Chapter 37.

Chapter 37. A Date? (1/13)

Fast forward a week and a day and it was Sunday. Where was I on this particular Sunday? Well… it was definitely a situation I would have never expected.

Seated to my right was a boy and girl I’d never met before in my life. We were complete strangers who should have absolutely nothing to do with each other. We didn’t even attend the same high school.

Well, ignoring the two who were obviously a couple, directly in front of me was a large screen. It was dark in the room, but everyone had their eyes glued to the screen to our front. What does one think of when couples are mentioned sitting in front of a large screen in a dark room?

A movie theatre.

Yes, I was at the movies.

Now, what was the soft sensation squeezing down on my left arm?

If one looked over, they would know right away. They might even be jealous.

However, to me, this situation could hardly be described as an enviable one. It was unpleasant. My day off from work had to be spent here of all places. I don’t even care to watch movies.

Stuck with a stupid couple on my right and my mortal enemy on my left, I was trapped and unable to escape. Even if there was a path to escape I wouldn’t be able to. I was being blackmailed by my mortal enemy after all. If I didn’t listen to her my secret would be revealed.

My blackmailer, the nicest girl in the world, was nothing but an evil villainess in my eyes.

Now, how did I end up in this situation? Well, we’d have to go back to yesterday while I was at work and begin from there.

It was just another normal day at work for me. Or so I’d like to say. For the last five days, there had been another change. That change was the popular girl’s interaction with me at work. She’d come in at the same time every day and collect her drink that I’d preemptively move to the front in secret every time. That much hadn’t changed.

However, if there were customers in the store she’d wait for them to leave before approaching the counter. As long as there weren’t any other customers around and it was just me and my coworker she’d stick around and start talking to us cheerfully. Yuna didn’t even seem bothered despite how she always had her eyes glued to her book.

She’d simply listen off to the side and occasionally chime in as this popular girl chatted up a storm with me with a wide smile on her face while leaning over the counter to close the distance to me.

But today, things took a strange turn when she came in today and saw the store was empty. She immediately collected her drink and approached the counter. As soon as she put it down she bowed forward while clapping her hands together and said, “Please go out with me on a date tomorrow!”

I wanted to scream ‘no,’ but the way she looked up at me with upturned eyes seemed to suggest she’d reveal my secret if I refused.

Though something happened that prevented me from even trying to refuse.

Yuna spoke up and said with the smile of a troublemaker interested in such a juicy topic, “Sure. Sure. No problem at all. He’ll absolutely accept. Sunday is his day off anyway and I’m certain he’s got nothing better to do with his time. If he doesn’t accept, I'll report him to our boss for refusing such a pretty and sincere young lady.”

She accepted the date on my behalf. I shot her an intense glare and wanted to say something but she treated me like air.

The girl bowed to Yuna and gave her thanks, “Thank you very much.”

“Not a problem.” She smiled at her with an unusually warm look in her eyes.

“Then… this Sunday at 9:00 AM, can you meet me here?” She slipped a piece of paper over the counter with the location to meet up. It also had her phone number on it. She’d taken advantage of the situation and used the opportunity to give me her number.

“Sure.” I groaned. With my coworker pushily accepting the date on my behalf and revealing my typical Sunday where I did nothing, I didn’t have a real excuse I could make to turn her down. She also had her hands on my secret as well.

After she left I opened my mouth and asked, “What do you think you’re doing? She’s a high schooler while I’m in university and you accepted her request for a date on my behalf?”

“Well, she’s such a good-natured girl. I figured I’d do you the favor of accepting on your behalf since I was sure you’d try to turn her down knowing your personality. Looking at her earnest pure eyes filled with sincerity, doesn’t it just fill you with the desire to protect that smile of hers? Don’t you dare hurt her.”

After a short pause, she continued, “Also, I quite like this customer and want her to keep shopping here. She’s like a breath of fresh air compared to the guys who come in here to buy things with the sole objective of hitting on me just because I’m a girl they have an easy excuse to talk to. If you turned her down, it might have made things awkward for her and she would no longer come around. Just know that I’ll never forgive you if that happens and I’ll make all your shifts hell if she stops coming here because of you.”

This popular girl’s powers were far too scary. She’d known Yuna for far less time than me, yet her bond with her had easily usurped the extent of my work relationship with this fellow coworker of mine.

Why did I make an enemy of such a formidable girl again? Was I an idiot? Did I have eyes and fail to recognize Mount Tai? I couldn’t help but think, if this girl really saw me as an enemy instead of someone she wanted to befriend, couldn’t she easily crush me. She wouldn’t even need to so much as raise her pinky to squash me out of existence. 

I was honestly outclassed when it came to social points. If she was at the top of the leaderboards, then I was the person in last place. She’d be a filthy big spender whale… no, make that leviathan, while I was a measly F2P.

The only way for an impoverished F2P like me to beat such a well-fed leviathan was a lot of time, patience, and skill.

I could only remorse over the sense of powerlessness I felt whenever dealing with this young lady. She had me defeated. The little forms of resistance I put up against her all felt futile. She’d be pushed away only to come back stronger than ever before. It was like a protagonist with unlimited final forms. Just when you beat one of their final forms they would use the power of friendship and love to ascend to even higher heights.

Plot armor. This girl definitely had plot armor on her side. I might as well interact with her under the assumption she is the main character type in a story and I’m just a small fry she can crush at any moment. I would make an attack against her, then she’d reveal to me that she was only using 1% of her true power.

Ah, it was frustrating. So very frustrating.

For the remainder of my shift, I remorsed over such incomprehensible things.

The morning of our date, there really wasn’t much I had the will to do to make this girl hate me. I’d proclaimed myself as her mortal enemy, but on a personal level, even I didn’t want to see her sad. She was just that strong.

The farthest I was willing to go to make her hate me was to show up an hour late.

When I showed up at the designated place, a cafe in the city at 10:00 AM, she had already been there for over an hour. As soon as she saw me she didn’t voice a real complaint, she was quite happy to see me at all in fact.

Rather than complain about me taking so long, she did the exact opposite. She told me, “Only an hour late? Aren’t you a bit too soft? I’d come here expecting to wait at least a few hours for you to show up.”

Hearing that I had an awkward look on my face. An hour late by her standards was me being too soft?

“But it’s good that you didn’t come too late otherwise things might have gotten a bit difficult.”

When she suddenly said that I was a bit confused.

“What would have gotten difficult?”

“Oh, well… let’s just sit here and talk for a bit.”

She took out her phone and seemingly sent a text message to someone before she put her phone down on the table while on the home screen.

I didn’t get a chance to see who she texted, but I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when I saw the questionable wallpaper on her phone.

“That picture…”