Rinna leaned against the headboard, her back cushioned by the small cream-colored pillow that Hisaki had placed there. She grabbed her phone from beside the pillow.
She didn’t plan on playing any games.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to play, it was that her current body didn’t have the stamina for it… death’s pesticide?
A ranked match could easily take over twenty minutes. If she ran into a teammate who fed kills, her blood pressure would spike, and she’d probably explode before the turret did.
Triangle basket operation?
Forget aiming, her fingers would start to ache after holding down the fire button for thirty seconds.
As for Origin God Start and Ming Dynasty… staying up late to farm materials?
Spiral abyss run?
Just imagining herself curled up under the covers at night grinding maps on her phone made her stomach start to cramp in protest.
As for entertainment on her phone, it was limited to chatting with friends.
Of course, most of the time it was phone calls with Hisaki at home.
Hisaki would ask her, in a voice even more clingy than usual, what she had eaten today, how much, whether she had taken her medicine on time, and if she felt unwell anywhere.
Rinna would answer while internally grumbling that she wasn’t about to be admitted to the ICU, but she obediently reported every detail because if she didn’t, Hisaki would worry enough to come running over.
She scrolled through Shakeplus for a while.
Her fingers swiped up unconsciously on the screen… a cute pet video, swipe away. A comedy short, swipe away. A food review, swipe away.
The images flowed past her eyes like water, but her brain couldn’t absorb any of that chaotic information.
After less than ten minutes of scrolling, her temples started to throb, and there was a dull pressure behind her eyes, as if reminding her:
‘Stop watching. Your brain doesn’t even have the capacity for fragmented entertainment.’
Rinna flipped the phone over onto the blanket and closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths.
Forget it, I’m done scrolling. Then she remembered something important. Kikyo—she still hadn’t apologized to her.
Although yesterday’s ‘bullying’ in the stairwell was prearranged—Kikyo kneeling on the ground, trembling shoulders, being called ‘small fry’ without daring to talk back—it was all an act, a small play that Rinna and Kikyo had rehearsed to complete a quest.
But even if it was clear it was just acting, the script of school bullying itself was harsh, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say so.
Making the pink-haired girl kneel on the cold stairwell tiles, being watched by a crowd of unsuspecting classmates, being cursed at with such a punchable tone line after line.
Any girl with a bit of pride might have developed a mental scar from it.
Although Kikyo didn’t seem like the type to mind, Rinna felt she should still say something.
She picked up her phone again and closed the short video apps.
The screen paused for a moment over the cluttered icons, then she tapped on that green communication app with the two speech bubble icon. Green Bubble.
There were three pinned chats. At the top was ‘Best Friend,’ with an avatar Hisaki had chosen for her.
A photo of a white cat and a black cat squeezed into the same nest, the white cat lying on top of the black cat, which wore an expression of ‘Whatever, I’ve given up.’
Second was ‘Mother,’ with a headshot of the mother’s own potted clivia.
Third was ‘Dad,’ with a side photo of an old car from his collection that he’d never driven.
Rinna scrolled down a bit on the screen and found the entry labeled ‘Kikyo (Partner).’ She had deliberately added ‘partner’ to the note because she felt that just writing ‘classmate’ was too distant, and just ‘friend’ wasn’t accurate enough.
Kikyo was the only person in the entire school who knew about her ‘Brat Girl Acting Plan’—her secret accomplice.
The chat history was still at the point where they had last discussed the stairwell acting details… And that was it.
Rinna typed a line in the input box:
“Will what happened yesterday affect you?”
Her index finger hovered over the send button for less than a second, then pressed it.
The message whooshed into the chat window, and a small green checkmark indicating ‘sent’ appeared on the right side.
Just as Rinna was about to put down the phone and close her eyes to rest, the screen lit up.
‘That fast?’
Rinna blinked and glanced at the time at the top of the screen… It was around 11:40 AM. According to the schedule, that would be about the middle of the last class before noon, roughly between 11:30 and 12:20.
‘Was Kikyo sneaking a look at her phone during class?’
The corner of Rinna’s mouth twitched, and she let out a soft laugh through her nose, silently giving this ‘delinquent classmate’ a mental thumbs up.
The message appeared from Kikyo:
“Not at all. Please reward me lots!”
Before Rinna could figure out how to reply, a second message popped up with a whoosh:
“Just kidding, hehe~”
Rinna looked at the words on the screen and let out a soft chuckle.
She could picture Kikyo at that moment… huddled under her desk, phone hidden behind a textbook, face a mask of seriousness pretending to look at the board, but with her fingers rapidly tapping the screen underneath, a mischievous smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Rinna typed in the input box:
“Mm… that’s good. I’ll treat you to a meal next time.”
Send. Rinna leaned the phone against the blanket, the remnants of that smile still lingering on her lips.
As expected, she didn’t dislike Kikyo, her seat neighbor.
Although they hadn’t known each other long, and their relationship was built on the strange foundation of ‘acting,’ the fact that Kikyo would reply instantly, not take the scolding seriously, and even joke back saying ‘please reward me’ meant that this path wasn’t a complete wasteland.
Then she heard a rustling sound.
Very soft, but very close… it was the sound of fabric brushing against the sheets.
Rinna turned her head and met Hisaki’s gaze. Hisaki was awake. She had probably been woken by that faint laugh from Rinna just now.
She was still in the same position, lying by the bedside, her right arm bent under her head, her left arm resting on the edge of the bed, her fingers just a few centimeters from the edge of Rinna’s blanket.
Her black hair spread over the white sheets, with a few strands falling over the edge, swaying slightly in the air.
Her eyelashes still curved from sleep, slightly upturned, and her dark brown pupils had a dazed, watery look in the midday light… but the moisture quickly dried up the moment she noticed the glow of Rinna’s phone screen.
Hisaki looked at Rinna.
Rinna, who had just woken up not long ago, was leaning against the headboard, holding her phone, a very faint, curved smile still on her lips.
She was typing. She was smiling. She was chatting with someone, and she seemed happy.
The moment this realization hit Hisaki’s brain, her pupils contracted almost imperceptibly… not out of anger, not suspicion, but the most primal form of jealousy.
That jealousy hadn’t even fully formed yet—it was just a vague, warm, uncomfortable mass, seeping outward from a point in her chest.
The movement of her sitting up was a bit too sudden.
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