Chapter 120: Black Mini Dress

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Translator: Soafp

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“Ren-kun, did you have another bad dream?”

The next morning.

After giving me a light kiss as I woke up, Airi looked at me with concern.

At her words, Nodoka—who had been in the middle of doting on me that morning—opened her eyes wide.

“W-What!? Another one!?”

“No, not that kind of nightmare.”

At the very least, it wasn’t one where someone died or was seriously injured.

Still, it was quite a shocking event for me.

I got out of bed and sat down at my desk.

Then, as I told the two of them about the nightmare I’d had that morning, I began writing it down in my notebook.

“The light music club president suddenly drops out of school.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Well…”

Even in the dream, I’d only heard about it secondhand from Takagi.

Even Takagi had been completely flustered.

The reason for her dropping out was something I never could have predicted.

“She ended up showing her panties to the entire student body.”

““…Huh?””

Not only Nodoka, but even Airi blinked several times in confusion.

Seeing Airi react like that was surprisingly refreshing.

“Apparently, during the cultural festival performance, she got so caught up in the excitement of playing that she stopped paying attention to her footing… and took a spectacular fall.”

“So… when she fell, everyone got a full view of her underwear?”

“…Yeah.”

It felt like something straight out of a high school band anime.

Sure, it would be incredibly embarrassing.

But was it really enough to drive someone to withdraw from school?

Unfortunately, that wasn’t where the problem ended.

“Apparently quite a few people were recording the performance on their phones. Of course, they weren’t trying to film her underwear on purpose.”

“I see… So the video showing her panties ended up spreading everywhere.”

“Yeah. It didn’t just circulate around school—it also got uploaded to social media.”

According to Takagi, the school had tried to deal with it, but the video had already spread too widely to erase completely.

“And apparently… the underwear itself wasn’t exactly ordinary.”

“Huh? Was it really that sexy?”

“…Apparently.”

From my perspective, dropping out seemed like an overreaction.

But for the club president herself, it must have been an overwhelming amount of stress.

Knowing her personality, she probably couldn’t bring herself to confide in anyone, either.

Airi nodded thoughtfully.

“I think I understand your ability a little better now, Ren-kun.”

“Hm? Where’d that come from?”

“Ever since you’ve been telling me about your ability, something has been bothering me. You say you foresee unfortunate events, but what counts as ‘misfortune’ is pretty vague, isn’t it?”

“Well… yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Exactly.”

She turned the page of my notebook and began writing with a pencil.

“My theory is that the criterion is whether you would be shocked by it.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yes. Every unfortunate event you’ve foreseen so far has been something that would deeply shock you, hasn’t it?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“I think your ability predicts events that catch you completely off guard—things you’re emotionally unprepared for.”

Her theory made an incredible amount of sense.

Especially when I thought back to Yuzuki’s case.

That nightmare hadn’t been about Yuzuki dying or being seriously injured.

It had been about something that would have been devastating for me.

“So that’s why the targets were always either me or people around me. And by ‘people around me,’ it really means people within the range of what I can observe.”

“Exactly. The reason you dreamed about me jumping off the rooftop was because it was supposed to happen right in front of you. Back then, we didn’t even know each other, remember?”

“That’s true. You couldn’t exactly call someone you hadn’t even met ‘someone around me.’ …Wait a second.”

I turned toward Airi.

“How do you know that?”

“Know what?”

“The… detailed contents of the nightmare about you.”

“Because I read every single one of your notebooks.”

“…”

Come to think of it, she’d searched through my entire room.

It shouldn’t have been surprising that she’d read my notebooks too.

The way she admitted it so casually left me speechless.

Maybe she figured it didn’t matter since that future had already been avoided.

Nodoka stared in surprise.

“Huh?? What are you talking about? Senpai jumped off the roof?”

“Ah… well…”

“I’ll explain.”

Airi explained that nightmare to Nodoka.

As she listened, tears gradually filled Nodoka’s eyes, and before long she tightly hugged Airi.

“S-Senpai… If Ren hadn’t been there… I don’t know what would’ve happened to you…”

“That’s right. That’s why Ren-kun is the most important person in my life. And after him… you are, Nodoka.”

“I’m only second!? Well… I guess that’s only natural!”

The three of us laughed together.

Seeing my girlfriends getting along so well was heartwarming.

I’d always thought a scene like this could never exist in real life.

Just then, Yui opened the bedroom door.

“Um… breakfast is ready…”

“Oh, sorry. We’re coming.”

The three of us left the room and sat down at the dining table.

Lately, Yui’s cooking had improved by leaps and bounds.

These days, Yui handled breakfast, Nodoka cooked dinner, and the two of them made lunch together.

After taking a sip of the miso soup, Yui nervously asked,

“U-Um… h-how is it? Does it suit your taste?”

“Hm? Yeah. It’s delicious. I really like this kind of homemade flavor.”

“R-Really? That’s a relief… Then… I’ll make breakfast every morning from now on. M-Miso soup… or whatever you’d like…”

Yui looked unusually embarrassed.

…Was this one of those “I’ll make you miso soup every morning” moments?

After taking a sip of the soup herself, Airi asked,

“So, Ren-kun, what are you going to do about the club president?”

“Hmm… Ideally, we’d keep her from falling in the first place. But on stage, there are just too many unpredictable factors.”

It was similar to what had happened with Ito-san.

But during the cultural festival performance, it would be much harder to stay right beside her like before.

“Honestly, it’d probably be best if we just changed the costume to pants.”

“But Ren-kun… can you actually convince her?”

“…That’s the problem. She seems really happy with the current costume.”

The real issue was how to prevent her underwear from being exposed while keeping the black mini dress.

Nodoka immediately suggested a simple solution.

“Wouldn’t wearing spats underneath solve everything? Honestly, I don’t understand why anyone would go on stage dressed like that without wearing them in the first place.”

“Now that you mention it… You’re right. There’s no way she simply forgot to put them on… is there?”

Then again, I also had to consider the matter of causality.

“Well, Ren-kun, shouldn’t you start by talking to the club president herself?”

“Yeah. But suddenly bringing up her underwear would be… pretty awkward.”

I briefly considered leaving it to Nodoka and Airi.

Then I remembered that, if anything, the two of them had even worse social skills than I did.

As far as I knew, the person closest to the club president was…

Nodoka narrowed her eyes.

“Ren, don’t go helping another girl and accidentally flirting with her again.”

“…That’s not my intention.”

“Nodoka, Ren-kun has the constitution of an eroge protagonist. Even if he does nothing, girls are destined to gather around him.”

“That… actually might be true…”

Just what did those two think I was?

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After arriving at school as usual, I got straight to the point with Takagi.

“You’re pretty close with the light music club president, right?”

“Huh? What’s with that all of a sudden? I mean… we’re fairly close.”

“How close?”

“Well… that’s kind of hard to answer.”

Making sure none of our classmates could overhear, I lowered my voice and asked with a straight face,

“Close enough to casually talk about sexy underwear?”

“As if I could do that! I’m not you!”

“Hey, I couldn’t do that either.”

“Then why on earth did you think I could!?”

Takagi delivered a perfectly valid retort.