“You… you…”
“Me, me, me~”
Ignoring Yuuma Tsugumu’s panicked expression, Akiba Sakura lightly stepped into his room as if she owned the place.
“Heh heh… I don’t know why, but coming into Tsugumu’s room after dinner has a different flavor to it~”
Sakura spoke with a sing-song lilt while twirling a key in her hand.
“Wha… Why do you have the key to my room?!”
“Oh my~ I wonder why? I’d like to know too~ “
Sakura’s mouth instantly curved into a mischievous cat-like shape, her eyes gleaming with pride.
She slowly closed the door behind her and even thoughtfully turned the lock.
“There we go. Now everything is back to the way it was~”
“The hell it is!!!!! You’re still in here, aren’t you?!!!”
“Eh—”
As if she had heard something hilarious, Sakura waved her hand dismissively.
“Don’t be silly, Tsugumu. I’ve been in this room the whole time, haven’t I?”
“Who are you trying to kid…”
Before Tsugumu could argue, Sakura interrupted him.
“As for the key… I really don’t know how it ended up in my hand. Honestly~”
“Liar!”
It wasn’t exactly that Sakura was lying; she genuinely didn’t understand why Yuuma Mariko had just handed the keys over to her like that…
***
The time went back to when Sakura was helping Mariko with the dishes.
After hearing Tsugumu close his door on the second floor, Sakura let out a long sigh.
‘He’s totally impenetrable. He even locked the door… Does this mean I’ve made no progress at all? Sigh… If I don’t get anywhere before that guy gets a girlfriend, won’t I have failed?’
Sakura scrubbed a bowl, feeling a bitter taste in her mouth.
‘Dammit… Is my Great Plan of Childhood Friend NTR going to go bankrupt just like that? Should I just find a new target now?’
‘No way… I’ve finally made it this far. Everything was fine before high school, so why did things suddenly turn out like this…?’
‘If he gets a girlfriend, should I become the “other woman” and do a Reverse NTR? No… there’s no thrill in that… Appreciating a girl’s despairing, lifeless expression… It really isn’t as good as having a Victim. Sigh—’
As a Master Foodie, Sakura felt a rare moment of dejection.
‘Ah… whatever. Once I’m done with these dishes, I’ll just go home and watch a few episodes of NTR anime and take care of myself. It looks like today is a dead end anyway…’
Just then, a set of keys attached to a thin cord suddenly appeared before Sakura’s eyes.
“Th-This is?”
The sudden appearance of the keys gave Sakura a start, and her hands stopped scrubbing the bowl.
“Meow meow meow…?”
“Meow meow meow meow!”
The meows were answered.
Sakura turned to look at the “Mariko-cat” holding the keys and froze.
“A-Ah…?”
“These are… the spare keys to Tsugumu’s room.”
“Ts-Tsugumu’s room keys?”
The moment she heard they were ‘Yuuma Tsugumu’s room keys,’ Sakura reached out with her sudsy little hands and reflexively grabbed them.
“That’s right~ Go on, Sakura. Go open The Forbidden Door!”
“The… The Forbidden Door…?”
The moment she heard the word ‘forbidden,’ Sakura’s eyes lit up.
Ignoring the soap suds on her hands, she took the keys and prepared to head upstairs.
“Wait, hold on—”
Mariko stopped Sakura before she could react, grabbed her hands, and wiped them dry on her own apron.
“Do your best, okay?”
Once the foam was gone, Mariko looked at Sakura encouragingly.
“D-Do my best?”
‘Who cares! With these keys, I have the trump card to turn this around!’
Sakura didn’t have time to overthink her confusion.
She thanked Mariko and ran up to the second floor.
‘Go get him, Sakura!’
Mariko secretly cheered for her.
Meanwhile, inside his room, Tsugumu let out a sudden, inexplicable sneeze.
***
“Mom did something unnecessary again…”
Looking at Sakura sitting across the small table, Tsugumu only needed a moment’s thought to realize his mother was behind this.
After all, no one else besides his mother had a spare key to his room, not even his father.
“…How did you get Mom to give you the keys?”
“This and that, that and this~”
However, Sakura acted as if she hadn’t heard him, preoccupied with rummaging through his school bag.
“Wait… That’s my bag…”
“Heave-ho! Found it!”
Just as Tsugumu reached out to take his bag back, Sakura pulled out exactly what she was looking for—Tsugumu’s exercise book.
“Page twenty-eight… twenty-eight… here it is!”
“Hey, what are you doing…?”
As she flipped through Tsugumu’s exercise book, Sakura’s eyebrows twitched.
“…”
“You brat, that’s enough! Give it back—”
Before he could finish his sentence or touch the book, a monstrous strength clamped down on his wrist.
“!”
Tsugumu was startled.
He looked at Sakura and saw that while the girl’s fair face still held a sweet smile, it was now covered in dark, shadowy lines.
“Hey, Yuuma Tsugumu…”
“!”
Though her voice hadn’t changed much, the sheer pressure radiating from her tone made the high school boy—who was both older and taller than her—feel a chill run down his spine.
“You… this homework… you just wrote total gibberish, didn’t you?”
“Th-That’s none of your business!”
Despite the hellish pressure coming from in front of him, Tsugumu hadn’t completely lost his nerve.
“Homework is just something you finish and get over with…”
“Huh?”
Sakura released his wrist and slammed her hand on the table.
She tilted her head slightly, her eyes staring gloomily at the boy in front of her.
‘Fine, fine, fine—I didn’t check properly for the past two weeks, and it turns out this guy is still just phoning it in? Is this the level of the Victim I chose for my Grand NTR Undertaking?’
“Pick up your pen.”
“What did you… say…”
“I said pick up your pen!!!”
“Yes!!!!”
Tsugumu, who had intended to keep challenging the authority of “Blackened” Sakura, instantly sat perfectly straight like a good little boy.
He held his pen in one hand while the other obediently moved the exercise book in front of him.
‘I… I was careless. In my quest to taste the ultimate NTR result, I forgot the most important point—’
“Hurry up. Cross this out and do it again! I clearly taught you this one!”
A demonic red light flashed in Sakura’s eyes.
“And this one! Even though the answer is right, your handwriting is so crooked it looks like you were asleep. Rewrite it! Rewrite it!”
“Isn’t… isn’t this a bit much…?”
“You don’t know a damn thing! “
Sakura cut him off, her finger pressing heavily under one of the problems.
‘Tsugumu’s looks are average at best, and his grades back in middle school were a complete disaster… I was too obsessed with grinding his affection points that I forgot about this…’
“If you get this right but lose points because your handwriting is too ugly, then that outcome…”
‘If this guy doesn’t have a single spark of brilliance, he’ll undoubtedly be swallowed by an inferiority complex! I won’t, though! When it comes time to face off against the Yellow Hair, he won’t have a shred of fighting spirit. Even if he falls in love with me, when I’m eventually snatched away by the Yellow Hair, he’ll most likely just show a cowardly expression and back out… If that happens… the fruit of victory…’
“It won’t be perfect at all!!!!!!”
‘It won’t be perfect at all!!!!!!’