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 44: Best Friends Forever!

The two girls from my class were standing right in front of me in line.

(…! No way… This isn’t the kinda place where someone from Teimon Academy would show up, right!?)

I almost yelled that out loud, but then I spotted two even more out-of-place people sitting at a table way in the back, so I managed to hold it in.

I pulled my bangs down a bit so they wouldn’t recognize me if we crossed paths, then quietly lined up behind them.

One of them glanced my way for a second, but she immediately turned back to her friend… looks like I’m safe.

Truth is, I’ve never actually talked to them, but I do know a little about them.

They’re kinda in the neutral crowd… I think Shika mentioned something about them being close because they’re both general-admission students. Since she’s super plugged into all the gossip, I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.

So yeah, even if they’re from Teimon Academy, it’s not impossible for them to hit up a fast-food joint.

That possibility had completely slipped my mind.

Their conversation started drifting over to me naturally.

“What’s a secret supposed to be, anyway?”

“I saw this big-eating channel say their Homucha finally came out on the 218th one in a video.”

“0.45871 percent? That’s, like, decent odds, right?”

“Homucha probably just got lucky. I bet the real minimum is around there. But if we pull one, we could totally go viral…!”

They didn’t call it out, but… eating over 200 of these for a big-eating vid? No way they actually ate them all… maybe the staff just chows down happily off-camera or something.

Also, calculating to five decimal places that fast!?

And since it’s a percentage, it should technically be seven digits after the decimal anyway.
I’d even need a couple extra seconds to do that in my head… Just hiding in line doesn’t mean general-admission kids aren’t kinda scary, does it?

Still… if it’s this hard to pull, getting a second secret one to give to Sasa might be pretty tough after all.

Finally the line moved up to me. I glanced sideways and saw the two classmates sitting down at a table near the entrance that had just opened up. Phew.

Looks like Sasa and the others won’t get spotted.

I grabbed a lucky set too and hurried back to Sasa’s table.

Shika was rubbing her cheek all over the hedgehog wrapped in the carpet—she must really like it—while Sasa was fidgeting nervously.

“Sorry for the wait. I don’t need the merch, so you can have it, Sasa.”

“You could’ve just said you bought it for me, y’know? …Thanks…!”

Oh. So Sasa already knew.

The timing, the lame excuse I was ready to give… I knew it was weak, but when she thanks me so straight-up like that, my face gets all hot anyway.

“Anyway, I’m gonna scarf this down quick…”

“Wait—! The carpet…!”

She gripped the bag so carefully because you can tell right away if it’s a squishy just by squeezing. Sasa started opening it super slowly, bit by bit.

I munched on my burger and watched her little unboxing ceremony.

…But I already knew her wish wasn’t gonna come true.

Should I have said something beforehand so she wouldn’t get sad no matter what came out…? Nah, Sasa’s weirdly sharp about stuff like that. She’d see right through me trying to be considerate.

“This is… a turtle squishy… right? It’s… not exactly cute, but since you gave it to me, Taiki, I’m gonna treasure it…!”

Just like I felt when I ordered and picked it up.

And of all things, a turtle… On SNS everyone was calling it a total miss.

Sasa’s smiling for me, but… I dunno. I suddenly remembered her from my past life making almost the exact same face.

Back then I couldn’t say anything, and it looked like she was forcing it.

What she really wanted… was the carpet, wasn’t it?

Maybe pulling the secret on the very first try used up all my luck. Thinking back to my original high-school life in the first loop… I was never exactly blessed with good fortune anyway.

But for some reason…

This turtle kinda felt like it suited me.

Slow, always trying hard to keep up but never quite catching the others… until you start doubting whether effort will ever really pay off.

And then… one story popped into my head.

“Sasa… You know the Aesop fable ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’?”

“Hm? Yeah… it’s super famous. They race, and in the end the tortoise wins, right?”

“Yeah. Actually, the rabbit and tortoise in ‘LORN FRIENDS’ start with an episode based on that Aesop fable… and by the end they become best friends.”

From her reaction, it looked like Sasa had no idea… but the communication app “LORN” itself is run by a company under the Kokonoe Group.

I never got directly involved with it in my past life, but I had a junior who loved ‘LORN FRIENDS’ and joined the company because of it, so he told me a ton about the episodes.

“—So, uh, what I’m trying to say is… I just wanted to tell you that the tortoise and the hare actually get along really well.”

I had no idea why I was suddenly going so hard.

Before I knew it, I was blurting all that out super fast.

I cringed inside at how full-on otaku I sounded.

Maybe I just wanted her to accept that a tortoise—something a lot like me—was okay.

Then she gave me this blank look… and next thing I knew, a soft, knowing smile spread across her face.

“Hehe, Taiki… You don’t have to worry about me like that. I’m seriously… just happy you gave it to me, y’know?”

“Huh…?”

“But that side of you… I think it’s super……………… cool!”

When she said that, Sasa’s cheeks flushed bright red.
She’s usually great at giving compliments, but hearing something this direct… it had enough power to knock out any guy our age.

I’d been thinking she was just forcing a smile for my sake.

But apparently not.

The Sasa from my past life and the Sasa now… they’re different people.

She’s changed… Maybe it’s not good to keep judging everything based on what I knew back then forever.

◇◆◇<Third-person perspective>◇◆◇

Shika, who’d been listening to Taiki and Sasa’s whole exchange, was screaming inside her head.

(That’s— that’s so unfair～～～～～～～～!! Hearing that episode makes me want a tortoise and rabbit too, y’know!?!)

Shika knew a ton about ‘LORN FRIENDS’.

And for good reason… Multiple game apps tied to ‘LORN FRIENDS’ were out there.

She hadn’t grinded the endgame content or anything, but she’d downloaded and at least played every related app once.

Still, she’d been so into the games themselves that she never really followed the actual ‘LORN FRIENDS’ storyline.

(Sasa-chan’s face is bright red too… But it’s fine! I got a carpet from Kashiwado-kun too, so…)