"I don't hate Yukino..." Setting aside Sogo Doma, who was practically radiating resentment, Mashiro Shiina lowered her head and threw the first straight pitch. "Does that mean we can't be friends?"
Yukino Yukinoshita was actually quite a twisted girl. She longed for friends, yet she was afraid of making them. In truth, she had already begun to waver yesterday, but Haruno Yukinoshita's words had made her build a high wall, shutting herself back inside her own world...
Yet that wall was not sturdy. After all, humans were social creatures by nature. No one wanted to remain alone forever, and the second daughter was no exception. She seemed to have built towering walls around herself, but in reality, all it took was someone calling out from beyond them—
"Yukino, come out and play..."
"Yukino, let's play together..."
As long as someone called to her a few times like that, just as elementary school kids called their friends out of the house, Yukino Yukinoshita could break down the high walls she had built herself. If she was in a hurry, she might even jump right over them!
At that moment, Mashiro, who lacked both common sense and ill intent and was as innocent as a blank sheet of paper, was precisely the friend continually calling for the second daughter to come out. Yukino Yukinoshita rubbed her forehead.
"Mashiro, don't listen to Doma's nonsense. Friends don't hate each other. Actually, perhaps just as Mashiro said, Doma doesn't hate that person named Hijikata. He's just being stubborn right now."
"But..." Mashiro Shiina glanced at the resentment-filled Sogo beside them. "The way Sogo says he hates him doesn't sound like a lie."
"No..." Before the second daughter could speak, Utaha Kasumigaoka, who loved arguing with her, agreed with her for the first time. "Um, Mashiro,