Friend

Right after the summer vacation, the new semester started. Everyone couldn't stay lazy around and needed to go to school.

Naturally, Shishio was also included.

Still, he was surprised by the sudden news coming from Usa.

"You go out with that girl?"

"Hahaha..." Usa laughed happily.

"You! You! How dare you leave me behind?! You guys are traitors!" Tagami cried when he heard Usa had a girlfriend.

However, Shishio smiled and patted his shoulder gently. "Good job." He thought of something and then took out two vouchers from his pocket. "For you."

"What is this?" Usa was dumbfounded when Shishio suddenly gave him something.

"It's a free ticket to watch a movie. You can have it."

"Eh? Really?" Usa was surprised.

"You don't want to?"

"No! No! Please let me have it! Thank you very much!" Usa bowed his head gratefully. His money was quite thin, so it was great that someone could give him a movie ticket, so he didn't need to pay much money for the date. While his girlfriend didn't ask him to treat her as a man, he wanted to treat her, but the reality said otherwise.

His salary from the part-time job wasn't bad, but there were a lot of things that he needed to use.

Shishio smiled and felt happy that Usa had gotten a new girlfriend. Still, he wasn't surprised since Usa was a good guy, and his face wasn't that bad. His size was also average in this country, so everything about him wasn't that bad at all.

Still, this also made him wonder what Ritsu was going to do.

However, when he was there, it was quite impossible for them to be together, especially when Ritsu didn't feel anything toward Usa. Instead of forcing their relationship, it was better for him to take her, but he just felt that the time wasn't right.

He also started to feel that something might happen soon, which made him quite restless. However, he shook his head, and all he could do was to prepare in case something happened.

"Um, Oga-san... can you also..."

He glanced at Tagami and asked, "Do you have a girlfriend now?"

"...." Tagami could only cry in the corner of the class.

Shishio looked at Tagami for a while before thinking about his preparation. While the system was great, he also did his own business. He only had three businesses, which he created on his own, and all of them were internet-based.

The first business was Pixiv, which was an online community for an artist.

The second was NicoNico, which was an online video sharing.

The third was Zoom, which was communication software.

Lastly, it was Twitter, a social network service.

He combined the three of them and even wanted to buy Syosetsu, which is an online novel self-publishing website, to combine with his other business.

Besides that, he also built a cloud-computing server and artificial intelligence like what Ryuunosuke Akasaka had.

He had to say that artificial intelligence made his life convenient since it could help him with many things. It could also help him protect his business from hackers, which was quite troublesome.

This might be strange of him to say all of this, and people might wonder when he had time to do all of this when he had been flirting with all of his girlfriends most of the time.

Yet strangely enough, he had time. He spent two to four hours managing most of his business every day before leaving all of them to his people. He only pointed the direction, and as for the rest, he left them since, with the number of businesses that he owned, it was impossible for him to manage all of them alone.

"Still, it's rare for you to go to school."

He looked ahead and asked Ryuunosuke, who was sitting in front of him.

Ryuunosuka rarely came to school since he felt that school was useless and it was better to spend his time on his work. However, a genius had this privilege, so everything was okay.

"Even if I have a privilege, there is still a limit. It's dangerous if I don't come."

Ryuunosuke bit a tomato with his teeth, causing some of the juices to drip from the corners of his lips.

Shishio looked at him for a moment and wondered why he felt there were a few guys that were observing Ryuunosuke secretly.

Shishio glanced at Sorata, who blushed before looking away.

"..."

His lips twitched, and he shook his head since Sorata wasn't someone that he should watch out for anymore. Instead, if there was someone he needed to deal with, it was that person.

"What's wrong?" Nana asked curiously since his expression was quite weird.

He looked at Nana, Mea, Maiko, and Nanami, who were in the same class as him. He shook his head and said, "Nothing. I am just thinking that everyone is talking about the cultural festival now."

"Oh, listen! Listen!"

The cultural festival had always been the most exciting, and everyone looked forward to it in this school.

Naturally, it was for normal students, but a few isolated students didn't really want to participate and only wanted to finish this event as soon as possible.

However, could they?

The cultural festival of Suimei was different from other schools. It was already a regional event where all the people in the neighborhood would come and participate in the event. It was also held for a full week without stopping, showing how extraordinary this event was.

Nana, Mea, Maiko, and Nanami were also excited, especially when they had been working hard on creating a horror theme of books for the literature club. They were sure that their work could be successful. Even if it couldn't be accepted by the majority, their work could be accepted by a niche audience.

"....."

He was silent since he didn't think they were wrong since the niche audience would be excited by their work, yet even so, he felt complicated even if he was also one of the creators. He didn't join their conversation and only listened quietly, especially when they planned to dress in horror costumes.

"...horror costume?"

"Yes."

Mea and Maiko suddenly took out their books and showed him the costume that they had drawn.

"What do you think?"

"...what is this?"

"Hasshaku-san."

"Hasshaku-san?"

"It's a ghost who eats a little boy."

"Rejected."

"Why?!" 2x

"It's gonna cause a lot of trouble." He looked at Mea and Maiko with a sigh. "Please don't add such an element, okay? We're going to get banned."

What could they say?

Their discussion was quite intense, and in the end, they decided to wear a nun outfit.

Why?

Because it was easier and kind of cute somehow, also, being in a nun outfit also made the people around them think what they sold was kind of tame and wasn't something horror, which was kind of fun to see what kind of expression those people were going to react to when they read their books.

On the other hand, was he also going to wear a priest outfit?

Maybe this was part of his duty to exorcise many lewd women in this school.

Still, while their club activity was something that they looked forward to, the activity of their class also wasn't something that they were going to miss. They had planned several things, but in the end, it might be better to open a sweet stall or something since they didn't really have much energy to focus on the class.

"Compared to us, you're going to be the busiest, you know?"

"Literature club aside, since we can help with the rest, the Service Club will make a movie, right?"

"Are you going to get the help of the Movie Club?"

"No." Shishio shook his head. "If we get the help of the Movie Club, people will think that the amazing one is the Movie Club, not our club."

"...."

They were speechless, but they couldn't deny that he was right.

However, he knew that he was going to be quite busy with this cultural festival.

'Class, Literature Club, and Service Club. Then...'

He thought about Sakurasou and suddenly thought about a certain crazy upperclasswoman. He was one hundred people sure that girl wouldn't stay quiet about this cultural festival and would definitely do something.

---

And his guest was right, Misaki was talking with her friend about the cultural festival, and when she thought how fun it was, she also wanted to do something.

"I want to do something! I want to do something too!"

While Misaki might be an alien, she still had basic communication skills, and she also had few friends, even though the number wasn't much. However, this was what friends were, right? There was no need for a lot of them, only a few, but they could stay with you until your last life.

Saori Himemiya was one of those friends. She looked at Misaki for a while before glancing outside, and she happened to see Mitaka Ren, who happened to walk or deliberately walked, in front of Misaki's class.

However, Misaki was oblivious to Mitaka, or she might even ignore him.

"Misaki."

"Hmm?"

"Are you not going to say anything to Mitaka? That guy has been standing in front of our class."

"Oh, I see him."

"Then?" Saori was dumbfounded by Misaki's calm demeanor. It might be only her imagination before, but somehow she felt Misaki had changed. It felt like Misaki had become mature. She wasn't sure how to explain this, but she couldn't help but ask.

Misaki was shy, blushed, then said, "I... I have been conquered now."

"..."

"...Sorry."

"I am someone's bitch now."

"...what?"

"As I said, I belong to someone now."

"....so um... like a boyfriend? I mean, you have a boyfriend?!"

"Un." Misaki nodded shyly.

"...." Saori glanced to the side and saw that Mitaka wasn't there anymore. She shook her head and said, "Congratulations." After all, compared to such a scumbag, it was better for Misaki to get a different man, right?

"Who is it?"

Anyway, after everything was settled, the two talked about love between them.

---

While everyone was going home or his apartment to talk about many things, he walked toward the Service Club, but before that, he was going to stop at the ice cream vending machine to buy his favorite mint chocolate ice cream.

Still, as he arrived, he saw someone was there.

"Yo, Senpai."

"..."

Hikigiya was about to eat his chocolate ice cream but stopped before he greeted this scumbag.

"Yo."

Was it his imagination?

Why did he feel like he had a friend now?

Yet he didn't think this was bad at all.