Some bickering later I escaped back into my room, putting the remnants of our study session away. Had it been anyone else, I would have written them another message to thank them, but I absolutely didn’t dare do that with Taizou.
...Actually, thinking about him, it's system time!

‘29/100. The target is surprised about how well he and the host get along. Not unwilling to spend time with the host, but unlikely to initiate it. Comfortable with light joking around.’

!!!
A single study session had let things jump up that much?!
Well, okay, let’s think… My family didn’t trouble him, I hadn’t tried to do anything weird but focused on studying, my room looks normal and I joked a bit with him. He hadn’t looked annoyed with me, either.

Friends should start around 45 to 50 points (probably), so I shouldn’t get too happy yet. Going from acquaintances to kinda-friends was an easy process for students our age, the harder part was steadying those friendships. My goal wasn’t actually that high, so I was already quite elated though.

What does the additional info say~

[Spent an hour studying together. Since the host was serious about studying, the target felt comfortable. Target is relieved that his choice in making a deal with you was the right one. Found the joke stupid but amusing.]

I giggled creepily, my face split with a grin. I couldn’t help turn my face to the ceiling and whisper.
“Hey system, don’t you think some more help would be good?” I waited for a moment. “Like, a ‘hint’ field or something? On how to proceed? Like I had when the status changed?”

More waiting. Then, suddenly my menu began to blink and my jaw dropped. In a hurry, I opened it to find a new tab, another still greyed out. It revealed two subcategories - one of them still locked, the other blinking.

Excited, I took a look at it.

The window opened to show Taizou with rudimentary info as well as a font saying ‘Current target’ above him. To the side were - to my happiness - ‘gathered information’ and ‘current hints’.

The gathered information was the things I knew, general information that I had filtered out in our short meetings:

• Prefers honesty
• Does not wish to be treated like he’s special
• Uninterested in small-talk (avoids unnecessary conversation)
• Patient when the host is nervous
• Takes his education seriously

Hmm. As expected. The current hint was the one that interested me the most, though! Aaaand iiit reaaads…

[It is suggested that the host keeps the interactions with the target to the lessons. For further contact, using a text message is possible, but the topics should be carefully chosen. This state should be kept until the host is accepted as a friend.]

So I can actually text him? About what, though…

I rolled around on my bed, happy to have gotten the hint at all and slightly creeped out that the system actually adjusted to my needs. After a while, I reached for my phone and typed a short message:
‘Thanks for teaching me. Can I ask you questions per text message if I get stuck?’

Watching grammar and spelling~
My friends would laugh at me if they saw me writing like that.

That should be valid, right..? I hesitated for a while before sending the message with closed eyes. I felt like the idiotic main character of some teenage romance drama. In that case, I’d probably be getting a love rival even before getting together with the love interest-

...Did I just jinx myself? I jinxed myself, didn’t I? I didn’t think I’d even get that far with Taizou, but somehow I was suddenly certain I’d have someone interfere with me. Ugh, shivers.

The image of our student council president popped up in my head. Yeah, that guy would be the perfect love rival, wouldn’t he?
He didn’t strike me as gay - which is kind of ridiculous to say, not like there was any certain behaviour to identify someone as gay - and had two or three girlfriends before…

But Taizou had a sort of special beauty that attracted some guys. I think most of them were just joking, but if he actually approached them, I couldn’t say how many would agree after all.

I think our president was that type. He was interested in Taizou and checking to see if he could twist the cold beauty around his fingers. He wouldn’t lose anything if it didn’t work.
...The thoughts of a guy watching from the second floor down to the courtyard and who had never been a single step closer to the president.

I rolled around a bit more and almost fell out of my bed, cursing as I caught myself in a weird position. My phone vibrated and I ended up falling to the ground anyway, ignoring my complaining butt and failing to enter my passcode right twice before the stupid thing unlocked.

‘Yeah.’

Not more, not less, but that single word was my permission to write to his number (as long as it was school related). I laughed, clutching my phone to myself.

For the first time in my life, I looked forward to studying math so that I could find things to ask him.

In the end, I actually didn’t need to find topics I had to talk with him about on purpose. There were so many question marks floating around in my head every time a math class at school finished that I was constantly spamming him with questions anyway.

Hopefully, the next lesson would be soon - I was getting desperate again with all those new topics and the approaching midterms.

Just when I had typed a nervous ‘Sorry, am I disturbing you too much?’ into the text field of the app while walking, I met him.
Not quite coincidentally, I might say.

I was focused on my phone while walking around the courtyard, but the not very intrusive, low opacity pop-ups that appeared to steer me along, turned me into a certain direction.

[Left] or [Right], it would say, or sometimes even show an arrow for a short time. I hadn’t really noticed them because they were on the upper half of my vision, but their mere existence was enough to unconsciously cause me to follow them.

So, it turned out that I bumped into Taizou in some remote corner during a break.

His frosty look relaxed a bit when he realized it was me he bumped into, causing my heart to skip a beat.

“Watch where you’re going”, he said, rudely, but his tone suggested he really meant nothing else than to remind me that walking with my face plastered to my phone was a bad idea.

I winced and laughed, hurriedly locking my phone and putting it away.
“Ah, sorry, sorry… I was distracted.”

Taizou just blinked with an expression that said it had nothing to do with him anyway and moved to pass by me. I twitched, then turned to him.

“Uhm-”
It was more a stuttered sound than anything but it was audible, so he glanced over his shoulder to see what I wanted from him.

“A-Am I writing you too much? I know I’ve got a lot of questions, it’s just-”
I fidgeted, not sure how to continue, but Taizou already made a small ‘Oh’ and shook his head.

“I’ll tell you when you’re being annoying”, he said directly.

Generally, that would probably be regarded as rude, but it was quite the relief to me - I wouldn’t have to guess when I was writing him too much.
Even during an actual conversation, I would find it hard to gauge whether I was annoying the other (unless they were my friends, whom I knew well enough), but if it was via chat then it was even worse.

“That would be nice”, I answered with honest relief, deflating.

That made him raise an eyebrow just a bit, but he didn’t press the topic and just continued to walk on.

I stared after him for a while. That honesty was part of what I adored about him, I didn’t think of it as rude.
Quite on the contrary, I liked it better than those two-faced types where you could never tell what they thought of you.

At least with Taizou, I felt I could somewhat trust the system's comments on his character: He got along with me, there was no denying that.
Not overly much, yes, but he wasn’t irritated around me and didn’t snarl.

I really did feel that I had a chance to become his friend, maybe quite soon.

Thoughtfully, I grasped for my phone again and erased the message I had written but not yet sent to him, then looked around.
Where was I even?