Saturday.
Although the matter she originally wanted to talk about that night had inadvertently been glossed over by their playful banter with Miyahito,
Utaha hadn't forgotten. Quite the opposite.
She now had one more thing on her mind that concerned her.
'So, why did Miyahito suddenly say he had no talent?'
Letting out an imperceptible sigh, Utaha gently stirred the rich, fragrant coffee in her cup with a small spoon, pondering in her heart.
At this moment, Yoshikawa Yuki, who was sitting across from her and eating cake with a blissful expression, noticed the troubled look on Utaha's face. She put down her fork and looked at Utaha curiously.
"What are you thinking about? You look so serious."
"Nothing much."
Looking up, Utaha smiled at Yuki and took a small sip of her coffee.
"I was just thinking about what to have for dinner tonight. I guess Miyahito won't be coming home for dinner."
"Here we go again." Yuki looked at her best friend, who was acting like a perfect, virtuous wife and mother, with a complex expression and shook her head helplessly. "Please, Utaha, you and Miyahito aren't even married yet. Can you stop acting so domestic? At least, when you're out enjoying 'girls' time' with your good friend, me!"
"Please act like a normal JK (high school girl), okay?"
".....It's not as exaggerated as you make it sound." Utaha, looking slightly embarrassed, turned her face away, pouted slightly, and retorted with a hint of defiance.
"Besides, Miyahito is my boyfriend, so of course I have to care about his daily life!"
Yuki gave Utaha, whose face showed a hint of defiance, a deadpan stare for a moment, then let out a faint, drawn-out sigh.
Great, Utaha is completely beyond saving... I really don't know what kind of sweet talk Miyahito fed her. Thinking about the Utaha from before, such a high-and-mighty beautiful girl, and in less than half a year of dating Miyahito, she's turned into the 'Yamato Nadeshiko' (ideal Japanese woman) that every man dreams of.
Tsk, tsk, impressive, Miyahito.
"Oh right, I forgot to ask." Scooping a small piece of cake into her mouth and savoring the soft, sweet flavor filling her mouth, Yuki asked nonchalantly.
"It's Saturday today. Why did you suddenly have the free time to ask me out shopping? Don't you need to be all lovey-dovey with Miyahito?"
"..."
What lovey-dovey! You make it sound like we're stuck together 24/7... Wait, thinking about it seriously.
It seems, like, probably, possibly, for most of the 24 hours in a day, the two of them are indeed together... Even if they aren't together temporarily, either Miyahito or she herself will subconsciously go look for the other.
I see! No wonder nowadays, whether people are looking for her or Miyahito, they basically just grab one of them, state their business, and that's it—they've already defaulted to the assumption that as long as it's about the two of them, telling one of them is enough!
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Under Utaha's speechless glare, a completely bewildered Yuki subconsciously sat up straight, looked down to check if something was wrong with herself, then looked back up at Utaha and scratched her cheek.
After staring silently for a short while, making Yuki feel extremely uncomfortable, Utaha finally withdrew her gaze faintly.
It wasn't Yuki's fault.
Thinking about it seriously, the culprit behind the current situation was probably Tachibana-sensei, who called her to the office every day, asking her, as the girlfriend, to find a way to improve Miyahito's science grades.
"Miyahito, Tooru-kun, and Ishigami-kun from Shuchiin went to the arcade." Saying this, Utaha recalled how, after dinner last night, her boyfriend had asked her with a very hesitant and cautious tone, 'After cram school, can I go to the game center with Tooru and Yu?' She couldn't help but smile.
Noticing that doting, faint smile at the corner of Utaha's mouth, Yuki paused, and then...
'Yare yare, that sweet, sugary smile... it's truly a kawaii expression that only a girl in love can make.'
"Then we absolutely have to shop to our heart's content today! Utaha~"
"Yeah. Oh, Yuki, wait for me to check out Noela first. They just released a few new printed dresses online, and I think they would really suit Ayase. It's a good time to go see them in person."
"No problem~"
"...."
Just as Utaha and Yuki were smiling and discussing their shopping plans for the day.
Behind the two girls, at a four-person table about one or two sofa booths away, sat a man and a woman wearing sunglasses, their movements somewhat sneaky.
"Um." Wearing a beach-style plaid short-sleeved shirt and beige casual shorts, with a pair of black sunglasses on his face, Kasumigaoka Naoki's eyes, hidden behind the dark lenses, revealed a trace of helplessness. He looked at his wife, who was sitting beside him, pricking up her ears to eavesdrop on their daughter and her friend, and spoke with a somewhat troubled tone.
"Kao, how about we go back?"
"If Utaha finds out that the two of us sneaked all the way from Wakō City to Tokyo to stalk her behind her back... she will definitely be furious."
Hearing this, Kasumigaoka Kao calmly looked at her husband, whose face clearly screamed: 'Ah, I want to go home!', 'Why do I have to use my rare day off to stalk my daughter?', and 'Seriously, she's so hard to coax when she's mad.'
That look was practically saying, Naoki, you're such a useless father!'
Seeing this, what else could Naoki say? Shaking his head helplessly, he reached out and pulled the mint soda on the table a bit closer, biting the straw and taking occasional sips.
I'm sorry, Utaha... Dad has tried his best.
After suppressing her husband's silent rebellion, Kao nodded with a satisfied expression, then turned her face and continued to eavesdrop on her daughter's conversation intently.
In fact, there was one thing Naoki had guessed wrong.
Actually, his wife, Utaha's mother, Kasumigaoka Kao, didn't care at all about what her daughter's daily life in Tokyo was like.
Of course, this didn't mean she didn't care about her daughter. It was just that, as a mother who "acted like a mother only during infancy, and after her daughter grew up, their relationship was more like frenemies than mother and daughter, and who advocated 'free-range parenting, as long as she can handle it, I won't interfere'",
as long as she knew "Utaha isn't starving or freezing in Tokyo, and is eating three proper meals a day," Kao gave her well-behaved daughter one hundred percent trust in everything else.
(Kasumigaoka Naoki: This is a lie! This mother is just too lazy to manage her daughter!)
As for why Kao, who acted this way, would suddenly appear in Tokyo on this rare day off for both her and her husband, and sneakily stalk her daughter—the reason stemmed from a very faint, and somewhat distorted, "Utaha" she had faintly heard during their routine phone call last night.
And that "Utaha" from last night.
Was extremely similar to a certain boy's voice she had heard through the phone receiver on a certain morning during the summer vacation.
'Hehe! Today I will definitely catch your little tail!'
My dear daughter, wash your neck and wait for Mom's judgment!