Safely locked inside the pristine, white-tiled sanctuary of the Hinata family bathroom, I leaned heavily against the sink and splashed ice-cold water onto my face.
"Get a grip, Kurogane Mei,"
I whispered to my reflection, watching the water droplets slide down my cheekbones.
"You are an NPC. A background asset. You are currently hiding in a lavatory because a high-society heiress texted you a casual threat about real estate during your study date with the canonical heroine. This is not normal background behavior."
I took a deep, steadying breath.
It's fine.
The phone is face-up.
Haruka is a sweet, innocent angel who wouldn't dare pry into someone else's digital privacy.
I am entirely secure.
Meanwhile, back in the bedroom, the white wooden table was completely silent.
Haruka sat on her plush cushion, her pencil resting against her chin as she stared at the history timeline.
BUZZ.
The table violently vibrated again.
Haruka flinched, her amber eyes automatically darting toward my phone.
Because I had frantically slid the device away in a blind panic, it had collided with her stack of textbooks, tilting it slightly.
The screen lit up with a blinding, unmistakable banner preview.
[Kazari Shiori]: Are you ignoring me, Kuorgane-san? I know you're not at your apartment. If you're hiding, I’ll simply have to ask Fuyumi to track your IP address...”
Haruka’s breath caught in her throat.
She didn't touch the phone, but her amber eyes narrowed as she read and the intimate phrasing.
Kurogane-san? Hiding? H-High-society upperclassmen are texting her like this on a Sunday afternoon?!
A strange, heavy knot of sudden overthinking and territorial jealousy tightened right in the center of her chest.
By the time I walked back into the room, adjusting my glasses, the atmosphere felt a fraction off.
Haruka was staring intensely at her notebook, her expression slightly stiff, but she didn't say anything as I sat back down on my pink cushion.
I shouldn't push it, I thought, sensing the subtle shift in her energy.
Let's just diffuse the threat.
I stealthily grabbed my phone, slid it under the table, and tapped out a rapid, desperate response to Shiori.
[Kurogane Mei]: I AM CURRENTLY OCCUPIED WITH CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP REVISIONS!!! My brain cells are under severe academic duress, please do not launch a satellite strike on my district!
PING.
[Kazari Shiori]: Oh, fine. I’m actually in the middle of a rather tedious family board meeting myself. I only had a few minutes of free time before my father's advisors walked in, so I decided to check on my favorite commoner. Study hard, Kurogane-san~
I let out a massive, silent sigh of relief.
Thank goodness, she's actually occupied.
I quickly fired back a cute, animated panda sticker waving a tiny white flag that said
“No problem! Good luck!”
And firmly placed the phone back on the table, face-down, determined to bury it from my consciousness.
Haruka had definitely seen the screen flash, and her mind was actively spiraling into a vortex of catastrophic overthinking, but she stubbornly chose not to pursue any action.
She cleared her throat, forced her sweet protagonist smile back onto her face, and tapped the history book.
"A-Alright! Let's get back to the 19th-century regional trade laws, Mei-chan!"
"Yes! Let's conquer the economy!"
I cheered, my internal monologue still completely paranoid, tracking every slight movement of my phone like it was a live grenade.
For the next hour and a half, we buried ourselves in pure, unadulterated academic labor.
My brain was working double-time half of it trying to memorize industrial revolution timelines, and the other half actively panicking about high-society surveillance.
By the time the clock on her wall hit exactly 2:56 PM, both of our brains had officially reached their thermal maximum.
"Ugh... my cognitive functions have expired,"
I groaned, dropping my pencil.
"Hehe, let's take a break,"
Haruka smiled, stretching her arms.
She stood up, grabbed the plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and placed it right in front of me.
Then, she walked over and sat down directly on the edge of her neatly made bed, her ivory one-piece sundress pooling softly around her thighs.
I immediately grabbed a cookie, looking straight down at the white table as I began to chew, my mind still completely dazed and paranoid from the afternoon's events.
"We actually covered a lot today,"
Haruka said, kicking her legs back and forth slightly as she looked down at me from the mattress.
"The trade route timeline makes so much more sense now, right, Mei-chan?"
"Uhm,"
I mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate chips, keeping my eyes firmly locked onto the wood grain.
"And the regional tariff charts aren't as bad when we break them down into sections."
"Mhm,"
"Mei-chan?"
Haruka tilted her head, her voice dropping into a slightly amused, slightly pouting register.
"Hey... you've just been saying 'uhm' and 'mhm' while looking down this whole time. Is... is the snack really that tasty?"
"Ah! Yes, it's amazing, I'm just processing the data!"
I blurted out.
Determined to look like a polite, attentive guest, I snapped my head upward to look at her.
My glasses instantly shattered their visual parameters.
My brain cells completely liquefied, evaporated, and ceased to exist within the physical universe.
Because Haruka was sitting high up on the edge of the mattress, and because she had unconsciously opened her legs slightly while relaxing, the hem of her ivory one-piece sundress had naturally shifted upward.
Sitting right there in my direct, unfiltered line of sight was a pair of soft, pastel-pink lace underwear.
Ding! [CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR: VISUAL CENSORSHIP GRID HAS UTTERLY COLLAPSED. MEI’S YURI RADAR HAS EXPLODED.]
"!!!"
A violent, high-intensity blush exploded across my face, turning my skin a shade of crimson that out-performed a burning star.
My reflexes kicked into absolute overdrive.
I slammed my head back down so fast my forehead nearly cracked the surface of the study table, my eyes locked onto the floorboards with the terror of a person who had just witnessed a forbidden deity.
Haruka blinked, completely startled by my sudden, violent downward trajectory.
"M-Mei-chan? Why did you look down so fast?! Did you drop something?!"
She looked down at her own lap to check—and instantly realized the structural failure of her sitting posture.
"Kyaaa?!"
Haruka let out a sharp, high-pitched anime shriek, her entire face bursting into a brilliant, fiery crimson as she violently snapped her knees together and pulled the hem of her sundress completely over her legs.
"I—I'm so sorry! I didn't realize! I was just so relaxed because it was you, Mei-chan! I'm so sorry!"
"I-It's totally fine! Structural oversight! Gravity is a complex force!"
I wailed into my hands, my mind in full-blown, catastrophic panic mode as she kept frantically apologizing from the mattress.
But beneath my chaotic defensive jokes, my internal monologue was screaming a very specific, very devastating verdict.
Dear diary: GUILTY. My inner lesbian is officially, undeniably GUILTY. You are being this embarrassed over seeing Haruka's real-life inner underwear right now?! In your past life, when you pulled the seventy-two-hour marathon on Sparkling Hearts, you literally spent hours staring at her official, high-definition SSR summer beach illustration where she was wearing a tiny pastel swimsuit! You min-maxed your stats just to unlock that graphic card!
But seeing a digital rendering on a tablet screen is an entirely different universe compared to sitting three feet away from her mattress and seeing the real-life pastel lace in high-definition reality.
The sheer, authentic proximity of a beautiful girl is a truck-kun level threat to my morality.
The background life is dead, my conscience is compromised, and I am officially a sinner in the house of the heroine.