“Devil, devil, devil, devil, devil…”
Akiba Sakura, once again being helped out of the roller coaster exit, kept cursing Yuuma Tsugumu in her heart.
It had to be said that Yuuma Tsugumu was a ruthless person.
He had gripped Sakura’s wrist the entire time, not letting go.
After enduring another two-hour queue and the heart-straining roller coaster ride, she was completely spent.
Throughout, Yuuma had held her wrist, preventing her from breaking free.
And Sakura couldn’t very well throw a tantrum in front of so many people, so she had to grit her teeth and go through it again.
She had thought to herself that even if she went again, she’d be a bit more accustomed than the first time and might feel better, but that wasn’t the case at all.
In contrast, Yuuma Tsugumu looked completely unfazed.
‘We went through the roller coaster twice, so why does he only look like his hair is a little messy?’
After resting on a bench for a good while, Sakura shot a dissatisfied glance at Yuuma, who was scrolling through his phone beside her, her lips pouted so high they could almost hang a small lantern.
“This is your punishment. If you do something indecent like that again, I’ll tell Aunt Shiori—”
“Hmph…”
Hearing Yuuma threaten to tell her mom, Sakura just turned her head away with a light snort.
‘Mom would definitely take my side anyway, so go ahead and tell her—damn blockhead!’
‘No wonder this guy had no reaction to my advances before. It’s because he’s a total straight man. I’ve been so bold these two times, yet the gains have been minimal.’
Thinking this, Sakura let out a long sigh, then slightly raised her head to look at the clear, cloudless sky.
Beside her, Yuuma waited silently.
He still believed Sakura needed more time to recover.
“…”
The two sat on the bench like that, one playing with his phone, the other gazing at the sky.
“Tsuguo-kun, why did you suddenly start hating me so much?”
After a long silence, Sakura’s clear, pleasant voice softly rang out—
Just moments before, Sakura had been constantly pondering in her mind why her plans hadn’t been progressing.
She thought about how her relationship with Yuuma had been fine before, until it suddenly changed during the summer vacation of the year they were about to advance to high school—
Yuuma had become much colder towards Sakura on his own.
So now, Sakura kept trying to recall what she might have done to make Yuuma suddenly dislike her.
In Sakura’s impression, she was supposed to be the kind, amiable, and lovely childhood friend character.
She shouldn’t be disliked by her childhood friend, right?
Unable to figure it out no matter how much she thought, Sakura finally subconsciously voiced the question—
“Tsuguo-kun, why did you suddenly start hating me so much?”
The moment the question left her lips, Sakura felt a twinge of regret.
But then she thought, this was a question that had troubled her for a long time, so asking the person directly—even if she got a false answer, she didn’t care.
However, Sakura’s intuition told her:
‘Yuuma Tsugumu won’t lie about this.’
“…”
Hearing the question, Yuuma’s finger, which had been swiping the screen, stopped.
But his gaze seemed still locked on the phone screen, unmoving.
Sakura kept looking at his profile, feeling inexplicably anxious and afraid, but also hiding a sliver of anticipation.
“I…”
Yuuma put down his phone, raised his head, and turned to look at Sakura.
For some reason—Sakura could see the firmness in his eyes hidden behind his bangs.
“I have never hated you.”
‘!’
Hearing these words, Sakura’s heart jolted.
The brain that had been ready to analyze Yuuma’s response instantly crashed, going completely blank.
“Ah? Oh! Th-that’s… that’s good!”
The two sat facing each other in silence for a good while before Sakura finally reacted.
At that moment, she only felt her ears burning, and her words came out somewhat slurred—
“S-so… it was just my misunderstanding, hehe~ I knew Tsuguo-kun couldn’t possibly hate me!”
Sakura’s face was slightly flushed, her gaze deliberately avoiding Yuuma.
If someone else had said this, she might have questioned it—because the drastic change in attitude before and after was undoubtedly a key point.
But because the person in front of her was Yuuma Tsugumu, her childhood friend from age three to sixteen, her heart instinctively chose to believe this statement.
“That’s really great!”
“…”
‘But you touched my scale.’
However, Yuuma’s words weren’t actually finished.
He had originally wanted to add this sentence, but looking at Sakura’s expression, his lips only parted slightly, paused for a moment, and then slowly closed again.
“Mhm.”
In the end, he only let out a heavy ‘Mhm,’ and then stopped looking at Sakura.
Yuuma wasn’t lying.
Ever since he met Akiba Sakura at the age of three, his gaze had been captivated by this radiant ‘childhood friend.’
He still remembered many things, many things about Akiba Sakura—
In preschool, when he was being mischievous and accidentally broke a vase, after Yuuma Mariko made sure he wasn’t hurt, she began lecturing him.
It was Sakura who used her soft, gentle voice to persuade Mariko not to scold him anymore.
In elementary school, when he offended some older students and got cornered by a few of them in an alley near the school, it was Sakura who fiercely chased them away with her backpack and helped treat his wounds.
She herself just spat a little saliva and wiped the wound on her cheek from a wood splinter, looking up with a smile saying that could disinfect it.
In middle school, Sakura, whose beauty had begun to blossom, wore a pure white dress.
Standing on the stage during the school festival, she played the violin brilliantly with her slender, pale hands, shining brightly.
He stood below the stage, watching that dazzling figure, unable to help but feel his heart flutter.
All these things forced Yuuma Tsugumu’s heart to admit one thing—Akiba Sakura was undoubtedly his ‘White Moonlight.’
And now, Yuuma had matured a lot. He could control his emotions well when faced with things.
So, at first, he thought it was fine to keep the relationship like this, to just watch her silently from afar.
Until one day, he discovered that something Sakura did touched the one and only scale of his as a ‘Pure Love Warrior.’
The former ‘White Moonlight’ also crumbled in that instant, which made him secretly resolve to cut ties with Akiba Sakura in the future—
So when Sakura asked this question, Yuuma, looking at the former ‘White Moonlight’ before him, found it impossible to hate Akiba Sakura no matter what.
But as a ‘Pure Love Warrior,’ he also found it impossible to approve of Akiba Sakura no matter what.
This was why he always lost his temper when Sakura teased him with ‘NTR Classic Quotes’—normally, facing his ‘childhood friend’ and ‘White Moonlight,’ he would have taken those words as ‘jokes.’
But after that incident, he could no longer view the things she said at that time as ‘just joking’ no matter what.
“…”
“…”
“Well! That was a strange question to ask, huh? Tsuguo-kun, don’t take it to heart, okay—shall we go play the next attraction?”
Sakura smiled, slowly stood up, and looked at Yuuma, her hands clasped behind her back as she showed a cute smile.
“…”
Seeing Sakura like this, Yuuma also smiled and responded:
“No, let’s call it a day here.”