"I never thought Onoya's free-spirited habit of clinging to Mr. Lin Yan would come in handy here."
"Hehe. I'd been preparing for this day from the very beginning."
"Yes, yes, you're the best."
"Thinking about the distance between you and Miss Hishiro last year, I figured we could use that as an excuse to cover things up."
"Now even I'm hurt."
"Sorry. Since we couldn't outsmart her, we could only rely on psychological warfare!" Onoya An's smug smile made her intentions obvious to everyone. Then her expression suddenly changed as she continued, "But judging by her face, she definitely didn't believe our explanation."
"Yeah." Yoru Akatsuki agreed with that, nodding. "But what Miss Hishiro does next is something I'm looking forward to as well."
"Exactly."
"Be careful. We absolutely can't let anything slip and cause Mr. Lin Yan's ReLIFE to fail at the last moment."
"Exactly."
The ice in the iced coffee had already melted. Yoru Akatsuki lifted his cup and took a sip, then looked at Onoya. Onoya said to him—
"Senior, although I've always felt a little bothered by the fact that Mr. Lin Yan was taken from me, you actually wanted to support Miss Hishiro until the very end, didn't you?"
Yoru Akatsuki took another sip of coffee. Still holding the cup in his hand, he suddenly said—
"Sorry. I actually acted like the victim back then."
"That couldn't be helped. In truth, Onoya, you didn't do anything wrong. It was my results and proposal that led to this outcome."
Yoru Akatsuki recalled the day their superiors assigned the tasks. Onoya An had been standing beside him before the section chief. Yoru Akatsuki's proposal was to extend Hishiro Chizuru's experiment, but he had no idea how likely it was to be approved. He appeared calm on the