"Hehe, you can scream until your throat breaks, no one is coming to save you. Give it up!"
"Besides, if you were a little more sensible, I could spare you some suffering."
"Ahahaha, you're putting up quite a fight, little girl. Let's see how long you can hold out!"
Countless nauseating voices echoed in her ears. The girl, trapped in darkness, frowned deeply. She felt no sense of security; thick malice and undisguised desire encroached upon her like slime.
[No, don't, it hurts, it's so painful, I'm so scared, please... someone... save me...]
The helpless girl pleaded in the depths of her heart, like a fisherman searching for a lighthouse in a storm, clutching her last shred of hope, craving an existence that could save her.
Her hands clawed at the air, like a dying person's desperate craving for life.
Vaguely, it seemed someone overlapped their palm with hers and held her hand. A warm current and an unwavering strength flowed from that palm throughout the girl's entire body.
The darkness was completely shattered, and light illuminated the girl's entire world.
The girl's face, contorted in agonizing fear, relaxed. She let out a breath as if all danger had been dispelled, and her consciousness sank into a deeper level as she fell asleep.
Her hands were tightly held by an unknown person. Although it was a bit rude, the girl still wanted to express her heartfelt gratitude to this stranger.
—It feels so good to have you by my side...
Her vision was shrouded in orange light spots, and everything she saw was blurry. At the end of the road, there seemed to be a black figure looking at her with concern.
The voices in her ears gradually became clearer; someone seemed to be calling her name repeatedly.
"Saki, Saki!"
"Eh? Prince Charming?"
Like a dreamlike stage play, the Sleeping Beauty poisoned by the villain had finally waited for her prince, the curtain falling with a final passionate kiss.
The girl's cheeks turned bright red as she pursed her lips, preparing to respond to the passion initiated by the other party.
Something was approaching her, getting closer and closer, closer and closer...
At the same time, the girl's heartbeat gradually accelerated.
However, there was no passionate kiss as expected; instead, with a bang, her forehead was struck by a critical hit.
"'Prince Charming,' my foot. You've been reading too many manga. Take a good look at who I am."
Her hazy vision gradually cleared. The blonde girl finally saw the figure in front of her clearly. It was a girl with two braids, almost the same age as her. The blonde, blue-eyed Prince Charming from her fantasy did not appear.
"Eh? You are... Natsuhi?!"
"Who else would it be?"
Wada Saki opened her eyes completely, staring unblinkingly at the beautiful girl in her vision who was looking at her with an expression of disgust. Although the other person's appearance had changed a lot, she could still identify her by her voice.
The soft sensation at the back of her head made Saki's pupils dart left and right, wanting to confirm the current situation.
She was lying down, and Natsuhi was sitting. It was a lap pillow!
This was a classic trope she had seen countless times in shoujo manga: to protect the girl he loved, the male protagonist bravely faced evil forces, and it seemed no difficulty could withstand the power of love.
In the end, the male protagonist, scarred from the battle, fell into the girl's arms. The girl offered a lap pillow as a reward, waiting for him to slowly wake up so they could spend the rest of their lives together, growing old hand in hand.
Ahhh! What a romantic scene!
But unfortunately, the person beside her now was not a prince, but her familiar-to-the-point-of-exhaustion... best friend, Ito Natsuhi.
Thinking about how Natsuhi had seen her pursing her lips, blushing, and heart-racing while fishing for a kiss, Saki wished she could leave the planet overnight and find a hole to crawl into where no one could find her.
She felt like her cheeks were hot enough to boil a kettle of water right now.
Saki hurriedly lifted her head to pull away from Natsuhi's lap pillow, only to discover that a part of her body still seemed to be connected to the other person.
Following her gaze, she saw her palm tightly interlocked and pressed against Natsuhi's. She was stunned for a moment, her brain seemingly unable to comprehend the situation before her.
"This... did I do this?"
Saki looked up at Natsuhi, then pointed at herself with her hand.
"Yeah. Just a moment ago, you were muttering 'no, no,' then frowning and biting your fingers, twisting your body non-stop until you grabbed onto me, and you've been holding on ever since."
"Oh, and by the way, no matter how much I struggled, you wouldn't let go, looking like you'd die if you left me."
System: [Hehe, keep making it up, I'm listening. You clearly have so much strength, yet you say you couldn't break free. Isn't it just because you couldn't bear to see Saki suffering alone?]
[I really should have recorded how flustered and worried you were just now. So kind~]
Natsuhi: [Shut up! You talk too much. My lifelong reputation is going to be ruined by you sooner or later.]
If the system didn't lack a physical form, Natsuhi would have wanted to punch it.
"What? You, you don't have to describe it in such detail... It's too embarrassing!"
"Don't say any more. Please call me a taxi and let me go..."
The usually sunny and cheerful Saki; Natsuhi hadn't expected her to show such a shy expression. Natsuhi smiled as she looked at the flushed beauty, not forgetting to add a mischievous remark:
"Oh, right. How long do you intend to hold my hand? Do you need me to hold your hand all the way home? If Student Saki wants to do that, I suppose I can oblige."
With a poof, Saki's head emitted white steam like a boiling kettle, and she fainted once again.
System: [Hey, you went too far...]