Episode 260: Bombshell

「S-Satsukawa-san… e-e-engaged…」

「Aaaaaaaaaah…」

「It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie lie lie lieeeee…」

Setting the reasons aside…

The boys, who had been showing a wake-like silence until a moment ago, were now in a state of pure agony due to the sudden turn of events.

The fact that Sara had a boyfriend, and was even engaged, was beyond a mere shock. Especially since they’d just seen that same Sara bragging about it with a full-blown happy smile…

Honestly, I bet some of these guys won’t be able to recover for a while.

「Ehehehe… A. To-tal. Dis-as-ter.♪」

「You really are something… though I get how you feel.」

Yuri and the others must have known from the start that things would end up like this once the truth about Sara and Takanashi-kun came out. From the perspective of Yuri, who had been enjoying this while knowing what was coming, this disaster was probably exactly what she’d hoped for.

「But Satsukawa-san hated being hit on by other guys anyway, so isn’t this perfect? Right, Natsumi-chan?」

「I guess. I figured the truth would leak out sooner or later…」

Rattle rattle rattle…

「Take your seats. Class is… what happened?」

The teacher walked into the room and tilted his head in confusion at the state of the classroom.

Setting the girls aside, the boys were… well, they looked completely defeated. It must have looked like a bizarre sight to the teacher.

I guess the next break won’t be peaceful either…

「And so… next is… Takeyama.」

「………」

「Takeyama!」

「!? Y-Yes!?」

「Were you listening?」

「…S-Sorry…」

「Good grief… Then Nishida!」

「………」

「Nishida!!」

「Y-Yes!?」

…Yeah, this isn’t a lesson anymore.

It’s exactly as I expected, but the shock seems to be way too much for the boys. They can’t concentrate on the lesson at all, and even the girls seem a bit flighty.

They’re intensely curious… no, they’re in full-blown curiosity mode, focusing all their attention on Sara.

This is the engagement story of Sara, the girl who was called a man-hater for her insane track record of shooting down guys and her flawless, total rejection of them. There’s no way teenage girls who love gossip wouldn’t be interested in a treasure like this.

And as if to symbolize that, even now, small, folded pieces of white paper are flying around me.

In this situation, I wonder how many people are actually listening to the lesson?

Plop…

And the one that just landed right in front of me… or rather, the one that literally flew here, is that same piece of white paper that’s been traveling all over the place. If the serious Sara saw this, she’d get mad at them for playing during class… but for now, let’s check the contents.

「Takanashi-kun? As in that Takanashi-kun?」

On the messy paper where a bunch of things had been added, this one line was written in capital letters at the very end.

Looking at the flow of the notes…

It seems someone pointed out that they remembered Yuri mentioning Takanashi-kun’s name, and from there, they linked it to the「Goddess’s Furious Outburst Incident」from before.

There’s also a note asking「Vice President?」so there’s no doubt they’ve identified more than just his name.

But if they know this much, they should just ask Sara directly… I guess she’s still hard to talk to.

I casually looked around the room and saw a few people watching me with excitement. Then I felt a tap on my back, so the next person to pass this to is the one right behind me.

「No comment. Ask Sara.」

Since Sara finally seems to be in the mood to talk herself, there’s no way I’m going to expose anything. I steeled myself for some boos, wrote that down, and then secretly passed the note back… and it was snatched away with incredible force!?

The note continued to travel all over the place, and eventually, it came back to me again.

There, it said…

「Meanie」

「Cruel」

「Demon」

Hmph, that doesn’t hurt or itch at all…

「Flatty」

「Ironing board」

「Hey!! Who are you calling an ironing boa—」

「Hmm? Yuzuki, is something wrong?」

「Hah!? S-Sorry, it’s nothing!」

I’d reacted instinctively to that unforgivable word and accidentally shouted out loud.

…Damn it, I don’t know who did it, but you better remember this.

By the way… just for the sake of my honor, let me state that I am definitely not an ironing board.

I’m often told I’m slender, but this is the first time I’ve ever been called something as rude as an ironing board.

I have to admit that「these」are modest just like me, but even so, they’re about half of Sara’s… no, a third… maybe… with the help of a tailwind(?)… they should be there.

No, they are there!

Haa… I’m starting to feel miserable just saying it. This is just a bad comparison, people like me are normally… anyway, enough of that.

I could hear several small chuckles. I glared around the room, and a few people quickly looked away.

I’m definitely going to find the culprit someday…

Rattle rattle rattle…

The moment the lesson ended and the teacher left the room…

The girls swarmed around Sara, their footsteps echoing like a rumbling in the ground. Their eagerness to hear the rest of the story they’d been deprived of during class looked like something out of a horror movie.

「S-Satsukawa-san!! Is the person you’re engaged to really Takanashi-kun!?」

「The guy who became vice president recently, right!?」

「Is there a connection there, by any chance!?」

「How far have you two gone!?」

「Weren’t you a man-hater!?」

The onlookers… or rather, the maidens with romance on the brain who had been kept waiting for so long, no longer had any sense of order in their questioning.

The interrogation began like a torrent from all sides, and in a reversal from earlier, Sara was the one left wide-eyed and shocked.

「Eh!? Um, everyone, p-please calm down!!」

It’s rare for Sara to show such panic over something not directly related to Takanashi-kun.

Wait, if I consider that this is an interrogation about Takanashi-kun, then in a way, she’s still panicking because of him, isn’t she?

If that’s the case, I guess it’s not all that rare.

While I was thinking about that, Sara was being crowded by the girls, bombarded with so many questions that she couldn’t give a proper answer.

This is a bit much…

「Alright, that’s enough, you guys. You’re bothering Sara.」

I couldn’t just stand by and watch when Sara was clearly troubled. Even the current Sara would still find communicating with such an unspecified large number of people difficult.

I don’t mean to sound high and mighty, but I wanted to at least offer some support.

Plus, if she accidentally leaked that they were living together, it’d turn into a massive problem later.

「Everything you want to hear is probably the same anyway, right? But this isn’t just Sara’s story, so keep it to harmless topics, okay?」

I knew I was being a bit forceful, but I said it anyway.

That’s because I wanted to indirectly warn Sara as well as the classmates gathered here.

For better or worse, Sara gets a bit lax when things involve Takanashi-kun. I wanted to make sure she didn’t expose too much.

Though, I don’t know how much of that actually got through to her.

「You are right. I cannot cause an inconvenience for Kazunari-san, so I shall tell you the general details… if that is alright with you?」

「「「Kazunari-san!!!!????」」」

「Oooooh!!!! Satsukawa-san called a boy by his first nameeeee!!!」

「Crazy!!?? This is seriously crazy!!!」

Sara had only called Takanashi-kun by his first name, yet a massive uproar started that was almost surprising to us.

If you think about how Sara has been perceived until now, I guess even that is a shock.

「S-Satsukawa-san, do you call him by his first name normally!?」

「E-Eh? Yes, I do.」

「Ah!!! J-Just now, you called Takanashi-kun ‘Husband,’ didn’t you!? Are you going to call him that when you get married!?」

「No, once we are married… I’ll call him… Dear…」

「「「KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!」」」

「「「DEAARRRR!!!???」」」

「…Oooooh!!!」

「…D-Dear… Dear…」

「…Aaaaah, someone stop this already…」

The boys were shouting and shaking their heads, while the girls were simply in a state of high-intensity excitement.

The more the girls got hyped, the deeper the boys sank into the depths of despair… it was a situation you could only call chaos.

「Y-You’ve already decided that much!?」

「I wouldn’t say decided, but since I call him that even now at times, after we are married, it will only be natural…」

「Whaaa, you already call him that!?」

「Whoa, whoa, I can’t even imagine that scene!!」

「S-Satsukawa-san, that’s the vice president, right!?」

「Yes. That is correct.」

「I knew ittttt!!」

「I thought it was suspicious when Satsukawa-san was acting so friendly at the general assembly!」

「Me too. She was praising him like crazy, and she had a smile I’d never seen before.」

Back then, Sara was genuinely happy to be standing on stage alongside Takanashi-kun.

That’s exactly why she was wearing such a happy smile, and it’s only natural that no one had seen it before.

After all, Takanashi-kun is the only one who can bring out that smile… but because of that smile, I guess it’s no wonder people were curious about their relationship.

「Satsukawa-san, weren’t you a man-hater? Why was Takanashi-kun okay?」

「Ah, I want to hear that!!」

「Me too!!!」

…Of course they’d end up there.

The fact that Sara keeps men at a distance is common knowledge, and these are her classmates. They’ve seen it with their own eyes since their first year, so you could say this class is the one that wants to know the answer most in this school.

「…I am sorry, but I believe Natsumi is the only one here who can truly understand that.」

「…I guess.」

I have, of course, heard the story from Sara.

But that’s because I know Takanashi-kun’s past and Sara’s past, and I was able to accept it because of that.

In the first place, I can state for a fact that there is no man who can look at Sara’s appearance and accept her purely as a friend without any hidden motives.

But Takanashi-kun, partly because of his own heart’s wounds, didn’t look at Sara like that from the start. In other words, at that point, Takanashi-kun was a rare existence.

And for Sara, who understood him, Takanashi-kun in turn supported her by continuing to be the way she wanted him to be.

Even though it was a situation where a hundred out of a hundred people would misunderstand, he still didn’t try to seek anything more for Sara’s sake, being fine with being friends if that’s what she wanted.

So while on the surface it might look like Sara is supporting Takanashi-kun, on the inside, it was the opposite.

Two rare people searching for each other, miraculously meeting… to use Sara’s words, it was a fated encounter.

It might sound like a cheap way to put it, but even I felt it was fate when I heard the story. It’s not strange at all for the two of them to feel that way; in fact, it’s only natural.

「But there is one thing… Kazunari-san is the one and only precious person I have finally managed to find.」

「And for the record, it’s exactly the same for Takanashi-kun. That’s why these two are head over heels for each other, and absolutely no one can get between them.」

I didn’t really intend to cut in…

But since I’d been thinking about the two of them and got a bit emotional, I accidentally blurted out that extra bit. I might have messed up a little.

「I can’t believe Natsumi would say it like that…」

「Natsumi-chan’s a romantic~」

As I expected, I got teased a little. But…

「From my perspective as someone who knows the situation, that’s the only way to put it. This isn’t a joke or an exaggeration; for Sara, no one but Takanashi-kun will work.」

「It is just as Natsumi says. That is exactly why I love Kazunari-san. Our future marriage is something I desire myself, and I have promised to become Kazunari-san’s wife.」

「…Ah………」

「…U-Um…」

「…W-Wife…!?」

Taking over from my words, Sara made her declaration with a dignified manner that didn’t show even a shred of hesitation.

She stated clearly that she was the one who desired the marriage with Takanashi-kun.

Seeing Sara’s sincere demeanor, even the group that was about to tease her… no, every classmate here was legitimately speechless.

But that’s to be expected.

Sara’s feelings and resolve are things that we couldn’t possibly measure with our current senses.

「…S-Satsukawa-san really does like Takanashi-kun, doesn’t she?」

「…That’s amazing… hearing you say it like that, I have no choice but to say congratulations.」

「Satsukawa-san, you’re so happy. Must be nice… I’m so jealous you found someone like that.」

Even the girls who came over to interrogate her out of curiosity were shocked by Sara’s pure feelings for Takanashi-kun, and they found themselves unable to tease or mock her.

I think it’s natural to feel like you want to genuinely congratulate her after seeing her like that.

「W-W-W-Wi… Wife.」

「…Aaaaah, I guess I have to give up after all…」

「……I knew it was impossible, but still…」

「…I don’t want to admit it… but I guess I have to…」

And it seemed that had reached the boys who were listening as well.

They’d been completely forced to realize that they had no choice but to admit it and give up.

Or rather, after hearing Sara’s feelings stated so clearly, if someone still said they couldn’t admit it, I’d question their common sense.

Because the boys in this class know clearly about Sara’s man-hating, they must have had a certain sense of security that no one else would appear. That’s why I think they’re quick to realize they have no choice but to accept it once a specific person appears.

I don’t know what Sara was thinking when she suddenly changed her stance, but since this result was born, I guess she was right.

「Satsukawa-san and Takanashi-kun really are lovey-dovey, aren’t they?」

Yuri, who had been enjoying the sight of the classmates until now, suddenly cut in with a smirk.

The girls started shooting glares at her easy-going way of speaking, which made it sound like she knew everything.

「That’s right, Yuri!! Did you know Satsukawa-san had a fiancé!!??」

「I knew she had a boyfriend. The engagement was news to me too, though~」

「No fair!?」

「Hey!! Why didn’t you tell us about something this huge!」

「Well, it would have been more fun if I staye—cough!! It’s a friend’s private business, so I couldn’t just say anything.」

That Yuri thought it would be more fun if she kept quiet was her true feeling, I’m sure, but strictly speaking, I had been putting pressure on her not to spread things around too. But looking at her now, I don’t know which reason was the real one.

More importantly, because Yuri said something unnecessary, the conversation that was about to wrap up started to flare up again.

…Don’t tell me this was her goal?

「S-Satsukawa-san! By the way, have you already decided on things after you get married!?」

「No, we haven’t discussed anything that specific yet…」

「Then, then… what about… the baby?」

「BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?」

「KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!」

「H-Hey, that’s a bit too far!」

Yeah, the mood had shifted to that of a school trip girl talk… and it seemed to be heading in a pretty dangerous direction.

It’s a relief that the topic hasn’t touched on the living-together situation, but to be honest, this isn’t a great topic either.

Because even if it’s still way too early, Takanashi-kun aside, Sara definitely has a tendency to think about those things to some extent.

And this could「in a sense」lead to topics that are the most interesting to people our age.

Even though I trust the two of them, as someone who knows about the living-together situation, this isn’t a topic I can just laugh off.

Or rather, I don’t really want to hear my best friends talking about that kind of stuff…

「Hey, that’s way too much…」

「N-No, we certainly haven’t talked about that sort of thing yet. It’s much too early… it’s a story for the future, after all.」

Even Sara seemed to find this topic embarrassing, as expected.

But the fact that she still answers firmly despite her flushed face and bashfulness is probably due to her own seriousness.

「Whoa, whoa, Satsukawa-san is blushing!?」

「I-I’ve never seen that before!!」

「Whaaaaa, you’re seriously not thinking about it~?」

I was surprised by the unexpected scene of the great Sara being teased by her classmates.

Even if it’s a sight that wouldn’t normally be strange, when it’s「Sara,」the shock is still bigger.

And since the classmates haven’t had a chance to interact with her casually before, they’re starting to get involved as much as they can.

「AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!??」

Just then, Yuri suddenly let out a loud shout.

It was a shout like she’d realized something and was shocked, but it completely cut through the air around us.

Everyone’s gaze turned to Yuri to see what was up, since she’d interrupted the talk with Sara.

「W-What is it, Yuri, all of a sudden…」

「S-Satsukawa-san, you bought an easy birth charm on the school trip…」

Silence………

Ah… right, there was that…

That idiot Yuri just dropped an incredible bombshell right here. It’s true, of course, but that was originally my prank. And even Yuri should know that, but if she says it like that, it makes it sound like Sara chose that one herself.

Also, you「receive」a charm, you don’t「buy」it.

「「「B-B…」」」

B?

「「「KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!」」」

「「「AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!」」」

「S-Satsukawa-san, don’t tell me you’re already!!!???」

「It’s a lie, Satsukawa-sannnnn!!」

「N-No, you are wrong!! That was Natsumi’s prank!! I’m not… yet!!!」

「「「YET!!!!???」」」

「So you are thinking about it!!!!」

「T-That is!! O-Of course once I am married, I too eventually wish to have Kazunari-san’s baby—」

「S-Sara, that’s enough!! Calm down…」

「「「BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!」」」

「Uwaaaaaaah, it’s over for meeeee!!」

「Aaaaaah, it’s a dream, it’s a dream, it’s a dream dream dreammmm!!」

Everyone and everything… was a total mess…

The only thing I can say for sure… is that I am definitely going to squeeze Yuri, who started this, later. I’ll squeeze her until she cries and apologizes… that much is set in stone!!

And in the end, although I explained thoroughly that it was just my prank, Sara’s baby comment lingered…

The girls’ excitement showed no sign of settling down even after class started. And the boys… especially the ones who idolized Sara, looked so crushed I actually felt sorry for them.

Sara has a boyfriend, she’s engaged, she’s bragging, and the finisher was the baby… yeah, it’s only natural, it’s just too cruel.

But it can’t be helped. It’s all the truth, and Sara only has eyes for Takanashi-kun…