Shizuku

"Takahashi, are you free?"

When Takahashi received Sakura's message, he was standing in front of a vending machine, buying a drink.

As he turned and walked over to a nearby bench, Takahashi casually glanced at a rather suspicious person. Yes, he was just an ordinary first-year student, and it seemed someone had been following him—and had been doing so for two days already!

He had noticed on the first day, but in the end, he hadn't said anything. He knew who the person was: an employee at the repair shop. The employee had no reason to follow him. The only possibility was that it had something to do with Sakura. He'd been keeping an eye on the man over the past two days, too, and sure enough, the stalker spent more time following Sakura. There had to be something going on, so Takahashi had been waiting for Sakura to come clean.

He sat down on the bench and replied to Sakura while drinking his beverage.

"If someone else had invited me, maybe not."

"I'm a little scared. Could you come to my dorm? I want to tell you something."

Bang!

He'd barely knocked when the door opened, as though Sakura had been waiting right outside.

"T-Takahashi," Sakura said, her voice trembling.

Seeing Sakura's tears welling in her eyes, her pitiful expression as though she were about to burst into tears, Takahashi drew her into his arms. "It's okay. I'm here."

Sakura's dorm room was clean and had a very girlish feel to it. It looked like she'd put a lot of care into decorating it.

The two of them sat in the room. Takahashi didn't say anything; he knew Sakura was nervous and needed time to gather her thoughts.

"Takahashi, I... I used to be... a... a..."

"Don't rush. Take your time. I'm listening."

Takahashi sat down beside Sakura and gently patted her head.

"Phew... I used to be a blog idol called 'Shizuku.'" As she spoke, Sakura showed Takahashi her phone. The two pinned photos on her blog were a picture of Takahashi and one of herself. They'd been taken at a dessert shop, and the sakura-pink and pale-blue bracelets on their wrists hinted at what was going on. Even now, they were both wearing the same bracelets. "Then this person started following me..."

"You mean the employee from the repair shop?"

"Yeah."

"No wonder you were about to cry when the camera broke, Airi," Takahashi teased.

Hearing Takahashi say something so intimate, Sakura turned into a steam engine. Her cheeks flushed red, steam practically rising from her head as she clutched her skirt hem and stammered, "I... I... I..."

Takahashi had thought Sakura might say something like, "Could you not call me that?" But instead, she finally said, "C-can I call you by your name, too?"

"Of course."

"Ka... Kamiya?" Sakura asked timidly, her eyes darting to Takahashi's face now and then as if she were afraid he might get angry.

"I'm here, Airi," Takahashi said with a smile. "From now on, let's call each other that way!"

"Okay. Kamiya, I'm sorry. I took your picture without asking, then uploaded it to my blog without your permission." Sakura's voice grew quieter and quieter, as though she'd done something truly awful.

"That's no big deal. I secretly took pictures of you, too, Airi." Takahashi showed Sakura a photo of her playing with the cats at the Cat Cafe.

"As for uploading them to your blog without my permission..." Takahashi's tone suddenly changed. "Airi, I'm angry!"

"Huh?" Startled by Takahashi's abrupt change in tone, Sakura's eyes suddenly filled with tears. "S-sorry. I... I was wrong. Could you please not be angry? I..."

"How are you going to make it up to me?" Takahashi changed his expression again, putting on a playful smile.

"I... I..."

"We'll talk about that later. Let's get back to the important stuff first."

Sakura clutched her skirt hem with flushed cheeks and took several deep breaths. "The employee from the repair shop followed me. Then he saw the blog post I'd made about the two of us together and said all kinds of things about killing you. He also secretly took a lot of pictures of you."

That explained everything. Sakura had known all along that someone was stalking her, but because of her personality, she hadn't dared to say anything. When her camera broke, she'd been close to tears because she knew the employee at the only electronics repair shop had been following her, so she was afraid to take it there. Luckily, Takahashi had gone with her. With Takahashi by her side, and Sakura's two blog posts suggesting that they were dating, the stalker had mistaken him for Sakura's boyfriend. That was why he'd started following Takahashi over the past two days, too.

"It's okay. Leave the rest to me." Takahashi patted Sakura's head. "All right, now that we're done talking about that, let's discuss how you're going to make it up to me."

"What... what kind of compensation do you want?" Sakura asked nervously, clutching her skirt hem with both hands.

"Airi, as a popular idol, you must have a lot of outfits for photo shoots, right?"

After leaving Sakura's dorm, Takahashi didn't hurry back to his own. Instead, he went to the Student Council to deal with the stalker.

Back in her room, Sakura sat on her bed amid a mess of clothes, covering her flushed cheeks with both hands. She hadn't expected to agree to Takahashi's request—to be his photo model.

Most importantly of all, in the end, she'd even helped Takahashi... At the thought, Sakura turned into a steam engine again, hot air rising from her head. She collapsed onto the bed, both hands covering her chest.

Maybe having a large chest wasn't all bad.

"Hey, are you sure that stalker will come?" Tachibana Akane asked Takahashi. She didn't quite believe that the handsome underclassman in front of her could be stalked by a middle-aged man. If he were a beautiful girl, she could understand it, but why stalk a pretty boy?

"Take a guess why they call him a stalker," Takahashi said, looking at Tachibana Akane with an exasperated expression.

Of course, after two days of gathering evidence, they'd caught the stalker. Since it concerned student safety, the school took it very seriously and had the stalker sent off to prison.

Chairman's Office.

Knock, knock, knock!

"Come in."

Chairman Itayanagi, who was handling school business, looked up at the visitor. "Oh, it's you, Takahashi. What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to make one call outside the school."

"Make the arrangements."

"Yes, young master."

Just after leaving the Chairman's Office, Takahashi saw a white-haired beauty with a cane watching him as he came out of the office.

←_←

"Hey, little cripple, what are you staring at?"

"It's just been a long time since I last saw Kamiya. I didn't expect to run into you here, so I was a little surprised." As Itayanagi spoke, she placed her hand in the one Takahashi held out to her.