"Mm, it's finished. The lyrics are right here. I'm glad Riki helped me finish in time for the live..." Akari said with a smile.
"I see. Riki helped you... Wait, he's there with you right now?!"
Riki slapped the table, utterly stunned, his expression blank.
"Yeah, he's right beside me." Akari found Riki's over-the-top reaction a little strange and turned the camera toward Riki.
"That's right, kids. It's me."
Riki nodded calmly.
He hadn't done anything bad or elbowed anyone. It was perfectly normal for him to be visiting Akari's home, right?
"It really is you." Riki's expression turned a little complicated. "Why are you at Akari's house?"
"I asked Riki to help me, so he came over," Akari said.
"I see." Riki let out a sigh of relief. "That's good."
"What about the lyrics?" Akari asked. "What do you think?"
"Anything you write is the best, Akari!" Riki quickly replied.
Akari had never been very good at handling Riki's enthusiasm, and now she didn't know what to do.
"By the way, Akari, could I come over to your place next time?" Riki asked tentatively.
Akari smiled. "Of course. You can come with Aine, Sose, and Rakuna-chan."
"...Everyone, huh?" Riki sounded a little disappointed, then added, "I'll try out the new song. It shouldn't take long. I'll let you know."
After Akari ended the video call, she stared blankly at Riki. "What should we do now?"
It was your house. Why were you asking him?
"I don't have friends over very often, so I don't know what to do with one," Akari said apologetically.
It wasn't Akari's fault. Riki also felt he was just as shy as she was, and wasn't very good at entertaining people.
They could start by chatting about something interesting.
"Do you play Genshin Impact... Uh, no. Do you play any games?" Riki asked.
"I like piling stones together. It makes me happy to watch them turn into stars." Akari smiled faintly.
Riki nodded.
That sounded a little hard to understand at first, but if you replaced "stones" with "Light Stars," it made perfect sense. Just imagining Ultraman flying out of one Light Star after another was enough to make Soyo!
Who would've thought Akari and he would get along so well?
"I wish Riki were my classmate," Akari said.
"You go to an all-girls' school. How could I possibly get in?" Riki said.
Men in the BanG Dream! world were rare Palu, though this was the real world, so it wasn't bound by the setting.
Riki was about to say something when he suddenly heard a noise outside. It sounded like Akari's parents had come home.
"Do your parents know I came over?" Riki asked.
"I forgot to tell them." Akari stared blankly.
Note to my next-life self: tell the parents before visiting a girl's house.
I'm hanging up.
Soyo: Girlfriend?
"I see, so you're Riki, the music instructor for Akari's band. Akari's a little different from other kids, so I'm grateful to you for helping her."
"Don't mention it. Compared to a troublesome kid, Akari's already very sweet."
Riki looked at Akari's parents, seated across from him on the sofa, then at Akari sitting beside him. He couldn't understand how things had turned out this way. He should've been under the bed, not sitting in the living room. But Akari's parents weren't nervous at all about this unexpected man showing up. Instead, they'd welcomed him warmly.
"Akari's never had many friends. Thank you for spending time with her," Akari's mother said happily.
"Actually, I'm just like Akari. I'm afraid to speak up at university, and my classmates often yell at me. It's really stressful for a shy person like me. All I can do is quietly write music and put up with it. But being with Akari makes me feel much happier."
Riki was a Chinese kid, too. He knew when to play along.
Let the students at Haicheng University suffer a little longer. I'll take the credit for being nice.
"You're a university student? And you play instruments, too? Akari's made an amazing friend. Would you like to stay for dinner?" Akari's mother asked warmly.
"No, actually, I was just..." Riki tried to refuse and started to get up.
"I bought abalone to make soup."
"I'm hungry."
Riki took the cue and sat back down.
He'd spent the afternoon acting as Akari's Seven-day statue. Surely it was fine to have a meal cooked by Akari's mother?
Dinner at the Takamatsu house, now airing!
The Takamatsu family really was one of Mygo's few healthy families. A healthy kid raised in a healthy household.
But if that was the case, how had Akari turned into a shut-in?
Riki knew how to be a good guest, too. He offered to help with dinner, just in case someone ruined his little abalone.
"You're very good at chopping vegetables," Akari's mother said, surprised.
In Japan, men who could cook were rare outside the profession. After getting married, most men left the housework to their wives and focused on work, becoming full-time ATMs. Japanese women didn't mind too much. After all, if an ATM could sprout arms and cook for itself, what would they be there for?
"You must be good at cooking," Akari's mother praised him.
"I am, indeed, good at cooking."
Riki, first-year student at Haicheng University, top-tier chef—Little Master Riki. That's me.
"Riki's amazing," Akari added.
Riki nodded, then suddenly frowned as he realized something was off. How had this turned into a Riki Appreciation Club?
Could the Takamatsu family have some unusual ideas about him?
Were they going to keep him as their...
Cook?!
"Riki, thank you again for being willing to start a band with Akari. Sometimes we don't know what she's thinking, so it makes us very happy to see her with a good friend. I hope you'll be good friends for the rest of your lives," Akari's mother said with a smile.
"Of course!"
"Thank you. Make sure you eat your fill tonight!"
Mrs. Takamatsu, could I have that big abalone?
In the end, the big abalone went into Akari's bowl. She wanted to split it with Riki, but when he saw her innocent expression and the keen gaze of Akari's parents, he could only give in.
"I've never liked abalone," he declared righteously.
Akari, next time you want to share something with me, do it in secret. Otherwise, your mother looks like she's about to trap me in your house and make me her lifelong labor Palu.
Today's winner and loser—Riki lost.
He didn't get to eat the big abalone.
Dinner in the high-rise apartment: Nagasaki Sose sat alone, eating noodles she'd cooked herself.
Mom: [Sorry, Sose. I can't come home again today. Make yourself something to eat, okay? I love you?]
Nagasaki Sose: [Okay, Mom. I understand.]
Nagasaki Sose had always been a sensible child. She didn't interrupt her mother at work, cooked for herself, never threw tantrums, and got good grades. Everyone liked her.
In the empty high-rise apartment, she was the only one eating noodles under the light. Every so often, the fork clinked against the porcelain plate.
Nagasaki Sose thought again of what Toyokawa Sakiko had said to her. She lowered her eyes and ate in silence.
"I wasn't wrong," Nagasaki Sose murmured.
Then she thought of Riki. Toyokawa Sakiko had told her to stay away from him. Was it simply because the two of them were friends?
Or was it because Sakiko... liked Riki?
Because she liked him, did she not want Sose getting too close to him?
"I don't have any feelings for him, either," Nagasaki Sose said to herself at the table.
No one answered. Nagasaki Sose suddenly imagined Riki sitting across from her. He would surely chatter on and on, saying all sorts of strange things—things that would annoy her.
"I don't want to listen."
Nagasaki Sose murmured the words, but the corners of her mouth lifted slightly. When she looked up, though, Riki wasn't there.
"What don't you want to listen to?"
Nagasaki Sose suddenly heard Riki's voice and froze.
Was she hearing things?
"I bet you're thinking this is a hallucination right now. But your next line is... 'You pervert!'"
Nagasaki Sose suddenly noticed that the scenery around her had changed. A moment ago, she'd been eating in her own dining room, but in the next instant everything had changed. This was... Riki's place.
Come to think of it, Riki's voice seemed very close.
Nagasaki Sose turned her head and found her face less than five centimeters from Riki's. She could feel his warm breath on her lips, and she herself... was sitting on his lap.
Nagasaki Sose's face turned visibly from pale to red, and her ears were red enough to drip blood.
"You pervert! Why am I sitting on your lap?!"
She swung a slap at him.
Riki quickly turned his head to dodge it.
Kennedy: Send me your sensitivity settings.
Kennedy, stop messaging me. Adjust your own sensitivity.
"It's not like I did this on purpose. Who knows why you landed right on my lap the moment you showed up? I suspect this is your own problem," Detective Riki said, earnestly investigating the case.
Nagasaki Sose was about to argue, then remembered that she really had been thinking about Riki. For a moment, she didn't know what to say. But she couldn't lose her temper, so she glared at him.
But when Nagasaki Sose looked at Riki, she realized she couldn't help feeling at ease.
She looked up and found Riki watching her.
"What?"
"Why don't you get off before we keep talking?" Riki said. "Your soft legs are crushing me. You've turned my soft seat into a hard one."
"I was going to get off without you telling me," Nagasaki Sose said crossly. Then she noticed that Riki was staring at his phone with a grave expression.
Riki turned to Nagasaki Sose. "Can you play the cello?"
"The cello... Yes. Why?" Nagasaki Sose asked, puzzled. Before she'd started playing bass, she'd practiced cello—and for even longer than she'd practiced bass.
"Let's make a video together." Riki waved his phone. A message from a classmate was on the screen: Godfather, help! I'm desperate!
If he was calling Riki his godfather, the situation must really be dire.
"His cello-playing girlfriend broke up with him, and he can't find anyone to perform with him. He can't submit it to the teacher as an assignment, either. Since you can play the cello, we can make a video together."
Girlfriend?
Nagasaki Sose picked out the key word from the flood of information and stared at Riki warily.
This guy really did have designs on her.
Wedding
Before you continue