I Was Helping Out With The Harem Plan Of The Romcom Protagonist I Admired, But Now That I’ve Realized He’s A Scumbag, Next Time I’m Going To Stop It And Make The Girls Happy Myself - Chapter 5: Budding Feelings

Chapter 5: Budding Feelings

After that, it was awful.

Morning time. Short breaks. Lunch. After school.

Jinguuji and Takasaka-san kept talking together the entire time.

Thanks to Takasaka-san’s original personality—her shy, withdrawn side—it didn’t seem like their relationship would go any further yet, but if Jinguuji pushed even a little… I didn’t even want to imagine it.

Once Takasaka-san took off her glasses and did a makeover, it would get seriously dangerous.

That’s when the “heroine who’ll do anything for the protagonist she loves” would be complete.

And if that happened, it’d be a nightmare to deal with.

So… what do I do?

※

Takasaka POV

Let’s rewind a bit. A few days after the field trip incident.

I’d started to pay attention to one boy—no, it wasn’t exactly “attention.” It was more like suspicion. A sense of something being off.

Naturally. Because I’d almost had the crime pinned on me.

His name was Yuuya Sugita, apparently.

He stole the field trip money while I wasn’t looking.

I don’t know how he did it, but I couldn’t shake the distrust I felt.

At first, when it looked like I was about to be framed, my emotions nearly got swallowed by anger.

But when I forced myself to think calmly, I realized how strange it all was.

What felt off?

It was the fact that he confessed in front of everyone.

Sure, it’s possible he still had a conscience, couldn’t bear the guilt, and admitted it.

But his attitude denied that.

His actions and his demeanor didn’t match.

He confessed to stealing the money—in other words, the whole class found out he’d stolen it—and yet his attitude didn’t change. For some reason, he stayed completely calm.

If he’d confessed because guilt crushed him, some kind of panic would’ve shown.

But he didn’t show even a flicker of it.

Almost like he did it on purpose…

The classmates around me were so focused on making him the villain that only I noticed the discomfort in it.

To get to the bottom of that discomfort, I decided to follow him.

When school ended, Yuuya Sugita left the classroom at a brisk pace.

I tailed him, careful not to look suspicious.

Even though only a few days had passed since the incident, the rumor had already spread across the whole school.

He walked down the hallway like he was fleeing from it.

He was so fast I almost lost him, but I managed to keep up and follow him through the school gate.

Once we got a little distance away from the school and I couldn’t see other students around anymore, his pace suddenly slowed.

So “fleeing the rumor” really was the right description.

I kept hiding myself as I followed, and then he let out a big yawn.

I’d been sneaking glances at him during class too, and he yawned a lot.

I didn’t know why—but maybe I was about to find out.

There was no one else around besides me and him.

Maybe he realized that too, because on an empty roadside, he started talking to himself.

“Man… part-time work is such a pain.”

Hearing that, I remembered.

Right—people said he’d been spending all his time working.

At school, there were rumors about “family circumstances” and “debt,” things like that.

So I assumed that’s why he tried to steal the field trip money.

That’s what I’d believed the whole time—until the next words out of his mouth shattered it.

“Maybe I’ll quit. There’s no reason to save money anymore.”

No reason to save money.

I couldn’t understand what that meant.

Because if he didn’t need money, then there was no reason to steal the field trip money in the first place.

Did he steal for some other reason? Did he commit a crime on purpose just to make the class hate him? No—something didn’t fit.

And the moment it clicked, it felt like the last, most important piece slid perfectly into place.

He’d been throwing himself into part-time work only to make up the field trip money.

After that, it didn’t take long to reach the conclusion.

—He wasn’t the one who stole the field trip money.

The real culprit was someone else.

And he… he worked himself to the bone to earn money for one reason only: to take the blame for me… to make himself the culprit.

I didn’t know why he’d go that far for my sake, and it was nothing more than a guess.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off Sugita-kun as he wandered lazily into a convenience store.

I didn’t know why.

Even so, the fact remained: his face and his name were carved deeply into my heart.