Date: April 7, 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 7:50 PM
Location: Intersection
"What do you usually do for fun?" Ogawa asked, taking a sip of water. "Do you have any hobbies?"
The conversation drifted. It naturally detached from the Leo variable and school parameters. It entered the terrifying, unstructured territory of casual small talk.
Albert gripped the cold plastic bottle. He ran a quick, desperate filter on his vocabulary. He could not use technical terms here. If he spoke his internal monologue out loud, she would instantly label him a weirdo. He needed to sound like a normal high school boy.
"I just read manga," Albert said flatly. "And watch anime."
He braced himself for the standard negative social reaction.
But Ogawa didn't laugh or look at him weirdly.
She just nodded, her eyes bright with genuine interest, and mentioned a popular fantasy anime she sometimes watched on weekends. They exchanged a few sentences about the plot structure. The back-and-forth exchange was steady and calm.
Albert felt a silent sigh of relief because he is talking to someone who is not criticizing his hobby of anime and manga.
"Do you like sweets?" Ogawa asked next. "Like cookies or chocolates?"
"I prefer bitter things," Albert answered, keeping his words grounded. "Dark chocolate. Black coffee. But I eat regular sweets when I'm studying. Brain food."
Ogawa laughed. "I get that. What about pets? I have a really loud golden retriever at home."
"No pets," Albert said. "But I like cats. They mind their own business."
"Cats are great! They really just do their own thing," she agreed with a bright smile.
The conversation flowed. Albert realized that as long as he kept his answers short and didn't overthink the variables, his social anxiety remained perfectly quarantined. It was just a normal chat.
Then, a soft electronic chime interrupted the quiet moment.
Ogawa pulled her smartphone from her uniform pocket. The bright green logo of the Lime messaging app lit up her screen. She quickly read the notification, and her face brightened. She looked back up at Albert.
"I have to go meet someone," she said, giving a small, polite bow. "Thank you for explaining things to me, and thanks for the chat, Atherton-san. See you at school!"
She quickly walked away, disappearing into the dense pedestrian traffic heading toward the station.
Albert stood alone on the sidewalk, holding the cold bottle of water.
He looked down at the plastic bottle.
He had just held a proper, sustained conversation with a cute girl. He hadn't frozen in panic. He hadn't used strange terminology. He hadn't humiliated himself like he did in the hallway this morning.
He had completely bypassed his own social barrier. For a self-proclaimed loner, this was a massive anomaly. A real milestone.
He took a slow drink of the cold water.
I hope I can trigger another anime trope, a legendary romcom scenario.
He felt strangely lighter.
But as the adrenaline of the interaction finally wore off, the exhaustion hit him like a physical weight.
The mathematical processing of the crowd, the medical emergency, the shock of the seventh Tendo, and the sheer focus required to act normal around Ogawa Sakura had drained his stamina completely.
If he went back to his quiet house right now, his mind would have no external data to process. It would just loop back to the image of Leo and Maya who look perfect together. He needed external noise. He needed a specific environment to force his system to shut down and relax.
He needed something that will make him forget thinking logically for at least few minutes to rest his mind.
A maid cafe.
Albert was not a hardcore otaku. He enjoyed anime and manga, but he did not obsess over the culture.
However, he understood the psychological mechanics of a maid cafe. It was an environment engineered specifically to simulate unconditional positive attention, triggering a predictable release of dopamine and serotonin.
Right now, he needed that artificial magic.
He turned away from the main road and began walking. He did not use a map application. The location he was heading to did not exist on regular maps. It was an exclusive, unadvertised sanctuary built only for hardcore otaku.
The owners deliberately hid it to filter out casual tourists and maintain a pure, isolated atmosphere.
Albert had found it during first year of middle school, purely as a mental exercise. He had spent an entire night decoding a series of complex alphanumeric ciphers posted on an anonymous underground forum.
The decrypted data gave him exact walking coordinates from the main intersection.
He executed the route perfectly. It required ten complicated turns through the city's backstreets. He walked down a narrow alleyway, turned left at a broken vending machine, and took a right past a closed laundromat. He slipped through a narrow gap between two rusted chain-link fences, navigated a damp corridor behind a row of restaurants, and made six more precise turns.
Albert calculated, mentally tracking his coordinates.
The spatial design is brilliant. It functions as a physical firewall. By structuring the approach path as a high-complexity labyrinth, the owners have reduced the probability of accidental foot traffic to absolute zero. Only a user with the correct decryption key can locate the server.
He reached a dead end. He was facing an unmarked, solid steel door. It looked exactly like the service entrance to a boiler room.
Albert reached out and pushed the heavy metal open.
The transition was immediate. The cold, gritty reality of the alley completely vanished. A small brass bell jingled above him, and the warm, thick scent of sweet vanilla and fried eggs hit him instantly.
"Welcome home, Master!"
A chorus of bright, high-pitched voices called out in perfect unison. It was not just a standard restaurant greeting.
The maids standing near the entryway projected a highly engineered aura of absolute, unconditional acceptance.
Their smiles were perfectly calibrated to show pure joy at his arrival. Their posture, their tone, and the pastel lighting around them all radiated a comforting, bright energy designed to instantly disarm a person's social defenses.
To the socially exhausted and lonely customers, stepping through that heavy steel door and being hit by that cheerful aura felt exactly like stepping out of a freezing storm into a warm, safe room.
Albert stepped inside. The room was dimly lit with pink and warm yellow lights. Every customer in the room was a male wearing glasses, oversized jackets, or anime merchandise.
Nobody was talking to each other. They were all sitting alone, quietly enjoying the absolute safety of their secret base.
Albert found an empty table in the corner and sat down. He pulled his menu open. He wasn't actually hungry.
He had already consumed a dense, 400-calorie nutrient bar between classes to maintain his biological energy levels. But the purchase of food was the required transaction to initiate the psychological service. It was like a ritual.
He ordered the standard omurice.
A few minutes later, a maid approached his table holding a plate of yellow eggs and a bottle of ketchup. She was wearing a frilly, exaggerated French maid outfit with a large white bow on her chest.
"Here is your special omurice, Master!" the maid chirped, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. She uncapped the ketchup. "What would you like me to draw for you today?"
"A perfectly symmetrical pentagram, please," Albert replied blankly.
The maid giggled, expertly ignoring his weird request, and quickly drew a cute, slightly lopsided cat face with the red ketchup.
"Now," the maid said, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. She leaned in close, closing one eye in an exaggerated wink. "To make it super delicious, we have to cast a magic spell together! Please make your hands into a heart shape, Master!"
Albert stared at her. The sheer social embarrassment of the action was immense. However, he knew the rules of the environment. Refusing to participate would break the simulation and ruin the data output.
With a completely deadpan expression, Albert raised his hands and formed a stiff, rigid heart shape with his fingers.
The maid beamed. She raised her own hands, forming a heart, and began to chant loudly.
"Ready? Kira-kira, pika-pika! Catch my fluffy pure love beam! Make it super-duper delicious! Moe, moe... kyun!"
She pushed her heart-shaped hands forward, miming the action of shooting a magical beam directly into his omelet.
Albert watched the ketchup cat. The ridiculousness of the situation, the absolute absurdity of a high school boy casting a fluffy love beam at an egg, finally bypassed his logical filters.
A small wave of genuine amusement washed over him. The tension in his chest loosened.
He felt the magic. The environmental therapy was working perfectly.
Albert looked up from the omelet to politely thank the maid.
He looked at her face. He looked at her eyes.
Then, he noticed a familiar figure.
Albert calculated, his eyes widening slightly behind his glasses. He finally recognized her because of a specific unique feature.
Oh! Wait, That hair...
At that exact same second, the maid stopped smiling.
Her eyes finally registered the face of the boy sitting across from her.
The cheerful, professional "moe" expression instantly shattered. Her mouth dropped open in absolute, horrifying shock. The bottle of ketchup in her hand trembled.
He looks familiar to her. She recognized him.
They sat in the same classroom.