Chapter 56: Are My Roast Point Rewards Getting Lower?
Peace finally returned to the dinner table, and everyone began eating.
Well, that wasn't entirely accurate.
Saku was the only one actually digging into his food with enthusiasm. Everyone else ate with almost exaggerated elegance, even Michiru and Saki.
It was as though some invisible competition had begun, and nobody wanted to be the first one to embarrass herself.
Even Futaba wasn't an exception.
Perhaps she'd been swept up by the atmosphere, or perhaps she was simply tense in an unfamiliar environment. Either way, she took small, restrained bites.
That naturally caught Saku's attention.
It wasn't particularly strange.
After all, if he looked around the table, Futaba was the only person still wearing a lab coat. She stood out from everyone else immediately.
「I was so busy helping Michiru finish the post-production and upload the video that I almost forgot we had a guest.」
「I didn't think much about it earlier, but now I'm curious. How did she even meet Mai?」
「If I remember correctly, Futaba Rio barely interacted with Mai in the original story. One was Azusagawa Sakuta's girlfriend and the other was his friend, but they almost never dealt with each other directly.」
「Since Futaba had no romantic storyline with Sakuta, they rarely met unless Sakuta deliberately went to see her. Futaba almost never contacted him first.」
「Strictly speaking, she's seriously socially anxious.」
Saku silently drew in a breath.
「If she's already met Mai, doesn't that mean Mai has met the male protagonist too?」
The thought immediately made something inside him tighten.
「Is this plot inertia? Or the world's will?」
「I've already interfered like a butterfly flapping its wings, and Mai never developed any direct connection with Azusagawa Sakuta. Yet somehow they've still met.」
「Then is it possible Mai and the male protagonist could eventually click anyway and then... Nope. I'm the one who steals people. Nobody gets to steal mine.」
Mai's chopsticks froze halfway to her plate.
Right now, she desperately wanted to tell Saku the truth.
What he was imagining simply wasn't going to happen.
There was no way she would fall for Azusagawa Sakuta.
Even if he was somewhat interesting...
'Damn it. Why do I think he's interesting at all?'
Perhaps Saku had spoken about the original story with too much certainty.
For the first time, even Mai herself felt slightly unsettled.
What if some mysterious force really could interfere with her and push her back toward the so-called original plot?
Adolescence Syndrome already proved supernatural phenomena existed.
If there were some other unknown force at work, it wouldn't exactly be impossible.
And Mai wasn't the only one who felt uneasy.
Every girl present had her own original storyline.
If Sakurajima Mai could somehow be influenced into following her original fate and falling in love with someone else...
What about them?
The idea alone was enough to make everyone uncomfortable.
「Anyway, I should keep in touch with Mai more often. Surely every time I call, she won't conveniently be 'getting her hair done' or 'out for a run.'」
「Worst case, I'll just video-call her. Better to be safe.」
「Azusagawa Sakuta has plenty of girls secretly interested in him anyway. He doesn't need Mai too.」
「Come to think of it, in the Rascal Does Not Dream anime I watched, Futaba Rio might've been the only girl who didn't like the male protagonist. Even Mai's younger sister had feelings for him.」
「Thinking about it, sister pairs are pretty sweet too. Right, not just Mai has a sister, Yukino does too. Two pairs of sisters... slurp, nope, can't think about that anymore!」
[Valid roast detected. Roast Points +60. Current total: 3,010.]
Yukino: 'Heh. Two pairs of sisters? You really dare to imagine anything, don't you? Fine. I'd love to see how you plan to bring the sister pairs home.'
Yui: 'Hiss I didn't hear anything. I didn't hear anything! Mai-senpai, please control your boyfriend!'
Megumi: 'Hmm... unfortunately, my older sister already has a boyfriend. What a shame. Sigh I'd really like to watch this drama unfold in person.'
The atmosphere at the table shifted again.
Saku didn't notice.
His attention had already moved elsewhere.
His Roast Points had finally broken past 3,000.
Another roughly 2,000 points and he'd be able to exchange them for an SSR-Rank Surprise Mystery Box.
Right now, Saku desperately needed a higher-level skill.
Something capable of helping him break through the technical bottlenecks slowing down the game.
He was so focused on it that he barely touched his food anymore.
Instead, he began digging through memories from his previous life, searching for anything else he could roast.
「Since Mai ended up with me, I haven't paid much attention to the Rascal Does Not Dream storyline lately. The original timeline clearly doesn't work properly in this world anymore.」
「But if the major events are still similar, Azusagawa Sakuta should be about to meet a 'Petite Devil Kohai.'」
All the girls: 'A little devil?!'
Everyone who could hear him was startled.
Did supernatural creatures actually exist in this world too?
Just imagining it made several of the girls uneasy.
Fortunately, it was merely a misunderstanding.
「Laplace's Demon. A demon from science.」
「If I remember correctly, the underclassman Sakuta is about to meet is Koga Tomoe, who develops that kind of Adolescence Syndrome.」
「The obvious symptom is getting trapped in the same period of time over and over again, creating a time loop.」
「At its core, she's extremely good at reading the room and anticipating how other people will react, which develops into something resembling predictions of the future.」
「But since this is Adolescence Syndrome, Azusagawa Sakuta naturally gets 'reasonably' dragged into it and even pretends to date her for a while.」
「And of course, it ends with the Petite Devil Kohai falling for the male protagonist. Classic formula. A little old-fashioned, maybe, but the hero saving the girl never really goes out of style.」
[Precise roast detected. Roast Points +150. Current total: 3,160.]
'That's it?'
Saku was surprised.
The reward from that Precise Roast seemed unusually low.
Roast Point gains had always fluctuated, but Precise Roasts generally paid much better.
And he'd just gone through a fairly substantial chunk of plot.
'Does the target actually need to be present?'
Most of his previous roasts had happened while the person involved was standing right there.
This time, however, none of the people he'd been talking about were present.
Could that be why the reward had dropped?
Saku wasn't sure.
But he could test the theory.
Koga Tomoe wasn't here.
In that case...
His gaze slowly shifted.
'You'll do, Futaba Rio.'
Futaba had already been bombarded by so much information that she'd begun feeling numb.
Then she suddenly noticed Saku looking at her like a hunter who had just spotted prey.
An ominous feeling immediately rose inside her.
Sure enough, his next thoughts were about her.
「Come to think of it, Futaba Rio also develops Adolescence Syndrome in the future. Let me think... I think hers was called a doppelganger.」
「Yeah. The same thing as that old urban legend. She literally splits into two separate Futaba Rios.」
「The duplicate inherits everything from the original Futaba, but their personalities end up almost completely opposite.」
「Nobody would expect that the rational, bespectacled Futaba secretly harbored a heart that wanted to become popular, sexy, and even be loved by others.」
「In that sense, her condition is actually somewhat similar to Mai's previous one.」
「Both of them have two extreme desires pulling in opposite directions inside their hearts, and that contradiction eventually triggers the syndrome.」
「For Futaba Rio, that internal tug-of-war becomes so severe that her sense of self effectively splits apart, creating the doppelganger.」
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