“Almost 2 PM — let’s eat. Ryouya-kun, Riona, anything you want?”
“I’ll go with whatever you and Nee-chan want.”
“Mm — me neither — oh, but not the couples-only menu, please.”
“Aw, I was about to do that again.”
Apparently she’d been planning a repeat of the Tokyo Inclusion Square incident. Disaster averted by reflex.
After deliberation we picked the fast-food chain Wacudonald’s and headed for the food court.
There’s a Wacudonald’s in every mall — extremely convenient. Inside, the place was buzzing in summer-vacation mode. We grabbed an empty table with our trays.
“Hey, those two girls — insane.”
“Yeah, tall, good build, perfect.”
“Want one as a girlfriend.”
The two of them were drawing the standard amount of male attention, and the standard background commentary.
“What’s the guy with them, though? Doesn’t fit, can’t be a boyfriend.”
“Probably bag carrier or wallet.”
“Disposable.”
The standard envy-and-bewildered-hate aimed at me was also doing its usual rotation. I’d been with them long enough that I no longer noticed.
Human adaptability is terrifying. While I was thinking that, Reona caught my wrist, pulled me toward her, and bit a piece off the teriyaki burger I was holding.
“H-hey—!”
“Ryouya-kun’s teriyaki looked too good. As payment, take a bite of my bacon lettuce burger.”
She held the half-eaten bacon lettuce burger up to my face. I took a bite without thinking.
“Heh — you used to be concerned about indirect kisses, look at you now.”
“Yeah, no point at this stage.”
“Now me too.”
Riona repeated Reona’s move, took a bite of my teriyaki burger, and offered me her cheeseburger in exchange. I took a bite.
A lot had happened in a short time, so my sensitivity had been calibrated way down. Needless to say, the surrounding male jealousy intensified accordingly. After lunch we left Wacudonald’s and headed for the planetarium.
I had picked this mall mostly because it was far, and it happened to be one of the rare malls with a planetarium, so we stopped in. Inside we took seats and watched the projection scroll across the ceiling and walls.
“That’s Deneb, in Cygnus. Over there is Altair, in Aquila. And that’s Vega, in Lyra. Connect them and you have the Summer Triangle.”
“Yeah, you know everything, Riona. I’m not the audience for astronomy — I really only knew the names.”
“Mm, me too — knew the names and nothing more.”
Riona was filling in around the narrator’s script for me and Reona. Riona, what don’t you know about?
“I used to love stargazing with Mom when I was little.”
“Wait — you weren’t with her, Reona?”
“Nee-chan didn’t come. Said sleepy and not interested.”
“Hey — Riona, don’t casually expose me.”
“It’s true though.”
I’d had a mental image of the two of them as joined at the hip, so this surprised me. Granted, picturing Reona quietly watching stars was genuinely difficult.
The hour-and-a-half projection wrapped up. We’d been out since morning and were running low on stamina, so we headed home. They didn’t object.
”…So I never got an answer this morning — how did you know I was at this mall?”
“That’s a maiden secret. But wherever Ryouya-kun goes, we know.”
“If Ryouya vanished from in front of us, we’d follow to the ends of the earth.”
They said this calmly. Whether they understood it sounded like stalker speech, I genuinely didn’t know — but I was beginning to suspect they understood and said it anyway.
I’d been telling myself the Yagami Ryouya enthusiasm would burn itself out and they’d lose interest in me — but I was now finding it hard to be sure. There was, growing in me, a suspicion the heat was not going to cool, ever.