Malice was a rather abstract term. Fortunately, the girls in the Service Club had all suffered malicious treatment from others to some extent. Outstanding girls like Utaha Kasumigaoka and Yukino Yukinoshita had been isolated to the point of having no friends at all. Ako Tamaki had been driven by malice to the point where she could no longer distinguish reality from illusion. Even Eriri had once been ostracized for being an otaku... The malice of others was nothing unfamiliar to them; they had experienced it firsthand. And once malice formed, it would not vanish for no reason. Utaha Kasumigaoka and Yukino Yukinoshita had chosen to fight back, Ako had chosen to flee, and even Eriri had learned to disguise and hide herself, yet the malice had not disappeared.
Surrounded by malice, Utaha Kasumigaoka and Yukino Yukinoshita, who fought back, still had no friends. Ako, who fled, sank deeper into the online world. Eriri was even afraid of anyone discovering the identity she had hidden away and could only live cautiously behind a mask... The reason the Little Golden Retriever often came to the Service Club, aside from learning drawing techniques from Mashiro, was mostly because she could take off the mask she had worn for so long here. Even though these people knew she was Kashiwagi Eri, an artist who drew doujinshi, none of them looked at her through tinted glasses—what Eriri wanted was actually very simple: a group of like-minded friends who could discuss things with one another and improve together. Though the art club had also provided her with a safe environment to create after seeing her drawings, and the club president had helped conceal her identity, there were simply too many people in the art club, and no one she could truly exchange ideas with—if only there