After I Confessed to My Childhood Friend and Got Rejected, I Threw a Game Offline Meetup to Cheer Myself Up, Only to Find Out My Long-Time Gaming Buddy Was Actually the Quiet, Silver-Haired Swedish Beauty Who's the Cutest Girl in School

Chapter 5.1: Heart Mark

Two months earlier, around the time when classes had just been reshuffled.

The game-loving, communication-shy Amamiya Takaaki had a bad memory of being glared at hostilely by almost all the boys in the school for a week.

It was because he had secured the seat in front of Nagase Karina, the number one girl that all the boys in the school wanted to date.

There was no bullying, but apparently, boys kept coming to him on their knees or offering large sums of money to swap seats.

Incidentally, when Amamiya Takaaki was about to accept one of those offers, the homeroom teacher did not permit it, so the situation settled down quickly.

Amamiya Takaaki himself had not expected much.

For an introverted guy like him, having any connection with Karina was a pipe dream.

Having seen dozens of handsome guys confess to her and get shot down, he could not possibly think he had a chance.

“Karina! I like you! Go out with me!”

“Sorry, no way.”

“Karina-chan, I’m in love with you! With marriage in mind, with me…”

“Too heavy, pass. I’m listening to music, so be quiet.”

“Karina-tan, with me…”

“Who…?”

That was not all.

Karina was also famous as someone “you can’t tell what she’s thinking.”

She spent most breaks by herself and was basically quiet.

Even when friends talked to her, her responses were casual, often just one word.

In short, she had an aloof attitude.

She would cut off conversations with a dryness like “I’d rather listen to music than talk to you guys,” then immerse herself in her own world while listening to songs through her favorite headphones.

Her friends seemed used to that attitude, but to Amamiya Takaaki, who did not know her well, it only left the impression of “So cold!?”

In other words, if an insignificant person like him talked to her, there was a high chance she would ignore him.

If she ignored him, Amamiya Takaaki, whose heart was as fragile as glass, would probably carry it with him until graduation.

He had no choice but to play the mob character.

As a mob character whose face was not even drawn, sitting in the seat in front of Karina.

“Ah…”

Amamiya Takaaki, who had been staring at the form to decide committees, noticed a mechanical pencil that had rolled to his feet and bent down.

It had a bit of dust on it, so he wiped the surface with his handkerchief before looking for the owner.

Tap tap.

Gently tapped from behind, he turned around to see Karina, who was usually expressionless, putting her hands together with an apologetic look on her face.

“That’s my mechanical pencil. Thanks for picking it up.”

“Ah, no, no problem at all…”

Amamiya Takaaki handed the mechanical pencil to Karina, who smiled gently, and he felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.

The moment their fingers touched slightly, his hand jerked with a twitch, but Karina, as expected, showed no reaction.

Unlike Amamiya Takaaki, she did not get conscious about something like that, which was just like her.

“Hey, you. What was your name again…?”

“Ah, m-me? Amamiya, but…”

“And the first name?”

“T-Takaaki, that’s what it is…”

Because he was too embarrassed, his tongue did not work right, and Amamiya Takaaki felt even more embarrassed.

“Takaaki-kun, huh. I’ll remember that.”

And Karina said that.

That was the first conversation between Amamiya Takaaki and her.

Amamiya Takaaki noticed Tojo Chika glaring at him from a distant seat and did not reply, but it was a moment when he truly felt glad for this seat.

However, after that, the two of them had not had a single conversation.

Just picking up a mechanical pencil was not enough to become friends.

Amamiya Takaaki pretended to sleep in the seat in front of her, and Karina gazed out the window from the seat behind while listening to music.

They led quiet high school lives that would never intersect, just like any two strangers.

Amamiya Takaaki thought that was the end of it.

“Whoa, that monster back then was super huge and surprised me. If Rain… I mean, Amamiya-kun, hadn’t come to help, I would have been eaten for sure.”

“Ah… yeah, that’s right.”

“I do level grinding by looping the usual dungeon, but sometimes hidden monsters pop up, so I wish they would stop that. The experience points are low, but they’re unnecessarily strong. It kills the motivation for looping, so I hope the developers fix it soon.”

“I think so too…”

“By the way, are you still equipping the accessory I gave you the other day? I heard it’s been trending lately that it fetches a high price at auction.”

“Y-yeah, it is. But since it’s a gift from Dragon Head… I mean, Karina-san, I’ll just keep equipping it as is…”

Karina is such a chatty girl.

She always spent time quietly in the seat behind, but now she was talking like a machine gun at a speed he had never seen.

“Hehe, you say the nicest things. Who would have thought that Amamiya-kun, my classmate, was that Rain-san. The world seems big, but maybe it’s actually even smaller.”

“I never imagined that Dragon Head-san was Karina-san either…”

The image of Dragon Head’s avatar, a middle-aged man grinning with white teeth, floated in his mind.

Even now, Amamiya Takaaki could not believe this situation and was full of suspicion.

“Hey, Amamiya-kun. You don’t have to call me with ‘san.’ Just call me Karina casually.”

“Eh… but isn’t that rude? We’re not even friends…”