vrcanaries Ch. 78.2 - 3 + 1 Pt2
Ch. 78.2 - 3 + 1 Pt2
"'Nogami-san, I’m going to assault you now~'—what kind of criminal announces himself like that beforehand?! Honestly, he’s a complete idiot…"Nogami huffed quietly for his sake, this self-righteous mutt, this stupid dog who kept trying to “teach” her lessons.
"Me too!"
Chouko looked as if she’d finally found someone who understood her pain. She practically poured out her grievances like water, retelling everything Harutaki had done.
“‘Shihou-san, you don’t want those embarrassing photos I took of you spreading around, do you?’ — I mean, seriously, we’re high schoolers! And Hoshikawa-kun actually waited until I passed out and, like some kindergarten brat, used a marker to draw a turtle on my face!”
“Pfft… a turtle? What the heck is that supposed to be…? Hoshikawa, that’s way too childish!”
Nogami covered her mouth, doing her best not to burst into full laughter and disturb the other customers.
“I’m starting to feel embarrassed sitting next to you, Harutaki.”
Sae nudged him with her elbow, grinning.
“If it were me, I’d at least draw a pig snout.”
…Was that supposed to be Sae-style comfort?
How moving. Truly his best bro.
Harutaki thought this as he lay slumped over the table, pretending he no longer had the courage to face the world.
“People call you a scumbag, but honestly? You’re kind of lame. If it were me, I’d just go ahead and give Shihou-san’s huge boobs a good squeeze.”
Minako mimed grabbing at the air twice in front of her chest. As always, she joked lightly, while secretly stealing a glance at Harutaki from beneath her lowered lashes.
“Sanada-san is even bigger than me, so you can just squeeze your own~”
That, precisely, was why he was also someone special to her.
As Chouko and Nogami leaned together, laughing at Harutaki’s misery, Chouko let her gaze drift toward the boy sitting across from her.
She remembered that overwhelming relief of having survived…
That moment when he’d said, “It’s because I like you that I respect you.”
The seriousness in his eyes…
Clearly, with the leverage of her secret alt account and those humiliating selfies, he could command her to do anything.
Clearly, when she’d fainted, he could’ve taken advantage of her however he wished, humiliate her, use her, even take everything from her.
You really are too cruel, Hoshikawa…
Her cheeks flushed crimson. How was she supposed to face him after this?
“Ah, speaking of which, Nogami-san, that time you—”
“Just call me Izumi.”
As she said this, Nogami casually hooked her arm around Chouko’s, leaving the latter, who’d always used the aura of a noble heiress to protect herself, briefly frozen in confusion.
“Then I’ll call you Chouko, okay?”
“…Mm.”
“If we’re both victims of that idiot scumbag Hoshikawa, then obviously we need to team up and get revenge! Besides, if we eat sweets together, drink together, chat and laugh together, if we’re not friends, that’d be way too weird, right?”
How enviable…
Chouko looked at the bright, carefree smile on Nogami’s face and found herself wishing, just once, to be as bold and open as her someday. A day where she could simply laugh and talk with everyone without holding back.
“Then… please take care of me from now on… Izumi.”
“No need for that polite stuff between friends. My mom’s always nagging me to remember manners, annoying as hell.”
Nogami complained lightly while shaking Chouko’s outstretched hand.
“Chouko-chan, you can call me Sae. And yay, now we have one more person to join us for lunch at the usual spot, it’ll be even livelier.”
Sae picked up her half-finished glass of soda and held it out to her.
“Cheers! Welcome to the squad, Chouko-chan~”
“Ch–cheers…”
After freezing for a moment, Chouko finally clinked her glass against Sae’s, awkwardly, but still with gentle grace.
“Call me Minako. Let’s get along from now on.”
After shaking hands with Minako, who had stood up to greet her, Chouko couldn’t help thinking—
Minako-san is definitely the sanest one out of the three.
She inhaled deeply. The blended scents of the café, coffee, pastries, fruit filled her chest with a faint sweetness.
This feeling was…
Actually kind of nice.
“Um, well, can I also call you by—”
“Hoshikawa, what kind of daydream are you having?”
Nogami interrupted him mercilessly, crushing his hopeful fantasy.
“Hoshikawa-kun, this table is full of girls, you know.”
Chouko teased him lightly, implying, half-joking, half-not, that he was the outsider here.
“If a scumbag calls us by name, it’ll be awkward. Please show some self-respect and go wait for disposal at the garbage collection point.”
Minako, as always, said the cruelest things with the softest, most angelic voice.
“If I don’t go there myself, will Sanada-san carry me to the garbage station?”
He slumped dramatically against the sofa, pretending to be devastated.
“No worries. You still have me. Even if it’s raining and everyone tosses you into a trash can, I’ll help you close the lid.”
Sae cheerfully threw an arm around his shoulder, joining Minako in teasing him.
“Honestly, I thought Sae would at least bring me home…”
“What would I want with trash?”
“Huh? So I’ve already been downgraded from scumbag to garbage?”
Seeing the disbelief on Harutaki’s face, the four girls burst into laughter.
Looks like I can detach the final booster now, he thought.
The rocket has officially cleared Earth’s messy atmosphere—
His mission was complete.
“But seriously, idiot Hoshikawa’s cooking is pretty good. Calling him trash feels a bit unfair.”
Nogami suddenly shifted the topic, keeping the conversation circling around him.
“Yeah. When I woke up that night and ate the dinner he’d left for me, I ended up eating way more than usual. My stomach was still bloated when I went to bed.”
Chouko nodded in agreement.
Then the two shared a glance—
And simultaneously turned toward Harutaki, who sat there with his chest puffed in triumph, waiting for praise—
“Stupid dog. Make me dinner a few more times.”
“Hoshikawa-kun, please make full use of your remaining value.”
Are you two sweatshop owners or what?
…Oh wait, they are heiresses.
Exploiting him like this was practically their birthright.
But that was fine.
He wasn’t cooking for free—
A girl’s kiss was always sweet.
If he earned even a bit of affection from Shihou or Nogami, he could never end up at a loss.
In other words, if he kept working hard, their affection would only grow, and his life would get sweeter and sweeter.
Just imagining that was enough to erase every bit of fatigue from cooking for them.
“Harutaki cooks? No way!”
“Please don’t project yourself onto others.”
Harutaki instantly struck back at Sae for teasing him earlier.
“Mmm. A top-tier scumbag who can cook… I’m curious to try it.”
“Be careful, you might get captured by a top-tier scumbag’s cooking.”
He returned Minako’s teasing without hesitation.
He didn’t mind being the joke of the table—
It improved the mood and brought everyone closer.
But conversation couldn’t just be flattery either; that only lowered one’s worth.
And most importantly, he had to tell the difference between malicious teasing and affectionate teasing. Respond to malice with strength; respond to kindness with kindness.
With the atmosphere warm and comfortable, he moved on to his second reason for coming today.
“Nogami-san, do you know anyone with connections to the Metropolitan Police Department? Like… family or relatives?”
“Huh? The police? Oh, are you trying to deal with that side-character scumbag?”
Nogami caught on quickly.
But…
This guy really is an idiot, she thought.
As if she had friends besides the ones sitting here.
“Well, calling Yobitani a side character isn’t wrong… But the problem is he’s a third-year, still under twenty, so legally he might… not face real punishment.”
To Harutaki, someone who practiced and was methodical, it was clearly a repeat offender. Who knew how many girls had already suffered because of him? Yet the so-called Juvenile Law didn’t protect victims.
It protected the criminals, letting them avoid real punishment.
Tch. ‘Juvenile Law protects juveniles,’ huh?
A joke overflowing with hellish irony, one he pushed aside before he got any angrier.
But the truth was undeniable: society rarely punished underage offenders properly.
A normal person could do nothing, at best, a tragic one-for-one “five steps of bloodshed.” But the two young heiresses sitting with him were not normal people.
If the law couldn’t enforce justice, then poison must be fought with poison.
Harutaki didn’t believe in “guidance” or “rehabilitation.”
Being a repeat offender? Laughing about being underage so the law couldn’t touch him?
Return to the right path?
What a joke.
A guy who can straight-facedly declare he’s still a minor and therefore untouchable by police or the law, giving that kind of scum privacy protection, worrying about his future being “ruined”… isn’t that ridiculous?
“Chouko’s my friend too. Of course, I’m not just letting that trash walk away. But Hoshikawa, if you want to pull some strings, why look so far away?”
Nogami tilted her chin meaningfully toward his right side.
“Sae?”
“Ah, my dad’s the director of Division One. I… I think he’s the rank of Senior Superintendent?”
“The director of the First Division should be a Superintendent General.”
Nogami shot Sae a helpless look.
Someone like her would never get this sort of thing wrong, she could recite every position her father has ever held backwards if she had to.
“I thought your parents worked in sports or something.”
As he turned to talk to Sae, the corner of his eye caught Minako sitting further inside. He noticed the flicker of loneliness on her face, there and gone in an instant.
His priority right now was cleaning up the mess that bastard Yobitani left behind; he didn’t have the time to worry about other things. Asking Minako about it in front of everyone would be inappropriate anyway. And the two of them weren’t close the way he was with Nogami or Shihou. She was similar to him in that sense, someone who would never show her real feelings under circumstances like this.
Still, she was always sticking by Nogami’s side; she probably wasn’t in any real trouble. More likely she’d just hit a rough patch recently.
“At first I only wanted frontline work, so I exercised to keep myself in shape. But after some things happened, I… kind of started liking swimming and sprinting too…”
Sae muttered her explanation, then pulled her phone from her shoulder bag, unlocked it, and tapped her father’s contact.
Just as Nogami had said, she and Chouko were friends now. With her straightforward personality, there was no way she’d turn a blind eye to what happened to her friend.
And scum who violate girls using low-down tricks like that… she loathed them just as much.
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