"Morning, you two. Hot as hell again today, huh?☆"

"Morning."

"Morning, Tsuki-chan."

The point where Yuu and I usually crossed paths with Usotsuki-chan should have been much closer to school. Lately, though, I’d been running into her more and more at the weirdest times, and I still had no clue what that was about.

"? Did something happen with you two?"

"""...Not really."""

Yuu and I had both tried to act normal, but our faces had stiffened up and we’d answered in perfect sync, which only invited the kind of pointless probing Usotsuki-chan lived for.

"Come on, come on, something happened, right?☆"

She circled around us like a kid who’d just gotten a brand-new toy. "Did you guys have a fight?☆"

She looked way too happy about that idea.

"We didn’t fight. Right, Yuu?"

"Y-Yeah! Ren-chan and I get along great!"

"...? So it’s not a fight. Then what is it?"

"It’s nothing."

"Yeah, it’s nothing, Tsuki-chan."

"Ehh, that’s suspicious."

It took a few minutes before Usotsuki-chan finally got bored of grilling us. After that, Yuu narrowed her eyes and leaned past me toward her, the same way she had yesterday, tilting her head like she couldn’t figure her out at all.

"...What exactly are you trying to pull?"

"What do you mean~?"

Usotsuki-chan skipped along beside me, humming to herself, and even her blonde twin side-up hair bounced with her. Across from her, on my other side, Yuu glared with sleepy half-lidded eyes while sticking her upper body forward. She looked like an exhausted puppy barely clinging to its last bit of battery while trying to act tough, which was honestly cute as hell, but since I couldn’t get a read on Usotsuki-chan’s mood either, I stayed out of it this time.

"Oh, right! If you two are okay with it, why don’t we start walking to school together again, like back in middle school?"

"Hah? No way. Absolutely not."

Yuu shot the idea down instantly, and honestly, I couldn’t say I thought it was such a great idea either. Even now, we were hurrying along with almost no time to spare before the bell. We’d probably make it today if we kept this pace, but I showed up this close to being late pretty often. It couldn’t be helped, and the school knew why, but that only applied to me. Dragging other people into my mess for no reason wasn’t a good idea, and more than anything, I was worried about Yuu’s situation.

"Look, I cut it close all the time. I’d feel bad making even Usotsuki-chan deal with that."

"But you walk with Yuu-chan."

"That’s... well... you know... we’re..."

When I looked at Yuu, she deliberately went, "Poh♥," then pressed a hand to her faintly flushed cheek.

"Am I in the way?"

"You are!"

Yuu answered without hesitation, but the problem on my mind was different.

"It’s not that you’re in the way. I just don’t think there’s any upside in it for you. You live in a different direction, you might end up late, and if we’re setting up a meeting point, you’d have to go out of your way anyway."

If we were going to meet up naturally on the way to school, it would have to be somewhere closer to the school, which kind of killed the whole point. That meant the only real option was for Usotsuki-chan to make a small detour and come meet us like she had yesterday and today.

"Hmm, I get it. So the real issue is the hassle on my end. Got it."

Once I laid it out, she accepted it surprisingly fast.

"Still, think about it, okay? Is it fine if I keep joining you like this tomorrow too? Will you allow it?"

"Denied."

Yuu was still as brutal as ever with her.

"What about you, Ren-kun?"

"I’m fine with it. But if you think you’re gonna be late, don’t wait around. Just go on ahead."

"Roger that~☆"

"Hold it, Ren-chan—!"

"Easy, easy."

I calmed down the irritated Yuu while also keeping an eye on Usotsuki-chan, who still felt like she was only ever talking from the surface and never showing what was really going on underneath.

"Ren-chan, you’re way too nice even to a person like this..."

"Ah, Yuu-chan, that’s harsh~."

Even while saying, in that cheerful voice, "That one actually hurts, you know~," Usotsuki-chan kept walking beside me like it didn’t bother her in the slightest.

It was when we were about ten minutes away from school.

"So, lately there’s been this rumor going around that I’m doing compensated dating."

The words that came out of Usotsuki-chan’s mouth hit like a damn truck in every possible sense.

"Seriously, people come up with the nastiest rumors, don’t they?"

I’d definitely never heard that one before, but then again, this was Usotsuki-chan we were talking about. Worrying too much about what she said usually ended up being a waste of time.

"Well, I am the sinful woman who steals boys that already have girlfriends, so I guess it’s not that shocking~."

The mischievous grin on her face, along with that teasing look in her eyes, was aimed straight at me.

"W h o t h e h e l l a r e y o u t a l k i n g a b o u t?"

"Calm down, Yuu. It’s just Usotsuki-chan lying again, same as always."

I had to soothe Yuu before she blew a fuse on the spot. Seriously, these two were oil and water in basically every normal interaction, so how the hell had they stayed friends this long?

"R-Right, yeah. That’s true. ‘A boy who already has a girlfriend’ doesn’t automatically mean Ren-chan. I know that, I know that, I just got pissed for a second. I trust Ren-chan."

"Who knows~? This womanizer might be picking up girls somewhere behind your back. It’s not like you can watch Ren-kun every second of every day, Yuu-chan."

Usotsuki-chan snickered, clearly entertained by Yuu’s rushed explanation, but the second she saw Yuu’s actual expression, she blinked in surprise.

"Ren-chan isn’t cheating."

When Yuu said that, there was real certainty in her voice.

That level of trust coming from her made me feel awkward in a way that wasn’t exactly unpleasant.

"Oho~?☆"

Usotsuki-chan grinned again. She definitely looked like she was thinking up something rotten.

"Then maybe I should make him cheat right now♡"

"H-Hey—"

My bad feeling turned out to be dead on. Right in front of Yuu, Usotsuki-chan pulled my arm into her chest. Just like that, we ended up linked arm in arm like a couple.

"~~~~~~!?!?"

Yuu’s eyes flew open. She didn’t say a word, but her body moved fast. She immediately forced herself between us and grabbed both my arm and Usotsuki-chan’s.

"Ufufu~ I was just jok—ow, ow!"

Because I was the one whose arm had just been trapped in that situation, I knew exactly what had happened. Even if Yuu’s grip on me was careful, the force she used to rip Usotsuki-chan off me was strong as hell. Sure, there was a difference in build between girls and guys, but even so, Yuu had way more strength than you’d guess from looking at her bare arms. I had no clue where she was pulling it from.

"S-So strong... you were seriously going all out..."

Usotsuki-chan rubbed her forearm and moved a little farther away from me while looking genuinely nervous around Yuu. Smart move. You really shouldn’t piss Yuu off too much. The calmer someone usually is, the scarier it gets when they finally snap, because then you have no idea what they might do.

"Hm?"

While I was giving Usotsuki-chan a wry smile as she rubbed her arm, I felt a tug on my right sleeve and looked toward Yuu.

"...!"

Our eyes met, then she looked away. As we walked side by side, my right hand and her left were close enough to brush. She glanced at them, then at me, then looked away again. Her eyes kept darting around restlessly, and once I caught what she was trying to say, a smile slipped out before I could stop it.

"Here."

"~~♥"

I held out my hand, and our fingers slowly found each other, testing, then sliding together until we were fully interlocked. A proper lovers’ handhold was a lot more embarrassing than it sounded. Yuu must’ve felt the same, because she kept her face bright red and her head lowered while walking in silence. With her free hand, she kept combing at the braid hanging over her left shoulder. Judging from the way her mouth kept twitching, it didn’t look like she was holding back words so much as holding back something else entirely.

Yuu ended up like some cat someone had borrowed and temporarily tamed, but in that strangely comfortable silence, the two of us kept walking.

"~♪"

When I looked over at Usotsuki-chan, she was glancing sideways at me with the corner of her mouth raised. Then she faced forward again and kept walking in a damn good mood, humming to herself.

By the time I made it to the classroom before homeroom, I hadn’t even set my bag down yet when a flood of abuse came flying at me in voices just low enough not to piss off everyone around us.

"Oi, Hoshimiya! You’re the worst, man!?"

"Oi, Hoshimiya! I’m disappointed in you!!"

"The hell? What’s with you guys all of a sudden?"

The ones who came rushing over to talk shit the second I sat down were Machida from the baseball club, who was obsessed with keeping his hair long, and Masunaga from the table tennis club, who was obsessed with shaving his head. Together, those idiots were the Machi-Masu combo.

They’d barged in, tanked my reputation without permission, and declared themselves disappointed in me, so naturally I asked what the hell they were talking about.

"We heard about it! You’ve been going out with Onodera Yuu from Class A, but you’re also seeing Tsukimi Yoruko!"

"That’s two-timing! Straight-up two-timing!"

"Calm down. I’m not two-timing anyone. And it’s not ‘Yoruko,’ it’s ‘Yako.’ Yako."

"Wha—!? Don’t tell me you’ve already gotten close enough to call Yoruko-chan by her first name too!?"

"Yo! Mister Two-Timing President! Double standard!"

"I said it’s Yako, not Yoruko... and just correcting her name doesn’t mean jack shit happened between us. Also, ‘double standard’ has absolutely nothing to do with this. I’ve got too many things to respond to at once here. What is with this annoying-ass energy?"

Even while I was trying to clear up their misunderstanding, the situation just kept getting worse. I could feel everyone in class staring at me. Some of those looks were openly disgusted. Some were confused. Some were the kind of curious looks people gave when something interesting was happening in front of them. The fact that some classmates looked genuinely unsure meant my harmless little reputation-building project had been working pretty damn well until now.

Too bad it looked like it was falling apart this very morning.

"Hoshimiyaaa!"

"Hoshimiyaaa!"

"You’re annoying as hell. Knock that shit off. And the two-timing thing is a misunderstanding."

Honestly, I still had no idea what the hell was going on, so it was probably time to look into it properly, especially when combined with the ugly rumor Usotsuki-chan had mentioned about herself that same morning.

"...Seriously. So this is the kind of crap someone with a girlfriend gets dragged into too..."

The emotions being aimed at me weren’t just coming from other people for their own reasons. My own reputation could change all of that however it wanted. I didn’t want to say I’d forgotten that, exactly, but I might have been taking the risks of acting like Yuu’s fake boyfriend a little too lightly.

The moment lunch break started, I could feel the classroom stir.

"Ren-chaaaan♥"

Yuu popped her head in through the front door of the classroom and called out to me in a syrupy, catlike sweet voice. She wore a bright, friendly smile, but she looked like she was forcing it.

"So Usotsuki-chan’s with you too."

"Yeah♥ I thought we could all eat lunch together♥"

For the record, Usotsuki-chan was right there, looking half-dead while Yuu held her by the back of the neck. For once, she wasn’t even wearing her usual smug grin.

...So this is about the rumor.

Yep.

The second I quietly guessed the topic, Yuu confirmed it. If she’d believed the rumor the moment it started spreading this morning, she would’ve come straight to me first. Obviously someone as sharp as Yuu wasn’t going to miss that something was off, either in the rumor itself or behind it, so she’d decided to stay quiet for now and feel things out. That was probably how she’d played it.

"Let’s go."

"Okay♥ I made your lunch again today♥"

"Looking forward to it."

I was already used to the jealous or icy stares people sent my way when they saw me acting lovey-dovey with Yuu, but now a lot of those had turned into outright contempt. It wasn’t even confirmed that I’d actually been two-timing anybody, and still they were showing zero mercy. Society would kill a person just for being suspicious. Right now, this closed-off little daytime world called school was doing a pretty faithful job of acting out that whole ugly truth.

"...Are you sure this is okay?"

Yuu asked that like she was worried about me after I stepped out into the hallway without hesitation.

"Yeah. Right now, gathering information comes first."

"If you’re okay with it, Ren-chan, then I am too..."

She’d noticed the looks people were giving me, obviously. If I asked her to clear things up, she’d probably do it immediately, but for now, making the wrong move would be stupid. For the moment, acting like our usual lovey-dovey couple felt like the safest play, maybe even the most effective one.

"I didn’t even do anything wrong..."

Usotsuki-chan muttered that in complaint while Yuu dragged her along.

"If you’re saying that, then Ren-chan and I didn’t do anything wrong either!"

Yuu was carrying lunch for all three of us while dragging Usotsuki-chan. She really is nice... Or so I thought, until I looked closer and realized one of the lunches was a convenience store bento. Yuu had probably confiscated it from Usotsuki-chan at some point. She really is strong...

"I’m pretty sure this whole rumor thing starts with you, Tsuki-chan."

"Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing."

"Ugh... ngh!"

With both Yuu and me peering into her face, Usotsuki-chan groaned.

"I didn’t do anything wrong!"

Coming from her, that had exactly zero persuasive power.

So anyway—

"We’ll be taking your statement down at the station."

"And if you lie, this lunch is getting fed to the birds~."

"N-Nooo! I don’t want another interrogation so stressful that even while I’m eating it feels like I’m chewing pencil shavings!!"

That was weirdly specific. Did the fact that I found it funny make me kind of an asshole? So much stress you couldn’t even taste your food anymore... If I were being honest, it sounded like she’d probably gone through something like that before.

Because she was a liar.

"—So what the hell is going on?"

We were near the school’s second gym, in the space between it and the pool. The cherry blossoms had already fallen long ago, and the petals on the ground were halfway back to becoming dirt. There was basically nothing there except some brush and a step near the back entrance of the gym to sit on. Still, hardly anybody ever came by, which made it perfect for this kind of talk.

"There’s a rumor that Ren-chan is two-timing?"

Yuu, smiling with a face twitching so hard it was damn near cracking, stepped toward Usotsuki-chan—not me.

"I-I mean, I have no clue how any of this happened either..."

"Don’t lie. This morning you were already talking like your compensated dating got exposed."

Wait. Was that what she’d been saying?

"The compensated dating thing isn’t true. It’s just a rumor."

Right. If Usotsuki-chan had actually been out there doing sugar daddy stuff, I honestly wouldn’t have known what kind of eyes I was supposed to look at her with after that.

"But if there are rumors like that going around, it means you’ve done enough to make people resent you, right?"

I could see why Yuu would say that, but if somebody who resented her was the one spreading those rumors, then what they were doing was nasty as hell.

"Did I really do that much to make people hate me? What kind of image do you even have of me, Yuu-chan?"

"A lying piece of shit."

"That’s awful!"

Usotsuki-chan bent over and covered her face dramatically with both hands. No—scratch that. More like Uso-Naki-chan. If she kept pulling little fake acts like this over and over, did she seriously not realize it would drag down people’s impression of her and eventually wreck their trust in her? Usotsuki-chan wasn’t a genius or anything, but she wasn’t actually stupid either... or at least she shouldn’t have been.

"Besides, I’m not the kind of girl who gets screwed by random old men I just met!"

"So you do get screwed by men you know?"

"That’s not what I said!"

Girls talking to girls—or maybe just these two specifically. If I left them alone, the conversation went flying off in a bizarre direction almost immediately.

"Hold on. Lunch break isn’t that long. We can keep talking while we eat."

"...Yeah, good point."

Once Yuu cooled down, she handed me the lunch she’d made for today. I thanked her, took it, and sat on the step beside the gym while listening to Usotsuki-chan talk.

And damn, today’s lunch looked good too. The main dish was crab cream croquettes.

"...What?"

"Nothing~."

When I looked over at Usotsuki-chan, who’d been watching me shovel down Yuu’s ridiculously good food, she turned away looking slightly annoyed.

"Tsuki-chan. So? Why is this rumor spreading? Do you really have no idea what caused it?"

Yuu pressed her again, wearing the sort of expression that looked like she’d killed off all emotion.

"Of course I don’t. Besides, Mizuno-chan, the girl I got close to in PE the other day, is helping me too. So I don’t think even more weird rumors are going to spread... probably."

"Mizuno-chan, huh."

After hearing that, Yuu gave a short little nod. There was definitely something loaded behind that reaction.

"Mizuno? Isn’t she in your class too?"

Judging from Yuu’s attitude, she at least knew who the girl was, even if they weren’t close.

"Yeah. She’s in Class C. If I remember right—"

Yuu stopped her chopsticks and leaned close to whisper in my ear.

She’s supposed to like a first-year boy who joined the soccer club. I think his name was Sorimachi-kun. He’s in Class C too. As far as I know, it’s one-sided for now.

Class C’s Mizuno, and Sorimachi from the soccer club, also in Class C...

Unfortunately, I didn’t know either of them. They weren’t my classmates, and my circle still wasn’t that wide yet, so trying to approach them naturally might be a pain in the ass. Even so, Yuu was amazing. She could match a person to a basic profile almost instantly. It made me appreciate the girls’ information network, and also made it scare the shit out of me a little.

"Hey, don’t whisper secrets right in front of me~!"

"Sorry, sorry."

Even while apologizing, I made up some random fake secret conversation for Usotsuki-chan. The reason Yuu and I weren’t telling her the details wasn’t just because we didn’t trust her—though that was definitely part of it—but because we still didn’t fully understand what was going on around her.

This is getting more annoying than I thought.

Yeah... it is.

Yuu nodded, looking a little fed up.

I’m not going to believe everything Usotsuki-chan says just because she says it, but we can’t ignore this either. Can I leave it to you?

Mmgh...

Yuu puffed out her cheeks and looked at me with obvious displeasure.

I’ve told you before, I’m not especially nice to Usotsuki-chan. But if she ended up not coming to school anymore, you wouldn’t feel great about that either, right?

I wouldn’t really...

That was what she said, but Usotsuki-chan was one of the few friends both Yuu and I could act natural around. There was no way either of us could honestly say we wouldn’t care if she disappeared. Yuu would never admit that, though. And even though I’d framed it as the possibility of her getting driven into not coming to school by someone’s bullying, the tragedy I was really imagining was worse than that.

Lately, just from watching her, it was obvious Usotsuki-chan herself was more worn down and unstable than she looked from the outside.

Whatever the case, we needed to deal with this fast.

Please, Yuu. This is the kind of thing only you can do.

...Fine. If you’re saying it like that, Ren-chan...

After a negotiation that barely even counted as one, Yuu reluctantly nodded.

I’ll look into it on my side, so you just act like normal, okay?

Thanks. That helps. And if there’s anything I can do, tell me. I don’t know whether I’ll actually be useful, but I’ll do whatever I can.

"W-Whatever!?"

Yuu’s face went bright red in an instant, like it had caught fire.

"Why the hell are you shouting all of a sudden?"

Yeah. I mean, within the limits of what a powerless guy with a tiny social circle can do. So don’t get your hopes up.

...Ah, y-yeah. Right. For this issue, I mean. Sorry, but I might ask you for something later, so be ready for that.

Got it. I’ll sit tight until then.

"You’re whispering to each other again~!!"

We apologized to Usotsuki-chan, who had already finished off her convenience store bento in no time flat, and lunch break ended with us doing nothing but eating and talking about what to do next.

School ended.

"Hoshimiya. If you say the two-timing thing is a misunderstanding, I’ll believe you, but... it’d still be bad if it were true, okay? Make sure you understand that."

"Bullshit. You don’t actually trust me. Also, hurry up and get to club practice already."

Machida, one of my classmates, gave me that fake-serious look with his brows knitted together and started lecturing me. Why the hell did I have to get talked to like that by him? He shaved and shaped his eyebrows, but the left and right didn’t even match, and it bugged the hell out of me every time I looked at him.

"Hoshimiya. I believe you’re all in on Onodera and nobody else, but... what are you gonna do about Tsukimi Yoruko? Are you gonna dump her?"

"You too, Masunaga? Her actual name is Yako, not Yoruko. And you should get going to practice too."

The Machi-Masu duo both pulled grim faces and kept preaching at me, but I knew damn well they were enjoying themselves.

"""Alright, we’re off to club practice. Hang in there, Hoshimiya."""

After saying whatever the hell they wanted, the two of them left the classroom.

"...Well, whatever."

Honestly, the fact that they kept poking at me like that meant they were also giving me way more chances to deny the rumor in front of the rest of the class. That part was actually useful. Whether they understood they were helping or not was another issue.

"Anyway..."

I finished getting ready to leave, but I’d deliberately taken my time with it because I was waiting for someone.

"Sorry to keep you waiting~. I got held up♥"

Yuu appeared at the back door of the classroom, holding her bag with both hands and smiling with perfect posture.

"No, I just finished getting ready too."

I got up from my seat like everything was normal, but even while trying not to think about it, one thing kept bothering me: the stares from the handful of classmates still in the room.

"........"

"You were sleepy this afternoon, weren’t you? Did I pack too much lunch for you?♥"

"Not at all. It helped me get through the day."

"Ufufu♥"

Yuu had to know the way my standing in class had gotten worse, but she acted like it didn’t matter in the slightest and called out to me just as sweetly as always.

"Then let’s go♥"

"Yeah."

With those suspicious eyes still on me, like they were watching to see whether I’d screw up, I left the classroom exactly the same way I always did.

As we walked down the hallway, I sensed someone running up behind us. Not someone just passing by, either. The footsteps were clearly headed straight for us with purpose. I turned around, and Yuu turned a moment later.

"You two!"

That energetic first line caught me off guard, but I answered anyway.

"You need something?"

"I certainly do, for both of you!"

The one speaking in that hilariously over-the-top, slightly off-brand rich-girl way was a tall blonde girl with long hair, bright blue eyes, and a face so well put together it almost didn’t look real. She was tall for a girl.

"I wish to speak about Yako-san."

She wore a headband and had her bangs boldly swept up, showing her forehead, but somehow that didn’t make her look childish at all. It was probably because her features were so mature. From the look of her, she was probably mixed. Her blonde hair, unlike Usotsuki-chan’s, was almost definitely natural.

"Nijouin-san..."

That murmur from Yuu told me the girl in front of us was named Nijouin.

So despite looking like that, she straight-up had a very Japanese last name. Not that I cared about any possible middle name.

"Good day, Onodera-san."

"G-Good day."

Yuu returned the greeting, but she looked a little overwhelmed. Yeah, this type probably wasn’t her thing.

I casually stepped half a pace forward between them and introduced myself.

"Nice to meet you. I’m Hoshimiya."

"You are the one dating Onodera-san, are you not?"

"Seems you know a lot already."

"Indeed I do. You are rather famous. Once again, my name is Nijouin."

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

So people who talked like this really did exist in real life. This was the kind of full-on, textbook, anime-character speech pattern I’d only ever thought of as fiction.

And somehow it actually worked on her, which felt unfair. Not to stereotype anybody, but that foreign blood was doing some cheat-code shit here and giving her looks that made the whole character setup feel weirdly believable.

...Anyway, she’d come over because she had something to say to us, right? Since Yuu didn’t seem eager to handle it, I decided I’d ask.

"You said you wanted to talk about Usotsuki-chan?"

"—!"

The moment I said "Usotsuki-chan," the corners of her eyes and cheeks twitched like she’d almost overreacted. At the very least, the fact that she didn’t look thrilled by the nickname suggested she was on Usotsuki-chan’s side.

"Y-You all seem rather close. What a... lo-vely... nickname."

"Yeah. Same as with Yuu, I guess. We go way back, like one of those annoying bonds you can’t really shake. We’re the kind of friends who don’t bother holding back."

"I-Is that so..."

She looked shocked. Or unconvinced. Or like she just couldn’t accept what she’d heard. Whatever it was, Nijouin gave a small cough and reset herself.

"What I came to ask you two is quite simple. You are aware of the rumor in question, are you not?"

"Aware? I’m one of the people caught in the middle of it."

"In that case—"

Nijouin’s eyes sharpened for just a second as she looked back and forth between Yuu and me.

"—allow me to confirm something first. Is that rumor true?"

"No."

"Nope."

Yuu and I denied it at almost the exact same time.

"...I see."

Our expressions and tone must have convinced her, because Nijouin let out a breath and pressed a hand to her chest in relief. Apparently even though she’d called it a simple confirmation, she hadn’t been fully sure.

"To be honest, it’s been a pain in the ass for us too. I don’t know where the rumor started, but to Yuu and me, Usotsuki-chan is our friend. That didn’t change just because Yuu and I started dating."

"So that is how it is..."

I decided to offer up some harmless information first to see if it would draw anything else out of her. It wasn’t sensitive, and using it as a conversation opener didn’t feel unnatural, even if I was pushing the pace.

"Are you close with Tsuki-chan too, Nijouin-san?"

As if sliding neatly into the flow of the conversation, Yuu jumped in.

"...Shortly after school started, during PE class... yes, that is right. We became friends."

"I-I see."

Yuu looked a little overwhelmed by Nijouin’s sudden burst of energy, but there was relief in her smile too.

Yeah, it really was surprising, the kind of connections Usotsuki-chan had. In strange places, she kept ending up linked to strange people. Honestly, I couldn’t even picture how someone like the girl in front of us and someone like Usotsuki-chan acted around each other or what their conversations sounded like.

"Please be good to Tsuki-chan."

"You needn’t even ask!"

Nijouin puffed out her chest with absolute confidence.

Big.

I’m not saying what was big.

Well, fine, maybe just a little more detail.

We were talking about the sort of level where her uniform looked ready to burst, or like you could set something on top of it.

"...Ren-chan."

"I wasn’t looking at anything."

The second Yuu said my name, I caught that icy warning in her voice and straightened up fast.

Nijouin tilted her head at our suspicious little exchange. But anyway, it was good to know Usotsuki-chan seemed to be making friends outside of just us.

"I was hoping that, out of consideration for a friend’s friend, the two of you might cooperate with me!"

"""Cooperate?"""

When Yuu and I both tilted our heads, Nijouin puffed out that very generous chest again.

"The Yako Tsukimi Rescue Operation!"

"""...Ah. Right. Got it."""

Yuu and I both ended up staring blankly at her as she launched into her explanation.

What Nijouin told us about was the environment surrounding Usotsuki-chan.

Apparently Nijouin was in the same Class A as Yuu and Usotsuki-chan, but considering how strong her whole character was, it wasn’t hard to imagine she stood out like crazy. Right after school started, during the girls’ PE class that several classes took together, she’d ended up being the odd one out when it came time to pair up. Then, by pairing with Usotsuki-chan, who had been left over the same way, they’d apparently hit it off—according to Nijouin, anyway.

That was enough to make a guy tear up over the power of friendship. Saying they were just two leftovers finding each other would be too harsh, but basically, their friendship had been born from both of them licking their wounds.

As for the rumor-spreading that had finally expanded beyond Usotsuki-chan herself and started hitting the people around her too—mainly Yuu and me—apparently there had already been several nasty rumors about her for a while. The real question was how things had gotten this bad. No, scratch that. It had probably gotten this bad because everyone kept ignoring it.

Now that we’d finally dragged ourselves into taking it seriously, we were finding out all kinds of weird things about the world around Usotsuki-chan. There were people helping her, and there were people ignoring her, all in places even Yuu hadn’t known about. That was where Nijouin’s information became useful. She watched Usotsuki-chan on a regular basis and could fill in the blind spots Yuu didn’t have covered.

"Mizuno-san has been moving very actively on her behalf. Thanks to that, the spread of the nastier rumors has somehow been held in check."

"Nastier rumors?"

"Oh? You have not heard? Things like Yako-san engaging in compensated dating, or that her number of past partners is already somewhere in the late double digits... all of it, of course, completely baseless gossip."

Damn. That was way too damn specific. Still, the rumor about compensated dating was something Yuu and I had already heard from Usotsuki-chan herself, since she’d brought it up as something bothering her.

Whether the content of the rumor was true or not, it did sound like the fact that people were spreading it at all was real. Maybe it hadn’t exploded yet, but it was definitely out there. A girl named Mizuno was apparently helping in earnest, which was probably the only reason things hadn’t gotten much worse yet.

All right. Now the overall picture was finally starting to come together.

"If rumors like that spread, things will definitely get even uglier than they already are."

"Yeah, no kidding."

Clearly worried from the bottom of her heart, Nijouin crossed her arms and sighed.

Held up by both arms like that, those generous hills of hers—

Ah, hell, pushing them up like that made them look even bigger.

"Ren-chan. Are you messing around right now?"

"My bad."

Yuu puffed out her cheeks and glared at me. I’d just been resting my eyes for a second, but somehow she always knew exactly what I was thinking.

"In any case, when I think about Yako-san, I worry and worry and worry..."

Nijouin let out another sigh, looking genuinely troubled.

"I was so concerned that I managed only eight hours of sleep last night."

"That sounds like more than enough sleep to me."

If anything, it sounded like too much.

"—I get the situation. We’ll talk to Mizuno too. Thanks, Nijouin-san."

"Not at all. I shall move on my own as well. I can already picture Yako-san being so deeply moved by our friendship that she bursts into sobs!"

Laughing with a loud, aristocratic "O-ho-ho-ho," Nijouin walked down the hallway in the opposite direction from us.

Usotsuki-chan really did have a talent for drawing in intense weirdos.

Now then, all that was left was—

"Mizuno-chan’s already gone home, I think. She wasn’t in her classroom."

Yuu had already moved ahead of me and checked that.

"So you already confirmed it. Nice. In that case—"

"Tsuki-chan bolted out of her classroom the second school ended. She shouldn’t have had anything special today, but..."

"..."

Yuu tilted her head in that cute way of hers like she was asking, Why would she do that? Whether she was aware of it or not, when it came to protecting the image of our relationship—or anything connected to it—Yuu put out some seriously intense pressure.

Maybe comparing her to a territorial bear would be too much, but she definitely got more aggressive. That probably said a lot about how sick and tired she’d gotten of guys confessing to her.

Either way, with Usotsuki-chan having run off like she was escaping, the only ways left to contact her today were going to her house or messaging her directly.

If that was how it stood, then dropping by Usotsuki-chan’s place on the way home sounded like the next move.

And yet...

The more I half-joked to myself that maybe Usotsuki-chan had sprinted home because Yuu scared the shit out of her, the harder it got to completely rule that possibility out.

"Ren-chan? What’s wrong?"

Yuu was probably already fed up with being dragged into Usotsuki-chan’s problems, but on the surface she still treated me exactly the way she always did.

"Thinking about something?"

"...No, it’s nothing. Let’s head home."

"Okay♥"

It would probably be better if I contacted Usotsuki-chan by myself, which made this whole situation feel weird as hell and kind of awkward. It was like there was this sticky haze of mess and sludge clinging to all of us, something we couldn’t see but could definitely feel, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

All I could do was hope the whole problem got resolved sooner rather than later.

Chapter 5: I Was Just Trying to Enjoy a Normal School Life, and Somehow I Ended Up Accused of Two-Timing