“There really are as many girls around you as ever.”
Reaching out her right hand, Shokuhou Misaki used the chopsticks held between her fair, slender fingers to gently pick out a piece of shrimp from her own bento box, then placed it into the bento box of the Yurika sitting beside her.
In a tone rather laced with amusement, she teased,
“And from the look of you, things don’t seem to be going especially well…”
“…”
To Shokuhou’s words, carrying that air of a queen and that teasing edge, Yurika didn’t respond.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to; it was that right now she had absolutely no time to.
Normally, on the strength of her popularity, Yurika did manage to mooch quite a bit of food at Tokiwadai, and far from lowering her popularity, this move had actually boosted it quite a bit by making her seem more approachable.
So food wasn’t something she had to fret over for the time being.
Even so, Tokiwadai’s students were young ladies after all; though there was a cooking course, the food they made was at best decent, and couldn’t quite be ranked as truly delicious.
The food packed into this bento box Shokuhou had given her, though, was a completely different matter.
There was no telling whether Shokuhou had actually made it with her own hands, but the presentation alone was a fair bit nicer than what the other students made, and after one taste, Yurika even felt that if she didn’t hurry up and eat it, the flavor inside might somehow fade away.
So right now, Yurika was completely absorbed in eating, so focused she didn’t even notice Shokuhou adding some of her own food into Yurika’s bento box.
Watching Yurika wolf it down while somehow still not losing her poise, Shokuhou couldn’t keep the smile from spreading across her face.
“Mmgh… this is amazing…”
Wolfing it down, Yurika’s eating speed was easily more than double her usual pace, and before long she’d polished off the bento in her hands completely.
In the plain white, undecorated bento box, aside from a little leftover grease from the food, not even a single grain of rice remained.
Having cleaned out everything in the box, Yurika let out a long, contented sigh, a murmur of satisfaction quite different from her usual cold air.
“If anyone else at school saw you like this, they’d probably be pretty shocked.”
Seeing Yurika finish the bento, the corner of Shokuhou’s mouth curled into a slight smile, and she reached out to pick up the bento box Yurika had set on the ground.
The spot where they were eating was a lawn in this park used for the outdoor sketching lesson, so the two of them just sitting on the grass like this was perfectly fine.
After packing up Yurika’s bento box, Shokuhou set down the one in her own hands; she hadn’t finished hers.
“…What is it you came to me for this time?”
Having just eaten someone’s bento, no matter how thick Yurika’s skin was, she couldn’t very well bring herself to shoo Shokuhou away.
So watching Shokuhou bury her head in her little bag rummaging for napkins, Yurika sighed, reined in the relaxed expression she’d had a moment ago, reverted to her usual slightly cold look, and asked,
“I’ve told you, I don’t directly run my faction. Even if I told them to join your faction, it wouldn’t do any good.”
“I know that. So coming to share a bento with you this time wasn’t about telling you any of that.”
Fishing a small packet of napkins out of her bag, Shokuhou pulled one out, turned back toward Yurika, leaned forward slightly, held out the napkin, and said with a grin,
“Come on, your mouth.”
“I can do it myself…”
Watching Shokuhou smile like a little fox, Yurika frowned faintly and opened her mouth to refuse, but no sooner had the words left her than she felt, inside her head, a sudden inexplicable sensation, as if someone were rapping the back of her skull with their hand.
“…”
Her eye twitched.
Yurika shook her head to shake off that bizarre feeling, then looked at Shokuhou with mild exasperation.
She knew that sensation just now was probably Shokuhou’s ability up to its tricks.
Shokuhou knew her power had a hard time exerting any effective influence on Yurika’s mind, but she could still make Yurika’s head register pain, so she’d used a little of her ability just to let Yurika know she was messing with her.
“Come on, your mouth.”
Seeing that Yurika had noticed her mischief, Shokuhou’s smile grew even wider.
She reached out and brought the napkin toward Yurika’s mouth.
Though a bit resigned, watching Shokuhou so stubbornly insist on wiping her mouth for her, Yurika could only give a wry smile, then lean her body forward slightly and let Shokuhou wipe away the sheen of grease around her mouth, bit by bit.
“?”
Eyes closed, she felt Shokuhou dab gently around her mouth a few times with the napkin, and then nothing.
After waiting a while and finding Shokuhou hadn’t said anything, Yurika opened her eyes in mild confusion. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
What met her gaze was Shokuhou’s face, frozen in a daze as she stared at Yurika, though when she’d started staring there was no telling.
“…What are you doing?”
Yurika looked at Shokuhou’s inexplicable daze, at a loss, then glanced off into the distance, and suddenly noticed that off at the edge of the park stood a few Tokiwadai girls, peering over toward her and Shokuhou and whispering something among themselves…
“Ah! I get it now!”
Seeing this scene, a flash of inspiration struck Yurika, and she abruptly slapped her own thigh.
Looking at the Shokuhou beside her, who’d been startled by the sudden motion, she said,
“I know why you wanted to eat a bento with me!”
“Y-you know?”
Looking at Yurika, who seemed to have suddenly understood something, Shokuhou’s eyes went wide.
Watching the realization dawn on Yurika’s face, her expression turned a little surprised, and then a flush gradually crept up both her cheeks, her gaze unable to help darting away.
“You—”
“You must want everyone to see the two of us eating together, so you can raise your standing within my faction.”
But Yurika hadn’t noticed the change on Shokuhou’s face.
Caught up in what she assumed was a correct analysis, she nodded along, muttering to herself,
“This method really isn’t bad. The progress won’t be too obvious, but as long as you’ve got a certain standing within my faction, your future moves will be a lot easier too… What’s wrong with you?”
Though she hadn’t seen Shokuhou’s expression earlier, now Yurika noticed it: Shokuhou’s face beside her had, at some point, darkened terribly.
“You… you little—”
Shokuhou’s right hand clenched, then suddenly snapped up, and the napkin crushed into a ball in her grip went flying straight at Yurika’s head.
“Drop dead!”
“Eh, eh, eh??”