Chapter 39: Aki Tomoya Tests the Waters!
The weekend ended, Mai left, and everything seemed to return to normal.
But once certain things had changed, there was no truly going back.
At Toyogasaki Academy, Utaha had originally planned to visit the doujin game club after school, explain the situation to Tomoya, and speak with Eriri while she was there.
Instead, Tomoya found her first.
The club had continued holding activities as usual, but Tomoya's creative enthusiasm had taken a serious hit.
The biggest reason was simple.
The atmosphere had changed ever since Michiru left.
Michiru was the composer he'd personally recruited, yet she'd simply walked away and hadn't even returned home.
After arguing with her over the phone, Tomoya stopped contacting her directly. Instead, he reached out to his aunt, hoping she could pressure Michiru into coming back.
That should have worked.
Yet somehow, the entire matter quietly died.
When Tomoya went out of his way to ask what had happened, the answer he received was that Michiru was staying at a classmate's house and actively rehearsing with her band, so she currently had no time to return.
By then, Tomoya understood.
The composer he'd chosen wasn't coming back.
If that had been the only problem, he could've forced himself to accept it.
Michiru hadn't officially joined his team yet, after all.
Losing her was unfortunate, but manageable.
The real problem was everything else.
Most noticeably, Utaha and Eriri had stopped arguing.
Tomoya had never counted how often they fought, but ever since the club formed, the two of them had bickered practically every time they met.
It had become part of the club's scenery.
Recently, however, that had vanished.
They could sit in the same room peacefully, but they barely spoke to one another anymore.
Something Tomoya had grown completely accustomed to had suddenly disappeared, and the absence left him strangely uneasy.
More than that, Utaha's calls to him had nearly been cut in half.
In the past, she would constantly drag him out for research, complain about her problems, ask for his impressions of her novels, and discuss plot developments with him.
Sometimes Tomoya had genuinely found it annoying, especially when it cut into his anime-watching or gaming time.
Yet now that all of it was gone, he couldn't adjust.
He had the vague feeling that something was slipping away from him.
After several restless days, Tomoya finally decided he needed an answer.
The reason he didn't ask her inside the clubroom was because he didn't want things becoming awkward and damaging Megumi's impression of the club.
Utaha, however, no longer cared much about any of that.
Even after noticing Tomoya's uneasy expression, she remained perfectly calm.
"Aki-kun, you came all this way to find me. What is it?"
Utaha spoke openly right outside the classroom without showing the slightest concern for Tomoya's feelings.
Even she found that surprising.
Apparently, once the rose-colored filter disappeared, Aki Tomoya didn't seem particularly different from anyone else.
For that, she genuinely had to thank Saku's thoughts.
Without them, she might still be trapped inside her own love-addled mindset, wasting years chasing the same person instead of steadily moving forward along the path she actually wanted.
Her gratitude toward Saku had already surpassed what she'd once felt toward Tomoya.
This time, however, Utaha had no intention of blindly falling in love again.
She would watch.
She would judge.
And when the timing was right, she would make her move.
Career and romance.
She wanted both.
"Utaha-senpai, can we talk somewhere else?"
Utaha didn't refuse.
Whatever Tomoya intended to say, meeting him early was convenient. She could use the opportunity to settle everything at once.
The two headed to the rooftop.
They'd met there many times before, but this time the relationship between them was completely different.
"Aki-kun?"
Utaha glanced at the time.
"You wanted to say something, didn't you? The break isn't very long."
"Aki..."
Tomoya hesitated.
"Utaha-senpai, you used to call me Tomoya."
That was true.
Utaha didn't feel embarrassed about it.
Their relationship had changed, so naturally the way she addressed him should change too.
"I simply realized that calling you Tomoya-kun was overly familiar."
"We aren't close enough for that anymore."
She looked at him calmly.
"If anything, the way I addressed you before was inappropriate."
"And if possible, I'd prefer you stop avoiding the actual subject with meaningless things like this."
Tomoya visibly flinched at her coldness.
Utaha had never treated him this way before.
"Utaha..."
"Wait."
She immediately cut him off.
"Senpai is fine. Or Utaha-senpai."
"If you insist on adding my name, use Kasumigaoka-senpai."
Her gaze sharpened.
"I'd rather you didn't address me by my given name."
Tomoya's expression darkened.
The sense of unfair treatment finally stirred his temper.
"Senpai, you've changed."
"You never used to act like this!"
He stepped forward.
"Tell me what's going on. Did someone pressure you into this?"
His emotions rose with every word, and Tomoya moved closer until he instinctively reached toward her.
Utaha immediately stepped back and knocked his hand aside before he could touch her.
"Aki-kun."
Her voice turned icy.
"If you want to talk, then talk."
"There's no need to put your hands on me."
Once Utaha began looking at him rationally, disappointment only grew.
'An emotional otaku.'
'How did I ever fall for someone like this?'
The more she thought about it, the more it felt as though she'd once been brainwashed.
Come to think of it, according to Saku's thoughts, Tomoya was supposedly a protagonist.
And protagonists had protagonist halos, inexplicable abilities that made girls fall for them for no good reason.
Maybe that really was what had happened to her.
"Sorry."
Utaha's cold stare immediately snapped Tomoya back to reality.
He instinctively took a step away and apologized.
"I just... want to know why."
"Why have you changed so much lately?"
His voice weakened.
"You don't argue with Eriri anymore. You don't ask me to go out for research. You don't ask what I thought about your novels, and you don't discuss your plots with me anymore."
"I just want to know why."
If Tomoya hadn't asked, Utaha might never have seriously examined it.
But the moment he did, all the memories she'd rather not revisit came rushing back.
So he had known.
He knew she and Eriri were constantly fighting.
He knew why Utaha kept asking him to accompany her.
He knew what all those requests for feedback and discussions actually meant.
Tomoya wasn't stupid.
And he wasn't oblivious.
He had simply grown accustomed to keeping himself in the most advantageous position while enjoying everything the girls around him gave him.
He understood.
He had always understood.
He merely pretended not to.
Just as Saku had said, aside from Megumi, everyone else was ultimately just a useful tool.
There was no need to care about a tool's feelings.
Only whether it remained useful.
And so Tomoya had comfortably accepted everything they gave him.
He used guilt and old favors like chains, keeping both Eriri and Utaha tied to him.
What mattered wasn't what those "tools" felt.
Only what those tools could provide.
"Heh."
Utaha let out a quiet, bitter laugh.
For a brief moment, sadness flashed through her eyes.
Then it vanished, leaving only freezing coldness behind.
"Then let me ask you something."
"Isn't it better that Eriri and I aren't fighting?"
"Isn't it better that I'm no longer constantly dragging you out for research, asking for your opinions, and wasting your time?"
Her gaze fixed firmly on him.
"Or did you enjoy the sense of importance it gave you?"
Tomoya stiffened.
Utaha's voice hardened.
"Aki Tomoya."
"I'm not some convenient tool you get to use whenever it suits you."
…