The Monday following the disastrous gang standoff and Claude's subsequent, insane declaration of Ren and Chitoge's "romance" dawned with an oppressive sense of dread for Ren Takakura. Walking into Kuoh Academy felt less like entering a place of learning and more like stepping onto a particularly hostile stage, the spotlight glaring, and his script consisting of two words: "Act natural." A task made monumentally more difficult by the fact that nothing about his current situation was remotely natural.
His new "girlfriend," Chitoge Kirisaki, was waiting for him at the school gates, as per Claude's meticulously detailed (and utterly terrifying) instructions, which had been delivered to Ren via a stern-looking Beehive messenger who looked like he could snap Ren in half with his pinky finger. Chitoge's expression was a carefully constructed mask of… something. It wasn't quite friendly, not by a long shot. It was more like a strained, polite neutrality, the kind one might adopt when forced to interact with a particularly unpleasant species of insect one was not allowed to swat. Her piercing blue eyes, however, held a glint of pure, unadulterated animosity that she clearly couldn't quite suppress.
"Takakura," she greeted him, her voice tight, as if each word was being physically dragged out of her. "You're late. By two minutes."
"Sorry," Ren mumbled, instinctively taking a small step back. She looked like a coiled viper, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. "My, uh, alarm clock was… slow." Even to his own ears, it sounded pathetic.
"Try to be more punctual, 'darling'," she said, the endearment dripping with enough sarcasm to etch glass. She then, to Ren's utter horror, made a move as if to link her arm with his. It was a jerky, unnatural motion, telegraphed well in advance, giving Ren ample time to flinch away as if she were about to administer an electric shock.
Chitoge froze, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "Are you… afraid to touch me?" she hissed, her voice dangerously low.
"No! Not at all!" Ren squeaked, then, realizing how that might be misinterpreted, quickly added, "I mean, yes, a little! I mean… it's just very… sudden!" He was flailing, verbally and probably physically, looking like an idiot.
From the corner of his eye, Ren spotted Tsugumi Seishirou, Chitoge's ever-present bodyguard, lurking near a cherry blossom tree, her arms crossed, her expression one of intense, focused disapproval. She looked less like a fellow student and more like a highly trained operative assessing a particularly volatile and unpredictable target – him. Every time Ren even breathed in Chitoge's general direction, Tsugumi seemed to tense, as if ready to neutralize him with extreme prejudice. It was not conducive to a relaxed learning environment. Or a relaxed anything, really.
Their walk through the school corridors to their classroom was an excruciating exercise in forced proximity and awkward silence, punctuated only by the hushed whispers and pointed stares of their fellow students. The entire student body, it seemed, had heard about the "new couple" – the quiet, perpetually stressed Ren Takakura and the fiery, intimidatingly beautiful transfer student, Chitoge Kirisaki. The news had spread like wildfire, fueled by the sheer, mind-boggling improbability of it all. It was the juiciest piece of gossip Kuoh Academy had seen in years.
"They're… holding hands?" someone whispered, loud enough for Ren to hear. They weren't. Not even close. Ren was maintaining a carefully calibrated six-inch buffer zone between himself and Chitoge at all times, a personal space violation exclusion field that Chitoge seemed equally keen to enforce from her side.
"He looks terrified," another commented, not inaccurately.
"She looks like she's going to eat him," a third voice chimed in, also hitting disturbingly close to the mark.
Kosaki Onodera, bless her kind, innocent soul, approached them near their classroom, her expression a mixture of profound confusion and gentle concern. "Takakura-kun? Kirisaki-san? Um… congratulations?" she offered tentatively, her eyes darting between Ren's miserable face and Chitoge's stony expression. "It was… quite a surprise to hear the news."
"Thank you, Onodera-san," Chitoge managed, her voice surprisingly polite, though the smile she attempted looked more like a grimace of pain. "We're… very happy." She punctuated this statement with a swift, sharp jab of her elbow into Ren's ribs, a not-so-subtle command to back her up.
"Ecstatic!" Ren yelped, clutching his side. "Never been happier! So much… happiness! Right, Chito-chan?" He even managed a weak, trembling smile in her direction. The nickname, which had slipped out in a moment of sheer panic during the gang confrontation, felt even more ridiculous and dangerous now.
Chitoge's eye twitched. "Yes, Ren-kun," she said through gritted teeth, the honorific sounding like a curse. "Pure bliss."
Reborn, naturally, was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. He had taken to accompanying Ren to school, usually disguised as an inanimate object in Ren's bag (a particularly hard textbook today, judging by the way it kept digging into Ren's spine) or sometimes, much to Ren's mortification, simply allowing Ren's mother to drop him off at the school gates, where he would then proceed to "observe" Ren's social interactions with the critical eye of a seasoned field commander assessing a disastrous training exercise. To everyone else, of course, he was just Ren's adorable, if unusually perceptive, baby brother/charge.
"Excellent emotional control, Dame-Ren," Reborn's voice had chirped telepathically in Ren's mind earlier that morning (a new and deeply unwelcome skill Reborn had apparently decided to develop, further violating Ren's already non-existent personal space). "You're radiating the authentic terror of a condemned man. Very convincing. For the 'condemned man' part, anyway. The 'in love' part needs considerable work. Try not to look like you're about to throw up every time she gets within a five-foot radius. It's bad for the image."
The school day was a blur of forced smiles, stilted conversations, and the constant, oppressive weight of scrutiny. Every shared glance, every accidental brush of shoulders (which Ren actively tried to avoid as if Chitoge were radioactive), every moment they were seen in public together was analyzed and dissected by the student body. Lunch was a particular ordeal. They were expected to eat together. Chitoge sat ramrod straight, picking at her food with meticulous disdain, while Ren mostly stared at his rice, occasionally making what he hoped were appropriate boyfriend-like noises of agreement whenever Chitoge deigned to make a cutting remark about the quality of the cafeteria food, the weather, or his general existence.
His only solace was the brief moments he could snatch with Kosaki, usually when Chitoge was distracted by one of her few reluctant admirers or Tsugumi was busy glaring daggers at some perceived threat across the cafeteria. Kosaki, though clearly still bewildered by the sudden turn of events, remained a steadfast beacon of kindness.
"Are you… are you sure you're alright, Takakura-kun?" she'd asked, her brow furrowed with genuine concern, during one such brief reprieve. "You seem… even more stressed than usual. And Kirisaki-san… she doesn't seem very… happy, for someone who's supposedly in a new relationship."
"It's, uh, complicated, Onodera-san," Ren had mumbled, the understatement of the millennium. "We're just… a very private couple. With very strong, sometimes conflicting, emotions. It's our… dynamic."
Kosaki didn't look convinced, but she was too polite to press him further. Her quiet sympathy, however, was a small, precious comfort in the ever-expanding ocean of Ren's misery.
The day ended with another stilted, awkward walk to the school gates, where Chitoge was promptly whisked away in her sleek black car by the ever-vigilant Claude, leaving Ren to trudge home alone, emotionally drained and acutely aware that this was just the first day of what promised to be a very, very long and excruciating deception. The weight of their shared lie was already proving to be a heavy burden, a constant performance that left him feeling more exhausted than any of Reborn's brutal training sessions. And the thought that this charade was somehow crucial for maintaining peace between two dangerous yakuza factions, and therefore, indirectly, for his own continued survival, was almost too much to bear.