Lunch Break
Dun-don-dun-don
"Ah, finally lunch break. I wonder what I should get for lunch?" Monoa stretched and slumped lazily on the table.
"You don't bring your own bento, Monoa-kun?" I asked, even though I already know the answer.
"Yeah, my parents usually work till midnight so they wake quite late and my cooking isn't that good so buying breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria or a convenience store has been a go-to for me since middle school" Monoa revealed without any sense of discomfort.
"Is that so? Then here, have this" I brought out two bento from my desk and placed them on Monoa's desk.
"Uh, this is?" Monoa looked at me for an explanation.
"Well, I figured that it's better for you and Akirou-kun to eat healthy home-made lunches because you'll need the nutrient to help your body grow since we're doing daily training" I happily explained; not to say that the food at the food court are bad, just that mine are better is all.
"Wow, thanks, I didn't really think that far ahead" Monoa looked at me amazed.
"No problem, you guys can go on and have lunch without me. I have something to do off-campus, pass it on to Akirou-kun for me" I stood up and picked up my bento.
"Alright, don't come back late for elective" Monoa didn't try to ask further and started to pull out his phone, after all, it was quite rude to pry into the business of someone you've just met for only a few days.
"Where are you going, Ren?" Hearing our conversation, Hina asked with a light blush on her face. She seems to have calmed down and can speak to me normally now; for the entire morning classes, she's just been sneaking peeks at me and turning away with a red face when she saw I noticed her, and trying to avoid talking with me.
I found it very cute to see her squirming around just because of me and wanted to try cornering her but I would definitely get yelled at by Namaii for teasing her if I did that.
"Just stopping by a few places to pick up and deliver some stuff, you don't need to worry about me, I'll make it back before lunch break ends" I gave a vague answer before patting her head.
"Mhm, alright, stay safe" Hina just nodded in approval before turning her face away from me shyly.
A smile bloomed on my face seeing her acting like this, after several more seconds of patting her, I made my way out of the classroom before heading outside after changing shoes.
While walking past the fountain, I gave another look through the record of Zhu Heixing, the bastard who tried to ask Hina out. On the school database, he goes by a different name in Japanese but his real name is Zhu Heixing.
(A/N: Don't bother remembering it)
Zhu Heixing is the young master of the Chinese crime syndicate Night Spider with its main base of operation located in the remote areas in Japan, because of the group's main base in China getting raided several decades ago, they had hop countries all the way to the remote areas of Japan to go into hiding.
Night Spider kept themselves low-key for years, only doing minor crimes to get food on the table; however, they started doing more heinous crimes like human trafficking, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, assassinations, murder, and many more after a new leader took over some decades ago.
Night Spider is now a big group of criminals within Japan, causing harm all over the remote areas of many cities in Japan. Until now, their main base has never been discovered, only some lairs have been raided and its members put behind bars.
Even their leader's face and name have not been uncovered yet, with police and detective working hard trying to catch them.
And now the opportunity will present itself right in front of them, in the form of some anonymous tips by me slowly leading to all their hideouts; and while they and the police are fighting it out, I'll take my time making sure their young master gets to experience hell before ultimately getting thrown into jail and living a life of misery.
That's why I sneakily placed a [Curse of Misfortune - Advance], a [Curse of Enhanced Pain], and a [Curse of Ever Waking]. The first one gives extreme misfortune that will lead to severe injuries but never anything fatal for normal humans, the second one doubles the pain he receives and the last one will make him feel excruciating headaches whenever he loses consciousness.
The first one will be the source of pain and misery, the second one will enhance it and the last one makes him unable to sleep or pass out, thus gradually increasing his misery even more.
This was necessary so he'll be too preoccupied with living in constant pain to actually go through with his plans, and even if he does try to go through with it, I have an unending amount of countermeasures for that.
I already enacted on one of them, which was making a clone with the dark spell [Shadow Clone] and placing it in Hina's shadow, it might only have half my physical ability and ability to control darkness but it's more than enough to wipe out an entire military army with ease because it's immune to attacks that are not magic-based.
Anyway, after walking out the school gate, I continued walking until I turn at a dark alley before turning invisible then teleporting to some places to collect sufficient evidence for my anonymous tips to be more believable so they would work on it faster.
Also, I'm not doing it online or by phone or email, I'm gonna send a super conspicuous physical package that looks awfully like a bomb with lots of info in it to the police department via magic so there's no way for them to track me or trace everything back to me.
And for good measures, I'm sending it to the one across the city from Kurimo Academy and I'll even make the entire package from magic as well so traces of fingerprints or DNA will not be on it. I'd be super impressed if they can trace it back to me.
Yeah, I would be majorly impressed that they can trace a package that just appeared out of thin air onto their desk.
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(Third person POV)
"Hey, I've heard the rumor, is it true?"
"Yeah, are the famed 'Black Knight' and 'Princess' of Tayuri Middle School really going out?"
"You're in the same class as them; you should've been here when it happened"
"Ah~ The forbidden love of the 'Princess' and her overprotective knight"
"You know, it's only a mere nickname, right?"
"Ugh, we know! Way to ruin our fun Mr. Pervert"
"Oh, come on! We've been over this, stop calling me a pervert!"
""Hehehe~""
…
Asahina, who was sitting with Suika, Atsuka, and Alice having lunch in the classroom, was super embarrassed when she overheard her classmates and her former classmates from middle school talking about her and Ren; especially when she heard them mentioning the embarrassing nickname that was given to her by her peers.
"Asa-chan, don't listen to them and just ignore them, alright?" Suika tried to avert her best friend's mind from her dark past, she felt kind of bad because she wasn't able to stop her classmates when their nicknames were decided.
Even though she tried her best and nobody blamed her for it, she still felt guilty for not being able to stop them.
"Y-yeah, like Ren usually says, 'if you have something that's annoying you and you can't do anything about it, just ignore it until it goes away'" Asahina recited the casual words of advice Ren gave a classmate once before taking a deep breath.
The statement made Alice speechless because she saw him enacting it on her twin brother just this morning.
"I guess that works, but I don't think it's a very good rule to live by" Class Rep sighed helplessly because it would actually work in some situations, but as a child of a doctor, she would have to disagree with it on some cases.
"Hehehe~" Suika giggled because she has seen Ren pulling off a successful tactic of ignoring things that are annoying to him, sometimes he just spits out words of wisdom out of the blue and it always blows the recipient away.
"By the way, Asa-chan. Where did Ishi-kun go? I saw him going out of class with his bento when the bell rang but he isn't back yet" Suika turned to Asahina since she was quite curious where that guy went to at lunchtime instead of spending it with his "girlfriend".
"He said he's just going somewhere to pick up and deliver something, and that he'll be back before lunchtime ends" Asahina answered while trying harder to block out the chit-chat of her other classmates.
"Hmm…Are you sure he's not just running away from this situation?" Suika glanced towards the group of students and turned back with eyes full of suspicion.
"…" Asahina was speechless because it's entirely possible that he would do that but she quickly shook those thoughts away; she wanted to believe he wasn't like that but with his past records, it was hard to do so.
"N-no! Ren wouldn't do that, I'm sure he has something important to do right now" Asahina defended her childhood, even if he was guilty of doing it in the past, she had to defend her "boyfriend".
"Heh~, already abandoning me and defending your boyfriend, eh?" Suika looked at her with a teasing smile.
"I-it's not like that!" Asahina blushed and refuted.
"No, no, I get it. If someone badmouthed Kei-kun, I would defend him too. It would be weird if you didn't defend him" Suika cheerfully smiled and reassured her best friend.
Meanwhile, across from them. Class Rep let out a heavy sigh and lamented at how she didn't have a boyfriend. In fact, she hasn't really thought about love ever since middle school since she was focused on trying to get into Kurimo Academy.
She had been confessed to but she rejected them in pursuit of studying, and now that she had achieved what she set out to do during middle school, she kind of has a lot of free time until third-year where she would need to focus more on her study to get into a school.
Ren's speech at the entrance ceremony had her thinking for the last two days, and just last night, she had a talk with her dad and consulted him about it.
In short, her dad also agreed that she should enjoy her high school days and make lots of connections, especially in a school where most of the students there will achieve something big in the future.
He even joked that although she should enjoy her youth, he doesn't want any grandkids until after graduation. Her face reddened while thinking of his words from yesterday.
"Are you okay, Miyako-san? Do you have a fever or something?" Alice was worried she had a fever just like her yesterday when her face flushed all of a sudden.
"No, just remembering something from last night. By the way, Alicia-san, you're wearing those ribbons" Class Rep smiled happily seeing her gift being worn.
Yesterday after school, Alice really did bring Class Rep out to buy a drink for her. Of course, she didn't know any place in this city so Class Rep had to choose a place and she chose a small cafe nearby the school.
After that, the two walked around and Class Rep gave Alice a tour of the area; eventually, while they were walking by a store, Class Rep saw a pair of white ribbons and thought it'd look cute on Alice so she bought it for her.
That's how Alice came into possession of the white ribbons and why Class Rep was happy.
"Yes, thank you for these, I like them" Alice smiled thinly while feeling the ribbons with her hands.
While the four girls were in their own little bubble, everyone had their eyes on them and thought that it was such a harmonious scene.
Except for three boys sitting off near the window, they were more focused on their phones as currently, they were playing a game with each other.
Iniji, Hiro, and Alex were currently playing Chronicle Impact together; to be specific, they were competing with each other....Iniji and Alex were competing with each other.
You see, Alex had overheard Iniji and Hiro talking about their characters and builds for their characters. Alex then proceeded to insult them, calling their builds trash, then they got into a heated argument....Iniji and Alex got into a heated argument, Hiro stayed out of it and just killed some bosses while they were still debating.
One thing led to another, and now they're in co-op mode in Hiro's world competing on how fast they can solo a specific boss with only one character.
Suffice to say, it did not end well for Iniji as he missed one crucial fact, and that fact is that Alex was a leviathan, by that it means he's a pay-to-win kind of player who spends thousands of dollars on this game each month.
All his characters are completely decked out beyond belief with weapons of mythical-rank and ancient runes of the highest rank, not to mention the many duplicates of all the characters Alex got from pulling the gacha, making all his character gain their full potential as their Destiny was maxed out.
It was a losing battle for Iniji because the stat difference was too vast to bridge with just his skills alone.
While that was happening, Hiro was leisurely farming materials for his main's next weapon upgrade. The material it takes to do these higher-level upgrades was just too ludicrous for both free-to and pay-to-win players.
"Akirou-kun! Help me beat this smug whale; he's acting all high and mighty just because he has maxed Destiny on Invyrel" Iniji pleaded to him with hope coloring his eyes.
"I don't think even I can beat a maxed Destiny Invyrel with a mythical weapon in pure damage output" Hiro smiled helplessly while still farming materials.
And he's right, in Chronicle Impact, a character's Destiny is their highest power boost, plus mythical weapons are just abysmally hard to obtain whether you spend money or not so the stat difference between it and those of legendary is just too vast to bridge.
"Face it; you can't defeat me in damage with only your level two Destiny characters and with just legendary weapons, though I have to admit your characters are very strong with only just those" Alex spoke in an arrogant tone after his show of superior wealth, but he still did show them some respect as fellow CI players.
"Ugh, it feels weird getting looked down on and complimented in one sentence" Iniji rubbed his arms with discomfort on his face.
"You should feel honored because don't give them out often" Alex haughtily informed Iniji, yeah, most things that come out of his mouth are insults so don't get used to this.
"Achoo! I feel like someone is talking badly about" Alex rubbed his nose, pondering about who it was.
"I'm not that surprised, maybe someone's cursing you out or something" Iniji smirked amusedly at the thought.
"What's that supposed to mean, Shorty!?" Alex slammed the desk and glared at Iniji with anger.
"It means what it means Young Master Chang" Iniji's smirk grew wide as he started to compare Alex to those young masters in Chinese novels.
"What you call me!?" Alex was so enraged he could cough up bloo- I mean, he was angered to the point his face turned red.
Hiro was, once again, off to the side still farming materials. He already kicked them both out of his world since the game run soother in single-player mode. Hiro figured they would go back and forth for a good while.
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(Ren's POV)
After finishing out the first step of my plan of taking down Night Spider, I teleported back to the alley near the school and leisurely headed back as there were only 15 minutes left before the elective starts.
On the way there, I saw that second-year bastard, who is an actual Chinese young master, all bruised up and limping towards the school while gritting his teeth with a pained expression constantly on his face.
It looks like my curses were working their magic and if I had to take a wild guess, I would say that he got teamed on and beaten by some random group of thugs while alone.
'Man, how unlucky. Oh wait hahaha'
I just ignored his existent after that and walked through the school gate before heading off to class to get my bag for electives.
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(Ren's POV)
After School
The classes had ended and it was time for everyone to go do their club activity or if you're in the go-home club, heading on back home, or hanging out with friends.
Or if you're like Keirou and me, going on dates with your girlfriend.
I stood next to Keirou, who was also waiting for his date near the gate. Namaii told me to go on ahead and she'll be borrowing Hina for a bit so I did.
「So, I heard about what happened this morning」 Keirou leaned on the gate frame.
「Yeah, I was forced to do it, it was the only way」 I looked off into the distance with a melancholic expression.
「Really?」 Keirou narrowed his eyes, not believing a single word I uttered.
「No, not really. I just got sick and tired of seeing other guys asking Hina out right in my face; it annoyed me to no end so I didn't feel the need to stay passive anymore」 I wasn't fazed and told him everything I was feeling, this is after all the most effective solution to the problem of warding other guys off.
「Good, now you finally get it, love is war, you need to be active to win」 Keirou smiled melancholically and looked off into the distance, remembering about the past.
「Thanks, Keirou, for supporting our love」 I thanked him, for what hidden meaning those words held only us two will know.
「Thanks to you too, if not for you Suika and I would've never come close to what we are today」 Keirou grinned at me and I also returned with a smile, then we turned our eyes to the people and students walking by in silence.
We stayed like that in peace until a familiar voice called out to us.
"Kei-kun!" Namaii dashed past me and hugged Keirou's body lightly
"R-Ren" Hina walked up to me with a slight blush on her face.
"Hina, let's go, I already picked out the date spots" I swiftly grabbed her hand and quickly walked off into the crowd.
"Bye, guys! See you later!" I waved over my shoulder at Namaii and Keirou as I used [Vanishing Steps] to erase our presence, effectively making them lose track of us.
"W-wait! Where did they go?" Namaii showed a confused expression at us just vanishing into the crowd.
"Looks like he's still two steps ahead of you Suika" Keirou chuckled at his girlfriend's frantic searching.
By this point, Hina and I were already far away from them and out of sight so I stopped concealing our presence.
"Hina, let's have fun on this date, just the two of us" I turned to her with a gentle smile.
"A-ah, yes, let's have fun….just…us two" Hina's face grew redder as she thought about something; I thought it was cute so I didn't think much into it.
Thus, we walked hand in hand, starting our first official date.
