Ayanokoji wrapped his arms around Ryunosuke's legs and held on, his expression completely blank.
"I was wrong."
He deeply regretted what he had said. He should never have ended things with Ryunosuke. This person was a rare and irreplaceable asset. How could he have been so irrational as to say something like that?
Ryunosuke kept the same flat expression, walking forward and dragging Ayanokoji along with him, still attached to his legs. "Didn't you say you wanted to end our friendship? I'm granting your wish. Let go."
"No. I can't live without you." Ayanokoji replied without inflection, as though Ryunosuke were his entire world. From a certain angle, that was technically accurate. He was the most valuable asset Ayanokoji had.
Manabu, watching this display from the side, felt a deep, bone-level exhaustion wash over him. "Are you two done? This is the student council room."
Ryunosuke and Ayanokoji turned to look at him at exactly the same moment and answered in perfect unison, both utterly expressionless.
"Mind your own business. (x2)"
"Stay out of it. (x2)"
Manabu: 😐
He let out a very long sigh and gave up. He returned to his seat at the council president's desk and resumed his daily work, choosing to pretend the two of them didn't exist.
In truth, he had been meaning to ask whether the rumor about Ryunosuke and the chairman's daughter, Sakayanagi, was real. His reason was straightforward: before he graduated, he intended to place his younger sister Suzune in Ryunosuke's care.
Suzune had a way of rubbing people the wrong way without meaning to, and as her older brother, he couldn't leave with a clear conscience if she was going to be alone. If Ryunosuke was looking out for her, Manabu wouldn't mind acknowledging him as a brother-in-law.
He was essentially trying to find a good man to marry his sister off to, and Ryunosuke felt like the right match. It all depended on what Suzune wanted, of course.
As for competing with the chairman's daughter, Manabu thought everyone had their own strengths to bring. He didn't consider his sister to be at any disadvantage.
Suzune had her personality quirks, certainly, but she was in far better physical condition than Arisu, who had a heart problem. That condition had to limit what Arisu could offer Ryunosuke in certain respects, and that was where Suzune held the clear advantage.
Manabu had considered every angle. His sister couldn't lose.
The one thing he had failed to account for was that Ryunosuke didn't have just one girlfriend. It hadn't crossed his mind for a single moment that this unremarkable-looking young man was, in fact, a devoted favorite of a rather startling number of women.
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Once they were out of the student council room, Ryunosuke and Ayanokoji dropped the act. Neither of them had any real intention of ending their friendship. As far as Ryunosuke was concerned, it had just been two friends giving each other a hard time. For Ayanokoji, though, there had been a genuine moment of panic, a fear of losing the one person most useful to him against his father.
After sending Ayanokoji off, Ryunosuke looked at the four love letters in his hands and felt a dull pain settle behind his eyes. He could put the others aside for now, but not Haruka's. Inside her letter, Airi had written that she had already given the two of them her blessing.
He decided to see Haruka first. The other three would have to wait.
◆━⊰✿✧✿⊱━◆
On the garden bench, Haruka was waiting patiently. She knew that with Airi's blessing already in hand, all she had to do now was win him over. She had held back before out of respect for her best friend's feelings, but that was finished now. She could chase this openly.
Haruka felt entirely confident. Her mother was a cover model and a star in the entertainment world, a woman who had perfected the art of keeping men absolutely captivated without ever quite letting them have what they wanted, so thoroughly that they would do anything for her. Haruka had inherited that gift. She only needed to be herself.
Ryunosuke arrived at the garden with Haruka's letter in hand. Sitting on the bench was a beautiful figure with blue hair, waiting in the last light of the afternoon as yellowed leaves drifted down around her. She stood out against all of it, strikingly lovely.
She really was beautiful, and Ryunosuke felt his heart respond to it honestly. With Airi's blessing behind him, there was nothing holding him back. He had already heard how the meeting between his five "wives" had gone, and he still felt faintly amazed he hadn't been skinned alive. He had even briefly considered disappearing from the school entirely.
Still, when had Haruka started feeling this way about him? He couldn't place a specific memory. Had it been back when he helped patch things up between her and Airi?
He walked up and stood before her, blocking the sunlight falling on her face. Sensing the shadow, Haruka knew who had come. She prepared to deploy everything she had learned from her mother, the full technique of a proper successor to a certified enchantress.
She stood, brought her face close to his, hands folded behind her back, and smiled brightly. "Let's go on a date."
"Sorry, what?" Ryunosuke hadn't caught up yet.
◆━⊰✿✧✿⊱━◆
They were at the cinema. Haruka had changed into a light blue floral dress with a warm white fur coat and a small brown crossbody bag, an outfit she had clearly prepared specifically for this occasion.
Ryunosuke, for his part, was still in his school uniform. The Advanced Nurturing High School uniform was high quality and perfectly wearable day to day, though the green trousers had always bothered him slightly, so he had swapped them for black jeans to make the look work a little better together.
Inside the cinema, Haruka linked her arm through his as naturally as if they had always been a couple. The way she pressed close gave him no space to retreat, and a very specific softness made itself known against his arm.
Ryunosuke thought to himself: (Large. Genuinely large. Not ordinary by any measure.)
He felt his nose getting warm and tilted his head sharply upward to keep anything from happening.
Haruka noticed the reaction and felt deeply, privately satisfied. She had complete faith in her secret advantage. Across the entire school, no one could rival her in that department. She and Airi held first and second place respectively, with her in the lead.
She kept her expression entirely innocent as she browsed the listings.
"Let me see, let's watch this one! Titanic!" she announced with enthusiasm.
Ryunosuke pointed at a different poster. "I'm going to watch Godzilla. Let's meet up after both films are done."
And with that, he walked off toward the Godzilla theater. As far as he was concerned, Godzilla was the obvious choice. Who would voluntarily sit through Titanic?
Haruka stood frozen.
How had this man failed to follow the most basic script of a cinema date?