"Black-Stocking Female Monster..." Kasumigaoka's lips curled into a dangerous smile as her high heels tapped out a crisp rhythm against the ground. "Looks like I need to teach this middle school student some social etiquette."
"I'll be a high school student soon! And I'll be going to the same school as Brother Qiu! The same class too!"
"Then I'm also your senior at the same school."
Kasumigaoka suddenly leaned down close to Eriri's ear, her breath stirring the loose strands by her temple.
"Is that how you treat your senior?"
"Guh—!"
Eriri's pupils shook as she instinctively took a step back.
"S-Senior? Th-this... you... I..."
Jiang Lianqiu rolled his eyes.
The island nation's Senior-Junior Culture was such unbearable trash that it was beyond mockery. Bringing it out at a time like this was practically an Ultimate Weapon against Eriri.
Though he was very interested in Utaha Kasumigaoka, Eriri was still someone he had watched grow up. If it really came down to it, the girl was the one closest to him now.
Jiang Lianqiu wasn't about to stand by and watch Eriri get bullied any further. He placed a hand on her head and gave it a rub, asking gently, "Did you buy everything?"
"Guh..."
Normally, if Jiang Lianqiu patted her head in public, Eriri's tsundere side would have flared up. But with Utaha Kasumigaoka standing right there, the girl not only didn't resist, she even wrinkled her nose smugly at Kasumigaoka.
She had no idea why. It was clearly their first meeting, yet she just felt that this Black-Stocking Female Monster would become her greatest enemy in life.
She hadn't reacted this strongly even when she discovered that a huge pile of love letters had come spilling out of Brother Qiu's school shoe locker...
Utaha Kasumigaoka stopped while she was ahead and waved at Jiang Lianqiu. "Well then, that's it for today. See you after school starts, Lord Qiu~"
As she turned away, her long black hair swept through the air, carrying the fragrance of gardenias. Utaha Kasumigaoka departed with elegant steps.
"Hey, hey! She's already gone! Stop staring!"
Noticing Jiang Lianqiu's gaze lingering on Utaha Kasumigaoka's retreating figure, Eriri looked up at him and called out in a wronged tone, grinding her teeth.
"I only went to buy a few things, and you got tangled up with this Gloomy Girl... Hey, what exactly happened? What were you talking about just now?"
Jiang Lianqiu promptly took Love Beat from the shopping bag and explained what had happened to Eriri. He added at the end, "If I'm not mistaken, this Senior Kasumigaoka is Kasumiko herself, the author of this book."
"Huh?" Eriri's eyes widened. She was astonished that the senior who would soon be attending the same school as her was already a published light novelist.
But then she thought about it—hadn't she herself already started Setting Up Booth at Comic Conventions long ago?
Thinking about it that way, the other girl had only debuted in high school, while she already had work out back in middle school.
She won!
For no apparent reason, Eriri proudly raised her head and looked down smugly at the now-distant Utaha Kasumigaoka.
Jiang Lianqiu: "..."
You really are good at the Spiritual Victory Method, Haki Eriri.
Though she hadn't said it aloud, more than a decade of constant companionship had made him all too familiar with what Eriri was thinking.
That night.
Jiang Lianqiu was in the spacious bathroom of his bedroom, soaking his entire body in the bathtub with his eyes closed.
Although Eriri had sulked for a while during the day because of Utaha Kasumigaoka, the girl soon devoted herself completely to their date again.
Eriri had even gone home midway to change clothes. In the end, she dressed up and went with him to one of those Couple Date Spots supposedly frequented only by Normies.
Only after they had dinner outside that evening did Jiang Lianqiu take Eriri home.
Second by second, time passed. When the clock hand crossed midnight, and a little while later, at the precise instant his age officially reached fifteen—
—Jiang Lianqiu, half reclining in the bathtub, suddenly felt his heart pound violently.
His closed eyes flew open, but the sight before him made his mind spin.
The familiar bathroom lay before him, yet another completely different scene was overlaid upon it.
Beyond his own senses, a set of sensations from another person—sensations that did not belong to him at all—assaulted his brain through all five senses.
Under normal circumstances, everything humans believe they see is actually the result of photoreceptor cells in the retina receiving and being activated by external light, transmitting signals to the brain, and then the brain synthesizing them through a series of complex post-processing calculations.
It was hard to say whether the external information received by the eyes was more important in this process, or the brain's subsequent synthesis.
So—what if, while visual nerves were transmitting external light signals to the brain, the brain also received out of thin air an entire additional set of visual signals, even signals from all the senses?
The answer was that a person would feel as though they had seen two overlapping worlds, or even as though they possessed two bodies at once.
At least right now, while the Cloud Knight Rookie Su Shang was practicing swordsmanship in the courtyard, a sudden wave of dizziness made the girl lower her head unconsciously. When she inadvertently looked between her legs, she discovered something that made her face turn pale—
"Ah! I grew something weird!!!"
Before you continue