However, while the Chat Group members were watching the Memory Copy of "White Album," Yukino Yukinoshita had also finished the Memory Copy of her own world.
When she emerged from that vast, intricate torrent of information, the Service Club room was silent. Only the faint clamor drifting in from outside contrasted sharply with the turmoil churning within her heart.
She let out a soft breath, her fingertips slightly cold.
Her once-calm eyes were filled with unprecedentedly complex emotions.
"So that's how it is."
She murmured to herself inwardly.
At this moment, she finally fully understood why everyone in the Chat Group had been so certain that once she and Hachiman Hikigaya met and spent time together, they were destined to reach that kind of ending.
That Memory Copy had allowed her to experience, as though firsthand, everything between herself and the boy named Hachiman Hikigaya—from their unfamiliar first meeting, to the many Service Club requests where they clashed sharply yet cooperated seamlessly, to the growing understanding and bond they formed during the cultural festival, school trip, and other events.
Every subtle change in emotion, every inner struggle, every silent step closer had been presented before her with incomparable clarity.
She saw how another "Yukino Yukinoshita" had gone from being a lonely, proud girl clinging to a shell of perfection to gradually lowering part of her guard before that dead-fish-eyed boy, revealing a vulnerable, awkward, even somewhat "unlikeable" true self.
She also saw how Hachiman Hikigaya had used his twisted, self-deprecating, yet piercingly incisive way to expose hypocrisy again and again, protect the "right" that she insisted upon, and even put himself in humiliating situations for her sake.
Yukino Yukinoshita's gaze involuntarily fell on Hachiman Hikigaya in the corner once more.
At this moment, the image she had once had of