Not Falling for It! [Please Follow!]

After finishing their dessert, Hyuga Bin and Kurenai Yuhi took a walk on the street to help digest their food.

"Bin, can you do me a favor?" Kurenai Yuhi asked Hyuga Bin cautiously as they approached a fork in the road.

"What is it?" Hyuga Bin didn't immediately agree.

Before knowing if he could help, Hyuga Bin wouldn't blindly agree to requests.

"It's... I want to ask you to be my boyfriend." After saying this, Kurenai Yuhi quickly added, as if afraid Hyuga Bin would misunderstand, "Just a pretend boyfriend, for a little while."

"Kurenai, you want me to help you fend off Asuma's confession?" Hyuga Bin understood Kurenai Yuhi's intention; she wanted to use him as a shield.

He hadn't expected such a melodramatic plot, usually seen on TV, to happen to him.

If the story followed the usual TV drama trope, wouldn't their fake relationship eventually become real?

"You could say that," Kurenai Yuhi didn't deny it.

"Kurenai, I can't agree to this," Hyuga Bin didn't play along with the TV drama cliché and immediately refused Kurenai Yuhi's request. "I know you don't like Asuma, and even after you rejected him, he still pursued you, which has been bothering you. But I don't think pretending to be in a relationship is the right way to get rid of Asuma's pursuit.

You can tell Asuma more clearly that his pursuit makes you feel burdened and ask him to stop focusing his attention on you. I believe Asuma will understand; he's not the type to cling to you relentlessly."

"I'm sorry, Bin, I was being too presumptuous and didn't think it through," Kurenai Yuhi didn't get angry at Hyuga Bin's words, instead offering an apologetic look.

"Kurenai, you don't need to apologize. It's just that I couldn't help you." Hyuga Bin pointed to the fork in the road ahead, as their paths home diverged. "Alright, this is where we part ways for today. See you tomorrow."

"Okay, see you tomorrow," Kurenai Yuhi nodded and watched Hyuga Bin leave.

Kurenai Yuhi had a little secret: she had been secretly in love with Hyuga Bin since their time at the Ninja Academy.

Of course, her liking for Hyuga Bin wasn't just because he was handsome; she wasn't that superficial.

During their time at the Ninja Academy, she had always watched Hyuga Bin. He was more mature, sensible, polite, gentle, hardworking, diligent, self-disciplined... and handsome, compared to the other boys in their class.

She found it hard to imagine how one boy could possess so many good qualities. If Hyuga Bin didn't occasionally roughhouse with the other boys, she would have thought he was too perfect to be real.

In the years at the Ninja Academy, while she and the other girls focused their attention on the "star figures" of genius Hatake Kakashi and the Hokage's son Sarutobi Asuma, she preferred to pay attention to Hyuga Bin, who sat in front of her.

Later, she realized she had fallen in love with Hyuga Bin and enjoyed paying attention to his every move.

However, she didn't dare confess her feelings to Hyuga Bin because he only saw her as a classmate.

Even after graduation, they weren't assigned to the same team, and she could only occasionally hear about Hyuga Bin.

But not seeing Hyuga Bin for a long time didn't diminish her secret crush.

It was only in the last two years, as many classmates started dating, that her suppressed feelings began to yearn for something more.

Young love always blossoms.

Shyly, she approached her older cousin, Yūhi Meiko, who had a lot of dating experience, hoping for help.

Yūhi Meiko, living up to her reputation as a love expert, devised a series of plans for her after hearing about her secret crush.

This included the "chance encounter" at the dessert shop, the "failed chance encounter" at the training grounds, the third "chance encounter" at the dessert shop, and then feeding Hyuga Bin a small cake, wiping his mouth, and asking him to pretend to be her boyfriend – a whole series of tactics.

However, Hyuga Bin was a transmigrator who had dated many girlfriends. None of the tactics Yūhi Meiko taught her worked, and Hyuga Bin rejected her more decisively each time.

As soon as she got home, Kurenai Yuhi collapsed on the sofa, looking utterly dejected.

She had played all her cards today with no effect, making her doubt if she had any charm in Hyuga Bin's eyes at all.

After slumping for more than ten minutes, Kurenai Yuhi went to find her cousin, Yūhi Meiko, again.

"Did you not meet the boy you like today?" Yūhi Meiko asked, hugging Kurenai Yuhi and smiling, seeing her dejected state.

"I did," Kurenai Yuhi sighed.

"Then why do you look so downcast if you met him?" Yūhi Meiko felt Kurenai Yuhi's expression was very bad.

"Big sister, the methods you told me don't work at all. Today at the dessert shop..."

Kurenai Yuhi recounted her entire interaction with Hyuga Bin that day to Yūhi Meiko.

"How could this be?" Yūhi Meiko couldn't help but be a little surprised when she heard Kurenai Yuhi's story.

When she had used these methods on boys before, they had always been effective.

There wasn't a single boy she wanted to win over who had escaped her grasp.

"I think he just doesn't like me at all." The repeated failures made Kurenai Yuhi think this.

"No, even if he doesn't like you, facing someone as cute as you, a normal boy would still have normal physiological reactions," Yūhi Meiko disagreed with Kurenai Yuhi's idea and even had a bold guess: "Is it possible he doesn't like girls?"

"He probably wouldn't, right?" Kurenai Yuhi had a gut feeling that Hyuga Bin wasn't gay.

"How about this: you're going to a class reunion with him tomorrow, right? Big sister will teach you a killer move. As long as he's a psychologically normal boy, this time you'll definitely win him over!"

Yūhi Meiko leaned close to Kurenai Yuhi's ear and whispered, "Kurenai, listen carefully. When the time comes, you just do this..."