Men.
What, in particular, are middle-aged men most afraid of?
Not the beatings of society, nor the cold sneers of a superior at work.
What they’re most afraid of, always, is concern from another person.
A single line as simple as ‘Son, are the blankets warm enough?
Have you eaten?’ is enough to crack their defenses wide open.
But ever since Ai Hoshino’s death, Aqua Hoshino had plugged up his own ears and sealed off his own heart.
He had long since stopped being able to hear anyone’s concern, or to feel the warm gaze of anyone who cared.
And yet, today…
A man — likewise an adult — had told him that he had already done enough…
that he ought to forgive himself.
In a single instant—
Somewhere inside his heart, it was as though a crack had split open.
A full two years’ worth of accumulated negativity, all the pain, all the unbearable emotions — every last bit of it came surging up at once.
This wave of emotion was simply too strong.
Even Aqua Hoshino, who’d always been so detached, was powerless to hold it back.
And so, lying there on the floor, he covered his eyes with the back of his hand.
The tears flowed out as if they couldn’t be stopped.
Hurried, sobbing sounds, too, came shudder by shudder, squeezed up out of his throat.
Minami Yuji sat back down.
Looking at the Aqua Hoshino in front of him, he gave a slight shake of his head.
He had at least a rough understanding of the plot of “Oshi no Ko.”
Because of that, he also knew this.
The Aqua Hoshino of the original work absolutely could not be called a strong person.
He had only been forced to make himself strong because of Ai Hoshino’s death.
And that ‘being strong’ had gone on for over a decade.
Throughout all that time, no one had been able to open up his heart, and no one had so much as touched the truth of who he really was.
This had, without a single doubt, led to his personality growing crooked.
And as luck would have it, a certain reliable adult was from the Celestial Empire.
The one thing he absolutely could not stand to see was a child whose personality had grown crooked.
Sigh.
Propping his cheek with one hand, watching Aqua Hoshino crying in a state of utter dishevelment — even showing some signs of respiratory alkalosis—
Minami Yuji, with no help for it, crouched down, lifted the boy’s body up just a little, and gently patted his thin little back to help even out his breathing.
They say anime heroines are a real handful.
But right now, he was thinking—
This…
when the male protagonist actually goes off the deep end…
he seems even harder to deal with than the heroines, doesn’t he…
…
“So, those things you said to me earlier — you were trying to get me to give up on revenge and live the life of an ordinary person?”
Aqua Hoshino, having regained his composure, had red, swollen eyes and the traces of tears on his face.
He turned his head slightly to the side.
Minami Yuji, still with one leg crossed over the other, calmly flipping through a book, was sitting right beside him.
His lips moved hesitantly; that face of his, always so cold in front of other people, for the very first time revealed a different sort of emotion to another person.
This emotion was complicated.
Aqua Hoshino felt it was probably awe — or perhaps respect.
“How could it be that?” Minami Yuji set the book down.
“I already said it before — whether or not to take revenge is your freedom, and whether or not you want to live the life of an ordinary person is, likewise, your freedom.
You’re an adult too — you have the right to choose your own life, don’t you?”
“But just now you—” The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Aqua Hoshino was taken aback for a moment, and his expression took on a strange cast.
This explanation from the other party was nothing like what he’d just said.
“What I said was for you to forgive yourself.
At the end of the day, I never opposed your taking revenge in the first place.”
Minami Yuji blinked his eyes and looked over with a puzzled expression.
Aqua Hoshino choosing to take revenge for his mother was simple human nature.
On that point, Minami Yuji hadn’t, from the very beginning, intended to butt in — after all, this was the boy’s own choice.
What’s more—
“Even if I had opposed your revenge, you’d absolutely still keep pushing your plans forward in secret behind my back, wouldn’t you?”
Minami Yuji shot the question back.
“Uh—”
That line — which sounded as if the other party had seen completely through him as a person — left even Aqua Hoshino unable to keep his old face from flushing red.
Because it was exactly as Minami Yuji had said.
Even though he had let go of a fair bit by now, his goal of taking revenge had never once wavered.
So, even if it meant feeling a bit sorry toward Minami Yuji, even if it meant keeping it secret on the sly, he was going to see this purpose through to the end.
Just as he didn’t know how to answer this question—
The Minami Yuji over there, staring at him, suddenly opened his mouth again.
“That said — there’s something I’ve been quite curious about.”
“Curious?” Aqua Hoshino was thrown for a moment.
“This revenge you keep talking about…
do you have a concrete plan?” he asked.
“Uh…
a plan?”
This out-of-nowhere topic left Aqua Hoshino momentarily blank.
“That’s right.” Minami Yuji’s fingers lightly tapped on the armrest of his cushioned chair.
“You’ve been planning this for two whole years now, haven’t you?
Do you have a concrete revenge plan and a procedure to go with it?”
“Uh…
well, that’s…
um…”
Aqua Hoshino opened and closed his mouth.
He really did want to answer the Minami Yuji in front of him.
But it was only at this very moment that he — whose eyes had been completely blinded by hatred — realized: of all things, he had absolutely nothing that could be called a plan.
That’s right.
No plan whatsoever.
All he had was an obsession with the goal of revenge, and hatred toward the enemy who’d killed his mother — that, and nothing more.
A lot of people might bring up the film “Fifteen Years of Lies” from the original work as a counterargument.
But in actuality, the film “Fifteen Years of Lies” was a plan that could only be finalized after Aqua Hoshino learned of Hikaru Kamiki’s identity.
And strictly speaking, in the eyes of a reliable adult, that thing really couldn’t even be counted as any kind of outstanding ‘revenge plan.’
Let alone in the present situation, where Aqua Hoshino had no clue who Hikaru Kamiki even was.
“F-first, find the person who killed Ai…”
Under Minami Yuji’s gaze, Aqua Hoshino’s handsome face had already gone somewhat red, and he finally managed to squeeze out that one line.
“Find them?
Through what channels, exactly?
Hire a private detective?
Or start now, by first investigating the people around Ai Hoshino?
And then use your koyaku status to draw out information from them?
Pry the lay of Ai Hoshino’s social circle out of them?”
“I…
uh…”
Aqua Hoshino’s face continued to redden.
“And what about that line you said earlier — ‘make that person die in the most miserable, most agonizing way’ — what is this most-agonizing, most-miserable way, exactly?
Have you worked out how you’re going to physically torture him?
Or how to crush the other party utterly on a psychological level?
And only then let him die a wretched death?”
Minami Yuji was still asking.
“I…
I…”
If Minami Yuji had said these things a little earlier, Aqua Hoshino — full of rage and hatred — might still have thought the other party was being provocative.
But now, with his head considerably clearer, Aqua Hoshino, after hearing these words, abruptly realized one thing—
Did he…
not have any kind of plan from the very start?
Yes.
No plan.
Because even if he hadn’t fixated so hard on unlocking that phone, by just asking Saito Miyako, he probably could have figured out at least some part of Ai Hoshino’s social network before her death, right?
After all, Ai Hoshino had been Ichigo Pro’s flagship idol — back when Saito Miyako had been handling her, she’d practically never been more than a step away.
And as for the methods Minami Yuji was bringing up — how to torment, how to make the other party pay the price…
Aqua Hoshino hadn’t even thought about any of that.
Otherwise, in the original work, he wouldn’t have gone and done something as inexplicable as throwing himself off into the water to become a drowning ghost.
Only now did Aqua Hoshino abruptly realize one thing.
In front of Minami Yuji…
it kind of seemed like…
what he’d been calling ‘revenge’ all along…
was nothing more than a child throwing a pure, plain tantrum.
After realizing that.
The blond-haired boy’s expressionless — yet already reddening — face turned even redder.
Red to the point of being…
Unparalleled in brilliance.
And Aqua Hoshino had also keenly picked up on it.
The way Minami Yuji was looking at him was getting more and more weird.
“So in other words…
you haven’t even thought out a concrete plan — you don’t even have a plan for how to properly handle the other party once you find them…?”
Are you serious?
“…Yeah.”
Even though his handsome face was burning hot with shame, Aqua Hoshino still nodded.
And then…
“Hsss…”
Then he heard the sound of Minami Yuji in front of him sucking in a sharp, cold breath.
It was clearly nothing more than an ordinary inhalation, and yet it sounded as though it had critical hits and true damage mixed right into it.
Aqua Hoshino couldn’t bring himself to lift his face anymore.
He reached out with both hands and covered his face.
No longer daring to look at the expression on the face of the black-haired koyaku in front of him.
____
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