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 34.1: False Truth

Chapter 34.1: False Truth

The next day, Sasa went to school as usual.

The one who was absent instead was Riko Morozumi.

I never thought she would actually skip… Maybe I scared her pretty badly last night. I could see her followers around, but in the end, without their leader Riko, they were the type who couldn’t do anything on their own.

As long as Riko was gone, Amane’s peace would be preserved… but if she kept skipping like this, it would start causing problems for our side.

Above all, shutting herself in her room might remind Sasa of her past, since she used to be quite the shut-in herself.

Even when I approached her followers, they got completely spooked and ran away the moment I tried to get close, so I decided to ask some random girl for Riko’s contact information later.

It felt like a peaceful ordinary day, as if yesterday’s events had been a lie.

Of course, Kurumi—who seemed to have sensed something—was giving me suspicious looks… but she didn’t ask anything.

Kurumi… She really is a strange girl. It almost feels like she’s pretending to be a god who knows everything yet chooses to just watch from the sidelines.

When lunch break came, I stood up, thinking it had been a while since I ate with Ousei and Kotetsu, just the three of us.

Then Sasa walked straight over to me.

“Taiki. Would you like to have lunch together today?”

“Ah… Sure, I don’t mind.”

I didn’t have any prior plans with Ousei and the others anyway.

Considering what happened last night, I figured I should keep her company and agreed.

She often hung out in my room after school, but we had never eaten lunch together before.

As that thought crossed my mind and I stood up, Sasa naturally lined up beside me… and for some reason, she clung to my arm.

“Um… Sasa? What’s with the arm?”

“W-We’re going together, aren’t we? As a gentleman, you have to escort me.”

Her face turned bright red, and she clearly felt embarrassed… but I could have sworn her arm was trembling slightly.

Maybe she was still afraid of being alone.

“C-Come on, let’s go quickly?”

“O-Okay…”

Thanks to that, I got the feeling unnecessary rumors were about to spread in the classroom again, but I decided to just give up on preventing it.

If I had to point out one thing that bothered me, it was Shika’s gaze… but she wasn’t even looking this way.

Since Sasa and I had different walking strides, I moved carefully alongside her all the way to the cafeteria so I wouldn’t leave her behind.

We finally reached the cafeteria and she let go.

Thinking back, when I first met Sasa in my previous life, she had been dead drunk… and I had a memory of walking with her the same way. Well, that time it was only because she was wasted, though.

We grabbed trays, sat down at a table, and I finally thought we could talk normally… but for some reason she sat right next to me.

When two people eat together, normally they sit facing each other, right——

“…Isn’t this kind of close?”

“Maybe… you don’t like it…?”

“It’s not that I dislike it.”

“Then it’s fine like this, right?”

It’s not that I dislike it, but it still feels a bit much… Yet she stayed just as close as ever.

It reminded me of the time she kept me confined in my previous life, but this Sasa was different from back then.

This was surely——not because she liked me as the opposite sex… but simply because she had grown attached to me, I thought.

Even so, it was still bothering me.

“Is there something on my face? You’ve been staring the whole time.”

“Fweh!? Um… I just…?”

She seemed surprised that I pointed it out and became flustered and tongue-tied.

…Was she hiding something?

“If there’s something you want to say, just tell me, okay?”

“…Well, um. About last night… that thing that happened?”

“Yeah.”

So it was about that after all.

I hadn’t expected her to be completely back to normal Sasa after just one day.

I just hoped it hadn’t become a new trauma for her.

“Back then… I got stripped down to my underwear… and you saw everything, right?”

“That’s the kind of topic that’s really hard to respond to on the spot…”

Since it was the truth, there was no helping it…

“It was my first time letting a guy see me like that… so, um, you know?”

“…………”

I see.

When I thought about it carefully… of course a girl wouldn’t want a guy to see her in such an exposed state.

Even though it couldn’t be helped, I had seen her like that last night——

“Could you… take responsibility?”

It was a line I felt like I’d heard somewhere before.

What exactly was I supposed to take responsibility for?

It’s not like anything was going to shrink away… I almost said it out loud, but then I remembered Tsukimi calling me tactless and held back.

Then she closed the already small distance even more… and pressed herself fully against me.

“Ei!”

“H-Hey… Sasa?”

“…See? Today is kind of different… right?”

She leaned forward as she spoke, deliberately emphasizing her head.

It was probably the braided ribbon hair clip that was different from usual.

I had noticed, but… was she waiting for me to comment on it?

Was that all the “responsibility” she wanted… I didn’t really know.

“I thought you looked prettier than usual today. Is something special going on?”

“Don’t you want to say something more… like this? About my clothes or hair color or anything?”

Huh, what…? Was she asking about my preferences?

“I feel like it’s kind of wrong for me to comment on how Sasa looks.”

“Th-That’s fine too? Um… I suddenly really wanted to become cuter!”

“…I see.”

I got flustered because she said something that could easily make a guy misunderstand.

If a girl suddenly wants to become cuter, asking a guy this kind of question is pretty normal, I guess.

“How about we go to some clothing stores together sometime?”

“Really? O-Okay, it’s a promise then!”

“Y-Yeah.”

…Huh?