'That's how it always goes in the manga and TV dramas I read!'
'If he really does confess to me, should I say yes?'
'We've never even talked before! Isn't this kind of sudden?'
'Should I play hard to get in a bit? Turn him down first, or pretend to hesitate?'
'But he really is good-looking. He's the only type besides anime boys that I might ever picture when I'm entertaining myself...'
'But he already has so many girls around him, and a whole bunch of gyarus too... He kind of feels like a flirt, though...'
'Ahh! So am I gonna agree to be his girlfriend in a minute or not? Sigh, this is so hard to decide!'
Nonohara Yuzuka was thinking up lines for turning him down, but at the same time she couldn't help imagining herself dating Hikari.
For example, going to an amusement park with him, watching movies together, and so on. She ran through it all in her head several times, at top speed.
She'd even roughly worked out what their kids would be named.
Hikari hadn't said a word the whole way, and the two of them hadn't exchanged anything.
But the pink bubbles over the head of the girl who loved to daydream had been floating the whole way.
By the time she'd even sketched out the erotic scenes of all the kinds of play they might get up to once they were together, the two of them reached the quiet, empty rooftop.
But the first thing Hikari said up on the roof turned half the blood in Nonohara Yuzuka's body cold, and she felt as if she'd fallen into an ice cave.
"You're the blogger called 'Little Yuzu' online, aren't you, Nonohara Yuzuka?"
"Huh?"
Hearing that the very first thing out of Hikari's mouth was an exposure of her hidden identity, Nonohara Yuzuka's eyes went perfectly round, and she even forgot to breathe.
Her whole brain crashed in an instant, and she stared blankly at Hikari.
When she came back to herself, her face was full of panic, and she denied it over and over.
"N-No... What are you... talking about... I-I don't understand..."
"I don't know anyone called 'Little Yuzu,' and I've never been a streamer..."
"Hikari-kun... I... I don't understand what you're saying..."
Nonohara Yuzuka's chest rose and fell nonstop like a bellows, the towering peaks shaking violently.
Her palms, pinching the hem of her skirt, were soaked with sweat, and her voice stammered nonstop with nerves, but she kept shaking her head and firmly denied Hikari's accusation.
Hikari said nothing more. He only took his phone out of his pocket and held it up in front of her.
On the screen was a recording of one of her streams.
She was wearing a mask and had a voice changer on, but those bright, lively, watery big eyes and the trembling, beautiful eyes in her reddened sockets right now were almost exactly the same.
Especially the beauty mark under the right eyelid that Hikari pointed to with his finger, like a unique 'anti-counterfeit label.'
Nonohara Yuzuka's face went deathly pale with a whoosh, all the color draining out.
She bit her lower lip hard with her small white teeth and stared fixedly at that stream screenshot.
Not until a trace of rusty taste seeped into her mouth did she lower her head, unwilling, and admit it to Hikari in a trembling voice, "Hikari-kun... what... what do you actually want?"
Seeing the twin-tailed girl now, her small hands gripping her skirt tightly, her knuckles visibly white, obviously scared stiff and nervous beyond measure, Hikari put his phone away and said, as calmly as at the start, "I don't want anything."
"I just want to give you a word of advice, Yuzuka-san. As a high school student, you shouldn't be doing this."
"It's not just kind of shameful. It could also put you in physical danger."
"The internet is sometimes far away, but sometimes it's very close."
"If you keep streaming like this, I'm afraid someone will follow the cable to your door before long and meet the real you in person."
Hearing Hikari reject her hobby from the first word, and with such a condescending, lecturing air too, all kinds of annoyance, resentment and refusal to be talked down to welled up in Nonohara Yuzuka's heart.
After all, even though her chest had developed far beyond most adult women's, at heart she was still just a young girl in her teens.
So even though she knew Hikari's words obviously came from a good place, out of rebelliousness and some complicated feelings, Nonohara Yuzuka stiffened her neck and shot back stubbornly at Hikari, "Streaming and stuff... that's my own personal freedom, isn't it!"
"And... and nobody else is going to find out about it!"
Hearing the girl's rebellious, stubborn words, Hikari smiled and slapped her down offhandedly, "Is that so, Yuzuka-san? Then how did I find out right away?"
Hearing Hikari's blatant slap in the face, Nonohara Yuzuka was lost for words for a moment.
But she still didn't want to admit defeat and kept arguing back stubbornly, "That... that was just an accident! Hikari-kun, you... you probably have a crush on me and have been watching me all along, so you just happened to recognize me!"
"Other people won't necessarily be able to pick me out on the huge internet like you did!"
"And... and even if you did recognize me, it's... it's no big deal!"
Nonohara Yuzuka put her hands on her hips, her full mountains up front even bouncing proudly a few times, and looked at Hikari with a face full of baseless confidence.
Hearing the girl's words, all bark with nothing left behind them, Hikari smiled and suddenly took a step forward.
The distance between the two of them shrank in an instant.
Looking at Hikari's handsome face right in front of her, Nonohara Yuzuka's heart missed a beat, and she couldn't stop herself from blushing.
[T/N: New Novel guys. It's an original. Super good kinda. Here's the synopsis:
Title: Transmigrated Into an Eldritch World, I Am the Strongest?
Synopsis:
Transmigrated into another world where Eldritch run rampant, Lynn finds he's become a knockoff pseudo-god whose divine power has run dry and who's about to fade away.
Outside the church, indescribable horrors are pounding on the door, and the despairing countdown begins.
To save himself, Lynn grits his teeth and fabricates a full-dive VR online game called [Old Gods Awaken], summoning a batch of hardcore players from Blue Star to be his believers.
He figured this bunch would tremble in fear under the Eldritch's torment, but things spiraled completely out of control...
Player A (fanatical): "Guys, this headless wraith's physical hitbox is bugged! Block it with a door and take turns chipping at it for the first kill!"
Player B (excited): "This Great Old One's tentacle has a drop check! Eat it raw for +5 poison resistance, come bite!"
Player C (pensive): "If we tie up all the NPCs in this town, the cultists won't find anyone to sacrifice. That's what you call a logic clear!"
Watching the Eldritch monsters outside the door literally scared shitless by the players, and the local natives staring at him with awestruck, crazed eyes and worshiping him as the "Supreme Lord of Chaos", Lynn, sitting on the divine throne, looks majestic and unmatched on the surface, but inside he's panicking like an old dog: 'Stop filling in the blanks! I really am not some indescribable source of horror, I just couldn't hold back this Fourth Calamity bunch!']