Nohara Yi was completely unaware of the fate of his bento lunch, which Misae had personally selected ingredients for, a rare occasion where she hadn't used discounted items.
At this moment, a more urgent and bizarre problem lay before him.
"You're saying you drifted here from beyond this world?"
Inside the small, dusty, abandoned concrete pipe in the park, Nohara Yi sat cross-legged, looking at the strange, pink, round, soft-bodied yet cartoonish creature before him—it was wolfing down the bread he had just bought, almost licking up the packaging crumbs.
Could it be that his intervention in Kuse Shizuka's affairs meant this guy, Octopus Pi, didn't meet her, but rather encountered him instead?
Memories of Octopus Pi flashed through his mind—this fellow had no ill intentions, was dedicated to spreading happiness, but always, due to his clumsiness, caused trouble with good intentions, truly a "trouble-making machine."
Meeting it directly, perhaps, could be considered "mine-clearing"?
"To be precise, I traversed the sea of stars and came from Happy Star! My mission is to spread happiness, pi!" The pink octopus, mouth full of bread, spoke indistinctly but earnestly.
"What a ridiculous premise? Then I'll say I'm a horror star messenger from the 0721 galaxy! My mission is to spread fear and occasionally blow up a few planets, a super villain!"
Although Nohara Yi knew the other party wasn't lying, he couldn't resist teasing him.
"Ugh! How could there be such a bad person in the universe, pi!" This was beyond the pink octopus's comprehension.
Shouldn't all intelligent beings in the universe be true, good, and beautiful existences?
"Anyway..." Nohara Yi felt it wasn't good to keep teasing him, "What was your original name? I need a way to address you, right?"
The pink octopus immediately made a series of strange, unintelligible sounds.
"Alright, alright, stop talking, I don't understand."
Nohara Yi quickly interrupted: "No matter what you were called before, now you're 'Octopus Pi.' Simple, easy to remember. If you don't like it, 'Zayu Pi' is fine too."
The pink creature wiggled its tentacles, seeming to accept the former new name.
Nohara Yi then got to the point: "Octopus Pi, an envoy who came to Earth to spread happiness, you should have... brought some 'professional equipment' from your Happy Star, right?"
His gaze sharply fixed on Octopus Pi's tender pink body.
Considering this guy's "talent" for messing things up, and the fatal past... and future incidents involving his Happy Camera in another timeline, Nohara Yi felt obligated to implement "safety control"... With complex emotions, Nohara Yi walked into the classroom with the temporarily quiet, plump pink octopus.
As he stepped through the back door, he saw Kuse Shizuka standing beside her seat like a silent statue, her gaze lowered, her fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her skirt, clearly having waited for some time.
Nohara Yi quickly scanned the classroom; fortunately, Molina hadn't appeared yet.
"Xiao Shizuka, even if you turn yourself into a Buddhist shrine, motionless, you won't be popular, you know? Look at Ace, for example, he has a Bodhisattva-like face, but the Yapool still call him a butcher."
Nohara Yi walked to his seat, causing Kuse Shizuka to look up slightly in a panic, then quickly lower her eyes, her body tensing even more.
Then, she mustered her courage and took out the bento box from her school bag to return it to him.
Thinking that this boy might be defending her, and then recalling that lunch bento, which she, in resentment and impulse... A strong sense of guilt instantly overwhelmed Kuse Shizuka.
She dared not look into Nohara Yi's eyes, as if they were evidence of her sin that could burn her.
Nohara Yi smiled and took the bento box.
"Xiao Yi—" A childish voice, audible only to Nohara Yi, rang in his mind.
"Are you two... a married couple?"
It was Octopus Pi! At this moment, he was lurking in Nohara Yi's hair, disguised as a hair ornament, using "Invisible Flower."
Nohara Yi's shoulders twitched, startled by the sudden "telepathic communication" and question.
It seemed he could now respond telepathically too.
What was this, one mind, one body?
"Huh?!" Nohara Yi quickly retorted in his mind, "Why would you think that?! We're in fourth grade! Where would a married couple come from?!"
"But I observed that only a 'wife' prepares food in a small box for her 'husband' every day, pi? If she's not your wife, then is she your 'mom'?"
Octopus Pi's voice was full of innocent curiosity.
Nohara Yi was speechless, feeling this was a cosmic cultural cognitive bias.
He wasn't playing Valorant or blocking bridges; he didn't have the pleasure of recognizing peers as his mom.
But explaining human social relationships to it, coming from Happy Star with its peculiar logic?
Better not.
As Nohara Yi was complaining internally, Kuse Shizuka had already whispered, "Excuse me," and turned to return to her seat.
"You can't go." Nohara Yi called out to her.
"!!!" Kuse Shizuka's body suddenly stiffened, and her heart sank.
Did he not go far in the cafeteria and see her actions?
Paleness instantly crept onto her face; shame and fear gripped her.
Although she felt her relationship with him was ordinary, far from being friends, thinking that her actions might be discovered and lead to a breakup, she felt inexplicably uneasy.
She wanted to explain but didn't know where to start.
"I..." She barely mumbled a syllable, her voice trembling out of tune.
But Nohara Yi's next action completely exceeded her imagination.
He decisively reached out and grabbed Kuse Shizuka's still unretracted, slightly cool wrist!
"Eh?!" Kuse Shizuka trembled all over, the unfamiliar warmth on her wrist running through her body like an electric current, her mind instantly blank.
Two blushes suddenly burned on her cheeks, spreading all the way to her ears, making her completely lose the ability to think.
Long-term isolation had made her accustomed to being invisible; she had never been touched by a boy her age. At this moment, she could only stand stiffly, like a fawn caught in a trap, forgetting even to breathe.
In short, she had touched a blind spot in her knowledge.
What made her mind halt even more was that Nohara Yi, holding her, stood up.
He held her wrist, and with his other hand, quickly pulled a dazzlingly pink camera from his pocket, with a faintly glowing ring in front of the lens.
"Sorry, this might be a bit sudden."
Nohara Yi's voice was urgent, his gaze sweeping over her bewildered and flushed face: "But first, let's leave some 'together' marks, okay?"
He wasn't so calm inside.
When he got the Happy Camera, he couldn't stay calm.
His predecessors—Great Love Immortal Venerable, Yoshikage Kira, and Subaru Natsuki—had already proven the terror of the rollback skill.
So, when he returned and met Kuse Shizuka, his mindset was like encountering a legendary Pokémon!
Not saving was foolish!
The person before him was a disaster aggregate, burdened with a massive amount of negative energy, capable of exploding at any moment.
If it weren't for Japan's strict gun laws, he sometimes genuinely feared she might stage an American-style school shooting.
Kuse Shizuka was utterly bewildered.
She had never seen such a shameless person!
He wanted to take a photo at a time like this? With her unlucky face?
What exactly did he want to do?
But the warm touch on her wrist and his matter-of-fact expression made her unable to even object.
Like a cat forced into a costume, she passively nodded her heavy head, squeezing out a mosquito-like sound from her throat: "...Do, do as you please."
Her tone was full of helpless resignation.
Click!
The pink camera captured this scene—a black-haired girl with a stiff expression, flushed cheeks, and wandering eyes, and a calm-faced short-haired boy (and the invisible pink sphere on his head wiggled excitedly a few times).
Nohara Yi looked at the "save" screen on the camera, just as Kuse Shizuka was trying to pull back her numb wrist—
"Oh dear~ It seems... I've come at the wrong time, haven't I?"
A deliberately drawn-out, sweet voice, tinged with coldness and suppressed anger, pierced through the classroom's noise and cut through.
At the doorway, Molina stood with her arms crossed, her head tilted slightly, a brilliantly eerie smile on her face, but her eyes were like ice, scraping back and forth between their not-yet-fully-separated wrists.
She had just confessed to Nohara Yi that morning and been rejected; now, seeing him pulling and taking photos with the "gloomy girl" she disliked, her mood was imaginable.
If it were anyone else, it might be fine, but her mother was the culprit who seduced Molina's father and ruined her family.
However, Nohara Yi did not panic when he noticed her.
Turning around to face Molina's expression, which was almost spitting fire beneath her smile, he not only didn't panic but took a step forward and calmly retorted: "No, you've come at just the right time!"
Before he finished speaking, he walked in front of her, reached out, and grabbed Molina's arm.
Molina gasped briefly due to her unstable center of gravity, Kuse Shizuka's eyes widened in fright, and Nohara Yi had already rearranged the two with one hand each—Kuse Shizuka on the left, Molina on the right, and himself squeezed into the middle!
One hand rested on Kuse Shizuka's shoulder (causing her to tremble all over), while the other, using the momentum of pulling Molina, circled her shoulder.
"Come on! A new souvenir!" He ignored the suddenly rising body temperatures and struggling tendencies on both sides, released the more compliant Kuse Shizuka, and then raised the pink camera!
Click!
A second photo was born, overwriting the new save.
In the picture, the three had "harmonious" expressions: Kuse Shizuka was bewildered and flustered from being overly startled; Molina was startled and flustered, switching from annoyance to shock and indignation; Nohara Yi, though trying to appear calm, his subtle muscle tension when forcibly squeezed in the middle, betrayed that his inner self was not as composed as his exterior.
The Happy Camera could only save once, and jumping through multiple timelines was unrealistic, so it was safer to take a group photo when all three were present.
"Let, let go!" Molina broke free from the arm around her shoulder, hissing like a startled Hakimi.
"Nohara Yi! Don't think that by doing this! I'll forgive you for making me... and being so close to her!"
Nohara Yi shrugged indifferently.
His goal achieved, he could withdraw... ahem, in short, this insurance was now in place.