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 33.1: The Truth About Pure Beauty Amber

After dinner, I cleaned my room while waiting for Sasa to arrive.

If she was snooping around about Amane Mishina, I had to tell her to stop.

That was what I thought, but——

“Where the heck are you wasting time right now?”

The time she said she would come had passed, and she still wasn’t here.

Considering she hadn’t contacted me before either, it was possible she was loose with meeting times.

Still, I had a really bad feeling.

Probably… because I had found out she was secretly working behind the scenes about Amane’s situation.

I left the room and walked the route she usually took toward the cafeteria.

But I didn’t pass her on the way.

I opened the messaging app and sent her a message, but it didn’t even show as read.

There was no way I could go to the girls’ dorm myself, but it was unthinkable that Sasa of all people would fall asleep at this hour.

After all the late nights she spent in my room, I was absolutely sure of that.

Then maybe she was in some kind of danger.

But if that place was the girls’ dorm, there would be nothing I could do.

While I was wondering where to search, Kano appeared in the cafeteria.

“Kano! Have you seen Sasa anywhere?”

“S-such a sudden approach… I got startled, you know.”

“Sorry. But more importantly——”

“If you’re asking whether I saw her, I haven’t today.”

I must have seemed too impatient because I wanted even the smallest clue, and for a moment I thought her cheeks flushed slightly, but I ignored it now.

If she hadn’t seen her, that was that.

I couldn’t drag Kano into the search either, so I was about to turn on my heel when——

“I see. Then I’ll hurry… Wait. Today?”

“Yes, that’s right. The other day around this time she headed toward the annex… I was curious what she was doing.”

“Thanks. That helps.”

“Good. I’m glad the information was useful. And also——”

What I heard next shocked me even more, but I tucked it away in my chest for the moment.

Anyway, I had a lead now.

It was hard to believe Sasa would go to the mostly empty annex for no reason.

It was deserted and dark… While the hallways had security cameras, the classrooms didn’t, so it was the perfect place to do something shady.

The problem was that the annex alone was already too big. Unless I opened each classroom door, I couldn’t check for lights from the hallway.

I could go outside and peek through the windows, but that would take even longer.

I started running at full speed and began checking room by room.

The nighttime school building felt as dark and eerie as a haunted house, but it didn’t particularly disturb my mind.

I checked more than ten classrooms, but she wasn’t there… Maybe she was on the second floor or higher.

The moment I thought that and turned toward the stairs——

“So bright!! …Wh-what, the inner camera?!”

From somewhere on the still unchecked first floor, I heard a girl’s voice.

Someone was here… Convinced of that, I ran toward the direction of the voice.

I didn’t know which room exactly, but she was in one of the visible classrooms… I closed my eyes there and focused on listening carefully.

“Found her.”

When I pushed open the heavy classroom door, there were four girls inside.

Surrounded by Riko Morozumi and her followers, I found Sasa standing there in her underwear.

“I finally found you… Sasa…!!”

I quickly grasped the situation.

Amane wasn’t here, and the locker door was open. I realized Sasa had been waiting in ambush and fallen into a trap.

“Ha! Just one weakness of yours is enough!!”

I noticed Riko was pointing the camera of her handheld phone at Sasa, trying to take a photo of her like that.

Even if I ran from where I was now, I wouldn’t make it in time to stop her finger.

“Wha—the wrong app opened on its own—why?!”

But maybe because she was rushing to take the shot, she made an operation mistake.

Taking advantage of that opening, I closed the distance and snatched the phone from her.

“Sasa, sorry I’m late… You’re not okay, are you.”

No reaction. I had seen her like this once before in the first loop.

Ah, I see… So that’s what it was.

I reached one truth, and my heart felt ice-cold from the bottom.

Just to be sure, I checked the album, and I felt relieved that there were no photos of Sasa.

But I couldn’t just leave Riko and the others here.

“Hey… You’re prepared for what’s coming, right?”

My voice came out low without thinking.

Perhaps intimidated, Riko stumbled backward and sank to the floor.

“Ah… ahh…”

Even if she could act arrogant toward other girls, in the end she was just a high-school girl who had only recently become one.

She probably hadn’t even been wary of the mere six boys in our grade, let alone paid attention to them. That might be why she dared do something like this, but there are things you can do and things you can’t.

I took the most intimidating attitude I could… and took the phone from Riko.

“…I’m taking this photo, okay?”

I showed her the one picture on the screen.

For some reason it was a selfie of Riko’s face taken with the inner camera.