" Rito sighed in relief. "Mikan goes to your family's company almost every day now, and she always talks about the time she spends with Yami. If Yami suddenly left, she'd probably feel really lonely."
'Shouldn't Yami's job be staying at the gate and standing guard?' Yuuji thought with a raised eyebrow, though in the end he decided he didn't really care.
At this point, Yami's so called "job" was more of a hobby. As his parents' adopted daughter and his younger sister, she also had access to all of their money.
Between that and being Tearju's daughter, Yami was a genuine second generation rich girl, both on Earth and across the galaxy.
"You don't have to worry about Mikan's safety at my company" Yuuji reassured him before joking. "Instead, you should worry about your own love life. Dating two people at the same time sounds pretty complicated. One wrong step could ruin everything.
And you love taking wrong steps."
Upon hearing that, not only Rito but also Haruna beside him, who had been quietly listening until now, turned completely red like tomatoes.
"U-um... I..."
"That's not..."
The only exception was Run, who didn't really care because her values were different from those on Earth.
"I honestly don't understand why you get so worked up over something like that" Run said casually. "Throughout the galaxy, polygamy is much more common than monogamy, especially for people in high positions like Rito if he marries me. Nobody would get upset because a king had two or three wives.
In fact, Yuuji, as the future king of the galaxy, you're the person with the highest possible limit on wives. Nobody would be upset even if you dated a hundred people at the same time."
"Seriously?" Risa asked in surprise.
"That's right" Yuuji confirmed. "But I'm not interested. I'm perfectly happy with my current life with one beautiful girlfriend."
"Hehe" Lala laughed proudly and happily while everyone else reacted in different ways after hearing that.
At that moment...
"The group in the back, one thing is continuing to talk, but not even going back to your seats is a little too shameless," the teacher who had arrived quite a while ago complained.
The group looked around and realized that the entire class was staring at them.
"W-when? How?" Yui asked in panic as she immediately hurried back to her seat, unable to understand how none of them had noticed either the teacher or the situation in the classroom.
"We were having fun, so I made it so you wouldn't notice" Lala smiled innocently as she deactivated one of her inventions.
It had to be said, creating an object that made you ignore everything happening outside a certain area instead of making people outside ignore you was quite a strange invention.
The group looked at her helplessly for only a second before, already used to her oddities, returning to their seats without saying anything.
'Hm? What's that person doing here?' Yuuji wondered as he looked at the teacher who had just scolded them.
Feeling a little annoyed and being rather childish, Yuuji had arranged for the teacher who used to constantly scold him when he first started attending school to be transferred elsewhere. Of course, he wasn't that unreasonable, so he made sure the transfer came with a promotion, a higher salary, and better working conditions than he had here.
[After the previous principal was arrested, the school underwent a thorough investigation and a complete reorganization of its teaching staff, leaving them short on personnel for a while.
The current teacher learned about the situation and decided to return. He was accepted after passing another background check.
Very responsible.]
The moment Mona heard his confusion, she explained everything immediately.
'Too responsible' Yuuji nodded, somewhat amused by the irony of the situation.
Besides him, Lala had also noticed the teacher.
"Yuuji, Yuuji, did you notice who it is?" she whispered excitedly as she leaned toward his ear.
"Yeah" Yuuji nodded. "It's because..."
"Yuuji, Deviluke, no matter how quietly you speak, it's pointless if you're leaning toward each other's ears that obviously, you know?" the teacher interrupted them. "Next time you'll receive a punishment."
""Sorry.""
Both apologized at the same time.
...
Much to Yuuji's relief, the school day finally came to an end.
The whole group had been far too clingy with him and Lala today, even trying to include him in conversations and activities when they normally just let him sleep through class. The obvious reason was that the two of them would be leaving for two months starting this weekend, and they would probably keep acting like this for the rest of the week.
'I should've told them on Friday' Yuuji sighed to himself as he leaned against the inner side of the school's outer wall.
Lala had already gone home, and he had left with her as well. However, he had left behind two avatars because there were two people he wanted to talk to before leaving, making sure everything was settled.
Naturally, the avatars were in different places so as not to alarm everyone by seeing two identical Yuujis at the same time.
After all, seeing Yuuji leave and then spotting him again could simply seem like a personal mistake, but having two Yuujis within the same field of vision would be far too difficult to explain without causing all sorts of unnecessary problems, exactly the kind Yuuji preferred to avoid.
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