A Late Bloomer's Powerful Restart ~My Second Life Starts at a Prestigious School Where the Gender Ratio Is Totally Off, and for Some Reason, All These Talented Girls Get Attached to Me...!?~

Chapter 28: Is This a Bloodbath!?

Why does my dorm room get so many unannounced visitors?

…This is a problem I should seriously think about fixing once and for all.

When it comes to Sasa, I can admit my own carelessness made things too loose up until now, but this time Shika is part of the package too.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure we exchanged contact info… Was today supposed to be a surprise visit?

“Huh…? Wait, is that Nanamiya-san!? W-why are you in Taiki’s room!? W-w-what’s going on~~!?”

“Calm down, Sasa!”

“I’m perfectly calm!”

“That’s a lie! You look anything but calm!”

“Tehe!”

Maybe she meant it as a joke, because Sasa laughed it off.

I was finally starting to get used to Sasa being this loud and chaotic… but Shika had gone completely quiet, clearly freaked out.

Was she just shy around new people…? But then, for some reason, she suddenly switched back to the atmosphere she usually had in the classroom.

“Ahem! Kanaka-san… Do you always just barge into a guy’s room like this?”

“No way! Only when I want to hang out with Taiki!”

That doesn’t sound any different from “always.”

It’s practically every day, which is the real problem, so I didn’t bother pointing it out.

“And… maybe when I need some comfort too.”

“Hey, stop saying things that’ll cause misunderstandings.”

“…Misunderstanding? I didn’t say anything weird, did I?”

She really didn’t seem to get it; she just blinked at me in confusion.

This sheltered, out-of-touch rich girl… might need to learn a bit more common sense.

On the other hand, Shika—

“~~~~~!”

Her cheeks turned a very obvious shade of red… so she clearly understood what it meant.

“Anyway! I only said it was careless because the door wasn’t locked! More importantly, what kind of relationship do you two even have?”

“Game buddies.”

There still wasn’t anything deeper between me and Shika.

Better to be honest than to dodge and create even more misunderstandings.

“Th-that’s awful… So I’m not your very first female gaming buddy!?”

“Don’t phrase it in a way that sounds so misleading! Nanamiya-san, why don’t you show her the game console you brought?”

That should prove to Sasa that the relationship was real.

But Shika clutched the bag to her chest and turned her face away with a huff.

“Wh-why… are you calling me by my last name? You called me Shika last time, didn’t you?”

That was only one accidental slip-up at the very beginning!?

Well, if it’s okay to use her first name… then I’ll gladly do it.

But is Shika really fine with that? Letting a guy she just met call her by her first name…

Her cool mode was seriously hard to deal with.

When I glanced at Sasa, her eyes were wide open… and her face screamed complete misunderstanding.

“Shika… let me see the game console.”

“No thank you.”

“Eh…”

She was sulking, and she refused me at the worst possible moment.

Explaining through the Yashima chairman would be hard to prove since the connection with Shika was direct.

This was getting troublesome… or so I thought—

“There’s no need for that. If he’s Taiki’s gaming buddy, he should be good at games, right? We’ll know once we play.”

At Sasa’s suggestion, Shika twitched in reaction.

She seemed to have quite a bit of pride in her gaming skills… Apparently I’d poked her just right, because she picked up one of the controllers in the room.

“Fine… Let’s fight.”

What kind of development was this…?

Anyway, if it meant clearing the air between them, I decided to just watch their battle.

While I sipped coffee and spectated, the match was completely one-sided.

Sasa, who had only recently started playing, had no chance against Shika, who didn’t hold back at all and crushed her.

Even so, Sasa kept challenging her bravely, but the result stayed the same.

After a while of this, Shika suddenly froze, as if she’d snapped back to reality, and stopped moving her hands.

“Uh, um… I’m sorry. I went all out against a beginner—”

“Gotcha!! Yes—finally won!!”

“Hiii…”

Maybe because she had switched back to her real self, Shika shrank back, overwhelmed by Sasa’s high energy.

“Eh, Nanamiya-san!? Taiki, something’s wrong with Nanamiya-san!?”

“She’s just startled because you’re shaking her so much… And Shika, you can drop the act now, right?”

“Awawawa… Please… let go…”

Sasa might look like the typical cute girl, but she actually had surprising strength.

She kept shaking Shika like that, and Shika was going to collapse at this rate.

“Act?”

“Um… well… actually I’m… kind of timid…”

“…? Wait, so you’re saying you were acting in the classroom?”

“Yes. That’s exactly it.”

Sasa, sharp as ever, nodded with a completely clear and understanding expression.

Sasa had been brushed off casually by Shika before.

Shika was probably freaking out this much because she was thinking back on how she’d treated her.

But Sasa didn’t care about that kind of thing.

“I get it now! As the Nanamiya heiress, you can’t afford to give off a weak impression, right?”

“You’re not mad?”

“I’m in a pretty similar position, so I totally understand.”

Similar… well, basically the same.

The only real difference was their personalities… Sasa just put herself out there openly.

“Want to go another round?”

“Of course!”

In the end, Shika seemed to relax her guard around Sasa, who didn’t change her attitude at all even after seeing her true self.

After that, as they played a second and third match, I started getting a strange sense of déjà vu and stopped them.

“One more round—”

“How about we call it there? Or if you really want to keep going, do it in one of your rooms.”

“You’re not playing, Taiki?”

“It’s almost dinner time. It’ll get hard to leave the boys’ dorm after that.”

I thought I was giving them good advice, but both of them just tilted their heads.

“Even if someone sees us… it’ll probably be fine… right?”

“No, it won’t.”

“Kano-san said that if anything happens, I can just use her as an excuse.”

What the heck… That was news to me. Wait, why wasn’t I told about this?

Did people think I was the type to sneak girls into my room whenever I wanted?

“Wait a second. Didn’t you say you snuck in—hid—because it would be bad if anyone saw you?”

“First-time stealth clear… Since my first infiltration succeeded, it’s fine.”

“…I see.”

I corrected her wording… and wait, she was about to say “first-time play,” wasn’t she?

Don’t treat this like a game. Even if you did, shouldn’t the whole thing up to leaving still count as the “first-time play”…!?

…No, I should just stop commenting.

It seemed like there was no room left for me to argue anyway.

I silently praised myself for keeping it in my head.

But since they were playing games in my room, they should at least listen to the owner’s opinion.

“Anyway, we need to eat dinner, right? You can play more after you go back to the girls’ dorm and do it together there.”

“Muu… Fine then. I’ll come back after eating!”

“Did you even listen!? You’re going back to your own room!”

Shika was staring at me hard, probably suspecting that Sasa would come back after dinner too. My chest stung painfully.

Both of them were proper young ladies from distinguished families, so they neatly put the game console back where it belonged.

By the way, the game console Shika brought still hadn’t been used… I had no idea what she even carried it here for.

Since we couldn’t keep playing anyway, I decided not to touch the subject.

“Alright, let’s head to the cafeteria… but before that, Shika.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“Does the name Hana Saion ring any bells for you?”

That was the name I’d heard in the conversation between Morozumi and Mishina.

I’d wanted to ask Shika about it ever since I heard it.

I figured she would probably know—

“Huh…”

As if time had frozen, her eyes widened and she went stiff.

“Why… do you know about Hana Saion?”

When she finally spoke, her voice carried a faint sadness… and I panicked inside.

Sasa looked confused too, since it was a name she didn’t recognize.

“There’s a girl in our class named Amane Mishina, right? Morozumi called her that name… She seems connected to the Nanamiya Group, so I was just a little curious. Sorry… If it’s something you don’t want to talk about, you don’t have to force yourself.”

Just by looking at her face, it was obvious this wasn’t some trivial topic… Sasa, standing next to me, also had a look like she wanted to ask something.

She’s usually so perceptive about things like this… but now she seemed off too.

I was about to take the question back, but Shika answered first.

“Hana Saion… was Amane-san’s older sister… and a long time ago, she was my best friend.”

She used the past tense “was” for best friend, so she seemed to know the truth about her.

I felt bad for bringing up memories of a friend who was no longer in this world.

“…Sorry for asking something so sensitive so casually. I didn’t want to make you look that pained just to satisfy my curiosity. I’m sorry.”

“No… It’s just that… I haven’t fully come to terms with Hana Saion yet.”

I had already guessed that she was Mishina’s twin older sister.

But I never expected that Shika had been best friends with her—and that she knew she was no longer alive.

Still, I stayed calm. I had to stay calm.

I couldn’t let anyone find out that I knew the truth.

Even if they suspected, I couldn’t say the source was the future.