Yukinoshita's Correction Method

"Do I hate it..." Yukino Yukinoshita considered it seriously. "I don't hate you. I just find it a little troublesome."

It was club activity time right now, and the people who came should have been students in need of help.

But as Yukino Yukinoshita saw it, Yui Yuigahama's troubles had already been resolved.

If Yui Yuigahama came here without any troubles, she would take up the time of other students who needed help.

She would also interfere with her correction of Dong Yunshan.

Yui Yuigahama looked pitifully aggrieved. "When a girl says something like that, it means she hates it!"

"In that case," Yukino Yukinoshita said, taking into account the possibility that Yui Yuigahama had a new problem, and asked directly, "may I ask what you need?"

"It's about what happened before!" Yui Yuigahama pulled over a chair and sat down, showing the two of them her flashy phone. "Look at this!"

On her phone, there was now a mushroom pendant.

"Kaori made this for me." Yui Yuigahama talked about what had happened after that day. "After Sato gave the doll to Kaori, Kaori contacted me. She wanted to return the doll to me, but I refused."

If it had been the old Yui Yuigahama, even if she had wanted to refuse, she would not actually have done it.

But this time was different...

Dong Yunshan was puzzled. "Wasn't that proof of your friendship?"

"It was originally proof of our friendship, but after it was lost, it became the start of us avoiding each other. Instead, it ended up getting in the way of our friendship." Yui Yuigahama's expression was complicated. "If not for the doll, I could have found out about her romance much earlier."

To be fair, that was true.

The doll had carried too much in this incident.

Not only had it become the start of Sato and Kaori's cold war, it had nearly become the end of their relationship too.

So when Kaori wanted to return the doll to its rightful owner, Yui Yuigahama did not particularly want to accept it.

After everything that had happened, the doll had already become something far heavier.

Most importantly... Yui Yuigahama felt that Yukino Yukinoshita was right.

If people could express their thoughts honestly, many things would become much simpler.

So she told Kaori directly that the doll was proof of their friendship, but the friendship between them did not rest entirely on the doll.

Even if Kaori's doll was now lost, it did not mean their friendship had ended along with it.

And now that only one doll was left, rather than having Yui Yuigahama keep the sole remaining one, it would be better to treat that doll as a memento of the end of Kaori and Sato's cold war.

"That makes sense." Dong Yunshan quite agreed. "The doll is proof of your friendship, and the loss of the doll is also proof of your friendship."

"Right... Huh?" Yui Yuigahama's large eyes were full of confusion. "The loss is too?"

"Your doll and her doll were lost one after another within a short period of time. That means both of you wore the dolls on your schoolbags, so the wear on the strings happened at the same pace," Yukino Yukinoshita explained further. "Also, both of you noticed very quickly that the dolls were missing. That means the dolls were very important to both of you."

"So that's how it was!" Yui Yuigahama suddenly understood. "Yukinon, you're amazing!"

"He was the one who brought it up first..." Yukino Yukinoshita clearly trembled. "Also, Yukinon sounds strange. Don't call me that."

"But it's so cute... Oh right, little... Dong Yun." Yui Yuigahama almost said it out of habit, but fortunately stopped in time.

Dong Yunshan protested, "Dong Yun is Dong Yun. Don't add a 'little' in front of it."

"Hehe~" Yui Yuigahama scratched her head sheepishly and took a small wooden carving from her schoolbag. "This is something Sato asked me to give you."

It was a wooden carving shaped like a heart-shaped trophy.

On the heart was a relief carving that looked like both a dove and a hand.

Dong Yunshan accepted the wooden carving. "What is this?"

"It's a gift from Sato." Yui Yuigahama dug out another stack of stickers. "And these are for Yukinon."

Yukino Yukinoshita felt so tired. "I told you not to—"

"And mine is this!" Yui Yuigahama shook the little mushroom on her phone. "During their cold war, Kaori was busy making these."

After that date was cut short, Kaori also felt that she should have handled the situation better at the time.

But Sato would not talk to her, and she did not want to talk to Sato either.

During the cold war, while Sato was busy looking for the doll, Kaori was trying to make a gift for Sato using wood carving, which Sato was good at.

She wanted to use that gift to express her feelings.

But when she actually started making it herself, she realized it was not that simple.

First, she made a mushroom for practice.

In the end, the mushroom that had originally been the size of a palm got smaller and smaller as she carved it, until it could only be used as a pendant.

Then she made a heart-shaped trophy.

The finished product was still very rough.

So she thought she might as well make stickers, which were relatively simple.

After she finished them, she felt they were not formal enough.

After all, quite a long time had already passed, and if the finished product was only stickers, the sincerity behind it seemed a little lacking.

In the end, she never got a chance to talk things over with Sato.

Not until Sato came to her with Yui Yuigahama's doll.

"I thought that would be the end of it," Yui Yuigahama said emotionally. "But after Sato talked with Kaori for a bit, she spilled everything like she was dumping out a bag of beans. Kaori told me to bring the gift over."

"Ah..." Dong Yunshan sighed, then took a closer look at the heart-shaped trophy. He noticed that the relief on it was clearly much more refined than the piece as a whole. Evidently, Sato had worked over Kaori's finished product, while still leaving some of Kaori's traces intact. "So young, and she can't keep anything hidden."

"If everyone had been honest with each other sooner, none of this would've happened." Yui Yuigahama looked at Yukino Yukinoshita seriously. "That's what Yuki taught me, so you're not allowed to refuse this gift."

Yukino Yukinoshita sighed. "You have absolutely no intention of changing how you address me, do you..."

"And this mushroom too!" Yui Yuigahama finally dragged the topic back to the very beginning. "Kaori originally wanted to give me something else, but I still picked this one. After all, if I lose it, it won't hurt as much—when I told Kaori that straight up, she said if I lost it, she'd just give me another new one."

"So in the end, everything was solved using Yukinoshita's method." Dong Yunshan realized what had happened. "Which means this time, it should count as your win."

Yukino Yukinoshita narrowed her cold eyes. "Count?"

Dong Yunshan coaxed her like she was a child. "It means you won."

"No." Yukino Yukinoshita replied coldly, "You won."

This method won't work... Dong Yunshan realized that trying to correct her by blurring the concept of victory and defeat was completely useless.

"Um... uh... speaking of which, love really is hard work!" Yui Yuigahama sensed the shift in atmosphere and tried to change the subject. "Even though both sides wanted to get along, they almost ended up breaking up."

"That's youth for you. Green and immature." Dong Yunshan flicked his finger, and the wooden carving spun at his fingertip. "Sweet and sour, tender and cute. Once you grow up, all that's left is the business of exchanging resources."

"Be careful!" Yui Yuigahama watched the rapidly spinning wooden carving in horror, terrified it would go flying the next second. "And why do you sound like an old man? Adults fall in love too, don't they?"

"Adults are very busy." Dong Yunshan shook his head. "Who has time for romance? Just fast-forward straight to marriage."

Yukino Yukinoshita tidied up the scattered stickers. "Judging from you, you don't just want to fast-forward to marriage. It's more like you want to fast-forward to raising children."

"Wrong. I want to fast-forward to my children supporting me." Dong Yunshan caught the spinning heart-shaped trophy in one hand, picturing that wonderful future. "They pop out and immediately throw me a bank card, then tell me to spend sparingly."

"Good luck with that." Yukino Yukinoshita rolled her eyes at him. "Maybe one day you'll dream of an ATM willing to marry you."

Yukino Yukinoshita was reading, as always.

Dong Yunshan was working out, as always.

The air in the Service Club was filled with a peaceful, quiet feeling, as if the years were passing gently by.

No matter how great the difference between Dong Yunshan's and Yukino Yukinoshita's starting points, the Service Club was, in essence, a place that accepted students' consultations and helped students solve their problems.

But judging from Dong Yunshan's vague memories, high school was precisely the age when people were sensitive and fragile. Getting young people in that stage to bare their hearts and actively seek help from others was no easy thing.

Especially when that help was from classmates of the same school and age.

Perhaps because of that, the existence of the Service Club had not been made public.

But Shizuka Hiratsuka would introduce people to them.

That ensured the Service Club had commissions, while also protecting the privacy of those making requests.

High school students always had all sorts of worries, but not every worry was serious enough to require asking others for help.

So although Yui Yuigahama's troubles had been smoothly resolved before, with everyone ending up happy, the number of commissions the Service Club received had not noticeably increased.

Most of the time, Yukino Yukinoshita studied literature, while Dong Yunshan practiced martial arts.

The two of them either said nothing, or locked horns while correcting each other.

It could be called rather... harmonious.

You thought I was sick, and I thought you were diseased.

Wasn't that, in its own way, being of one mind?

However, this situation had recently begun to change.

"You..." Yui Yuigahama's voice came from outside the door. "What are you doing here?"

"Uwaaah!!!" Immediately afterward came a startled cry.

Then came Yui Yuigahama's scream.

By the time Yukino Yukinoshita slipped a bookmark into her book and looked toward the door, Dong Yunshan had already walked over and pulled it open.

Yui Yuigahama had her back pressed against the corridor wall, staring in panic at another boy who had fallen to the floor.

The slightly bulky boy was wearing a coat. He pressed his half-finger-gloved hands to the floor, straightened his arms to prop himself up, and rose to his feet with some effort.

Dong Yunshan searched his memory. "Zaimokuza?"

"Ohoho, have you finally spoken the name engraved upon my soul?" The boy pushed up his glasses, puffed out his chest, and lifted his head. "Indeed. I am the Swordmaster Shogun—Yoshiteru Zaimokuza himself!"

Yui Yuigahama began looking at Dong Yunshan in terror.

"In any case," Dong Yunshan said, stepping aside from the doorway, "come in first."

"When I came over, I saw him sneaking around outside the door." Yui Yuigahama, still shaken, muttered quietly to Yukino Yukinoshita. "I just asked him one question, and he reacted like he'd been burned..."

"Dong Yunshan." Yukino Yukinoshita got straight to the heart of the matter. "Do you know each other?"

"Yoshiteru Zaimokuza. My classmate." Dong Yunshan answered concisely, then looked at Yoshiteru Zaimokuza, who was sitting in a chair as if he were being interrogated. "Do you have some problem you need help with?"

Although they were classmates, Dong Yunshan had barely gone to school for more than a few days, so his understanding of Yoshiteru Zaimokuza was limited to that.

The fact that he even knew his name was already no small feat.

"Heh heh..." Yoshiteru Zaimokuza clasped his hands behind his back. "Give up your useless little tricks. I won't say a thing!"

Dong Yunshan: "?"

"Though your sneak attack may have captured my body, it can never destroy my divine will." Yoshiteru Zaimokuza threw his head back and laughed three times. "My divine sword shall never be sullied. When the time comes..."

"Sneak attack?!" Yui Yuigahama looked utterly innocent. "Me?"

"Do you not even know what you've done?" Yoshiteru Zaimokuza gave a long sigh. "Another lost soul. I forgive you. Do not let the sins of your past bind you. Stride forth toward a brand-new..."

"I get it." Dong Yunshan caught on. "He's probably talking about how you startled him just now."

"Then why say it in such a weird... ah!" Yui Yuigahama seemed to suddenly realize something. "This is chuunibyou, right?"

Yoshiteru Zaimokuza visibly trembled.

Dong Yunshan realized that Yui Yuigahama had guessed right.

"Chuunibyou?" Yukino Yukinoshita looked at Yui Yuigahama in puzzlement. "Is that some kind of illness?"

"I don't really get it either." Yui Yuigahama lowered her voice. "One of my friends told me about it. Her second-year middle school brother is just like this."

One of my friends... Hearing that kind of phrasing now, the first person Yukino Yukinoshita thought of was Dong Yunshan.

"Because they admire the special abilities and mysterious powers in anime, manga, games, and light novels, they deliberately pretend they have powers like that too." Yui Yuigahama recalled the complaints she had heard from her friend. "Like a right leg that seals away evil power..."

Dong Yunshan: "..." It should be right hand.

Yui Yuigahama: "Mysterious power that has yet to wake up..."

Dong Yunshan: "..." It should be awaken.

Yui Yuigahama: "Blood vessels burdened with a curse..."

Dong Yunshan: "..." It should be bloodline.