Chapter 12 | It’s a Cat After All

The mid-term tests were successfully completed, and soon it was June. Then one day.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmm.”

When Rinka walks down the hallway humming in a good mood, she attracts a lot of stares from both men and women alike.

She doesn’t even realize it, but…

“Hey, isn’t Hayami-san too cute these days?”

“I thought so. She used to give off an unapproachable vibe, but now she’s so much softer.”

“That’s right. You should go talk to her.”

“Baka, you don’t know? Hayami-san’s got a boyfriend.”

“What? Are you for real? She’s that “Takamine no Hana” you know? There’s no way anyone can win her heart.”

“Ah, you were in the hospital then and didn’t come to school. No wonder you didn’t know. Look, there he is, the “The Womanizer” in the same class as Hayami-san. He’s that natural womanizer.”

“Oh, that guy… Damn, I envy him…”

“….it’s really that one.”

—and this is how it looks.

In contrast, many female students wanted to get close to Rinka in a different way than male students.

Rinka has become famous throughout the school as the “Takamine no Hana,” For better or worse, many girls do not think well of Rinka’s presence in the school, which attracts the attention of the boys.

However, these days, Rinka seems to be truly happy with me. Now that she is showing her face as a “high-class” girl, which they had never seen before, more and more female students want to talk to Rinka as a girl in love as well.

“Ah, Ikki!”

She was humming and flew off to find her boyfriend in front of her.

“Class match?”

“Yeah, you know how the teacher said we had to decide what we’re going to do in homeroom today? Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Walking next to me, she tilted her head.

Our school, unusually for a school in recent years, does not have a physical education festival. Instead, we have class matches and ball games twice a year.

The school is located in the city, so, unfortunately, the grounds are not big enough to hold a sports festival in which all the grades participate at the same time.

“I didn’t hear that.”

“No, listen carefully.”

“I’ve been thinking about the cat café.”

Right now, the two of us are on our way to a cat cafe in the city. The actual plan was to go either on Saturday or Sunday, but since there was a student discount on weekdays, we decided to go after school.

“Rinka loves cats, doesn’t she? Look at this picture, you can really feel your love for cats.

The picture I showed her was one of Rinka with a cat and a squishy, silly smile on her face. I don’t want to keep it on my cell phone, so I filmed it and put it on display in my room.

“—What! When did you take this picture?”

“Last time we were in Onomichi.”

“Somehow, it’s not fair that Ikki’s the only one.”

“Oh, well, it’s Rinka’s fault, she’s too cute.”

“…don’t say such a thing so suddenly and unexpectedly.”

“Hm? I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Hmm? I’m sorry, sorry.”

“You’re definitely not sorry. I’m going to take a lot of pictures of Ikki too.”

I thought to myself, “What kind of payback is that?” She pointed the lens of her phone at me and snapped a picture.

Since it was the first time for both of us to visit a cat café, we had done our homework, but when we stepped into the café, we found it to be much more spacious than we had imagined.

“Look at all the cats! There are so many cats!”

Rinka’s excitement was heightened by the presence of so many of her favorite cats.

She hadn’t even finished the registration yet, but I held Rinka’s hand tightly and stopped her as she was about to go and touch them.

Rinka was so lovely, fidgeting all the time, waiting for me to come.

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