"Help me get the collar off."
Kaguya turned her body slightly to the side and lifted her hair, revealing her snow-white, slender neck.
"Leave it to me."
Chika accepted the task enthusiastically, aligned the key with the lock—click—and with no complications whatsoever, easily opened the collar.
"Phew..."
Kaguya let out a quiet breath of relief.
The loyal boyfriend plan ends here!
As Confucius wisely said: do not do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself.
If she herself didn't want to wear a collar, naturally she wouldn't force Natsuki to wear one either. No normal person would enjoy becoming someone else's pet!
"So it really was that simple."
Natsuki muttered to himself as he looked at Mr. Billy.
So the car key shape hadn't been a coincidence after all—it was a silent hint.
Sometimes you couldn't overthink things. The simplest, most straightforward solution was right before your eyes.
By this point, the players had already begun eating their food.
The most disgusting food belonged to the humiliated miss: wood sorrel and protein. The second-most disgusting was the skinned frog.
The player eating the skinned frog was the other male aside from Natsuki. His expression twisted in anguish, teeth clenched, as he bit into one of the frog's hind legs. He chewed twice, barely breaking it down, then threw his head back sharply and forced it down his throat in one gulp.
The facts proved that, when faced with the threat of death, people really would do anything.
Natsuki looked at Kaguya—arms folded stubbornly across her chest, completely unmoved, clearly determined not to eat a single bite—and suddenly had an idea. He turned to Mr. Billy:
"Mr. Butler, is it possible to give one's food to someone else?"
"Of course." Mr. Billy's voice was perfectly composed. "Whether you eat your dinner, don't eat it, or let someone else eat it—it's entirely up to the guest."
"Then there's no problem." Chika's eyes lit up. She quickly pushed her plate over. "Kaguya-chan, let's swap and eat each other's... "
Looking at the longhorn beetle larvae on the plate, the pink-haired girl quickly covered her mouth: "W-wait, I meant—I'll give you half."
Eating live, bursting grubs raw? Even a foodie girl like her absolutely could not bring herself to do it.
Natsuki picked up a blueberry and popped it into his mouth.
The surface of the blueberry was wrapped in a layer of frozen frost. Biting down produced a satisfying crunch—exceptionally cold, with almost no flavor whatsoever.
As Natsuki ate, he kept an eye on his quest panel.
After swallowing the blueberry, the countdown did indeed increase—but only by a few short minutes. Even if he ate an entire plate of blueberries, the countdown would extend by an hour at most.
"Here."
Natsuki simply pushed the plate of blueberries toward the humiliated miss, then casually took the wood sorrel and protein platter for himself.
Seeing the complex look in the humiliated miss's eyes, Natsuki said offhandedly:
"I still have plenty of time left on my countdown. Whether or not I eat the blueberries doesn't matter. You, on the other hand, need to get your countdown back up as quickly as possible... even if you don't eat them, you should have enough time anyway."
Kaguya pressed her pink lips together lightly. Seeing Natsuki's gaze clear and steady, his resolve firm—no trace of reluctance or hesitation—she finally nodded gently in agreement: "I understand."
"Foolish human." The werewolf miss, whose wrist was still firmly held by Natsuki, couldn't move—but her speech was completely unaffected. She mocked: "Knowing full well the importance of food, you hand it over to someone else without a second thought. The emotions you humans have are utterly incomprehensible."
"Possessing complex emotions is one of the hallmarks of higher animals." Natsuki answered in a measured, unhurried tone.
"From my perspective, it's nothing but foolishness." The werewolf miss let out a light huff. "Staying alive is everything. Once you're dead, there's nothing left."
Natsuki reached out and patted the werewolf miss on the head. Her fur was silky smooth—the sensation was excellent: "That's exactly why you're just a werewolf."
"How dare you pat my head!" The werewolf miss erupted in fury. "I'm going to eat you!"
"I'm sorry. I refuse." Natsuki pointed at the plate before him. "This wood-sorrel-wrapped protein looks quite good. Would you like to try some?"
"Werewolves don't eat weeds and bugs!"
"..."
"Kaguya-chan, let's swap." Chika pushed her dried fruit over and took a blueberry in return. She quickly wrinkled her little face. "...It doesn't taste good. The flavor is completely different from blueberry jam."
Of course it's different!
Blueberry jam has a ton of additives in it—it barely has anything to do with actual blueberries anymore. It's just like mung bean powder: the powder ground from mung beans is actually yellow, but in the eyes of ordinary people, mung bean powder must be green. So nowadays, all the mung bean powder sold contains edible coloring to dye it the "right" color!
Kaguya ate a blueberry, her expression calm: "...I've never eaten blueberries before. I don't know what they're supposed to taste like."
"Eh, Kaguya-chan has never had blueberries before?"
"No."
"I haven't either." Kotoriyū Rokka, seated beside Chika, tilted her head to look at them both, the ahoge atop her head swaying gently.
Kaguya passed her a blueberry: "Try one."
"Thank you, Kaguya-chan." Kotoriyū Rokka accepted it as though preparing for battle, her expression grave. "It looks way prettier than a tomato."
After realizing the maids and Mr. Billy wouldn't restrict their movements, Chika quickly grew restless. She stood and began swapping food with the others.
"Hiyori-chan, let's swap?"
The girl named Hiyori's face lit up with flattered delight. She thanked her gratefully: "Thank you, Chika."
The food on her plate was some kind of unidentifiable tree bark. Whether it tasted good or not wasn't even a question that needed asking.
"Yukino-chan, let's swap too."
Chika worked tirelessly to spread her light to everyone.
Under the pink-haired girl's efforts, the atmosphere at the table grew noticeably livelier. Some players began making the best of a bad situation, swapping food with one another.
Fujiwara Mom—her reputation was well-earned.
The Last Supper concluded quickly. Apart from the food that was genuinely impossible to swallow, everyone's countdown had increased to varying degrees.
"It's so hot." A stranger player raised their right hand and wiped their forehead with the back of it. "Just eating a little food, and I'm already sweating."
"That's so strange. We were freezing to death earlier. How did it suddenly get so hot?"
"Something feels off."
"..."
"We're done eating... what do we do now?"
A stranger girl asked quietly.
Chika lowered her head and looked at Mr. Billy: "Mr. Butler, are there any other activities planned?"
"I'm afraid there is only the dinner." Mr. Billy's tone was meaningful. "What follows is free time."
"Eh, that's it?"
One of the players sounded surprised.
They'd thought this was the Last Supper—that after eating, it would be time to depart. But nothing had happened at all?
"It's more accurate to say things are only just beginning." Natsuki glanced at the frost that had, at some point, spread all the way into the dining hall. He then looked at Kaguya and suddenly asked: "How can we prove that the world we're in isn't real?"