CH 254

Recently, Yuzuki has been going out to the neighborhood convenience store at 9:00 p.m..

She has stopped cooking, probably because she is feeling depressed, so she goes out to buy dinner.

I know this.

So of course I knew that if I left Kotaro’s house at this time, there was a possibility that we would run into each other.

Because he and she are ‘childhood friends’.

Just as Shiho and Ryoma are, Yuzuki and Kotaro are neighbors.

This way, they can meet each other even if they don’t intend to.

(If Kotaro were the main character, opportunism would have worked on its own, and they would have encountered each other in a good way without my intervention.)

But he is a genuine mob character.

If I hadn’t arranged it, he wouldn’t have been able to encounter Yuzuki like this.

“Yuzuki…”

Kotaro looked at her and widened his eyes.

It’s no wonder. The woman he sees is a far cry from the “Yuzuki Hojo” he knew.

” I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

Suddenly, Kotaro’s face twisted in pain.

The painful sight of a girl that he had grown up with as brother and sister, seems to have made his heart ache.

(It’s a cruel sight, isn’t it?)

Even I can’t smile when I look at Yuzuki now.

She stood there with shaggy hair, red bloodshot eyes, a half-open mouth, and pale cheeks … that was a far cry from the Yuzuki of a short while ago.

Perhaps she didn’t have the energy to care about her appearance, and she was dressed in a flimsy, dirty jersey that wasn’t typical of Yuzuki.

Probably she only goes to school and the convenience store, but I think she has fallen many times because of her daze. Because of this, her beloved jersey is in tatters.

At school, she’s still conscious of other people’s eyes, or maybe it’s not this bad. …After going home, it seems like she’s been this way for a while now.

“…What is it, Kotaro-san?”

After a dozen seconds or so, Yuzuki seems to have finally noticed us.

Looking at Kotaro, she gave a crooked smile.

“How are you?”

“… Ah, yeah. Well, I’m fine.”

” I’m glad to hear that. I am also full of energy. Today, I had so much energy that I bought a lot of rice balls.”

In the plastic bag she held out to us, there were more than ten onigiri rice balls stuffed inside.

“Are you going to eat all of this?”

” Yes, I feel better when I eat them.”

“No, this is truly…”

Kotaro is upset.

Yuzuki is definitely on the verge of “overeating”.

She may be using food as an outlet for the stress she is unable to dissipate.

She was never the type to eat a lot to begin with, so it is understandable that Kotaro is worried.

“I think you might get sick if you keep going like this.”

whispered softly, so that Kotaro could hear me clearly.

“If you don’t give her a hand now, it might be too late.”

The fact that she was talking as if she was talking about someone else must have gotten on Kotaro’s nerves.

“I know that.”

I heard a beastly snarl.

He really … is a mob character who shows his emotions properly when it comes to those who are close to him.

And the fact that he is so irritated is proof that he still perceives Yuzuki as a ‘close’ presence.

This mob character is too kind after being treated so badly.

Or perhaps it would be closer to expressing it as ‘weak-willed’, though.

Well, that’s not important.

At any rate, I succeeded in bringing Kotaro and Yuzuki together.

This was the end of my role.

“Well, that’s why you should help… your ‘former’ childhood’ friend. I’m going home.”

“Oh, hey! I’m not finished talking with you…!”

“Can you afford to talk to a me? If Kotaro doesn’t do something about it now, it might be too late, right?”

Kotaro would understand, even if nobody would say who.

Having saved Azusa and Kirari in the past, he must know how in danger Yuzuki is right now.

That’s why he can’t seem to return a word against me.

“… Damn it.”

Cursing, he looked away from me.

Then he walked slowly toward Yuzuki.

I couldn’t suppress a smile, watching Kotaro’s back like that.

（I wonder what “position” he’ll be involved in the story from now on?)

The first part was as a ‘mob character”.

The second part was as an ” antagonist character”.

The third part was an attempt to be a ‘protagonist’ … but did it fail? In the end, he couldn’t become anything, and Part III ended in the middle of the road.

So what position would Part IV put his character in?

Seriously…, I can’t stop being intrigued by Kotaro’s spin on this story…