A fragile sense of hope had settled over the club room. It was a delicate thing, blooming in the warm atmosphere created by Yuki Hoshino's counsel. Kenji Tanaka sat a little straighter on the sofa, the crushing weight of his years-long crush having been lifted and replaced by a clear, if daunting, path forward. He had a plan—a kind, honest plan. He could do this. He could take that first small step.
Yuki felt a quiet sense of satisfaction. This was why she had founded the club. This was the work she was meant to do: to untangle the knotted threads of human connection and show people that the simplest, most honest path was always the best one. She gave Kenji another encouraging smile, ready to wrap up the session and send him on his way with a renewed sense of purpose.
It was at that precise moment that the silence from the corner of the room was broken.
"Inefficient."
The word was not loud. It was spoken in a quiet, level monotone, yet it sliced through the warm, hopeful air like a shard of glass. Every head in the room turned toward the source.
Kaito Ishikawa had not moved from his chair, but his posture had changed. He was no longer lounging. He was leaning forward slightly, his grey eyes open and fixed on Kenji with an unnerving intensity. The lazy indifference was gone, replaced by the focused concentration of a predator that had just identified a critical flaw in its prey's defenses.
"Pardon me?" Yuki asked, her voice tight with a sudden, protective instinct.
Kaito ignored her, his attention remaining locked on the client. "Her methodology," he said, gesturing vaguely in Yuki's direction without looking at her, "is fundamentally flawed. It relies on emotional sincerity, an unstable variable, and posits a timeframe that is strategically unsound. The probability of success is moderate at best, while the potential for prolonged emotional distress for the client is high."
Kenji flinched as if he'd been struck. Ren's curious expression deepened, a flicker of excitement in her eyes.
"The objective," Kaito continued, his voice as calm and steady as a metronome, "is to initiate a romantic relationship with the subject, Satou Miyu. The president's plan is akin to trying to fell a tree with a nail file. It is noble, perhaps, but ultimately a waste of time and energy. There is a more logical solution."
He paused, letting the weight of his declaration settle in the room. He had their complete, undivided attention.
"Your problem, Tanaka-kun," he began, addressing Kenji directly, "is not your inability to talk to her. That is merely a symptom. The core problem is one of information and positioning. You are an unknown variable with zero perceived value. Her plan," he again gestured dismissively toward Yuki, "seeks to slowly increase your value through positive, low-stakes interaction. My plan seeks to create high value out of thin air by transforming you from an unknown variable into an intriguing puzzle."
He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. "I call it the Psychological Blueprint. It consists of four phases."
"Phase One: Data Collection," he said. "Before any action is taken, we must gather intelligence. For the next three days, you will do nothing but observe. You will not approach her. You will not speak to her. You will map her routine. Where does she eat lunch? What route does she take home? Who is in her immediate social circle? We need to identify patterns, weaknesses in her daily armor, and opportunities for insertion. This is not stalking; it is strategic reconnaissance."
"Phase Two: The Personality Gap," Kaito continued, his voice unwavering. "Currently, you are a ghost. We will not change you into a friend; we will change you into a mystery. Starting next week, you will begin to appear in her periphery, but in a new context. If she studies in the library, you will be there first, not looking at her, but engrossed in a book far above your academic level—Nietzsche, perhaps, or a text on advanced particle physics. You will let her see you, register your presence as 'the serious, intellectual guy,' and then, you will vanish for two days. This creates a cognitive dissonance. The human brain is a pattern-recognition machine; it is also a puzzle-solving machine. By establishing a pattern and then breaking it, you force her subconscious to ask a question: 'Where did that guy go?' You are no longer a ghost. You are an enigma."
Kenji stared, mesmerized and horrified. This was beyond anything he could have imagined.
"Phase Three: The Hook," Kaito said, his eyes glinting with intellectual fervor. "This is the most critical phase. Once you have established yourself as an enigma, we engineer a scenario where she must initiate contact. We will leverage a psychological principle known as the Ben Franklin Effect, which posits that a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do them another favor than if they had received a favor. We create a situation where she performs a small, almost unconscious favor for you. For example, you will 'accidentally' drop a single, complex-looking diagram near her table in the library. Not a whole stack of papers, which is clumsy, but one specific, intriguing document. Curiosity and social convention will compel her to pick it up. When she hands it to you, she will have performed the favor. In that moment, you will not be effusively grateful. You will give a simple, 'Thank you,' and a brief, almost dismissive explanation: 'It's for a personal project.' You then walk away. You have now escalated from an enigma to an enigma with a secret."
"In her mind," Kaito explained, "a subconscious justification must occur. 'I just helped that person. Why? I don't know him. He must not be a threat. In fact, the fact that I helped him must mean I feel some sort of positive or neutral inclination toward him.' You have hacked her perception of you."
"Phase Four: The Inversion," he concluded. "After the hook, you revert to Phase Two for a short period. You maintain the mysterious presence. The psychological tension in her mind will build. The unanswered questions will multiply. She now has a vested interest in solving the puzzle of you. At the optimal moment, you will create one final, brief opportunity for interaction. By this point, the probability is overwhelmingly high that she will ask a direct question: 'What is it that you're always working on?' And that is your opening. You will not ask her out. You will answer her question vaguely, create more mystery, and then, when the tension is at its absolute peak, you will let the conversation end. You will force her to seek you out again. You will maneuver the situation with such precision that she will believe it is her own idea to ask you out. Her confession will simply be the logical end-point to the emotional and psychological maze you have constructed for her. The probability of success is not moderate. It is near-absolute."
He finished. The club room was utterly silent. Kenji Tanaka looked as if his brain had been removed, scrambled, and put back in his skull upside down. Ren Akamatsu was staring at Kaito as if he had just revealed the secrets of the universe, her eyes shining with a dangerous, star-struck admiration.
Yuki Hoshino, however, was trembling. Her face, which had been filled with such warmth and hope just moments before, was now pale with a rage so profound it seemed to vibrate in the air around her. She pushed herself away from the table, her chair scraping loudly against the floor as she stood up.
"That," she said, her voice low and shaking with fury, "is the most twisted, abhorrent, and inhuman thing I have ever heard."