What puzzled her, though, was this: he already had Mai Sakurajima, a girl of exactly that type, as his girlfriend. So why would Lin Ye still fixate on another girl with long black hair?
Normally, she thought, there'd be no need to keep holding on like that.
Wouldn't it be better to just go to Tokyo, settle down with Mai Sakurajima, and enjoy a sweet, easy love life?
That was what Ai Hoshino would have done, if the choice were hers. As for other people, well, that depended on how they saw things.
Could it be that this girl was Lin Ye's first love? The very first girl he'd ever liked?
Was that why he clung to her so stubbornly, why he refused to leave Chiba and come to Tokyo, to be closer to her and to Mai Sakurajima?
The pressure on Ai Hoshino grew heavier by the second.
After Mai Sakurajima, here was yet another girl who felt like a genuine threat.
At this rate, her odds of becoming Lin Ye's girlfriend were shrinking to nothing. Marriage didn't even bear thinking about.
Her gaze settled on Lin Ye's face, and their eyes met.
Something in his expression was off. Just slightly, but off. A faint, unpleasant premonition stirred in her.
She just couldn't tell what it was about.
Yes, the feeling was definitely a bad one. She simply had no idea what it pointed to.
Call it a girl's intuition.
"Lin-kun, whatever it is you want to say, just say it."
Ai Hoshino spoke first, unable to wait any longer.
"It's fine, go ahead. Whatever you say, I can take it. I'm tougher than I look."
She offered it up freely, to put him at ease.
She refused to believe things could get any worse. And if they somehow did, she doubted it could be much harder to swallow than what she'd already heard.
Learning that even Mai Sakurajima was Lin Ye's girlfriend had already landed like a hammer blow.
Ai Hoshino couldn't imagine anything topping that.
"She's my girlfriend."
"Girl… girlfriend…"
Oh, hell.
Ai Hoshino's composure cracked all over again, everything inside her shaking.
How was she his girlfriend?
That girl with the long black hair had become Lin Ye's girlfriend too.
What was going on? Wasn't he supposed to merely like her, to be chasing after her?
And which came first, Mai Sakurajima becoming his girlfriend, or this girl?
A thousand questions crowded her mind. Ai Hoshino wrung her brain dry and still couldn't land on a single answer that fit.
She needed an answer. A precise one.
"Mm. She's my girlfriend. And also…"
"And also?"
And also what?
What else could there possibly be?
"She's also my fiancee."
Crack. Boom.
Ai Hoshino froze where she sat, as though lightning had come down on her.
It felt like a bolt of lightning had struck her square through. Her head emptied out entirely, leaving nothing behind but that one word — fiancee.
That girl with the long black hair was Lin Ye's fiancee.
Lin Ye was engaged. He already had a fiancee.
Then what did that make her? What chance did she have left?
If it were only a relationship like the one with Mai Sakurajima, she'd still have a shot at winning. Slim odds, maybe, but odds all the same. An engagement was something else entirely.
A betrothal like that had to have the blessing of both sets of parents. Without their approval, how could such an arrangement exist at all?
In that moment—
Ai Hoshino felt her life empty of hope. Nothing she did from here on seemed to hold any meaning. She might as well be dead.
Dead, and free of all the pain and grief and worry.
Everything returning to stillness and quiet.
"Lin, Lin-kun… that joke isn't very funny."
Her voice trembled. She was groping for an escape route, any at all.
Maybe this was just Lin Ye's way of needling her. Maybe it was a joke, nothing more, with no truth in it whatsoever.
She truly didn't want to believe that Lin Ye had a fiancee.
The blow was more than she could bear.
"It's the truth. Not a joke."
One sentence, and reality came crashing down. Her small hope of a reprieve went unanswered. She had, in fact, been praying he would take it back, offer her a lie.
Whether the lie was the earlier statement or this one, she'd have accepted either.
But Lin Ye gave her nothing. He laid the cruel truth out plainly, and every fantasy she'd built burst like a soap bubble.
"I'm telling you the truth. She's already my fiancee. Her parents have given their approval."
Everything was sliding toward the worst possible outcome.
Ai Hoshino had never once imagined she'd run into something this awful, this painful.
Lin Ye's arrival today had been the happiest thing in the world. They'd shared an intimate moment in the bathroom today, and their relationship had taken a real step forward — not the final step, not that, but progress all the same.
Everything had been heading in the best possible direction. How had it ended up like this?
Ai Hoshino's face went blank with despair, all the life drained out of it.
Her road to love had taken a devastating hit.
Struck down before the campaign had even begun.
She had no chance left.
She couldn't even beat Mai Sakurajima. How was she supposed to compete against a girl who was already a fiancee?
And Lin Ye liked this girl. And this girl had agreed to be engaged to him, which meant she liked Lin Ye back.
Mutual affection, plus a formal betrothal.
That was as settled as anything could get. There was no room left for any other possibility.
"I… I understand."
She understood, all right. But what was she supposed to do now?
What about her future?
She and Lin Ye had no future.
Every breath Ai Hoshino drew stung her lungs, as if the air itself had turned against her. Her whole body ached.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
She wanted to find somewhere quiet, somewhere no one would find her, and cry out loud until every dark, choking thing inside her had drained away.
The light had gone out of her eyes.
"So, Ai-chan, until I graduate high school, I'm not transferring schools to Tokyo."
Ai Hoshino didn't care anymore.
Or rather, the words simply weren't reaching her.
She was submerged in grief, all of her.
Lin Ye laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her. She stayed lost somewhere far away, barely reacting at all.
He realized how hard this had hit her — hard enough to knock the responses clean out of her.
In that case…
Lin Ye went with the simplest, most direct option available.
This time he didn't go for her feet, didn't tickle her. He aimed straight for those red lips and kissed her.
Yes.
It was the single most effective method he had where this girl was concerned.
Lips met lips.
He kissed her hard.
Ai Hoshino was a beat slow to register it. She made no move to push him away, but she didn't answer the way she had before either — not until the steady pressure worked its way through and drew something out of her.
"Mm…"
She sobbed even as she gave in, grief and all, hands balling into fists that drummed against Lin Ye's back. She hit him with real force, then, afraid of hurting him, pulled her strength back at the last moment.
Which said everything about how much she loved him and hated him at once.
A hundred feelings, all of them tangled and burning together.
In the end, she kissed him back.
Three minutes later, Ai Hoshino was leaning on Lin Ye's shoulder. Neither of them spoke.
Her feelings were a knot she couldn't pick apart.
She had no idea what to do with herself from here.
Her future, her hope — both of them gone.
What came next was a complete blank.
"Lin-kun."
"Mm?"
"I don't know what my future looks like anymore. I'm lost."
Yes.
She'd said exactly what she felt. She truly was lost.
"Then don't think about it."
"Don't think about it?"
"Mm. Do what's in front of you, the things you want to do. Leave the rest alone."
"But…"
It wasn't that Ai Hoshino disliked the idea. Only — not thinking about the future at all, was that really all right?
"Then can I… can I leave all the future stuff to you to think about, Lin-kun?"
"You can."
Lin Ye agreed without a moment's hesitation.
He'd taken it on.
And to Ai Hoshino, that sounded a great deal like taking on her whole life.
Yes — as far as she was concerned, Lin Ye was now responsible for the rest of her days.
"Then can I, can I… become Lin-kun's… girlfriend?"
Ai Hoshino gathered every scrap of courage she had and got the request out.
She'd poured all her strength and all her dignity into it.
Her face was pure expectation, nervous and hopeful at once.
The way she saw it, if Lin Ye already had two girlfriends, then one more… should be fine, right?
She hadn't raised the idea back when she first learned Mai Sakurajima was his girlfriend, because she'd felt she shouldn't be feeding that harem streak of his.
But now he had two girlfriends, and one of them was a fiancee.
So she let go of the restraint.
Things had already come to this. She needed to claim a spot for herself.
Even if she was late. Even if she couldn't measure up to the others. She wanted that place, that title.
"Haah… haah…"
In the whole broad room there was nothing but the sound of Ai Hoshino's slightly unsteady breathing.
Lin Ye hesitated, thinking it over, then said, "Give me a little more time."
He hadn't agreed.
Because the situation with Mai Sakurajima and Yukino was nowhere near sorted out. Add a third girlfriend and how was he supposed to handle any of it properly?
"Why…"
Ai Hoshino wanted a reason.
Lin Ye didn't especially want to explain, but seeing how uneasy she looked, he thought about it and decided to tell her anyway.
He gave her the short version, laying out the tangled triangle between himself, Mai Sakurajima, and Yukino Yukinoshita.
And hearing even that abbreviated account, Ai Hoshino found herself relieved instead.
Mai Sakurajima and Yukino Yukinoshita knew about each other, sure, but they hadn't reached the point of acknowledging one another, let alone getting along.
The two of them were still competing, still fighting over him.
Which meant she still had a chance. Many, many chances.
And Lin Ye hadn't outright refused her either. He'd only asked for more time.
She had no problem with that whatsoever.
Ai Hoshino spoke up at once. "Okay, Lin-kun. However much time you need, it's yours. I'll wait. I'll wait until the day you're willing to let me be your girlfriend."
Forcing him would accomplish nothing.
Nagging him would accomplish nothing either.
Ai Hoshino knew Lin Ye's temperament. Once he'd made a decision, there was no shifting it.
Pleading wouldn't change the outcome, and it would only sour things between them.
Of course, she also knew that as things stood, there wasn't much room for souring. She wanted to avoid even that much.
She didn't want anything between them to turn worse.
It had taken so much to get this far with Lin Ye, so much for their relationship to move forward at all. She wasn't about to stop here and slide backward.
"Ai, I'm sorry."
Those two words sent her spirits soaring.
Because he'd apologized. Because he felt guilty. And guilt meant he'd treat her better, be more indulgent with her.
"It's nothing. I like you, Lin-kun. It's really nothing. Only…"
This was the right moment to slip in one small request of her own. "Only, don't make me wait too long."
Ai Hoshino was willing to wait. She just hoped the waiting could be as short as possible.
"Understood. I'll sort things out between the two of them as fast as I can."
"The three of us, you mean."
Ai Hoshino pointed a finger at herself. "I won't let Lin-kun forget me. I'm a girl who likes you too."
On that point she wasn't giving an inch.
Lin Ye nodded, and let himself think it through.
Ai Hoshino's feelings for him might have started with the Suspension Bridge Effect, born out of the danger at that love hotel.
That was the origin. But the time they'd spent together afterward was what made her genuinely fall for him.
As for him, he'd liked this small, adorable girl from the very beginning — the natural appreciation and attraction any man feels toward a beautiful girl.
And afterward, being around her had drawn him in for real.
Now he was certain of it: he liked Ai Hoshino.
Becoming lovers wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
But his own feelings were a complicated mess at the moment, and all he could do was hold off on taking that next step with her a while longer.
"That's my Lin-kun. Hehe."
Ai Hoshino's smile came out radiant.
The awkward, heavy air that had filled the room was gone without a trace.
"Lin-kun…"
She wound one arm around his chest and squeezed gently. "It's late. We should sleep."
And as she said it, a little color rose in her face.
"Mm."
Lin Ye shifted, reached up, and flicked off the light switch.
Click. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the faint glow of the starry sky drifting in through the window.
Ai Hoshino lay on her side, eyes fixed on the boy beside her, the one she loved.
She liked Lin Ye so much. So very, very much.
A soft rustle of fabric.
Ai Hoshino inched over, pressing a little closer.
In the future, she wanted more of him. More time together, as much as she could get.
Worst came to worst, she'd quit being an idol.
If there ever came a day when Lin Ye didn't want her doing this job anymore.
Thinking that, the girl slowly let her eyes fall shut. Her awareness thinned out, dimmed, and at last she sank into a deep, heavy sleep.
…
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