Riko walked down the school hallway. In front of her, an old teacher could be seen leading them while carrying a stack of textbooks. Beside Riko walked another short-haired female student wearing the same uniform as her. The girl then started a conversation to break the ice.
"So... your name is Yuusaki Riko, right?" the girl beside Riko asked friendlily.
Riko turned her head. "Ah, yes. You can just call me Riko. It seems we'll be classmates," Riko said, holding out her hand to introduce herself.
"Alright then, Riko. Let me introduce myself, my name is Sairenji Haruna," the girl named Haruna said, accepting Riko's handshake. "But this is quite a coincidence, huh? The two of us are transfer students and starting on the same day," Haruna continued with a smile, letting go of their handshake.
"I was also surprised when I found out in the teachers' lounge earlier that there was another transfer student," Riko replied.
"By the way, Riko, why did you transfer to this school?" Haruna asked curiously.
"Oh, there's no special reason, really. I transferred here following my father's job, and we also just moved to this city," Riko explained.
"Oh, because of that, huh. Things like that do happen often, right," Haruna responded understandingly.
"What about you, Haruna?" Riko asked back.
"As for me... well, an incident happened at my old school, so our school was forced to close," Haruna answered, sounding a bit awkward.
"Huh?! What kind of incident?" Riko asked in shock.
"They said there was a massive gas explosion right at my old school building. But fortunately, there were no casualties," Haruna explained.
"A gas explosion?!" Riko exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock.
The old teacher in front of them stopped right in front of a classroom door. "Well, this is your class. Let's go in," he said.
Riko and Haruna nodded obediently. The teacher slid the door open and stepped inside first, followed by the two transfer students from behind.
However, Riko and Haruna's steps instantly halted right at the doorway.
The sight inside the classroom was truly beyond common sense. On the floor, several male students were lying down, clutching their bodies and groaning in pain.
Meanwhile, at his desk, Yuuto seemed to be sitting very casually. The young man closed his eyes, swaying his finger slowly as if enjoying a private concert from the song playing in his headset.
"W-what happened in here?!" the teacher shrieked, extremely shocked to see the chaos.
Hearing his teacher's loud shout, Yuuto slowly opened his eyes.
His gaze immediately swept toward the door and found Riko standing frozen there. Casually and without the slightest bit of guilt, Yuuto raised one hand and waved at Riko.
Haruna, who was standing next to Riko, accidentally followed the direction of that wave. When her eyes caught sight of Yuuto, Haruna instantly fell silent. She stared at the young man's face without blinking, enchanted by a charm that felt unreal. However, Haruna's daydream was immediately shattered when a voice slipped from the lips of the girl beside her.
"Nii... san?" Riko muttered softly.
Ding... dong...
The recess bell rang loudly, echoing.
"Alright, our lesson ends here," the teacher at the front of the class said while packing up his books on the desk. "And as for Yuusaki and Sairenji, Sawada and Momioka, please help them adapt. Kido, please help your cousin too, okay?"
"Understood, Sensei," Yuuto replied calmly.
"Leave it to us!" Sawada and Momioka answered in unison.
As soon as the teacher left, Yuuto immediately turned his body to face Riko's desk.
"So, Riko, are you hungry?" he asked while taking a bento box out of his bag.
Riko, who was asked suddenly, responded quickly with a stiff nod.
"Good. Let's eat together. Later after this, I'll take you on a tour of the school," Yuuto said with a smile. He then turned to Haruna, who was sitting next to Riko. "What about you, Sairenji? Do you want to join us?" he invited warmly.
"Eh? Me?" Haruna pointed at herself, a bit surprised to be suddenly spoken to by the young man she had been staring at earlier. She had just opened her mouth to answer, but Momioka Risa suddenly appeared near them.
"Are you really Kido Yuuto? Your personality feels very different, you know!" Risa interrupted, leaning her body forward and staring at Yuuto scrutinizingly. "You don't even get nervous anymore when talking to girls."
Sawada Mio, Risa's close friend, caught up to the desk and nodded in agreement. "Yeah, you've really changed a lot."
Yuuto just chuckled softly in response to the two girls' suspicions. "Risa, Mio... people definitely change over time, right? Whether it's their personality or their appearance. Can't I change too? Just assume I've recently finished going through puberty," Yuuto replied casually with a faint smile.
"Well, whatever you say," Risa snorted in amusement. She then placed her bento box on Riko's desk. "By the way, can I join you guys for lunch too?"
"Go ahead if you want, but..." Yuuto's sentence trailed off. His eyes glanced sharply around. Most of the students in the class were blatantly keeping their distance and glaring at Yuuto's desk with hostile looks. "...you have to be ready for their stares."
Risa, realizing the direction of Yuuto's gaze, just gave a small laugh. "Hehe, relax. I'm used to dealing with weird things like that," she said without a care.
"I'm joining in too!" Mio added cheerfully, also placing her bento on Riko's desk without caring about the tension from the other students in the classroom.
"Whoa, if it's just one desk, it looks like we won't fit," Yuuto said, observing Riko's desk which was starting to get full of bento boxes.
He then glanced at Haruna. The short-haired girl had been silent all this time, looking awkward like someone left out of the conversation circle. "Haruna, you want to join too, right?" Yuuto invited once again.
"Eh? Me... yes, I'm in," Haruna answered, a bit flustered, but her face looked relieved to be invited.
"Now, that's good," Yuuto smiled. "Risa, could you move aside for a bit? I'm going to shift Haruna's desk so it's side-by-side with Riko's. So we can fit all five of us."
"Okay!" Risa replied, stepping back to make room.
Easily, Yuuto pulled and aligned Haruna's desk until it connected with Riko's desk, creating a larger dining table. They then arranged the chairs around the combined desks.
Their seating arrangement was formed: Haruna and Riko sat side by side on one side, while Mio and Risa sat right across from the two of them. Yuuto himself took a position at the end of the desk, facing directly toward the four girls. Considering his position at the end, Riko and Risa became the ones sitting closest to Yuuto's left and right sides.
After they sat in their respective places, Yuuto took a quick glance around the classroom. Most of the students seemed to be whispering and throwing cynical looks at his desk, but the young man chose to remain indifferent.
Snap!
Yuuto snapped his fingers softly. In an instant, a transparent magical dome that could only be seen by his own eyes was formed. The invisible dome enveloped their desks, muffling all the noise and bothersome stares from the outside.
"Nii-san, what's wrong?" Riko asked when she noticed Yuuto suddenly falling silent for a moment.
"Nothing at all. Let's eat," Yuuto replied with a gentle smile.
They started opening their respective bento boxes. However, the four girls' movements suddenly stopped when Yuuto opened the lid of his bento. Their attention was instantly captivated. The contents of the young man's lunch box were arranged very beautifully, neatly, and radiated an incredibly mouth-watering, delicious aroma.
"Waah... Yuuto, your lunch looks so pretty!" Risa praised with sparkling eyes.
"Did you make this yourself?" Mio chimed in, amazed.
"You could say that," Yuuto answered modestly. He then brought his hands together. "Let's eat."
Calmly, Yuuto picked up a piece of rolled omelet and popped it into his mouth. However, while he was chewing, he realized that the four girls in front of him had frozen stiff. They were all staring straight at Yuuto's bento box with looks full of longing—almost drooling.
Yuuto chuckled softly seeing their cute reaction. "Do you guys want some?" he offered.
"Eh? Is it really okay?" Risa asked hesitantly, even though her face clearly showed she really wanted to try it.
Yuuto nodded and immediately pushed his bento box to the middle of the table so it could be easily reached by all four of them. "Go ahead," he said amiably.
"Alright, I won't hold back then," Risa said cheerfully. She picked up a piece of side dish from Yuuto's bento with her chopsticks, then devoured it.
Risa's eyes instantly widened. "Waaah! This is so delicious!" she exclaimed in delight, her cheeks puffing out as she chewed her food. "Yuuto, where did you learn to cook this well?"
Mio, who was curious, quickly followed Risa to take a portion. After her first bite, she immediately covered her mouth in amazement. "Oh my gosh, this is even way better than the food at a prestigious restaurant!"
Yuuto gave a faint smile. "I learned from Mama Emiya," he answered casually.
"Eh? Mama who?" Risa responded spontaneously.
However, Yuuto deliberately didn't answer and left Risa in confusion. Instead, he shifted his gaze to Riko and Haruna, who had just been zoning out watching their friends eat heartily. "If you want, you two can have a taste as well," Yuuto offered gently to the two of them.
"Eh? But... your lunch will run out quickly if we join in eating it too," Haruna declined with an apologetic look on her face.
"If my food runs out, I can just eat your lunches instead," Yuuto replied practically. "How about this? From now on, let's share each other's lunches going forward. That is, if you guys want to."
"Of course we want to!" Risa and Mio exclaimed in unison without the slightest hesitation.
Haruna smiled sweetly, her awkwardness slowly fading away. "In that case, we want to join in too," she said. Beside her, Riko agreed with an adorable little nod, even though her face was still slightly flushed.
And with that simple agreement, the five of them began swapping the contents of their bento boxes. They ate while interspersed with laughter and light conversation that felt so warm.
Thanks to that transparent magical dome, the four girls who were busy eating didn't hear the barrage of cynical whispers from the whole class at all. They seemed peacefully isolated from the outside world. On the contrary, Yuuto intentionally let those voices enter his ears.
To him, their insults and hateful glares actually sounded like melodious music.
Every now and then, Yuuto would casually glance at the group of male students who were whispering and staring at him. While chewing his food, he made a small gesture with his fingers—a provocative, dismissive sign as if challenging them, "Come on, keep going."
Feeling challenged and insulted by Yuuto's arrogant look, a few male students began to get fired up. However, just as their hostility peaked and they intended to step forward and approach his desk, a bizarre series of misfortunes suddenly occurred.
One tripped over his own friend's foot, another slipped on the floor for no reason, up to tumbling and crashing into a desk.
'Ah... what a beautiful sight,' Yuuto thought, smiling in satisfaction. Watching the series of mini disasters befalling anyone with ill intentions toward him truly became an entertainment of its own.
Meanwhile, in another corner of the classroom, Mei and Asahi could only sit stiffly at their desks with their heads bowed deeply. Watching the warm scene at Yuuto's desk made their chests tight with memories. Back then, in the past... the three of them—Yuuto, Mei, and Asahi—also often did the exact same thing. Sitting close together, sharing food, and joking around freely. But now, that position had been taken by new people.
Asahi bit her lower lip hard to endure the stinging pain in her chest. Her eyes stared blankly at the crowd of girls at Yuuto's desk, and she muttered softly in a despairing tone, "It should have been me... not them!"
On the other side of the classroom, a beautiful girl with long black hair was seen furrowing her brow. While eating her lunch quietly, the girl glared sharply at the ridiculous commotion of the male students who kept falling onto the floor over and over again.
"They are seriously way too noisy," Yui muttered in an annoyed tone. She had a scowl on her face because her peace and quiet during the lunch break had to be disturbed by this nonsensical chaos.
The three of them were now on their way home from school. Riko, Haruna, and Yuuto walked side by side. Apparently, after chatting at school earlier, it was just discovered that the apartment unit occupied by Haruna was exactly on the same floor as Yuuto's apartment.
"I never thought we were actually neighbors, Haruna," Yuuto said, slightly surprised.
"Yeah. We haven't had the chance to greet our next-door neighbors because we were too busy taking care of moving our stuff. So it's only natural that you didn't know yet, Yuuto," Haruna explained with an awkward smile.
"You live with your family, right?" Yuuto asked again.
"Yes, I live with my older sister," Haruna answered.
"I see. If you need any help, feel free to call me. You can also come over to my apartment anytime if you want," Yuuto offered amiably.
Throughout that warm conversation, Riko, who was walking by Yuuto's side, just stayed silent, bowing her head. Her face was scrunched up sourly, clearly looking annoyed.
'Why is this guy ignoring me and just busy chatting with Haruna?! Has he forgotten about his own cousin?!' Riko grumbled in her heart. She pouted her lips, feeling extremely irritated for being ignored.
Their steps finally came to a halt.
"Well, we're here," Yuuto said. The three of them were now standing right in front of the gate to Riko's family home.
However, before Riko could even open the gate, a very familiar, gentle voice greeted them from the direction of the porch.
"Darling, are you done with school?"
Haruna instantly turned her head. Her eyes stared in awe at the beautiful woman who was now standing there, smiling to welcome them in front of Riko's house gate.
"Da... rling?" Haruna muttered with her eyes widened in shock, looking back and forth between the adult woman and Yuuto.