Excited Airi

At noon, on the tree-lined path leading to the student cafeteria.

Natsukawa Sosuke and Sakura Airi walked side by side. Sakura still habitually lagged half a step behind, but her pace was no longer filled with the tension and unease it had held before.

Just then, a vibrant voice called out from behind them.

"Natsukawa-kun! Sakura-san--!"

The two turned around to see Ichinose Honami jogging toward them with a radiant smile, her waist-length hair tracing a youthful arc in the air.

"I have some good news to tell you!" Ichinose ran up to them, slightly out of breath, but the joy on her face could not be concealed.

"That stalker... has been caught!"

Sakura Airi's body stiffened abruptly.

She slowly raised her head, her large, deep blue eyes hidden behind her lenses looking at Natsukawa with excitement, before turning to look at Ichinose.

"This morning, the school security department raided that electronics store and apprehended the clerk on the spot!" Ichinose's tone was filled with excitement. "They found a mountain of photos on his phone and computer! The evidence is conclusive; he has been taken away by the school's disciplinary committee. I heard he's going to be expelled immediately and handed over to the police! We... we succeeded!"

Succeeded...

It's over...

These two phrases were like two beams of warm sunlight, instantly piercing through the thick, cold clouds that had been gathering in Sakura Airi's heart for days.

Over these past few days, the fear of being watched, the helplessness of being threatened, the panic of her identity potentially being exposed, and the pressure of forcing herself to be brave... all these negative emotions had washed over her heart like a tide, nearly eroding her entire being until she was riddled with holes.

And now, all of this had vanished into thin air.

The string that had been stretched to its limit finally, completely, went slack at this moment.

Sakura Airi's eyes turned red instantly. She bit her lip hard, not wanting to cry, but tears like broken pearls rolled uncontrollably from the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision.

These were not tears of fear, but of release, of relief, and of the joy of surviving a catastrophe.

She could no longer control her emotions; the dependency and gratitude she had suppressed for too long erupted at this moment. She lunged forward and threw herself into the embrace that had given her all her sense of security and courage.

"Wuu... Natsukawa-kun...!"

She buried her face deep into Natsukawa Sosuke's chest, her cold hands clutching his shirt tightly, as if she were holding onto the whole world. The sobbing she had bottled up for so long was finally released without reservation, turning into loud cries filled with endless grievances and joy.

Natsukawa Sosuke's body paused slightly, then he raised his hand to gently, soothingly pat her back as it shook violently from her weeping.

Ichinose Honami stood to the side, watching the two embracing, a genuinely happy smile on her face. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, falling onto Sakura Airi's long red hair and onto Natsukawa's calm profile, creating a warm and beautiful scene.

She felt happy for Sakura and reassured by Natsukawa's reliability. Yet, watching Sakura vent all her emotions in that embrace without any inhibition, a tiny, unnoticed trace of envy welled up in Ichinose's heart.

If it were me... if I could be like that too... that would be nice.

Natsukawa Sosuke stood quietly, feeling the violent trembling of the petite body in his arms. Sakura Airi cried like a child, pouring out all the fear, grievances, and pressure she had endured during this time into his chest, her warm tears quickly soaking through a patch of his clothing.

He didn't speak, just silently supporting her. His thoughts, however, drifted back to last night.

After receiving the message from Sakura about the stalker demanding to meet on the rooftop, Natsukawa Sosuke knew the time to close the net had arrived. He had not adopted Sakura's "fishing plan" that involved putting herself in danger. In his view, letting a victim face their perpetrator was a failure in itself.

What he needed to do was to ensure that the rat hiding in the gutter was uprooted from what it thought was its safest lair.

Natsukawa Sosuke opened his laptop. He didn't use any complex hacking techniques that required difficult decryption; what he utilized was merely the most common oversight of human nature and the stalker's own arrogant conceit.

First, he modified his laptop's MAC address to match the unique fingerprint of the stalker's phone, which he had sniffed out at Keyaki Mall the day before. To the crude public Wi-Fi router at the electronics store, Natsukawa was now, on a network level, completely disguised as that clerk.

Immediately after, he took out the key piece of the puzzle—the Session Cookie he had intercepted the day before.

He imported this string of characters into his browser's plugin and then visited Sakura Airi's blog. After verifying the cookie, the server immediately determined that he was the stalker himself, allowing him to enter the backend in a logged-in state. The entire process didn't even require a password.

The bullet was already in the chamber.

Natsukawa Sosuke's fingers tapped lightly on the keyboard, mimicking the man's greasy and pathological tone, and edited those two fatal private messages.

The location was changed from the rooftop to the electronics store.

The threat was changed from a simple meeting to a naked exposure.

The rest was just waiting. Waiting for Ichinose to apply official pressure through proper channels, waiting for school security to follow the trail and arrest the criminal—even if he deleted the chat logs, it wouldn't matter.

This was Natsukawa Sosuke's plan. A bloodless victory, without even needing to show his own face. He had simply given the stalker a gentle push from behind, and the bullet the stalker fired followed its preset trajectory, striking himself with precision.

"...Thank you."

The sobbing in his arms gradually subsided, replaced by a thank you delivered with a heavy, nasal tone.

Sakura Airi slowly lifted her head from his chest, her deep blue eyes, washed clean by tears, appearing exceptionally clear. Her fair cheeks were still streaked with tears, her eyes red-rimmed, making her look incredibly endearing.

She didn't pull away immediately, but instead looked up at him from such close proximity, as if trying to carve his image deep into her soul.

For Sakura Airi, the past period had felt like the longest, darkest nightmare of her life.

At first, there was the cold, snake-like fear brought on by that private message, which had plunged her into an abyss of isolation. Then, Natsukawa-kun's appearance was like a light splitting the darkness, pulling her back from the edge of the abyss.

After that, it was the first step Natsukawa-kun made her take: morning jogs. The burning in her lungs, the soreness in her muscles, and the shame of running under everyone's gaze—every single thing made her want to run away immediately. But as long as she saw that steady, never-stopping back in front of her, she seemed to gain a strength that let her grit her teeth and take that first step toward changing herself.

When those candid photos appeared, she had once thought she would collapse again. That was malice made manifest, proof that the shadow had touched her real life. But this time, she wasn't alone. Natsukawa-kun's calm analysis and Ichinose-san's warm helping hand had built a line of defense for her.

The final threat of exposure had nearly crushed her. It was a punishment she feared more than any physical harm. She thought she would shrink back into that shell of hers, trembling and enduring the strange looks of her classmates.

However, Natsukawa-kun's words, "I'm here," were like a sedative that completely shattered the final hesitation and cowardice in her heart.

She chose to believe in him, staking everything she had on that trust.

And he did not let her down.

In a way she couldn't even comprehend, he effortlessly and completely dispelled the nightmare that had been looming over her.

Time and time again, this person had rescued her from the quagmire of fear. He never criticized her cowardice, nor did he ever mock her incompetence; he simply guided her and protected her in the calmest, gentlest, yet most steadfast way, and in the end... he saved her.

This debt of gratitude, this sense of security, had long since transcended the boundaries of being mere classmates.