The Story Of How I, A Gloomy Guy, Ended Up Surrounded By the Top-Tier Beautiful Girls In Class After A Seat Change - Chapter 20

Hey everyone.

I’m Ryota, your typical introverted otaku.

After school, introverted otakus like me go to Animate or stay in our rooms playing games while watching anime, right? That’s how I used to live until recently, but now…

“Lime’s reply… I need to think about it.”

I was working on replying to Lime messages.

As soon as I got home from high school, I sat in my gaming chair and started lazily messing with my phone, only to find many Lime messages waiting for me.

Usually, I only get Lime messages from my parents or sister, so I tend to ignore them. But this time, the senders are…

Yuria Ichinose: “Hey, I want to discuss the movie we’ll see.”

Airi Miyama: “Ryota, look! I found a pill bug on my way back from work!”

Rui Kuroki sent an image.

The three most popular girls in my class sent me consecutive Lime messages. I couldn’t possibly ignore them.

Yuria Ichinose: “I was too embarrassed to see the Nyu-kyun movie alone, but you’ll go with me, right, Izumiya?”

Airi Miyama: “Oh, now I found a tadpole! It’s so gross but cute!”

Rui Kuroki sent another image.

The Lime messages from these three beautiful girls just kept coming.

Until three days ago, I only exchanged Limes with my otaku friend Tanaka. Now, in just three days, I found myself in a situation where three girls were messaging me like some pickup artist.

(“A gentleman should be looked at with new eyes after not seeing him for three days,” they say.)

Ah, replying is such a hassle… More than that, I’m worried my replies might come off as too creepy because I’m such an introvert.

(Should I use fewer emojis? Maybe avoid using anime stickers with anyone but Ichinose…)

It’s unbelievable how these top-tier beautiful girls keep sending Limes to an introvert like me who can’t even handle a simple chat.

Yuria Ichinose: “After the movie, I want to go to Animate. It’s hard to go alone.”

Airi Miyama: “Wow! Look at the rainbow! Can you see it from your window, Ryota? It stopped raining, and there’s a rainbow in the sky!”

Rui Kuroki sent another image.

Um, let’s see. Ichinose wants to talk about the movie, Miyama is chatting like a little kid, and Kuroki… what?

Rui Kuroki, who always has a mysterious aura, keeps sending random images. It’s making me uneasy. I hope it’s not something inappropriate.

(Let’s hold down the chat without marking it as read… Wait, what!?)

When I long-pressed the chat with Kuroki, my eyes nearly popped out of my head.

“What the… is this…?”

The image Kuroki sent was a selfie of herself in her track team uniform. She must have taken it after a competition. Usually, she lets her black hair down, but it’s tied in a ponytail, and her skin is more exposed than usual.

Rui Kuroki’s slender body is clad in a tight green uniform. Due to the uniform’s design, her midriff is exposed, revealing her slim waist and incredibly toned abs, which stand out even more against her pale skin.

And most notably—her navel.

My eyes were inexplicably drawn to her navel. Normally, I wouldn’t care about a track team photo, but the sight of her exposed navel made me gulp.

The vertical stretch of Kuroki’s navel had a sensual allure that made me want to trace it with my finger. The fact that it was usually hidden but now slightly visible was erotic in the same way as a glimpse of a nipple.

(What… what kind of sexiness is this…?)

Up until now, I hadn’t seen Rui Kuroki in a sexual light, but this photo made me feel strange about her navel.

Seeing that beautiful navel line, which perfectly appealed to my fetish, made me grit my teeth.

“No, I can’t get excited over a selfie like this. That would mean I’ve lost…!”

I accidentally tapped the chatroom again with my finger, which I had been holding down.

(Oh no, it’s marked as read!)

It was too late… a message from Kuroki came through on Lime.

Rui Kuroki: “Oh, it’s read ♡ How do I look in my track team uniform? Cute?”

Kuroki asked, clearly in a good mood.

(Damn it… by marking it as read, I fell right into Kuroki’s plan… I screwed up.)

Rui Kuroki, being the perfectionist she is, aimed to make me, the only one from our middle school class who hadn’t confessed to her, fall for her and confess.

(I can’t let her realize I got excited over her navel in this photo.)

Rui Kuroki: “You can save those three photos if you want. I won’t know how Izumiya-kun uses them, so don’t worry. ♡”

It was almost as if she was telling me to use them for… well, you know. Did she intend this to be an ‘erotic selfie’?

(…Never mind the intended use of these photos for now. First, let’s mute Kuroki’s Lime.)

I muted Kuroki’s Lime and closed my phone.

“Really… I can’t believe that Rui Kuroki is so actively trying to make me fall for her.”

Even sharing an umbrella with Rui Kuroki was an event of immense value to others. What would have happened if Yuria hadn’t called out to us back then?

(Wait, now that I think about it before Yuria called out, it seemed like Kuroki was about to say something…)

“She said something like ‘Since that day…’ or something.”

What did Kuroki mean by ‘that day’?

Was there something that happened back in middle school…?

“I have no clue… But Tanaka might know something.”

I’ll ask Tanaka about it tomorrow.