Alan, you don’t seem to regret it at all…

“A phone call? Who’s calling at this hour?”

I had been desperately studying late into the night to make up for the delay until now, but all of a sudden, my phone, which I had left on my desk, started vibrating along with the ringtone.

There was an unknown number displayed on my phone screen, so I couldn’t tell who had called. 

I wasn’t sure if I should answer it or not, but I thought it might be someone I knew, so I decided to answer.

“Yes, this is Kenjo.”

“Kaito, huh? I’m glad you picked up.”

The moment I heard the voice, I knew who it was and hung up without a word. There was no doubt that Alan was the one who had called.

“…Hmm, I’m pretty sure I blocked Alan’s contact.”

When I opened the block list, the name Alan Kisaragi was clearly displayed on it. Maybe it came from someone else’s smartphone.

Thinking of this, I also blocked the incoming call’s number. I thought I was safe now, but I soon realized that I was naive.

Less than five minutes after I got back to studying,  I received an unsolicited phone call. It must be Alan calling again. 

I think he’ll give up eventually, so I decide to ignore it. But no matter how long I waited, the ringing never stopped.

“…..I’m pretty sure I can reject incoming calls even without notifications.”

I tap the red button that rejected the call for now and open my phone’s settings screen, select the option to block incoming calls.

“Alright, now that I’ve gone this far, I won’t receive any calls from him.”

As I murmured that, I resumed studying, but surprisingly, I got another phone call in less than five minutes. And it was a call from an unknown number that I’d set up to be rejected earlier.

“…Huh? Didn’t I block the number earlier?”

I was starting to get confused, but I soon noticed the contraption. Alan was probably calling from a pay phone.

The phone I’m using shows that the pay phone is also inactive, but that doesn’t make it an inactive call target.

“…I’m surprised he can think of something like that”

I was a little impressed by Alan’s tenacity. But of course, I had no intention of answering the call.

And honestly, I was starting to feel stupid about dealing with Alan any longer, so I decided to turn off my phone.

“I should have done this from the start.”

It’s a little inconvenient to be unable to use my phone, but now I’m finally free from the annoying phone calls.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

“Oh god, what’s up with this…”

At the end of the night, I turned my smartphone back on, but when I saw the notifications, I couldn’t help but exclaim. In addition to countless incoming calls, I had received a large number of long emails.

　By the way, I was curious about the contents of the email, so I briefly skimmed through it out of curiosity, but it was filled with slander against Ellen.

There was a part of it that seemed like an apology to me, but I’m sure it was an act to gain sympathy or something.

“…I wonder what Alan really wants by doing something like this.”

I tried to think about why Alan was doing this, but I couldn’t think of any reason. Maybe Alan is broken somewhere like me.

With that in mind, I select all of Alan’s emails and delete every single one. I’m sorry, but I had no intention of reading the whole thing from the start.

After that, I quickly finished getting ready for the morning and headed to Ellen’s house.

　Ever since we started dating, we’ve started going to school together, and lately it’s become a habit for me to go to Ellen’s house in the morning to pick her up.

“Good morning, Kaito-kun. You look really tired since this morning. Did something happen?”

“Ah, a lot of things have happened since last night because of Alan…”

I started explaining the situation to Ellen. She was listening to me in silence, and her expression turned more and more dismayed .

“Alan, it seems like you don’t regret it at all…”

“Does he even have the luxury of calling or emailing me now?”

It seems that his parents gave him a small amount of money as a final gesture of mercy, but it’s unclear how long that money will last.

“That’s true. I don’t think there are many places that would hire Alan, a junior high school graduate.”

“I see…well, since he’s good-looking, I think there’s a good chance he’s making money that way.”

Maybe Alan is lying about his age and trying his hand at night jobs like hosting. He’s quite annoying, but he’s popular among women, so to be honest, there’s definitely going to be demand for him.

“…… continuing to talk about Alan any longer will only make me feel gloomy, so it’s time to call it quits.”

“I agree. And there’s no need for the two of us to feel gloomy in the morning.”

We forcibly break off the subject of Alan and start heading to school, talking about what we watched on TV yesterday.

We were unaware that there was a brown-haired, green-eyed person was observing us from afar.