Vol 2 Chapter 3 – The Café【Volume 2: The Flirting-All-Over-the-Place Second Semester Arc】

Shino’s fury had torpedoed the mixer plan completely.

Honestly, given how she felt about it, that was entirely fair — and Sandai understood it perfectly well. But the fact remained that the mixer could have been a useful opportunity to let a wider circle of people know about the relationship. In that sense, he was just slightly, a little disappointed.

Shino was unquestionably beautiful — and not just by the standards of their school. Her reputation had spread well beyond campus. Sandai had heard it himself once, stepping into some random shop, overhearing a group of kids around their age — maybe some university students mixed in — talking about her like she was a rumor.

Specifically naming his high school. Saying there was supposedly this incredibly beautiful girl named Yuizaki Shino.

The fact that dropping her name at a mixer packed the place — that made complete sense. Which was exactly why he wanted to put up a clear deterrent.

“Hmmm…”

“What are you thinking about?”

Shino, sitting in his lap, tilted her head at him with a puzzled look. Sandai took her hands and swung them lightly back and forth as he answered.

“Just trying to figure out how to get the word out about us. School-wise, it’ll probably spread on its own from your friends — but outside of school, I’m not sure what to do.”

“Outside of school?”

“Right.”

“Well then… want to come to my part-time job? It might spread from there, too.”

He hadn’t thought of that.

If they were going to let people outside of school know, showing up at Shino’s workplace was actually a perfectly valid option.

“That’s the café, right?”

“Yep! I told them I had a boyfriend and they said to bring you by sometime — so the timing’s actually perfect.”

“Well, if you’re okay with it.”

“Totally fine. Honestly, I wanted you to come way earlier, but you seemed like you wanted to keep things quiet, so I didn’t want to push.”

“…Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s go together tomorrow, then.”

And just like that, the plan was set: he’d be visiting Shino’s workplace.

☆

The next day.

Sandai walked into the café alongside Shino — and immediately felt profoundly, inexplicably out of place.

“That’s Shino’s boyfriend.”

“Hm. …Didn’t expect someone so quietly plain-looking.”

“I mean, Shino-pippi is actually pretty serious herself, right? When you think about it that way, it kind of makes sense.”

“We all knew she wasn’t great with guys, so… yeah. In that context, I guess he does make sense as her type. He looks kind. Sort of.”

The café had the feel of a tasteful European-style space, the kind designed as a calm retreat for women, and true to that, practically every staff member and customer inside was female.

And every single one of them had turned to look at him the moment he walked in.

It was less than a male customer was a rare sight, and more that he was Shino’s boyfriend — and that was apparently fascinating.

He sat there nursing the complimentary sweets and tea that came with what the staff cheerfully called the “boyfriend perk” — apparently, any boyfriend of a staff member got one free serving per visit — while the collective weight of appraising stares made him fidget in his seat.

And so.

Until Shino emerged from the back after changing into her work uniform, Sandai sat there, very much on display, squirming under the scrutiny.

Vol 2 Chapter 4 – Shino in Her Work Uniform【Volume 2: The Flirting-All-Over-the-Place Second Semester Arc】

A café server’s uniform is about as unremarkable as it gets.

White button-down shirt, a triangular headscarf, and a beige apron-dress with the café’s logo — understated and clean in its overall impression.

Nothing frilly, nothing attention-grabbing, certainly nothing like the provocative outfits some places put their staff in to draw in male customers.

And yet — Shino appeared in this thoroughly ordinary uniform, and she was so effortlessly, overwhelmingly cute that it hit like a physical force.

“Ehehe… This is the first time I’ve shown you this, right? What do you think?”

“You look cute.”

“Yes!”

Shino threw both hands in the air in celebration.

Then she rounded up the other staff members who weren’t busy and, with Sandai’s arm looped through hers and a delighted smile on her face, made her announcement.

“Ahem. …Alright everyone, allow me to formally introduce him. This is my boyfriend, Fujiwara Sandai.”

The staff looked him over from head to toe with undisguised curiosity — and then immediately:

“Hey, Fujiwara-kun — how did you two actually end up together?”

“I’m so curious about that. I kind of get why Shino-pippi fell first, but you don’t really look like the type who would fall for Shino on his own.”

“How far have you two gotten? You’ve at least kissed by now, right?”

“Who confessed? Or was it one of those ‘next thing we knew we were together’ situations?”

— The interrogation started before he’d even sat down.

They were intensely interested in everything: how they’d gotten together, how far things had progressed.

“I was the first one to fall for him, and I was definitely the one who kept pushing. But the actual confession was from Sandai.”

Shino said this with a proud little chest-puff, and the surrounding staff let out a collective ohhh.

“That’s so unfair, I’m jealous. My boyfriend and I got together because I confessed.”

“You really do want the guy to be the one to confess, don’t you.”

“Right? It’s an important moment.”

“As your senior in life and your assistant manager, allow me to add a word here. Fujiwara-kun confessing properly was the right call. A man who can’t commit to that kind of clear, decisive moment is a man you don’t want. …The ones who let things drift into ‘I guess we’re kind of together’ territory — there’s a high probability that even after years together, even when marriage comes up, they’ll suddenly say: ‘Wait, I never actually said I liked you… I wasn’t planning on this, so I want to break up.’ Spineless, the lot of them.”

“Words from a newly single woman in her early thirties still living at home carry a certain weight…”

“Did you say something?”

“Nothing at all, Assistant Manager…”

It was lively and a little chaotic — but somewhere underneath it all, the warmth of being celebrated was unmistakable.

Being able to introduce her boyfriend to the people around her seemed to make Shino genuinely happy. Watching her smile like that — bright and content — Sandai thought, setting aside whatever had originally brought him here: I’m glad I came.

☆

Once the interrogation wound down, and once the complimentary boyfriend-perk tea and sweets had been finished, Sandai made his exit from the café without lingering.

Staying too long would just get in the way of people doing their jobs.

But the moment he stepped outside, Shino came running after him — already changed back into her school uniform.

“Shino…?”

“The assistant manager told me I could clock out for today and that she’d count it as a full shift, so I should go be with my boyfriend…”

The workplace had been considerate enough to give them the time.

“She also said… that if you’re going to come by again, it might be better to come closer to when my shift ends.”

It clicked for Sandai then — the complimentary tea and sweets earlier, the so-called “boyfriend perk.” It was meant for a boyfriend coming to pick up his girlfriend after her shift. That was what it was for.

“Ah. That explains it.”

“Huh…?”

“Nothing. …Either way, I’ll make sure to come pick you up around when your shift ends from now on.”

As he said it, something occurred to him.

He’d always been the one to walk her to the station. But picking her up before that — coming to get her after work — he’d never really considered it. She’d been walking the night streets alone for that stretch of time, and the thought simply hadn’t reached him.

Sandai made a quiet note to himself, inwardly, about that.

“…You’re going to come pick me up?”

“It’s not safe at night.”

“Thank you~!”

Shino had no way of knowing any of that internal accounting — she simply took the news as the happy thing it was, and looped her arm through his with cheerful momentum.

The momentum, however, was a touch more forceful than intended, and her arm pressed against his chest — soft, unmistakably so — and Sandai found himself reaching up to scratch his cheek.

They kissed. She sat in his lap. But they hadn’t yet reached the point of things like this — of hands wandering, of contact that meant something more.

So it left him with a feeling he couldn’t quite name. A kind of warm, squirming, thoroughly inconvenient sensation.

“…S-So, what do you want to do for the rest of today? Anywhere you want to go?”

“Somewhere I want to go… I’d love to see the autumn leaves. I saw in a magazine that the park has them at peak right now. ‘The classic autumn date,’ it said.”

“Autumn leaves, huh… Let’s go then.”