After several strong, forceful blows, Tangze finally canceled the Sympathetic Revenge that had remained in effect, magnanimously tossing out the glass marble he had prepared beforehand.
Because his position behind Nikaido Yuji concealed most of his hand movements as he held him, everyone else saw it as the Heimlich maneuver taking effect. Nikaido Yuji had successfully coughed up the hard object blocking his throat and resumed breathing normally.
"A glass marble? Why would something like that be there? Could it have been mixed into the cake?"
"Glass marbles in the cake? Was that Reika's prank? But even for Reika, that's strange."
"Who knows? Maybe those two were making some kind of bet again."
"They were playing pretty hard, then..."
Those whispers did reach Nikaido Yuji's ears, but he had no time to care about anyone else's snide remarks. He could only stare uncertainly at the smooth glass marble on the floor.
He had never felt like he had swallowed anything foreign. He had chewed properly, too. When exactly had that marble...
Tangze released him. His clothes had been slightly rumpled from grabbing him, but he said nothing and merely smoothed and patted them back into place at an unhurried pace.
It couldn't be helped. Letting this guy die in such a humiliating state of suffocation would actually have been a fine idea, but Sympathetic Revenge, the empathy ability from Asai Narumi's coop, was ultimately a mental attack. Even if it could manifest physically to some extent, producing an effect similar to phantom pain that affected the body, Nikaido Yuji was not truly suffocating.
It was simply that this terrifying sense of asphyxiation came from Tangze's experience in his previous life, making it especially cruel and intense. A greenhouse flower like Nikaido Yuji, who could make a fuss over a scratched