Why the food is so expensive?

The laminated menu resting against the table was a glossy, high-definition catalog of financial ruin.

Hugo stared blankly at a beautifully photographed plate of truffle mushroom risotto. 1,650 yen. He shifted his gaze to a standard Margherita pizza. 1,400 yen. He had already sacrificed an unacceptable percentage of his monthly allowance to the extortionate iced water at the first café.

Across the massive leather corner booth, Mina flipped straight to desserts. Yuri didn’t look at the price column. Shira circled a lunch-set upgrade with her fingertip.

Mina was rapidly flipping through the dessert inserts, her finger tracing over seasonal parfaits and tiramisu. Yuri had her imposing, color-coded binder resting next to her plate, debating the merits of a seafood linguine with Shira, who was gracefully pointing out the lunch set upgrades.

Hugo looked back down at his menu. He wasn't entirely sure if he was currently experiencing poverty or if he was witnessing the sheer, terrifying overhead cost of maintaining a high-tier social life. He mentally calculated his remaining pocket money, cross-referenced it with his bus fare, and flipped to the back page.

When the waiter arrived, the contrast was staggering. The girls seamlessly ordered a sprawling network of pasta dishes, shared appetizers, and upgraded drink-bar glasses.

"And I'll just have the half-portion garlic toast. Water is fine," Hugo said to the waiter, handing the heavy menu back.

Mina paused, her hand hovering over the electronic call bell. She blinked across the table at him. "Just bread? I didn't know teenage guys were such light eaters. Aren't you going to pass out?"

"I am operating on a low caloric requirement today," Hugo replied flatly. "I don't have much of an appetite."

Hugo folded his receipt into a narrow strip and placed it beside his plate.

Yuri didn't look up as she unzipped her pencil case. "He probably already filled up on whatever his friends were going to buy him."

The word friends was laced with enough venom to kill a miniature horse.

Hugo didn't flinch. He didn't rise to the bait. He reached out and adjusted the placement of his paper napkin, aligning it perfectly with the edge of the table. Let Yuri construct whatever narrative she wanted; correcting her required energy he was currently saving by not digesting a heavy meal.

Less than fifteen minutes later, the booth was covered in porcelain plates, and the rich, heavy scent of garlic, melted cheese, and roasted tomatoes wafted.

Mina practically vibrated as she twirled a massive forkful of carbonara, taking a bite and letting out a muffled, euphoric hum.

"Oh, this is amazing," Mina mumbled happily, leaning back against the leather booth. "Seriously, thanks to you guys, I can actually eat real food on the weekends without going totally bankrupt."

Hugo paused, a piece of garlic toast halfway to his mouth. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch. "What do you mean?"

Mina swallowed, waving her fork cheerfully. "I have zero impulse control when it comes to seasonal menus. I used to blow through my allowance by, like, Tuesday. But since Yuri and Shira dragged me into applying for that part-time job at the bookstore, my wallet is finally safe!"

Yuri closed her eyes, pressing two fingers against the bridge of her nose. "Mina, you do not need to broadcast our employment status and your lack of financial literacy to the entire table."

Shira offered a soft, amused smile as she elegantly cut a slice of her pizza. "It is good that you are learning the value of earning your own leisure funds, Mina-chan."

Hugo took a slow, dry bite of his toast. The puzzle pieces clicked into place seamlessly.

A part-time job. The mystery of their disposable income was instantly solved. They weren't just passively wealthy; they were actively trading their labor to fund their fashion, their café trips, and their carbonara.

Hugo chewed thoughtfully. He had never needed a part-time job. He wore the clothes his parents bought him, he ate the dinners his parents prepared, and his primary hobby was staring at the ceiling in total silence. He didn't have a money problem because he didn't have a social existence.

He looked at the three girls chatting around the table. Being visible, it turned out, was incredibly expensive.

For the next twenty minutes, Hugo mathematically paced his garlic toast, taking one small bite every 3.5 minutes to stretch his investment through the meal.

Across the massive table, a rapid-fire exchange of data occurred. Mina and Yuri seamlessly volleyed topics back and forth, jumping from the glaring plot holes in a trending streaming series to the disastrous PR strategy of an actor currently embroiled in a scandal. Shira provided soft, measured commentary, serving as the elegant anchor to their drifting conversational flow. The sheer volume of their shared social knowledge was staggering. Hugo listened in silence, mildly concerned that if they continued for another hour, they would eventually reach national politics.

He took another sip.

Eventually, the waiter arrived to clear the porcelain plates, leaving only the condensation-heavy glasses from the unlimited drink bar.

The casual, vibrant atmosphere evaporated the exact moment Yuri’s hand vanished into her tote bag.

She withdrew the thick, color-coded binder and dropped it onto the center of the wooden table with a heavy, authoritative thud. From her breast pocket, she pulled out a pair of sleek, wire-rimmed glasses and slid them onto her face with terrifying, practiced precision. The shift in her aura was absolute. She was no longer a high school girl at a weekend lunch; she was a corporate auditor preparing to terminate a department.

"Right. To business," Yuri announced, her voice dropping the casual tone entirely. She flipped open the heavy binder rings to a freshly tabbed page. "The mandate for this community research project is straightforward: identify a localized public issue and construct a viable, data-driven solution. Does anyone have a preliminary hypothesis on where to start?"

Hugo looked at his empty bread plate. He had an obvious, immediate public issue in mind: the predatory pricing of suburban Italian family restaurants. Slashing the cost of a Margherita pizza by forty percent seemed like a highly viable, data-driven solution to local teenage hunger.

He naturally kept this revolutionary economic theory to himself.

Before Mina could offer what would inevitably be a terrible idea, Shira rested her elbows delicately on the table and folded her hands.

"I actually consulted a few of our third-year seniors regarding this rubric," Shira said smoothly, her posture perfect. "They were assigned this exact project during their first year."

Hugo’s internal processor completely stalled. He stopped looking at his empty plate and stared at Shira.

Consulted the seniors? He mentally scanned the unwritten academic rulebook. Was leveraging the intellectual property of past students considered a breach of academic integrity? Was it a gray area? For his entire educational career, Hugo’s strategy had been strictly isolated. If he encountered a roadblock, he engaged in brute-force trial-and-error until the problem was solved. The concept of asking a higher-ranking student for an operational shortcut had literally never crossed his mind.

He didn't even understand the logistical mechanics of the action. He had never spoken to a third-year voluntarily. He wasn’t even sure where they gathered. To Hugo, having a network of older students to feed you answers didn't just feel foreign; it felt like Shira was casually inputting a cheat code right in front of him.

Yuri, however, didn't look scandalized. She looked relieved, pushing her glasses slightly up the bridge of her nose. "Good, Shira. What was their idea?"