The Lying Man

Goto Hitori jumped, looking as guilty as a thief caught in the act.

"You wouldn't pretend to be sick to get out of work, would you? That would be shameful."

"N-no... no, I wouldn't."

Goto Hitori wept inwardly.

How did he know what I was thinking?

"Good. I trust you."

Bai Qiu smiled.

Goto Hitori changed into her sukumizu swimsuit.

She was submerged in the bathtub, which was filled with cold water and floating ice cubes.

Her teeth chattered from the cold.

And Bai Qiu's voice kept echoing in her mind.

Shameful behavior, shameful behavior, shameful, shameful... shameful...

So, all she had to do was actually get sick.

Then it wouldn't be shameful.

She couldn't let Aki-kun down after he'd trusted her!

"Hehehe... So cold..."

"Big sister's broken again."

A childish voice rang out.

A little girl who looked a lot like Goto Hitori, but was a hundred, a thousand, even ten thousand times more cheerful, stood beside the bathroom door.

She was Goto Hitori's little sister.

Nili had long since gotten used to her big sister's strange behavior.

Little Nili took out her diary and slowly wrote it all down.

Who knew how much time passed...

"Mom, something terrible happened!"

"Big sister passed out in the bath!"

Goto Nili shouted down the stairs!

Goto Hitori woke up in her room.

She sneezed twice and got a runny nose.

She didn't think that was enough.

So she spent another night sitting in front of a fan set to its highest speed.

She had to actually get sick!

Shameful behavior...

She couldn't betray his trust!

The Lying Man

"I can't believe this body is so healthy..."

Goto Hitori hunched over and made a ghastly sound as she arrived at Starry.

She was ready to face her doom.

She had never hated her healthy body so much.

All she did was get up earlier than the chickens and go to bed later than the owls.

She practiced intensely for over six hours every day.

After enduring cold water, ice, a fan, and a sleepless night...

All she had to show for it today was darker circles under her eyes than usual.

There was no way she could pretend to be sick!

It was the first day of Goto Hitori's working life.

It was such a momentous day.

Of course, Bai Qiu had come too.

It was also the first day of his part-time working life.

Last night, when Nijika told Ijichi Hoshino that Bai Qiu and Hitori would be working at Starry too,

Ijichi Hoshino had readily agreed.

After all, Starry was staffed entirely by girls.

She'd been short one strong back to handle the heavy lifting.

And now Bai Qiu was here.

She could get a little payback.

But then Nijika had added that

Bai Qiu only wanted to work part-time occasionally.

Ijichi Hoshino had, of course, objected.

What did he take her place for?

Come and go whenever he pleased?

But after Nijika asked her again and again,

Ijichi Hoshino finally agreed.

There wasn't much heavy lifting anyway.

So Ijichi Hoshino gave Bai Qiu a temporary job:

handing out flyers by the entrance.

For the record, Yamada Ryo was in charge of cleaning, while Nijika and Hitori were making drinks.

Bai Qiu happily accepted.

He'd never done any kind of part-time work before.

After all, he'd made his fortune writing light novels.

But surely handing out a few flyers wouldn't stump him.

It was the perfect chance to show Ijichi Hoshino how good he was at drawing in customers.

Standing in the shade,

Bai Qiu held a stack of flyers.

They listed the bands performing that evening and the songs they would play.

As people passed by,

Bai Qiu gave them a handsome, polite smile. With his clean student outfit and good looks,

almost no one turned him down.

The passersby took the flyers cheerfully.

The stack in his hands grew smaller and smaller, but Bai Qiu's smile gradually stiffened.

The flyers were going out,

but he hadn't sold a single ticket.

How embarrassing would it be to face Ijichi Hoshino later!

To be fair, it wasn't really Bai Qiu's fault.

Not many people decided on the spur of the moment to watch a live performance. A full live show lasted two or three hours,

and leaving halfway through would make people feel they'd wasted their money.

Suddenly, Bai Qiu felt someone poke him in the back.

Had Ijichi Hoshino come out to check on him?

Probably not. If it were Ijichi Hoshino,

he'd hear her before she arrived.

Bai Qiu turned around.

"I want this."

The girl wasn't very tall, so Bai Qiu looked down.

Their eyes met: the girl was looking up at him.

Had the long-awaited, crowd-pleasing character finally made her entrance?

Bai Qiu couldn't help thinking.

And she even had heterochromia: blue on the left and yellow on the right.

Whether she'd been born that way or was wearing colored contacts, he had no way of knowing.

When Bai Qiu didn't respond,

Yoruna poked him again with a small finger, then held out her palm.

"Sorry. Here you go."

Bai Qiu handed her a flyer.

Only then did he notice what was beside the white-haired girl:

a rolling case almost as big as she was.

Was it an instrument?

The case was so large that Bai Qiu guessed it held other equipment too.

But could this girl really pull it along?

Bai Qiu was about to ask, hoping he could persuade a customer to go into Starry.

But right before his astonished eyes,

Yoruna gave a little "whoosh."

She folded the flyer into a paper airplane and sent it soaring across the street.

Bai Qiu stared at her. "What are you doing?"

Even if you didn't like it,

you could at least...

not do that in front of the person handing out the flyers.

Weren't you embarrassed?

I'm the one handing them out, and I'm embarrassed!

If Ijichi Hoshino saw this, she might think Bai Qiu was slacking off.

His favorability might even go down.

Yoruna smiled happily.

Bai Qiu blinked. Were you serious?!

He glanced back at the entrance to Starry's basement and breathed a sigh of relief.