Stepping out of the Family Restaurant with the cool evening breeze on his face, Keita didn't go straight home.
He thought about things related to Anna, assessing the possibility of actively contacting her in the future.
But before considering those things, he needed to prepare a foolproof insurance policy for himself.
His ability was supernatural and couldn't be explained by common sense.
If any unexpected "loss of control" occurred during contact with others, what awaited him wouldn't be a simple misunderstanding, but an indefensible quagmire.
He needed objective, real evidence to prove his innocence.
Therefore, Keita didn't choose to go straight home, but headed towards the large shopping mall on the other side of the station.
His goal was clear—the electronics section.
He needed two tools for "self-defense": a high-performance voice recorder and a sufficiently discreet camera.
Naturally, they wouldn't be used normally.
But when he felt there might be danger, these two tools would be more convenient than a phone...
They could help him record conversations and contacts that might be misinterpreted, preventing him from being dragged into a whirlpool of trouble.
The combined price of these two items was a fortune for a high school student.
But for Keita, who possessed memories of two lifetimes, this money was a very necessary expense...
As long as it helped once... this kind of thing would never be a loss...
...
Two days had passed since the Family Restaurant incident, and Keita had slightly adapted to the side effects of his ability.
Keita's life hadn't changed much, except for a voice recorder in standby mode in his pocket and a camera kept for emergency use.
He walked into the classroom, and the noisy morning clamor greeted him.
Then his gaze was drawn to the scene at the other end of the classroom.
Anna, Hakamada Sousuke, and the Outgoing Person Karen, who had transferred in recently, were gathered together.
Karen was a presence so dazzling she couldn't be ignored.
She had smooth pink hair, snow-white skin, and a curvaceous figure that her school uniform couldn't hide at all.
She radiated a natural, innocent aura, which fit the "childhood friend from the sky" trope perfectly.
Of course, that was just the first impression from the surface...
At this moment, Karen was hugging Anna tightly from behind in an extremely enthusiastic manner.
"Anna! Thank you so much this time! If you hadn't pushed Sousuke over that day, I might really have gone back to England alone!"
Karen's voice was sweet and sincere, filled with the relief of a narrow escape and gratitude towards her "benefactor."
Her cheek rubbed affectionately against Yanami's, passing on that soft sensation without reservation.
Anna, who was being hugged, had a body that was incredibly stiff.
Keita could see the corners of Yanami's mouth turning up, but it was very forced; she lacked her usual energy.
Her eyes lacked focus, staring blankly ahead...
"It... it's nothing... we're friends, it's what I should do..."
Yanami squeezed these words out from between her teeth, and she didn't sound as excited as she usually did when speaking.
Hakamada Sousuke, standing to the side, had an expression of happiness mixed with a bit of embarrassment.
He scratched his head while looking at the two girls, his eyes full of doting for Karen and gratitude for Anna.
He was probably truly grateful for his childhood sweetheart's help...
What a classic scene...
The winner's boasting and the loser's forced smile.
This scene itself was the most cruel public execution for a loser.
The surrounding students were whispering, their gazes drifting towards the center of that public execution.
The girl sitting in the row in front of Keita turned around at this moment and gossiped to him in a low voice: "Hey, Imaizumi, look at Nanami-san's face, it's almost as stiff as a rock. How pitiful."
Keita's gaze didn't shift from the trio; he merely kept a faint, ambiguous smile on his lips as he replied softly:
"Pitiful? On the contrary, I think as spectators, being able to enjoy this level of facial expression management for free is quite a privilege."
What a nasty thing to say.
The girl was taken aback, and her cheeks instantly flushed a deep red.
She hadn't expected such a wicked response. Looking at Keita's smirking face, she found him exceptionally handsome today, causing her heart to skip a beat uncontrollably.
"Y-you... you're really a bit cold-blooded, you know..."
After giving her assessment and seeing that Keita continued to ignore her, she lost the desire to keep flirting and turned away in disappointment.
Keita didn't pay any mind to this minor interlude.
He watched Anna's current pathetic state, wondering when she would be able to break free from this awkwardness.
Back at the Family Restaurant, Anna had personally pushed her childhood sweetheart toward another woman.
And now, the woman who had snatched away her childhood sweetheart was hugging her, using a sweet voice to thank her for "making it happen."
Especially since the two of them seemed to be on incredibly good terms on the surface. Keita figured Yanami might actually be wishing for their relationship to shatter so they could have a proper catfight...
Women fighting... there are few men who don't enjoy watching that...
Keita's thoughts began to wander uncontrollably.
He recalled the sight of Sousuke's back as he rushed out of the restaurant that day without hesitation. Then he looked at Karen's current "airheaded and submissive" appearance, and Sousuke's blatant, lustful gaze toward her.
Dry tinder meeting a blazing fire.
Most likely, after that day, the relationship between those two had already escalated at light speed to the most intimate stage.
In other words, while Anna was still grieving over "losing" her childhood sweetheart...
...and while she thought this was just a pure competition for love...
...the winner and her prize had likely already achieved biological harmony somewhere together.
That was the most pitiful part about Anna.
One side was still stuck in mental loss and sorrow, while the other had long since entered the realm of physical pleasure and union.
This unspeakable gap in information and perception was a comprehensive crushing of the loser's spirit and dignity.
She probably still thought she had only lost his "heart," unaware that she had already completely lost the "man" himself.
In Keita's eyes, the emotional energy contained within a "loser" kept in the dark was quite potent...
But this also brought about a new problem.
If Anna's mental pillar had completely collapsed, what reason would he have to approach her?
Under the guise of caring for her?
While Keita didn't dislike Anna, he was somewhat averse to the idea of actively sucking up to someone.
He preferred to reach an equal partnership or transactional relationship with her...
But such a result certainly wouldn't be achieved smoothly; it would require something with a greater impact on Anna to act as a catalyst.
Thinking of this, an even more wicked and logical thought popped into Keita's head.
What if...
What if this Karen wasn't as innocent and harmless as she appeared on the surface?