The afternoon sun cast long shadows from the platform roof. Only a few scattered students were there, looking down at their phones or books.
"Today... I arrived quite early."
Reina murmured softly, her tone not showing much surprise.
After all, she had basically jogged all the way here today, much faster than usual.
That's fine.
She could take advantage of this gap before the train arrived to reply to the messages from her friends.
After calming her breathing, which had become hurried from the fast walk, she tucked a few strands of pink hair that had scattered by her cheeks during the run behind her ear.
Then she took her phone out of her flat shoulder bag, skillfully unlocked it with her fingerprint, and tapped the icon for the chat software named "Line."
The numbers in the notification bar were as eye-catching as ever.
Hmm... it's packed.
Reina's gaze habitually swept over the avatars at the top of the chat list that flashed almost every day—the energetic one, the elegant and refined one, the gentle and quiet one, and the cold and bright one... She didn't dare look closely and quickly swiped past them.
She squeezed her eyes shut, as if to cheer herself up, and then decisively moved her gaze down to the unread messages from ordinary classmates further down the list.
Her eyes drifted slightly, but her fingers had already begun to move skillfully.
She opened one dialogue box after another, her brain acting like it was in multi-threaded processing mode, quickly weaving together sentences for replies.
Most of the classmates' messages were relatively simple.
"Can you share the main points the teacher covered in class today?"
"How do you do the second question of the math homework?"
For these, Reina was already well-versed.
She only needed to reply with a concise answer, or attach a friendly sticker, and then exchange a few simple pleasantries like "Good luck to you too" or "See you tomorrow" to easily resolve it, maintaining an image of a classmate who was a bit busy but still easy to talk to.
However, there were always a few messages that weren't so easy to deal with.
For example, an invitation from a classmate she wasn't particularly close to, asking about "going to the newly opened theme cafe together this weekend."
The message was followed by several excited and expectant emojis.
To be honest, Reina really wanted to reply straightforwardly: "Sorry, I'm not in a good mood today or this weekend, I really don't feel like going out, you guys have fun."
But unfortunately, such a blunt refusal, bordering on rudeness, was absolutely out of the question.
There was no choice; after all, reading the air and maintaining surface harmony was a necessary social skill for a high school girl.
If they were really close, the kind of best friends who could complain to each other with "I'm just feeling like trash today, don't bother me" and the other wouldn't mind at all, then it wouldn't be a problem.
But when facing an ordinary friend or acquaintance who was neither close nor distant, refusal became an art that required careful handling.
The core principle was: don't say it directly.
You had to let the other person guess, to feel it, or simply find another reason that sounded reasonable and wouldn't hurt the other person's feelings to politely decline.
Like "What a coincidence, I already have something planned with my family this weekend," or "Ah, that sounds great! But I already have another appointment this weekend, definitely next time!" and so on.
Anyway, you just couldn't say straightforwardly "I don't want to go," "I'm not that close to you," or "Get lost, I want to be alone."
That would immediately get you labeled as "difficult to get along with," "unsociable," or "rude," making you a "dangerous person" to be around.
Reina didn't want to become that kind of image.
Although some corner of her heart might be longing for complete isolation without the need for disguise, but...
She was even less willing to open a group chat late at night and see her name followed by an ambiguous sentence like, "That girl is a bit... unsettling."
Ah... although she sometimes hated her current forced socialite state, finding it hypocritical and exhausting, she still had to grit her teeth and maintain the necessary surface-level effort.
In the end, her original wish was just to make her high school life a bit easier and more ordinary, not to completely become a loner who was isolated, talked about, and had to face all eyes alone...
...Wait.
Loner?
Her brain seemed to suddenly connect to a dusty circuit, and a white figure that was out of place with the noise suddenly appeared in Reina's mind.
Right... she almost forgot about Rin.
During lunch, she had rejected her somewhat rudely like that, and she had thought about apologizing later...
As a result, she had been immersed in her own thoughts all afternoon and completely put this matter out of her mind!
Her hand, which had already finished replying to all the necessary messages and was hovering over the exit button intending to close Line, suddenly paused.
Her fingertip swiped on the screen, the page jumped quickly, and stopped at an inconspicuous position in the contact list.
A chat page with a pure white background as an avatar and the remark name simply written as Rin.
The chat history was sparse, with only the greeting message automatically generated by the system when they first added each other as friends, and... a completely empty follow-up.
How should she say it?
Just say sorry directly?
No, no, no, no... that would be too bizarre.
The other person might not think there was anything to apologize for at all. If she suddenly said something like that, she would probably be treated as a weirdo whose brain had some wires crossed.
...Ah, although if she thought about it carefully, did her, Reina's, current image in Fujimori Girls Academy have anything to do with the word "normal" in the first place?
"A mysterious eye-of-the-storm figure who is closely related to several school celebrities and is chased and intercepted all day long"?
This self-mockery made her feel a sense of powerless exhaustion.
She stared at the blank dialogue box, her thumb hovering over the virtual keyboard for a long time, but she couldn't type a single word.
The words for an apology were organized and then dismantled in her mind; she always felt that no matter how she said it, it would seem strange and forced.
"The train is already here."
A voice with little variation in pitch came from a position slightly close to her side without warning, piercing through the slightly noisy background of the platform and falling clearly into Reina's ears.
"Ah... oh... thanks for the reminder." Reina responded with the habitual constraint of being suddenly addressed, not even having time to look up to see who was speaking.
Her gaze was still glued to the agonizing blank dialogue box on the phone screen.
"Is it already here... I didn't even notice..."
As she spoke, she raised her head somewhat sluggishly and looked toward the tracks.
The train was indeed slowly decelerating, preparing to enter the station.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she belatedly caught the familiar quiet figure beside her.
The short white hair was particularly eye-catching in the light and shadow cast by the platform roof, and even the lines of her profile were incredibly exquisite.
The other person also seemed to be looking at the direction of the incoming train and wasn't specifically staring at her.
Her brain's processor finally successfully matched the voice with the image, and Reina's body stiffened slightly, her eyes widening.
"Rin...?!"
[Aiya, scared me to death! Although Rin's voice acting is nice and her modeling is quite good, this isn't a reason to pop up like a wraith every single time!]
[Maybe... she's stalking?]
[If it were before, I would definitely say you're overthinking it, and Treasure Rin just simply likes to walk quietly by herself and has a light voice, but now, I can only say I can't say for sure.]
She really was stalking.
Reading the chaotic bullet screen in front of her, Rin gave her own answer in her heart.
From the moment she left the teaching building, she had maintained a distance that was neither too far nor too close—just enough not to trigger the target's alertness, but also ensuring she wouldn't be shaken off—trailing behind Reina and watching her walk hurriedly with her head down like a startled small animal.
There was no other way; who told the scene she and Yui performed in the corridor during lunch break to have such good data?
It directly boosted her ranking, which was originally precarious on the popularity chart, all the way to sixth place in one go.
And the system's back-end evaluation of her character's "level of attention" and "plot influence" also rose accordingly, from an originally minor supporting character to the current level of a major supporting character.
This meant she now had more screen time opportunities and higher narrative priority...
Now, there was probably only one thought repeatedly surging in Rin's mind.
And that was—more scenes! Give me more scenes!
The audience loved it, the data was soaring, and the opportunity was rare.
Therefore, actively creating reasonable encounters and promoting natural interactions was her most core and professional mission at this moment as the character Rin.
She turned her head slightly, appearing as if she had only just noticed the other person's existence because of Reina's exclamation.
Her azure eyes turned calmly toward Reina, clearly reflecting the other's currently flustered and slightly embarrassed face.
"Mm." She gave an extremely light response, acknowledging her identity and responding to the other's call.
Then, her gaze seemed to inadvertently sweep toward the phone in Reina's hand, which still had a lit screen staying on a blank chat interface, and then she quickly looked away, falling back onto the slowly stopping train.
"The doors are opening," she reminded, her voice still flat, showing no particular emotion.
There was no need to care too much.
She just happened to appear here, happened to be going in the same direction, happened to see a friend who was spacing out, and then, happened to give a reminder out of basic kindness...
That was all.