My phone vibrated with an incoming call.

Like always, Usotsuki-chan had already flooded my phone with messages first thing in the morning, carrying that same light, carefree energy she always used.

Usotsuki-chan: Morning. Sorry about yesterday, okay? I’m on my period right now, so I was feeling awful after school too. I think I might’ve been a little too hard on you guys, Ren-kun.
Usotsuki-chan: So, as my apology, I thought maybe I’d let you hear my voice first thing in the morning♡
Usotsuki-chan: Don’t worry! I’ll keep it a secret from Yuu-chan! lol
Usotsuki-chan: Ren-kun? You’re reading this right now, aren’t you? Answer me.
Usotsuki-chan: Just kidding. Sorry.
Usotsuki-chan: I just wanted to talk to you.
Usotsuki-chan: Will you let me hear your voice? Even for a little bit. Talking to you makes me feel a little better.
Usotsuki-chan: Just for a second. Okay? Please.
Usotsuki-chan: Can you talk right now?
Usotsuki-chan: Can I call you?”

A second later, the green answer button and the red decline button appeared on my screen.

She was already calling.

“...Huh?”

The moment I answered, a confused voice came through the phone.

“What’s this? You actually picked up right away today.”

She laughed softly, sounding genuinely happy, but the usual teasing edge in her voice was missing.

“Usotsuki-chan.”

“W-What?”

Even through the call, I could tell she tensed up.

“Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

Just like I expected, that was how Usotsuki-chan answered.

"........."

"Uh... um........."

A long silence followed. I didn't hang up. I just said nothing and let the tension build. At that, Usotsuki-chan seemed completely at a loss and could only mutter something under her breath.

"You're almost there. Hang in there."

I said only that, then ended the call without even waiting for a reply.

Today was Friday, three days after the day I found out people suspected me of two-timing, and also the day I learned there was someone in Yuu's class named Nijouin. Since this morning, one thing had been stuck in my head the whole time.

What does it actually mean to fall for someone?

Obviously, I wasn't talking about simple affection or friendship. I didn't want to think about liking someone as a person, or liking them as a friend. I meant romance. I meant loving someone as someone separate from yourself. I meant wanting to be with them, wanting to be tied to them. When someone starts carrying that kind of wish, what happens to them? How do they act? What do they accept, and what do they reject? What do they affirm, and what do they deny? How do they change, and what parts of them stay exactly the same?

[Tsukimi Yako from Class A is doing compensated dating.]

Once malice was born, it didn't stop. A rumor meant to drag one person down bared its teeth and started pulling everyone around it into the mess.

[Hoshimiya from Class B is dating Tsukimi Yako while he's already going out with Onodera Yuu.]

The other day, the blade of that rumor had swung my way too.

And then there was this.

[Reiko Nijouin is doing compensated dating.]

The email, sent from an address made up of a random string with no meaning at all, was just as impossible to verify as ever.

"This shit's nasty again..."

Muttering that, I used the spam report function. A copy of the email that had just come in was sent to the security company, and the original got dumped into the trash folder.

"........."

The nasty rumors were still spreading wider and wider. The certainty I already had inside me turned into something even stronger, while my suspicions sank deeper and deeper. This time, I had planned to let Yuu gather information and keep myself out of it. That had been the plan, anyway.

After school came. With the distant shouts of students at club activities and the sounds of instruments drifting through the air, I stepped into that classroom. There was one particular person who had kept coming out into the hallway, glancing around over and over, then going back inside. I made sure I wasn't seen while I watched, and after that, it looked like every student in that class except that one person had either gone home or left for club activities.

The classroom was completely empty now, and with the slanting afternoon sun coming in through the windows, the whole place was washed in a pale sunflower-colored light.

"In another age, what you're doing would've gotten you killed."

"Huh."

That one person answered my warning like she couldn't care less.

"You should stop before you go too far. Once you cross that line, you're not coming back."

"Huh."

I put on a dramatic tone, and the girl brushed me off coldly. Half ignoring me even after I walked right up to her, she sat on one of the desks by the window and stared out at the schoolyard, still damp from a sunshower. She didn't care that the folded hem of her skirt was getting wrinkled, and her dangling feet swung idly through the air. The ends of her short brown bob trembled a little.

"Mizuno. I'm saying it again. Stop."

This time, I meant it as a warning.

"Heh."

The girl, Mizuno, let out a short laugh that sounded like she was mocking me. It was a laugh that carried ridicule, but there was something fragile in it too. She had a reckless, throwaway air about her, and underneath that sat a kind of headlong aggression.

"You're Hoshimiya-kun, right? So you really do like Yako-chan after all?"

"Does that have anything to do with this right now?"

"Huh? If you're dodging it, then I guess that means..."

Mizuno turned around, grinned, and twisted her eyes into crescent shapes. Her gaze was impossible to miss, and the second I met it, I felt something seriously off. She had a small frame and a cute face, the kind of look that would normally make people want to protect her, but the impression she gave fell apart the moment you looked into her eyes.

The way we saw each other was probably already set in stone now, and it probably wasn't good. Considering what our first conversation was about, there wasn't much anyone could do about that.

"The only person I like is Yuu. She's my girlfriend. Of course she is."

"Even though you're two-timing?"

"That's just a rumor."

Mizuno gave a small nod.

"Watching from a distance, I was thinking this already, but you're weird too, aren't you?"

There was something loaded in the way she said it, but Mizuno didn't bother trying to hide what she meant.

"Funny coincidence. I am too...♪"

Those eyes. Those damn eyes. The discomfort I felt before sharpened into something more concrete, something nasty enough to scrape against my nerves. They weren't black in the same way Yuu's eyes were, with that depth that seemed to shine from somewhere far inside. They weren't like Usotsuki-chan's either, with those bold, mocking eyes that looked down on people.

"I don't hate weird people. As long as they don't get in my way, anyway.♪"

Her eyes were black all the way down, nothing in them but depth.

"Why would you do something like that... no, something like this?"

I worked my phone and showed her the email from earlier, the one I hadn't fully deleted and had left in the trash folder.

The second Mizuno looked at the message, the one she had probably blasted out to multiple people this morning including me, she looked up at me through half-lidded eyes.

"That's a pretty awful email, huh? I got one too."

"........."

I said nothing and just stared at her. Mizuno let out a short laugh, then jerked her chin up with a look that said she had no intention of backing down.

"So what if it is?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to know how the person who sent it thinks."

While saying that, I added, "And while we're at it..." Then I opened up a certain photo on my phone, one I'd secretly taken before.

"This too. It's fine to assume you were the one behind it, right?"

"Wow. That's one filthy notebook."

She didn't look surprised at all. I still hadn't gotten a direct confession out of her, but at this point there was no doubt that the source of the malice behind the whole mess was Mizuno standing right in front of me. That meant what I had to do wasn't changing.

So no, I wasn't going to waste time asking, Why would you do this? I already understood most of the motive. What mattered was the situation Usotsuki-chan had been shoved into, and the rumors about me. More than that, I needed to stop any more of this crap from spreading.

"Well, I've at least learned one thing. You're the kind of person who won't admit you did wrong unless she's forced to."

I turned off my screen right in front of Mizuno and set the phone down on the desk beside us, making damn sure it stayed where she could see it.

"So? You dragged me out after school just to talk about that?"

"Yeah. I wanted to see if there was any way to get you to stop. Stop bullying Usotsuki-chan."

"Bullying?"

She started playing dumb, saying things like, "That's awful," and, "If anything, I was helping stop the bad rumors from spreading."

"Sure. Pretending to be on someone's side and then stabbing them in the back works best, after all. That's the easiest way to corner someone who barely has any friends and is really just lonely as hell underneath it all."

"Betraying her? That's not..."

"When I heard it, I was honestly shocked by how simple the setup was. Because it's easy, right? Like this, for example."

Apparently, a student in Class A had heard from Mizuno, There's a rumor that Tsukimi Yako-chan is doing compensated dating, but don't believe it, okay? It really was simple. All you had to do was go around saying shit like that, and rumors spread in a way that was almost funny with how easily people bought into them.

Whether someone liked Usotsuki-chan or hated her, as long as they had even a little interest in her, that alone was enough to make them suitable carriers for the rumor.

"That's how it went, right, Mizuno?"

"........."

That was the ugly truth of rumors. Whether they were real or fake barely mattered. If the story had enough bite to it, it'd spread in a flash. And because she disguised herself as someone trying to help, the vile rumor ended up spreading in a way that felt unnaturally natural.

That was information Yuu had gathered. Apparently, over the last three days she'd only managed to collect a few pieces through students from Class A, but from what she found, the rumor had spread with explosive speed. That was enough for her to conclude this had been the main method.

"You're still going to play dumb?"

Faced with Mizuno still trying to dodge it even now, I slammed my fist down on the desk beside me and stepped in close. The sound came out louder than I expected, a hard bang that made Mizuno stiffen for just a second, but she still looked up at me and curled her lips into a mocking smile.

"Planning to beat me into listening?"

"No. I just want you to stop bullying Usotsuki-chan. If you do that, I won't say anything more than I already have."

"........."

Maybe it was because I kept my tone flat even while showing a threatening gesture, but Mizuno's face had gone a little tighter than before.

"Even if you talk about rumors and all that, you still can't prove it was bullying, can you?"

"Even with this much evidence?"

I pointed at the phone I had set down, making her aware again that I had photographic proof.

"That notebook and that textbook are still at Usotsuki-chan's house, by the way."

Like I was dealing with an idiot and couldn't help myself, I shrugged.

"Once the cops get off their ass and start moving, they're fast. If they've got the actual objects, they'll trace the tools used for the crime and the route they came through in no time. As far as this evidence goes, it probably wouldn't even take a day. It's not like they haven't got any clue who to look at, and it's not like they'd need to worry that much about sparing the people around you or the environment you're in."

"The police...?"

Mizuno laughed through her nose.

"Of course, there are ways to dig into this without going to the police too."

That made Mizuno widen her eyes for a second before narrowing one of them.

"Wouldn't that cost a ton of time and money?"

She was right.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's impossible. And if you won't admit it, then I'll have no choice. Hell, if it were me, I'd probably do it."

I said it like I was trying to make her understand that she should've already seen this possibility coming.

"If you like the idea of living your life while some total stranger who's a pro at this shit tails you around, if that kind of daily thrill sounds good to you, then maybe I'll give you that gift out of my meager part-time pay."

I might actually do it. That was the message. Normal common sense, the kind that says nobody would go that far, didn't apply here. She should've realized that by now. A detective wouldn't be some amateur who got spotted while tailing someone, but for a teenage high school girl like Mizuno, just believing she might be under surveillance by someone like that would already turn everyday life into pure stress.

Minors can't legally be clients, sure, but there were plenty of ways around that, like going through some other adult.

"...Assuming you really could do that, what the hell are you, Hoshimiya-kun?"

She put on a smile to hide her nerves, patched herself back together with an act of composure, and let her curiosity toward me peek through.

I ignored that and kept going.

"A teacher's probably going to step in and deal with you later. If you still don't stop after that, I'll move on to what I just said. If it comes to that, this gets bigger. And I doubt that's what you want either."

"You think this is negotiation?"

"Maybe. If you don't agree right now, that's fine too. You can wait until this blows up, then admit it and walk away with a real scar left behind. Or you can admit it here and now and swear you'll never bully anyone again. If it's the second one, then maybe it doesn't even have to leave a scar."

"........."

As I answered her evenly, Mizuno crossed her arms and sank into thought. She wasn't looking out the window now. She was staring into empty space. Maybe she had finally started seriously weighing the option I'd laid in front of her, the one that said, If you listen, I'll let everything end here.

"Mizuno, I'm telling you this for your own good."

I started to press her again, but then Mizuno cut in.

"Oh, and just so we're clear, don't get the wrong idea."

With that, she pulled her phone out of the pocket of her school skirt.

"I've been recording this."

She turned the screen toward me and showed me an app that could record audio.

"So don't try anything stupid."

"Same goes for you."

"What, you actually mean that? Depending on how someone sees it, what you said earlier counts as a threat. If I clipped out only the parts where you're pressuring me and put those out there, maybe you'd be the one in the worse position right now."

Mizuno gave me a thin smile, held her phone farther away from me, and stepped down from the desk, putting some distance between us.

"Are you admitting you spread cruel rumors about Usotsuki-chan and bullied her?"

"So what if I am? What then?"

Out of nowhere, Mizuno had turned aggressive. She opened her eyes wide and forced the words out through a mouth that had gone stiff.

"Do you even get the position you're in right now? If I release only the parts where you're threatening me, you're the one who ends up screwed, Hoshimiya-kun."

She sounded weirdly sure of herself, like she thought she'd flipped the whole thing around.

"So what do you think I do in a situation like this?"

"Huh...?"

My answer made no sense to her, apparently. Even though I should've been the one at a disadvantage now, Mizuno could only knit her brows and stare at me like I was insane.

"Did you think I'd drop to the floor and scrape my forehead against it to apologize? Did you think I'd be ashamed of how shallow my own thinking was? Or maybe you figured this kind of situation would make me break down crying with regret. Is that it? Tell me."

"What... what the hell are you even talking about?"

Maybe I'd had too many things I wanted to ask the person standing in front of me. Apparently, she hadn't been acting with any real depth of thought, and she hadn't really seen any concrete path ahead either.

"...Whatever. I did say earlier that the decision was yours, but honestly? Sorry, but it's questionable whether you even have a choice anymore."

"...What? Seriously, what are you talking about?"

At this point, the fact that I still hadn't lost my cool was finally starting to shake her.

"Can't be helped."

Guess it had come to this. I thought she'd at least understand I hadn't called her out here without preparing something first, but apparently not.

"You can come in now."

"--!?"

The moment I sent a glance and a signal toward the rear door of the classroom, she flinched and whipped around.

The door rattled open, and two girls showed their faces.

"Hi, Mizuno-chan. It's been a while since gym class, huh?"

"Good afternoon, Mizuno-san. You look as well as ever today."

The two girls who appeared were Yuu, who had already earned the title of model student and a high place in the school hierarchy right after enrollment, and Nijouin, whose looks were on the same top-tier level even if her class standing sat at rock bottom. Those two, who almost never spoke in the classroom and weren't even particularly close, were standing together in the same place.

Mizuno wasn't relaxed enough to just tilt her head and let it pass, not even now.

"W-what is this supposed to mean...?"

She couldn't process the full picture behind what was happening, and her voice showed every bit of that spinning confusion. She had been wary of the possibility that someone might be waiting out in the hallway where she couldn't see them, but this had still caught her completely off guard. She probably never thought we'd really gone this far.

Seeing Mizuno panic, Yuu gave her a cold little smile before looking over at me with a blank face.

"Ren-chan. Your signal was late."

"Yeah, sorry. I wanted to push a little longer."

I had wanted Mizuno to understand the situation on her own, realize she was cornered, admit with her own mouth that she'd done wrong, apologize, and stop bullying Usotsuki-chan immediately. This girl named Mizuno should've still had room to make that choice.

Maybe that sounded like I was expecting too much from her, but considering how serious the situation was, it was more like the bare minimum.

"Honestly... you're way too nice, Ren-chan. Though yeah, I like that about you too..."

Sounding exasperated, Yuu walked along the back of the classroom. In our school, every classroom with rows of student desks had lockers lined up along the rear wall. That much was the same no matter what grade or class you looked at. They didn't have locks, and nobody was supposed to keep valuables in them, so people mostly used them for little study tools or junk they couldn't be bothered carrying back home. Maybe because people were careless with them, or maybe because some of them had warped over time and stopped closing properly, a few locker doors barely shut at all. They looked sloppy as hell.

Yuu walked over to one of them, a locker with its door left hanging half open, and pulled a smartphone out from inside.

"Just recording audio is soft. If you're doing this kind of thing, you record video, Mizuno-chan."

She said it like it was nothing, like it was obvious. Then she started fixing up the inside of the locker. She was putting everything back the way it had been so the phone could stand there earlier. Consideration, probably, to keep the inconvenience to the locker's owner, whoever the hell it was, to a minimum.

Or you could call it restoring the scene. Or simple evidence cleanup.

"This is Class C... When did someone from Class A...? How did you even...?"

Mizuno muttered the question under her breath and trembled. By the time Yuu finished retrieving the phone, she turned its camera toward us and walked closer.

"Hey, Mizuno-chan."

Yuu's face behind the phone was smiling, but it was the kind of smile that looked pasted on. That fake smile of hers only came out when she was so pissed she couldn't keep it in.

"Can you just surrender already? How long are you planning to drag Ren-chan around with this? How long are you planning to make me hold back?"

Her voice sounded fed up, but the anger in it was obvious. Her eyes, dark like a bottomless pit, shone black in the light coming in from outside the classroom. Compared to that shine, even Mizuno's dark, deep eyes looked shallow.

"You're seriously getting in the way."

".........!!!"

Hearing Yuu's beautiful voice deliver words with murder packed into them, Mizuno lost her voice and flinched hard.

"Ren-chan told me, you know? That you've been spreading rumors about Tsuki-chan and bullying her. That part by itself? Honestly, I don't really give a damn."

Yuu moved in until it looked like she was about to kiss her, close enough that even the tips of their noses could've brushed, and whispered into Mizuno's ear.

"But spreading some lie that makes it sound like Ren-chan's into Tsuki-chan? Yeah, that wasn't smart."

What Yuu was saying was a little off-center, but every word she spoke leaked fury so sharp it was damn near killing intent.

Startled, Mizuno tried to resist, like she was fighting not to be completely swallowed by that pressure.

"Ngh... eh!?"

"What are you doing? That's dangerous."

Mizuno's raised arm never made it anywhere. Yuu caught her wrist and stopped it like it was nothing.

"Ah... that hurts...!"

"Violence isn't okay, right?"

".........!?"

Mizuno trembled. She shrank back. She stared in fear. Yuu gripped one of her arms with ease, and despite how close their builds looked, the difference in strength clearly shook her even more.

"N-no... stop... it hurts...!!"

Words barely coming out as words at all, Mizuno was forced back until her upper body lay across the top of a desk. Her eyes opened wide with fear, and she stared up at Yuu without even blinking. It was pure instinct, the kind that tells you not to miss a single movement from the thing terrifying you.

"Hey, Mizuno-chan. Didn't you notice it yourself? A minute ago, you were acting like Ren-chan was the one getting in your way. But you're the one in the way. You're the one getting in the way right now. Do you even realize you're wasting the precious after-school flirting time Ren-chan and I finally would've had to ourselves? What, do you want to die? Do you seriously want to die right now?"

"Uh... ah..."

The model student everyone adored, the cheerful popular girl, the real side of Onodera Yuu. Mizuno had never seen any of it before, and now it was literally right in front of her face. I had meant to act as the setup, to push her nerves forward before the final drop off the cliff, but Yuu's sheer pressure was maybe going a little too far.

I mean, I was the one who suggested setting aside time after school in the first place. Did Yuu even realize how insanely embarrassing it was that she'd just called it our "flirting time" out loud? Damn. I kinda felt bad now. I had no idea she'd been looking forward to after school that much.

Originally, Yuu's role here was supposed to be telling Mizuno that we'd recorded everything and that there were witnesses. But right now, Yuu was running a little hot. If she kept going too far, I'd have to stop her.

"Hey, Mizuno-chan."

Mizuno arched her upper body back over the desk, and her feet floated off the floor, shaking and kicking helplessly through the air. Yuu bent over her and leaned in from above. She slipped the phone into the pocket of her blazer, then slammed one hand down beside Mizuno's head on the desk.

"You're in the way, okay?"

"Hii...!!"

It wasn't a wall slam. It was a desk slam. With her hand planted there, Yuu spoke in a voice that sounded like it was crawling up from the bottom of hell itself.

"So don't get in the way again."

"Ugh... nn...!"

Slowly, tears welled up in Mizuno's eyes, and I decided that was enough.

Or at least, I did.

But then it spread again. No... not again. Her crotch.

I didn't hear anything, but a certain smell hit me, and I noticed something was wrong with Mizuno. Me, Yuu, and even Nijouin, who had been silently watching the whole thing, all reacted at once.

"Whoa..."

Mizuno covered her face with both hands and started sobbing. Liquid ran down from beneath the hem of her skirt, down her legs. No, not liquid. Urine. It trickled toward the loose white socks pooled around her ankles and soaked into them.

"No... nooooo..."

Mizuno cried and cried. Looking at her like that, Yuu, Nijouin, and I all turned to look at one another with the exact same expression.

"........."

She started crying.

A useless mess of emotions spread through me, something that wasn't quite sympathy and wasn't quite regret either.

Chapter 7: I Was Just Trying to Enjoy a Normal School Life, and Somehow I Ended Up Accused of Two-Timing (3)