Yukinoshita's Correction Method

"Do I dislike you...?" Yukino Yukinoshita considered it seriously. "I don't dislike you. I just find it a little troubling."

It was club activity time. The ones who came here should have been students who needed help.

But as far as Yukino Yukinoshita was concerned, Yui Yuigahama's troubles had already been resolved.

If Yui Yuigahama came here without any troubles, she would take up time that other students in need could use.

And she would interfere with Yukino Yukinoshita's correction of Dong Yunshan.

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

"So," Yukino Yukinoshita said, considering the possibility that Yui Yuigahama had new troubles, "what is it you need?"

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

There was now a mushroom charm hanging from her phone.

"Kaori made this for me." Yui Yuigahama began telling them what had happened afterward. "After Sato gave the doll to Kaori, Kaori contacted me and wanted to return it, but I refused."

The old Yui Yuigahama might have wanted to refuse, but she would not have actually done it.

But this time was different...

Reward Settlement

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

"It was proof of our friendship at first, but after it was lost, it became the start of us avoiding each other. It actually got in the way of our friendship." Yui Yuigahama wore a complicated expression. "If it hadn't been for the doll, I might have found out about her relationship much earlier."

If she could be honest about her feelings, many things would become much simpler.

So she told Kaori directly that the doll was proof of their friendship, but their friendship was not entirely tied to the doll.

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

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

"That makes sense." Dong Yunshan agreed wholeheartedly. "The doll was proof of your friendship, and its loss was proof of your friendship too."

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

"Your doll and hers were lost one after the other within a short time. That meant both of you had attached them to your schoolbags, so the strings wore down at the same pace." Yukino Yukinoshita explained further. "Also, you both noticed very quickly that the dolls were gone. That meant they were both important to you."

"So that's how it is!" Yui Yuigahama suddenly understood. "Little Yukino, that was amazing!"

"He was the one who brought it up first..." Yukino Yukinoshita visibly trembled. "And Little Yukino sounds strange. Don't call me that."

"But it's cute... Oh, right, Little... Dong Yunshan." Yui Yuigahama nearly said it out of habit, but fortunately stopped herself in time.

Dong Yunshan protested, "Just Dong Yunshan. Don't add 'Little' to it."

"Hehe~" Yui Yuigahama scratched her head sheepishly and took a small wooden carving from her bag. "Sato asked me to give this to you."

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

There was a relief on the heart that looked both like a dove and a hand.

Dong Yunshan took the carving. "What is this?"

"A gift from Sato." Yui Yuigahama pulled out a stack of stickers. "And these are for Little Yukino."

Yukino Yukinoshita felt exhausted. "I told you not to call me that—"

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

After their date had been cut short that day, Kaori also felt that she should have handled the situation better.

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

While Sato was busy looking for the doll during their cold war, Kaori tried using wood carving, which Sato was good at, to make Sato a gift.

She wanted to use the gift to convey her feelings.

But once she actually tried making one herself, she discovered it was not that simple.

She first made a mushroom to practice.

The mushroom had originally been palm-sized, but it got smaller and smaller as she worked on it. In the end, it could only be used as a charm.

Then she made the heart-shaped trophy.

The finished product was still rather rough.

So she decided to make relatively simpler stickers instead.

But after finishing them, she felt they were not formal enough.

After all, quite a long time had passed, and stickers alone did not seem to express enough sincerity.

So she never spoke to Sato.

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

"I thought the whole thing would just pass like that," Yui Yuigahama said with feeling. "But after Sato and Kaori exchanged a few words, Sato spilled everything like pouring out beans. Kaori then asked me to bring these gifts over."

"Ah..." Dong Yunshan sighed. He examined the heart-shaped trophy closely and found that the relief on it was clearly much more refined than the rest. Sato had obviously reworked Kaori's finished piece, though he had retained some of Kaori's traces. "So young, and already unable to keep secrets in his heart."

"If they had been honest with each other earlier, there wouldn't have been so much trouble." Yui Yuigahama looked earnestly at Yukino Yukinoshita. "Little Yukino taught me that, so you can't refuse this gift."

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

"This mushroom too!" Yui Yuigahama finally brought the topic back to where it had begun. "Kaori originally wanted to give me something else, but I chose this one anyway. I told her it wouldn't hurt if I lost it—then she told me that if I lost it, she would make me another new one."

"So in the end, everything was resolved using Yukinoshita's method." Dong Yunshan finally caught on. "Then this time, it should count as your win."

Yukino Yukinoshita narrowed her cold eyes. "Count?"

Dong Yunshan spoke as if he were humoring a child. "You won."

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

This method was not working... Dong Yunshan realized that a correction method based on blurring the idea of winning and losing was completely ineffective.

"Um... Well... Come to think of it, love really is hard!" Yui Yuigahama sensed the shift in atmosphere and tried to change the subject. "Both sides wanted to get along, yet they nearly broke up."

"That's youth. Green and unripe." Dong Yunshan flicked a finger, making the wooden carving spin on his fingertip. "Sour and sweet, immature and adorable. Once you grow up, all that remains is business built on exchanging resources."

"Be careful!" Yui Yuigahama stared in alarm at the rapidly spinning carving, afraid it would fly off at any moment. "And why do you sound so old-fashioned? Adults fall in love too, right?"

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

Yukino Yukinoshita gathered up the scattered stickers. "Looking at you, it seems you don't just want to fast-forward to marriage. You want to fast-forward to raising children."

"Wrong. I want to fast-forward to my children raising me." Dong Yunshan grabbed the spinning heart-shaped trophy and imagined that wonderful future. "The moment they're born, they toss me a bank card and tell me to spend it carefully."

"Keep dreaming." Yukino Yukinoshita rolled her eyes at him. "Maybe one day you'll dream of an ATM willing to marry you."

Peaceful Days

Yukino Yukinoshita was reading as usual.

Dong Yunshan was working out as usual.

The air in the Service Club was filled with a peaceful, tranquil atmosphere.

No matter how different Dong Yunshan and Yukino Yukinoshita's motivations were, the Service Club was fundamentally a place that accepted students' consultations and helped them solve their problems.

But judging from Dong Yunshan's vague memories, high school was precisely a sensitive and fragile period. Getting adolescents at that age to open their hearts and actively seek help from others was no easy task.

Especially when asking for help from peers at the same school.

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

But Shizuka Hiratsuka would refer people to them.

That ensured the Service Club received requests while also protecting the privacy of the clients.

High school students always had all kinds of troubles, but not every trouble was serious enough to require someone else's help.

So although Yui Yuigahama's problem had been successfully resolved and everyone had gotten a happy ending, the number of requests received by the Service Club had not noticeably increased.

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

The two either said nothing or corrected each other with sharp words.

It was, one could say... quite harmonious.

You think I'm sick, and I think you're afflicted.

Was that not a kind of shared aspiration?

However, this situation had changed somewhat recently.

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

"Wah!!!" A scream immediately followed.

Then came Yui Yuigahama's scream.

When Yukino Yukinoshita placed a bookmark in 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 hallway wall, staring in panic at another boy who had fallen to the ground.

The somewhat chubby boy wore a coat. He pressed his fingerless-gloved hands against the floor, straightened his arms to push himself up, and rose to his feet with some difficulty.

Dong Yunshan searched his memory. "Zaimokuza?"

"Hoho, have you finally spoken the name engraved upon my soul?" The boy pushed up his glasses and puffed out his chest. "That's right! I am Swordmaster General Yoshiteru Zaimokuza himself!"

Yui Yuigahama began looking at Dong Yunshan in horror.

"Anyway," Dong Yunshan said, stepping aside from the doorway, "come in first."

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

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

"Yoshiteru Zaimokuza. He's in my class." Dong Yunshan answered concisely, then looked at Yoshiteru Zaimokuza, who sat in his chair as though being interrogated. "What trouble do you need help with?"

Though they were classmates, Dong Yunshan had barely attended school for a few days. His knowledge of Yoshiteru Zaimokuza was limited to that.

Remembering his name at all was impressive enough.

"Heh heh..." Yoshiteru Zaimokuza placed his hands behind his back. "Give up your useless little tricks. I will not say a word!"

Dong Yunshan: "?"

"Even if your ambush has captured my body, you shall never destroy my divine will." Yoshiteru Zaimokuza laughed three times. "My sacred sword shall never be stained. When the time comes..."

"Ambush?!" Yui Yuigahama looked completely innocent. "Me?"

"Do you not know what you have done?" Yoshiteru Zaimokuza let out a long sigh. "Another lost soul. I forgive you. Do not let the sins of your past bind you. Take great strides toward a brand-new..."

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

"Then why did he put it so strangely... Ah!" Yui Yuigahama seemed to suddenly remember something. "This is chuunibyou, isn't it?"

Yoshiteru Zaimokuza visibly shuddered.

Dong Yunshan realized Yui Yuigahama had guessed correctly.

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

"I don't really understand it either." Yui Yuigahama lowered her voice. "One of my friends told me about it. Her younger brother was like this in his second year of middle school."

One of my friends... Whenever Yukino Yukinoshita heard a phrase like that now, the first person she thought of was Dong Yunshan.

"Because they admire the special abilities and incredible powers in anime, manga, games, and light novels, they deliberately act like they have those abilities too." Yui Yuigahama recalled her friend's complaints. "Like a right leg sealing away evil power..."

Dong Yunshan: "..." That should be his right hand.

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

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

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

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