"How did it go? Was everything resolved?" Zhao Yu's voice came through the phone.
"Mm, it's resolved." Yuuka glanced at the sleeping Qigong Shiori beside her and spoke softly.
"That's good. What happened to her?" Zhao Yu asked curiously.
"Actually..." Yuuka quietly explained what had just happened to Zhao Yu.
"I see. I didn't expect things to be so hard for her too..." Zhao Yu sighed.
"Lord Yu, you don't dislike Shiori, do you?" Yuuka asked.
"Not at all. If she were truly jealous of you, she wouldn't have told you. Really, she just got herself stuck in a dead end. The moment she had even the slightest thought, she decided that she'd become a bad person," Zhao Yu said.
As a corporate drone who had lived a second life, he naturally saw things more clearly.
In his view, Qigong Shiori had been living far too repressed a life. Because of her father, her moral standards had been pushed endlessly higher.
She couldn't tolerate the existence of any feelings that might taint her friendship with Yuuka, which was why she had suddenly broken down.
"But she's quite brave. She was able to decisively leave her family behind and live on her own."
Zhao Yu thought of a colleague from his previous life, someone who, like Qigong Shiori, had been tightly bound by his family.
But he hadn't had the courage to break away. Instead, he had lived day after day under that crushing pressure until all the spirit had drained out of him.
"Yes, Shiori really is brave." Yuuka looked out the window, her thoughts unknown.
"Yuuka? What's wrong? You seem a little strange..." Zhao Yu keenly noticed the shift in Yuuka's mood.
"Nothing. I'm just a little sleepy. It's already midnight, after all," Yuuka said.
"True. You have class