Chapter 12

In the morning, students gradually arrived at the classroom.

Among them, Kazuhiko Saiki was sitting at his desk with a blank expression.

“Hey, you look even spacier than usual.”

The one who said this was a boy just as ordinary and plain as Kazuhiko, a boy Kazuhiko inwardly thought, I don’t want to hear that from you.

“Oh, Tomo.”

Tomonao Utsumi One of Kazuhiko’s few friends.

Seeing his face somehow made Kazuhiko feel settled. Normally, it would be unthinkable for Kazuhiko to feel calm just by looking at a guy’s face, but after the torrent of recent events, there was a sense of relief, like a soldier returning from the battlefield, that he was back in the mundane everyday world.

“…For some reason, looking at you calms me down.” 

“Huh?!” 

“No, no, don’t clutch your butt.”

That was Kazuhiko’s fault.

But he couldn’t help it.

Since receiving that threatening letter, Reika had been relentlessly, sensually aggressive. Being pursued by a voluptuous beautiful girl was certainly pleasing to a healthy high school boy. But pretending to be hypnotized meant he couldn’t turn the tables and pursue her by saying, Do you like me?

Although, if he were the type of guy who could do that, he probably wouldn’t have kept feigning hypnosis in the first place. …No, with Reika’s “pressure,” which suggested anything could happen, even a courageous man might have pretended to be hypnotized.

And setting that aside, there was a vague premonition that if he were to make a move on Reika, his life would be decided then and there. Just a feeling.

She was a set meal that he absolutely shouldn’t touch. But she was too alluring. That’s why even after his self-relief, the memory of her sweet scent, body temperature, and soft touch would flood back, filling him with an endless stream of agonizing emotions.

This was precisely the happy torture that brought immense stress to Kazuhiko despite the happiness, leaving him exhausted.

Or perhaps it was simply overdoing the self-relief. …No, yesterday, after those photos, he had been made to have self-relief and then discuss over the phone how many times he had done it and what he had imagined, not over LINE. That was likely the bigger burden.

“Hahaha… life is strange and complex; the truth is stranger than fiction, I guess…” Kazuhiko said with vacant, distant eyes.

“Oh, okay… I don’t know what it is, but I can tell you’re really tired.”

Kazuhiko felt bad for scaring off his few friends, but he no longer knew what to do. Honestly, it had only been a few days, and if this was the result, Kazuhiko wasn’t confident he could endure it.

Should he just reveal to her that he wasn’t hypnotized? —Terrifying.

However, since he was certainly feeling a subtle sense of guilt, he was beginning to think that being condemned for it might be one way out. While he felt it would be a waste, the feeling that he couldn’t keep this up was stronger.

Just as Kazuhiko was thinking this, the classroom suddenly buzzed with noise.

Stealing the gaze of both boys and girls, Reika Takane entered, walking as if on a visual runway. Standing, a peony; sitting, a tree peony; walking, a lily.

She was as stunning as ever. But only Kazuhiko knew that this flower was a deadly, poisonous flower.

—If our relationship were ever found out, what would happen to me…?

In the old days, it would have surely been parading through the streets followed by execution. Though, to prevent that, Reika would have worked behind the scenes and thrown him into a specially made prison of her own design. What kind of torture would take place inside, he wondered?

Kazuhiko, newly aware of this unpleasant anxiety, felt his cheek twitch with a fresh worry. The reason he hadn’t thought of it until now was likely his blind trust in the risk management of the perfect superhuman, Reika.

He still believed he could trust her, but she was, after all, intensifying her invasion into his life.

—Am I, perchance, cornered?

Why hadn’t he realized it until now?

“Takane-san is beautiful as always…” Tomo, like the other classmates, stared at her with a dazed expression.

Kazuhiko wanted to warn them about the poisonous flower masquerading as purity, but no one would believe him.

She’s faking it so well, Kazuhiko thought. He earnestly wished that she would continue to successfully hide their relationship.

As always, Kazuhiko watched Reika in his peripheral vision. She was amicably chatting with the friends she usually hung out with. The boys of the top caste wanted to approach her but couldn’t.

However, how long did she intend to continue this?

—Hah, I need to figure out something.

Kazuhiko sighed inwardly.