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"This is this month's friendship fee."
Up on the Sobu High rooftop, a girl with cherry-pink hair—half her face hidden behind her bangs—timidly offered up a ten-thousand-yen bill with both hands to the young man standing in front of her.
Seeing him take it, she seemed to summon an immense amount of courage before speaking.
"Are we... are we friends now?"
Looking at the cash in his hand, Kai smiled with deep satisfaction.
At the exact same time, a mechanical voice chimed inside his head.
[Quest Completed]
[Extort a friendship fee from Hitori "Bocchi" Gotoh]
[Claim Reward?]
No, Kai wasn't in a rush to claim the reward right this second. Instead, he took his time sizing up the girl standing before him—the very same girl famously known as "Bocchi" to countless viewers in his past life.
First, he had miraculously transmigrated into this massive anime multiverse. Then, his System had awakened. Just the thought of having the chance to meet all the iconic anime heroines he used to fantasize about was enough to get him fully bricked up.
"K-Kai-senpai?"
Seeing that he hadn't said a word, Hitori couldn't help but call out to him in a tiny, wavering voice.
Meanwhile, her internal theater was already spiraling out of control.
[I'm doomed! I'm doomed! I'm completely doomed!]
[I knew it was just wishful thinking! Deluding myself into believing I could buy Kai-senpai's friendship for ten thousand yen! I really am just a rat in the gutter! What right does someone like me have to call a guy like him my friend? He's definitely laughing at me inside right now!]
But in the very next second—
"Just Kai!"
"Huh?"
The sudden exclamation caught Hitori completely off guard, instantly slamming the brakes on her internal panic attack.
"Just call me Kai. We're friends now, right? So we should address each other like actual friends."
Here in Japan, unless you were family, only the closest of friends ever addressed each other on a first-name basis.
[I have a friend! I actually have a friend on a first-name basis!]
"Kai?"
"Yep. And I'll be calling you Hitori from now on. Is that cool?"
"O-Of course!"
Hitori's voice couldn't help but pitch up a few octaves in pure excitement. 'I actually have a friend! And it's a first-name-basis friend! I am just too awesome.'
Watching Hitori instinctively sway back and forth in sheer delight, Kai stayed quiet. Sure, she usually dressed down in frumpy clothes, hiding half her face behind her hair so nobody could see what she really looked like.
But according to her actual anime canon, the only reason Hitori—despite being a massive social outcast—never got bullied growing up was simply because she was drop-dead gorgeous. She was so pretty that people couldn't bring themselves to mess with her.
Even her top-tier figure was completely hidden beneath that oversized tracksuit.
"Ahem!"
Hitori wasn't just a one-and-done target; she had way more quests attached to her.
Clearing his throat, Kai suddenly spoke up.
"Well, since we're officially friends now, holding hands shouldn't be an issue, right?"
As he said it, he casually reached out and offered his hand to her.
"N-No issue at all."
Hitori instinctively shook her head. Even though she had never actually made a friend before, she'd seen plenty of girls in her class hold hands just to go to the bathroom together. It was just holding hands—there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, right?
Besides, Kai was incredibly handsome, and his smile was just so warm and genuine. There was no way a guy like him would ever lie to her.
With that thought in mind, Hitori slowly raised her delicate, pale hand, getting ready to place it into his.
Click!
Over here in Japan, it was strictly illegal to mute the shutter sound or disable the flash on a smartphone camera. Because of that, the crisp, undeniable sound of a photo being snapped echoed right into both of their ears.
Was someone sneaking pictures of them?
Even though his little setup had just been rudely interrupted, Kai didn't panic in the slightest. Instead, he calmly turned his head to see what was going on.
Standing right at the entrance to the rooftop was a beautiful girl with a completely cold, aloof demeanor and a rather modest chest. She stepped out of the stairwell, smartphone in hand.
"Absolute scum."
The moment she locked eyes with Kai, she didn't even try to hide the sheer disgust radiating from her gaze.
Yukino Yukinoshita.
Conversely, a very different kind of gleam flashed through Kai's eyes when he saw her. He completely hadn't expected to run into two top-tier anime heroines on his very first day here.
And just like clockwork—
The absolute second he laid eyes on Yukino, a massive barrage of quest notifications exploded in his mind.
[Make Yukino throw up a peace sign while rolling her eyes in pure ecstasy]
[Please, God, I just want Yukino to verbally degrade me]
[Get Yukino to show me her panties while looking at me like absolute trash]
[Two-for-one Yukinoshita sister special! Make it happen!]
[Equip a pet collar onto Yukino]
[Goddess-tier feet. I need to see those toes.]
[Leave Yukino Yukinoshita completely speechless]
[...]
The sheer, overwhelming wall of degenerate quests made Kai's head spin. This was exactly the kind of insane VIP treatment you'd expect from encountering a main heroine. Having just experienced the same thing with Hitori, he wasn't going to lose his cool over it.
The system he had awakened was literally called the Quest System.
True to its name, it generated all sorts of crazy missions tied to specific targets. Finishing a quest handed out rewards, though he was still pretty much in the dark about what exactly those rewards entailed.
The only thing he knew for an absolute fact was that the system only locked onto heavy hitters—the most famous, top-tier girls from across the anime multiverse.
Take the quest he had just cleared with Hitori, for example. Extorting a friendship fee out of her? It had popped up exactly the same way.
And the process was ridiculously easy.
All Kai had to do was drop one single line:
"Gotoh-san, you really wouldn't want to spend your entire high school career without making a single friend, would you?"
..............
Yukino Yukinoshita obviously had no idea what the guy standing across from her was currently thinking, but the way he was dead-staring right at her only made the disgust in her eyes burn even brighter.
"I already have the photo. If you don't want me to drag you straight to the police station, I suggest you step away from that girl right now."
From Yukino's perspective...
This guy was clearly using some kind of underhanded tactic to take advantage of the poor girl in front of him.
Even she knew that getting a conviction based entirely on a single photo was going to be a massive stretch, but she hoped the threat alone would be enough to scare him off.
However!
Forget a stupid photo—even if she had recorded the whole thing in ultra-high definition, it wouldn't matter. He was a transmigrator armed with a literal System. Did she seriously think a second-year high school girl could intimidate him?
Crossing his arms over his chest.
Kai didn't look bothered in the slightest.
"Yukinoshita-san, I think you've got this whole situation completely twisted. Gotoh-san and I are friends. Is there a rule against friends holding hands?"
"Exactly!" Hitori had finally snapped back to reality by this point, and she immediately stepped right up next to him without a second of hesitation.
[You've got to support your friends—that's what friends are for!!]
"You..."
Getting backstabbed by the very victim she was trying to save left Yukino genuinely stunned.
"Yukinoshita-san, you wouldn't happen to be projecting this massive misunderstanding just because you don't have any friends yourself, would you?"
"...."
Critical hit.
Yukino was insanely confident when it came to pretty much every other aspect of her life, but the friend department? That was her one glaring weakness.
"Friends? First of all, we need to clearly define what actually constitutes a friend—"
"Alright, stop right there!" Kai waved a hand, immediately cutting off Yukino's incoming philosophical rant. "The only people who say stuff like that are the ones who definitely don't have any friends!"
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Kai Pic.
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