Academy City, besides all sorts of strange and endlessly varied high technology, also boasts an equally strange assortment of foods.
Sure, some of those foods are a touch too avant-garde for the stimulation they offer Yurika’s taste buds, but across all of Academy City there are still a few that make Yurika drool just thinking about them.
Things like the Tokiwadai Set Meal, the spicy version of the Tokiwadai Set Meal, and the Deluxe Tokiwadai Set Meal.
Before the Tenshouin conglomerate went bankrupt, Yurika’s favorite thing to do was enjoy a delicious set meal in the Tokiwadai cafeteria.
Sure, plenty of girls in the cafeteria might stare at Yurika with a look bordering on lewd obsession, but on the whole, compared to a top priority like eating her fill, those stares fell within Yurika’s acceptable range.
Yurika had originally assumed that after her family went bankrupt, she’d never again get the chance to eat that Tokiwadai Set Meal she found so endlessly memorable.
But things took a turn.
Yurika, who’d been a bit too proud to bring herself to ask, ended up securing a reliable source of meals through sheer dumb luck, all thanks to a tiny misunderstanding on the part of her schoolmate and kouhai, Shirai Kuroko.
She had to admit, this was a wonderful ending.
Even if the thought in her heart really was a bit shameless, on the surface Yurika’s expression stayed unchanged as usual.
Right now she was standing at the front entrance of the Tokiwadai cafeteria, exactly as Shirai Kuroko had instructed earlier, waiting with a blank face for Shirai Kuroko to arrive.
After all, for the time being, Shirai Kuroko was Yurika’s future meal ticket, she had to be protected!
This scene, however, looked a little different in the eyes of the other students around the cafeteria.
The Ice Queen of Tokiwadai, standing at the cafeteria door, had her hands clasped together a bit nervously in front of her.
On a face that was normally cold and aloof, an unprecedented hint of shy crimson had actually surfaced (well, it was her first time mooching meals off someone).
And every now and then she’d pull out her phone to check the time.
Every single one of these little gestures made the girls around her want to lose their minds:
“Is Yurika-onee-sama waiting for her girlfriend…?”
“H… how could she?! How could Yurika-onee-sama fall in love with some other woman besides me?!”
“Who?! Who did something so deserving of divine punishment?!”…
“So noisy…”
At first the surroundings had been only faintly noisy.
After all, Tokiwadai Middle School is an aristocratic school set up specifically for young ladies, and etiquette is still pretty important. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
But Yurika’s lover-awaiting posture really did give the girls who adored her, and the gossips, something to talk about.
So in just a moment, the entrance of the Tokiwadai cafeteria started to grow as raucous as a public market.
“What are you all making such a racket about?!”
Before Yurika could even react, another voice cut in ahead of her, interrupting the young ladies’ chatter and pulling everyone’s attention along with it.
Yurika started, and couldn’t help glancing toward the source of the voice.
But that one look instantly gave her a splitting headache.
“Oh, if it isn’t Yurika?”
The one walking toward her was none other than Shokuhou Misaki, whom she’d just seen that very morning.
In her star-shaped pupils, an odd light glittered.
“What a coincidence.” (Coincidence my ass…) Yurika shot Shokuhou Misaki a glance and said nothing.
She had no habit of blurting out every thought; it was precisely because she spoke so little that she’d been saddled with the title of Ice Queen.
“By the way, why is Yurika standing at the cafeteria door today?”
Sure enough, just as Yurika had figured, Shokuhou Misaki hadn’t come here by coincidence at all.
She’d come straight for Yurika, plain and simple.
In a matter of seconds, Shokuhou Misaki had already started fishing for information.
“Don’t tell me you’re waiting for someone?” (This woman, is she done eyeing my faction and now starting to go after the people around me?) Not knowing what Shokuhou Misaki was after, Yurika couldn’t come up with a fitting answer for the moment, so she simply shut her mouth and met it all with silence.
But it seemed Yurika had given Shokuhou Misaki too much credit for honesty.
Pi…
“Shokuhou Misaki!!”
A stab of pain shot through her head.
Yurika hurriedly mustered her psychokinesis and forced that eerie power out of her skull, then glared with wide eyes at Shokuhou Misaki, who was watching her with a narrow-eyed smile.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Nothing. I just wanted to know who you’re waiting for.”
Facing Yurika’s somewhat angry rebuke, Shokuhou Misaki showed no panic at all, her queenly bearing on full display.
Staring into Yurika’s eyes, she asked,
“Don’t tell me it’s a girlfriend?”
“And what if I said I’m waiting for a boyfriend?”
Faced with Shokuhou Misaki’s aggressive questioning, Yurika suddenly found herself a little fed up, so she struck her usual cold pose, folded her arms across her chest, and shot back without a hint of courtesy.
Yurika and Shokuhou Misaki’s mutually unyielding attitudes instantly got the crowd of girls watching all excited.
A standoff between the two queens was quite the show, and there was no one at Tokiwadai Middle School who wouldn’t be interested.
“Stop deceiving yourself, Yurika!”
But Yurika’s retort didn’t beat down Shokuhou Misaki’s momentum.
To Yurika’s comeback, Shokuhou Misaki used just one sentence to defeat her utterly:
“No man would ever be into you!”
No man would ever be into you! man would ever be into you! ever be into you! into you! you!
Shokuhou Misaki’s words pierced straight through Yurika’s heart like a sharp blade, blocking back whatever Yurika had been about to say, because, well, every word of it was the truth.
Tenshouin Yurika’s sexual orientation might not necessarily be yuri, but due to some suspected genetic issue, no matter how prettily Yurika dressed up, she’d only ever attract a swarm of besotted girls, and never stir the slightest sexual interest in a man.
It was as if she were a woman exuding intense male hormones.
And just as Yurika was driven to a complete collapse by that one sentence from Shokuhou Misaki, yet another voice suddenly carried over, breaking the deadlock:
“Yurika, sorry to keep you waiting…”
Saying this line at this exact juncture was no different from announcing, “I’m the one who got Yurika, come fight me if you’ve got the guts.” So everyone first froze, then turned toward the source of the voice with looks either hostile or curious.
“Uh… what’s going on here…?”
Having finally reined in her own urge to go find Misaka Mikoto, Shirai Kuroko, who’d rushed over to buy Yurika’s meal, now made her entrance, under the full force of everyone’s stares!