The Reason Why I was Cheated on By My Girlfriend

Voice

Kaguya Sakashita’s POV

For today and tomorrow, the afternoon classes will be group work sessions dedicated to preparing for presentations. The preliminary rounds will take place over the next two days, with the final round to determine the rankings taking place on the fifth day, Friday.

In the autumn of the second year, this school enters a period where students aiming for top universities have finished the initial phase of their exam preparations, and the atmosphere begins to relax.

During such a time, spending ten days on a field trip, as part of the social studies curriculum, is meant to encourage students to seriously consider their future paths.

The teachers explained that the purpose of the field trip is to reflect on why they want to pursue higher education, what they intend to do after they get there, and how they plan to live their lives as a working adult. This reflection is to be facilitated by conversations with current professionals.

(…it’s a waste of time to explain this to people who can’t figure it out on their own.)

I ignore most of the talk.

I don’t care about what others have to say. The only voice I want to hear is Haruki-san’s.

“—as this chart shows, the market for physical books is shrinking at an accelerating rate.”

Setting that aside, let’s focus on the presentation now.

This is a valuable opportunity for the two of us to plan and work together toward the same goal. There’s no reason not to take it seriously.

“The main customers of physical books are women over 30. For this reason, in recent years publishers have been publishing more romance novels, such as ‘Josei’ genre novels. Men tend to prefer e-books, so the number of physical publications is expected to decrease at an accelerating rate in the future.”

Ah, what a blissful time this is.

Haruki-san is listening to me. He’s is only looking at me.

“When you hear things like this, you might wonder why they don’t just publish e-books exclusively. However, there’s a significant problem with that, particularly concerning the benefits to the authors.”

Ah, why did I summarize it so much?

If I had made it into something that could have been dragged out for an hour, we could have spent even more time together, just the two of us.

“When an e-book is sold on an online store, the publisher takes about 60% of the revenue. This is shared with the author, but Kirikiri Bunko offers a 20-30% cut. For example, if an e-book sells for 1,000 yen and the author’s cut is 30%, it comes to roughly 200 yen. It’s very little. Authors have the option of self-publishing. In that case, the author’s cut is 70%. And currently, the cost of self-publishing is almost zero yen. For this reason, when publishers propose e-publishing to authors, they need to show added value.”

I’ll just stretch it out a little, they won’t notice, right?

“To summarize, there are currently two major issues in the publishing industry, especially in the field of novels. One is the shrinking market size of paper books. In the short term, it would be effective to increase the number of novels published for women, but in the long term, the decline will continue. The other is how to handle e-books. We need to show clear benefits to authors, but only a few major publishers can find the budget for that. With this in mind, we proposed to the publishers that…”

I let out a small sigh,

“I thought a presentation like this would be good, what do you think, Haruki-san?”

Ah, our time alone has come to an end.

From here on, I’ll have to smile and respond to the annoying pest’s voice.

“I think it’s good. What do you think, Yua?”

‘Hmm, maybe it’s a bit too long?”

I almost clicked my tongue.

But thankfully, I managed to hold myself back.

The current topic is the direction of our presentation. We’ll work on the details later.

How can she not understand that?

I guess her brain can only think about her lower body.

She’s truly an eyesore.

“…yeah, it’s a bit too long, isn’t it?”

I look down and take a deep breath, trying not to show my face.

“It seems I’m not very good at summarizing things briefly.”

“That’s not true. You’ve already done a great job by summarizing it this far. It’s really helpful.”

“…thank you.”

Ughh, she’s really noisy.

How can I make her quiet?

“Umm, so the highlight of this presentation is the part where we discussed with the publishers, right?”

Haruki-san!

“In the end, the conclusion is just basically that it’s a ‘good experience’, but I think if we can deliver the presentation perfectly, it will turn out great.”

“I see! Since the purpose of the field trip is to ‘seriously consider our future paths’, if we can show that our perspectives have broadened, the teachers will likely give us a high evaluation!”

As expected of Haruki-san. I love him.

“However, if we aim for the top, getting votes from the students is important as well, right?”

“……”

“Yeah, that’s right. That’s the tricky part…”

“Yes, it can be quite tricky. If we focus on content that appeals to the teachers, it might not go over well with the students, and if we aim for content that appeals to the students, it might not be well-received by the teachers.”

“Then, how about this, Kaguya-chan, can you summarize the themes that would appeal to the teachers, and I’ll work on the themes that would appeal to the students?”

“……”

“Then in the end, Haru-kun will combine and present them in a good way.”

“Isn’t that something the three of us should discuss together?”

“I thought that way at first too, but if we do that, the discussion might not go anywhere, right?”

“…ah, well, that’s true. I get what you’re saying.”

…why?

It feels like the atmosphere between Haruki-san and Yua-san has gone back to how it was before the incident.

It feels like Haruki-san is forcing himself a bit… why?

It’s strange. Why suddenly? Why, why, why—

“Kaguya-chan, what do you think?”

“…yes, I think that’s a good idea too.”

I hate it. I hate it. I really hate it.