Chapter 11: The Besties’ Get-Together
Page (1/3)
After finishing the story of how they had met and started dating, everyone began to eat.
To Tsuki Yamabuki’s surprise, although everyone was behaving as usual, things did not unfold as she had expected.
For instance, she had thought they might question whether Sugawara Ryuichi was really her boyfriend, or try to determine how much he liked her by testing how well he knew her.
Instead, their questions were all harmless and showed no trace of hostility. On the contrary, they did their best to take Sugawara Ryuichi’s feelings into consideration, clearly unwilling to let him feel bored.
“Excuse me for a moment. I’m going to the restroom.”
After several courses had been served and the food on the table had gradually dwindled, Sugawara Ryuichi temporarily left the private room.
Everyone understood his departure and said nothing.
Clatter…
From the moment the sliding door opened until it closed again, the private room remained completely silent.
A dozen seconds passed. Once the girls were certain that Sugawara Ryuichi had gone far enough, they exchanged glances and eagerly began to speak.
“Come to think of it, Tsuki, would you and Sugawara count as a teacher-student romance?”
Miyagi Wakaba was the first to ask.
She had been holding that question in while Sugawara Ryuichi was there and was practically bursting with impatience.
“Of course not. I’m not his teacher.”
At the mention of a teacher-student romance, Tsuki Yamabuki shook her head without hesitation.
According to the premise of their fake relationship, Ryuichi was merely her junior at Waseda University.
Even setting that premise aside, she and Sugawara Ryuichi were not actually dating. Their relationship was nothing more than a rental arrangement.
“How many times have you gone on dates, Tsuki?”
“Probably more than eighty?”
“What about the number of times you’ve gotten a room?”
“Uh… more than seventy?”
Tsuki Yamabuki had not expected them to ask such a question, and she was genuinely stunned. After hesitating, she chose not to give them the exact number.
Although she and Sugawara Ryuichi had agreed on their answers beforehand, she was not so rigid as to repeat them mechanically. She knew how to adapt to the situation.
At a time like this, approximate figures were clearly more convincing than precise ones.
After all, these were rather sensitive and private matters. There was no need to go into excessive detail.
“How long have you two been together?”
“Three hundred and sixty-two days. It’ll be a full year in three days.”
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
“In other words, once every five days on average?”
“That number feels a little low…”
At this point, Mai Asai murmured thoughtfully to herself.
“Low?”
Tsuki Yamabuki was genuinely astonished by that assessment.
She had never been in a relationship and had no experience whatsoever. She truly knew nothing about such things.
“Of course it’s low. Considering your circumstances, it would be perfectly normal for you to go out and stay somewhere together every weekend.”
Before Mai Asai could answer, Miyagi Wakaba cut in first, nodding with absolute certainty.
“If my boyfriend were as handsome as Sugawara, I’d probably cling to him every day. And even putting his looks aside, you two are in the first year of your relationship, when people are still passionately in love. It’s perfectly normal to be all over each other every day.”
Risa Minamida agreed wholeheartedly.
A couple in the throes of passion, both around twenty and full of energy—how could they not spend every possible moment indulging in one another?
“…”
Mai Asai, who was rather secretly passionate and prone to letting her imagination run wild, said nothing. She merely fell into deep thought.
To be honest, the number seemed far too low. She could not help feeling that something was wrong.
Considering how handsome Sugawara Ryuichi was, and how skilled he was at flirting, yet how little time he spent with Tsuki… Could that guy be two-timing her?
“I can’t help it. My work as a teacher keeps me very busy, and he has to focus on his studies as well. We can only go on dates during weekends and holidays.”
Tsuki Yamabuki was beginning to lose track of their rhythm. To keep herself from being exposed, she had no choice but to find an explanation.
“Oh, right.”
The moment she heard that, Mai Asai suddenly understood. All her suspicions vanished in an instant.
She had been judging the matter from her own perspective and experience, which was why the figures had seemed strange. But if both Tsuki and Sugawara had their own responsibilities and could only spend time together on weekends and holidays, then the numbers made perfect sense.
After all, teaching was an exhausting profession, with extremely long working hours and enormous pressure.
As for a student at Waseda, one only had to think about it to know that the academic pressure must be immense. It was, after all, one of the country’s most prestigious universities.
Leaving those questions aside, the three girls also took the opportunity to voice the curiosities and doubts they had been harboring.
Tsuki Yamabuki had finally found a boyfriend—and one she had supposedly been with for an entire year. She was no longer the inexperienced outsider she had once been, so the three of them spoke without restraint.
After one question after another, some of them made Tsuki blush furiously. She realized that she had still vastly underestimated how uninhibited her friends could become when they were together.
Some of the questions were even more obscene than asking about body measurements—crude, brazen, and enough to make anyone’s face burn.
…
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
Meanwhile, after leaving the private room, Sugawara Ryuichi went to the restroom and then stopped by the front desk to pay the bill.
He was not paying for the meal out of his own pocket. Tsuki Yamabuki had covered the cost.
Ordinarily, the bill should have been split evenly. Everyone had jobs and could easily afford a meal, and dividing the cost would have been fairer.
But Tsuki Yamabuki felt guilty about deceiving her close friends. Beforehand, she had given Sugawara Ryuichi both the meal money and the rental fee, asking him to pay under the pretext that, as a first-time guest at their gathering, he wanted to show his appreciation.
[Tsuki Yamabuki’s heart began to race. Infatuation points +1]
[Tsuki Yamabuki’s heart began to race. Infatuation points +1]
“What’s going on?”
Sugawara Ryuichi was somewhat bewildered when he saw the system’s notifications while paying the bill. It felt as though money had suddenly fallen from the sky for no reason.
After only a brief moment of confusion, he quickly figured out what was happening.
Clearly, with the only man in the group having left, the private room had completely transformed into a gathering of close female friends.
Although he still did not fully understand how the system worked, after several hours of testing, he had managed to discern a few of its patterns.
The system’s criteria for a woman’s attraction during a date were remarkably lenient.
As long as a woman’s heart raced or she experienced a sudden flutter because of him, the system would generate infatuation points.
If his guess was correct, Tsuki Yamabuki’s three closest friends were asking her about matters unsuitable for children, and those questions had directly prompted her imagination to run wild.
Although receiving infatuation points without doing anything was certainly gratifying, Sugawara Ryuichi knew that Tsuki was currently under siege from the three girls and suffering terribly. After paying the bill, he decided to return as soon as possible.
Besides, there had to be limits to earning infatuation points in this manner.
Clatter!
Sugawara Ryuichi returned to the door of the private room and slid it open.
The three girls had noticed his approaching footsteps long ago, and with his return, they immediately put away their uninhibited expressions.
“I could hear all of you laughing from outside. What were you talking about?”
Sugawara Ryuichi sat down beside Tsuki Yamabuki and asked, despite already knowing the answer.
“Nothing much. Just some funny stories about Tsuki from when she was single.”
The three girls did not want to leave him with a bad impression, so they naturally kept the details to themselves and brushed him off with an excuse.
“Phew…”
At last, he had returned. Exhausted after being bombarded with one outrageous question after another, Tsuki Yamabuki let out a long breath of relief, overwhelmed by an intense sense of security.
Page (3/3)