After lunch we resumed the library session — and I was useless. Mayo-senpai’s line was on loop in my head.
(Ayato openly had feelings for Kano. Plenty of guys I don’t even know surely do too.)
“Hey Yuito — how do I solve this?”
”…Use the law of cosines.”
“The cosines won’t work — only one side is given.”
”…Oh.”
(Misreading a problem doesn’t happen to me normally. I’m rattled worse than I thought.) Shou hadn’t noticed; Kenji wouldn’t have noticed; Kaito saved me.
Break time. Kenji and Kaito went to the bathroom; Shou stayed scrolling. Just-us-two — I asked something I’d been wondering.
“Shou — how did you actually get a girlfriend?”
“What’s prompted this?”
“Just curious. You’re the only one of us with experience.”
(Kenji and Kaito are zero-experience — only Shou.)
“I confessed to her, sure — but the path was not straight.”
“How so?”
“Initially I had zero interest in her.”
“That’s surprising — at the pool you looked like the world had ended when she punched you.”
“She started pursuing me, I gradually got drawn in — but she was also popular, and as I got more into her, she started cooling on me.”
(That hit too close. My situation with Kano isn’t identical but the shape is similar.)
“And I knew she had multiple suitors. If I’d done nothing her interest would have shifted. So I switched to full pursuit and barely made it.”
(Mayo-senpai’s the target may stop liking you warning was exactly what Shou had lived through.)
“So — Yuito, you ready to confess to Yuki-senpai?”
“What?!”
“That’s why you’ve been asking, right?”
(He’d seen through me. He’s perceptive — that’s part of why he’s the popular one.)
“If you confessed right now it would succeed. A month or six months later — no guarantee. The probability only goes down. So gear up.”
(He was right.) I made the decision: I would close out this old structure and step forward. I was confessing to Kano.
◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇
Next is chapter 100. Something will happen (prediction). New side work started — best work yet by my own estimate, should land for readers of this one. Title: ‘After the Bad End, Reliving My Life — a Classmate I’ve Just Met Is Directing Pathologically-Heavy Feelings at Me, for Some Reason’ — syosetu n2627mb.