Meet-Cute

The girls in my classroom had their eyes glued on me, too. Blushing, smiling, waving. At this point, it made me uncomfortable, especially because after hearing those kyaas, a boy brought his head up from his desk and shot me a death glare.

He was Ishiguro Shunto, another love interest and the president of the discipline committee. In Ryoya’s route, he’d been the rival; hanging around, antagonizing Ryoya, and dropping hints that Yuu should get with him instead. It’d been great, basically two hot guys for the price of one.

I looked around, trying not to make it too obvious that I was searching for my desk. I had no clue where Ryoya sat, after all…there. Friends with Yasutoki, check. Artist, check. The desk no one was at yet, covered by doodles, on Yasutoki’s left.

Ah. The desk right in front of Shunto.

I took a seat, and heard a stern, commanding voice say, “Popular as always.”

I stayed silent. Don’t respond to bullies.

“Why do you indulge all those girls who fawn over you?”

It was hard not to answer a question, and Ryoya wouldn’t stay quiet if provoked. I turned in my seat to look at him, thinking of my response.

He had deep purple hair swept back into a neat crest, a starched school uniform, and polished black nails. His face had seemed harsh and sharp in the game, based on how the artist had drawn him. In real life, the curve of his jaw was softer, and his eyes with pointed eyelashes in the corner had become simply long-lashed, a different effect.

Oh, damnit. He’s really pretty.

“If I didn’t, they’d be sad,” I said, mimicking Ryoya’s easy smile.

“I used to be surrounded by girls who were in love with me, like you,” Ishiguro Shunto said authoritatively. “I rejected all of them. They all got over it.”

For some reason, I wanted to laugh. “Did they now.”

“What are you implying?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

He crossed his arms and pointedly looked away.

He’s sulking, I realized. Cool Ishiguro Shunto is sulking…

I couldn’t handle seeing him keep going against type, so I tried to comfort him and explain myself. “All I mean is, maybe you thought they got over you, but they didn’t really.”

“No, they were all over it. No tears, no bothering me again.”

“Yo! What are we talking about?” That was Yasutoki, sliding into the seat beside me.

Hey. Were we actually friends, then?

Now that I thought about it, that was the implication in the game, too. Shunto was just interested in Yuu and couldn’t let it go, plus his discipline committee duties meant he had to crack down on the delinquent stuff. So he was antagonistic. But there were lines where he seemed really familiar with Ryoya, like “You never get up before nine am”; and calling him “omae” instead of by his name could’ve been rude, but it also could’ve been because we got along.

“Ishiguro-kun’s been breaking hearts,” I told him, in Ryoya’s cadence.

“I have not been breaking hearts, so kindly stop teasing me,” Shunto said with a huff.

“You break my heart whenever I look at you, gorgeous,” Yasutoki said cheerfully.

“Yes, yes, I know. Have you gotten your flirting quota out for the day now?”

“Not even close.”

Shunto rolled his eyes.

Are they… together?? What about the heroine?

I would have to become a detective and deduce this situation. Unfortunately, at that moment, the teacher came in and told us all to quiet down.

In terms of grade, I was a year behind Ryoya, but in terms of time, I had isekaied (…died?) in the winter and the game started in the spring. So, we were almost equal, and the schoolwork shouldn’t be that hard.

Except Sakura Academy, which Ryoya and three other love interests attended, was an elite high school. I was realizing just how elite now, in this after-lunch calculus class.

In the following exercise, draw the graph of each piecewise-defined function and study the graph to evaluate the given limits… what was “piecewise”? What were “limits”? At my old school, we didn’t have required calculus, and of course I was more into the humanities (I read like my life depended on it sometimes, after all). At this school, it seemed that they had already started calculus last year, or something like that. And it didn’t help that in my last math class, I’d skipped most of the homework, crammed for the exam, and then promptly forgotten everything.

I dug through Ryoya’s bag, looking for old math papers.

His schoolbag was absolutely crammed full of stuff. Notebooks, big textbooks, reams of old papers, house keys, transit card, a shiny silver necklace, a broken watch with a cheap plasticy strap, an assortment of pencils and those graded-by-thickness art pens down at the bottom and a little sketchbook to go with them. Giving up on finding his notes, I took out the textbook, went through the index until I found “piecewise, p. 111, 140, 156”, and tried my best on the exercise.

Shunto came over during the passing period. “Do you need help?”

“Yeah, thanks, Shunto—I mean, Ishiguro-kun.”

Shunto’s eyes went wide. “Ah. I have to go.” He turned and hurried out of the classroom.

Huh?

Since I had class, I couldn’t chase after him. What was he doing leaving, as the discipline committee leader?

“Good job,” Yasutoki said. “Want me to help you with your math instead?”

“What did I do?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you, you’ve got to figure that out on your own.”

Call him Asa, and use “ore” as your personal pronoun. “Asa…my life is hard enough already.”

Yasutoki laughed.

“Alright, everybody take their seats,” the next teacher said, coming in. “Where is Ishiguro-kun? It’s not like him to be late.”

Shunto snuck back in and sat at his desk with his head bowed. Clack. Clack. Clack. Beating out an anxious rhythm with his ruler. He didn’t talk to me again. Because I called him by his given name, was that the reason?

I felt a little forlorn about it.

Near the end of the last class of the day (English, which I was decent at given that I played some foreign games), my phone buzzed. I set up my textbook to obscure the view of my face and checked it under the table.

Sanada Sae: meet you at the front gate for our date? <3

I couldn’t respond because I didn’t know Ryoya’s phone password.

Sanada Sae: im bringing mae along btw
[Sent an image]

I couldn’t view the image because I didn’t know Ryoya’s phone password. Time to venture into the unknown, then.

…Hey, isn’t this my first date?

➽──────❥ ❀⊱༺♡༻⊰❀ ➽──────❥

When I arrived at the front gate, Ryoya’s fan club president and her curly-haired friend were waiting there. She was scrolling on her phone, while her friend had her face pressed into the fan club president’s shoulder in embarrassment and yelped, then looked away, when she saw me.

“Um, sorry for the wait.” Don’t use filler words! I scolded myself. Have you ever heard Miyazato Ryoya use a filler word?

“You were going to take us to the café, right?” The fan club president looked up at me with round eyes and an innocent expression.

“Of course I’ll take you to the café… Sanada-chan.” I improvised.

She made a high pitched noise of delight. So that was Sae. Then the curly-haired girl was…Mae took an awkward step away. I caught her chin in my hands. “And you too, my treasure.”

Mae flushed bright red. She buried her face in her hands, mumbling, “Aaaa who let you be that handsome…”

“God,” I said.

They both looked at me strangely.

Ah, I’d said that with a weird flat tone. “God…damnit I just don’t know.”

The girls giggled. A perfect save.

I was pretty sure I knew which café Sae was talking about. Koi Coffee, where the heroine of Delinquent Love! worked.

Chihara Yuu was an orphan. Her parents had died when she was young, and in her second year of high school, she’d asked the director of the orphanage for permission to drop out and work instead, so she could pay for an apartment and live on her own. She’d been given grudging permission, and gotten a job and apartment in the neighborhood of Ryoya’s school. Every month, she got an allowance from the state—which, in Delinquent Love!, translated to in-game money that could be used for fun things and never seemed to be spent on bills—and you could also earn money as a player by participating in the café’s minigame and making coffee for digital customers. The perk to playing the café minigame was that a boy might show up as a customer and talk to you. Apart from that, a lot of scenes in the story took place in the café, including several in the prologue.

Because I knew what café it was, I also knew how to get there. The game had a story aspect and an open-world aspect. By playing through your chosen route, you accrued love points, drama points, and misfortune points by making choices; when you got to certain checkpoints, you would have to use one of those point values to progress. For example, “You need 30 love, drama, or misfortune points to pass”. Then, it would ask you which one you wanted to use. That would affect the story—if you used misfortune, you’d end up on your way to a bad end (which some people wanted; the same kind of people who’d choose Konno Kanai, the yandere weirdo, as their love interest). But what if, for example, you wanted a lovey-dovey story and you didn’t have enough love points? Then you would use the open world aspect. You could walk around a small map, make money in minigames, and spend money in minigames. The boys would appear as color-coded dots, and by talking to them, you’d have more choices to make, generally about incidental things, and could accrue points that way.

Because of that, navigating and seeming natural in the environment wasn’t too hard. But keeping up with the two girls kept stressing me out.

“Miyazato-senpai, how was school today?” Sae asked.

“Um, good.” I felt awkwardness weighing down on me and added, “But much better now that you’re here, my pearl.”

Kyaa!

“U-um, M-Miyazato-senpai, did you know they have a really cute drink at the café now?” Mae said. “It has a little koi, it’s so good…”

“Koi like first love,” I said, sotto voce.
Kyaaaa!

It didn’t seem to be going horribly. Maybe I was better at flirting than I thought… or maybe Ryoya’s off-the-wall hotness levels were the main draw to them. He had such a good face that I’d probably be attracted to him even if he had the personality of a brick.

We arrived at the café. The door opened with the ringing of a small bell.

“Aaa,” Mae said to Sae, “I can’t believe we’re actually going out with Miyazato-senpai…”

“Miyazato-senpai, you’re so handsome…” Sae said.

We weren’t the first customers in this café. Four other boys had arrived before us.

I realized then that I knew what scene this was.

Okuda Kazuhiro, Yuu’s childhood friend, was in close conversation with her, leaning forward on the table. He had short and spiky black hair and muscles that put Ryoya’s to shame and my original body’s to double or triple shame.

The avatar you used to walk around town had a malleable appearance that started off basic and could be changed by the clothes shop and hair salon minigames. Chihara Yuu didn’t look like the basic appearance—she looked like how the player character was occasionally drawn in the game’s CGs. Somewhat plain, maybe pretty, with light brown hair in a bun; right now, wearing a pink apron with a cartoon koi over a button-up shirt. Her expression was a little anxious as Kazuhiro talked to her.

Takayama Fuuji, who had long and untidy lavender hair, lounged over two chairs, sipping a sugary drink and watching Kazuhiro and Yuu’s conversation with a half-interested gaze.

Shobu Tana, Kanai’s right-hand man, toyed with a knife. His orange hair was buzzed close to his head; he wore an oversized white hoodie with a high collar and white sweatpants, stained all over with bright-colored paint. His eyes were much sharper than Fuuji’s as he watched Yuu and Kazuhiro talk.

And then there was Konno Kanai, leaning his head on the chair back and staring idly up at the sky. His neck flexed with that position, highlighting a black lacey choker…he wore his hair chin-length, half white, half pink, and strands in front of his face pulled into little ponytails.

He looked over at me. “Look who decided to show up.” His voice was measured and memorable, seeming too low for his appearance, definitely low enough for his personality. “It’s someone from the private school.”

Shit, I can’t remember my dialogue!

“…Hi.”