Kasumigaoka Utaha tried to propose to Hayasaka Ai that they be allowed to take care of Shinomiya Kaguya. This was, of course, undoubtedly rejected by Hayasaka Ai.
This was within Kasumigaoka Utaha's expectations. If Hayasaka Ai had actually agreed, she would have suspected that the other party might be the mysterious person in disguise.
She lowered her demands bit by bit, at the same time probing to see what Hayasaka Ai's limits were, and to what extent this personal maid understood Shinomiya Kaguya's situation.
The matter of the diary could not be revealed. All she could talk about was them and Hamon.
Based on Kasumigaoka Utaha's cautious questioning, she obtained some information from Hayasaka Ai's equally cautious answers.
In the first few days after getting the diary, Shinomiya Kaguya had investigated many of the people mentioned in it, presumably to verify its authenticity.
Among them, naturally, was Kasumigaoka Utaha, who had been mentioned in passing in the first day's diary.
After that, as Shinomiya Kaguya began to practice Hamon, her suspicion of the diary had lessened a lot, and she herself had become much more cautious, no longer casually investigating others' information as she had before.
As for the matter of Hamon, Hayasaka Ai probably only had some guesses but no real concrete evidence. For this, the two of them had a back-and-forth for quite a while.
Kasumigaoka Utaha's side stated that since Shinomiya Kaguya's current condition was caused by poor sleep quality, she had a massage technique that could make people quickly enter a deep sleep and should be able to help Shinomiya Kaguya return to normal in a short time. It was just that this process was a family secret.
To this, Hayasaka Ai almost instantly thought of the incident a few days ago, when she had inexplicably slept in Shinomiya Kaguya's bed for a whole night and was even reprimanded by the main family for it the next day.
And so, Hayasaka Ai responded, stating that the young mistress had recently been using this method to help her enter a deep sleep and proactively asked if she could learn this technique.
Looking at Hayasaka Ai's sincere appearance, if this Hamon hypnosis technique hadn't been written in the diary by the mysterious person just today, Kasumigaoka Utaha would have really believed her.
In any case, after all the back-and-forth, Kasumigaoka Utaha did not reveal the matter of Hamon, and Hayasaka Ai, through the attitude of the few girls, confirmed that the people her young mistress knew were indeed unusual.
In the end, Hayasaka Ai agreed to give Kasumigaoka Utaha and the others a little time alone with her young mistress.
Of course, although it was said to be alone time, in reality, it was just at a distance.
Hayasaka Ai didn't even leave the coffee shop, just sat on the other side of the cafe with her back to them.
And Kasumigaoka Utaha, after consuming a bit of the Reading Value she had just obtained today, successfully mastered a new use of the ripple and used it on the naive-looking Shinomiya Kaguya.
Watching Shinomiya Kaguya, who in just two or three minutes, was resting her head on her lap and had sweetly entered a state of deep sleep, Kasumigaoka Utaha's group once again felt the practicality of the ripple.
At the very least, in the future, they wouldn't have to suffer from insomnia because the content written in the diary by the mysterious person was too shocking.
But is it appropriate for the young mistress of the Shinomiya family to be sleeping on my thigh-highs?
Kasumigaoka Utaha hesitated for a moment, then had Umaru-chan go and call Hayasaka Ai over. After all, she was the professional maid.
After Hayasaka Ai carefully carried Kaguya to the side and rested her head on her own lap, Kasumigaoka Utaha's gaze fell on Bocchi, who was trying her best to make herself seem non-existent on the side.
Unfortunately, this Guitar Hero did not have the kind of aura that Katō Megumi had that could make people subconsciously ignore her.
The more she tried to hide herself, the more conspicuous she became in the eyes of the few people there.
This level of social anxiety was really difficult to handle.
Kasumigaoka Utaha tried her best to make her voice sound softer and asked the pink-haired girl.
"Um... we'll just call you 'Bocchi-chan' like the mysterious person did in the diary. You don't mind, do you?"
The pink-haired girl's body stiffened, and then she shook her head at an astonishing speed, indicating that she didn't mind.
Not bad, at least there's a reaction.
Kasumigaoka Utaha skipped the questions that might make the other party feel uncomfortable and directly asked her if she had seen any suspicious characters in the alley.
That bastard mysterious person had said before that he didn't want to come over and affect her mood, but this morning's diary directly revealed that he was clearly at the scene, just that he hadn't been discovered.
Bocchi-chan thought for a while, trembling, and then a look of being on the verge of tears appeared on her face.
The mysterious person had clearly already discovered her hiding in the small alley, but she hadn't noticed it at all from beginning to end. Now that she's being asked, how should she answer?
What should I do? If I say I don't know anything, will they suspect that I've been bought off by the mysterious person?
At a time like this, do I need to commit seppuku to prove my innocence?
Ahhh, so why did I have a sudden impulse and run over here this morning? This is clearly not a place that a reclusive, gloomy hikikomori like me should come to!
Thinking that her life might come to an end at this very moment, in the eyes of the few girls, Bocchi-chan's face was rapidly turning pale.
Kasumigaoka Utaha hurriedly spoke up to soothe her emotions. "Alright, alright, it's okay even if you didn't find anything. I didn't think that mysterious person would appear in front of us so easily in the first place."
It seemed they couldn't get any useful information out of Bocchi's side.
Next, they could only wait for Shinomiya Kaguya to return to normal and see if she had any ideas.
Thinking of this, Kasumigaoka Utaha couldn't help but curse that mysterious person who was probably hiding somewhere and peeking at them under her breath.
...
And the mysterious person himself, whom Kasumigaoka Utaha was frantically thinking about, was indeed not too far from these girls at the moment.
He was currently in a private room in an internet cafe near Shinjuku Station.
If you just looked at the straight-line distance, he was less than two kilometers away from those girls.
At this moment, Miyauchi Hikage was playing a game while occasionally making some records in his diary.
"Mmm, Kasumigaoka Utaha cursed me again. I've noted this down."
As he said this, Miyauchi Hikage added a stroke to his diary.
At this moment, in the diary, the names of the few girls who had participated in the gathering today were written down.
At the very top was Kasumigaoka Utaha. Behind her name were two complete '正' characters and one with three strokes, representing that she had cursed Miyauchi Hikage a total of thirteen times today, exceeding the total of all the other diary holders.
Below were the names of Kuroneko and Umaru-chan, with a few strokes behind them as well, but the two of them combined had not yet made up a single '正' character.
As for Bocchi-chan and Shinomiya Kaguya, their names were currently blank, representing that they had not cursed him at all so far.
It was precisely because Shinomiya Kaguya had not only not cursed him at all today but had not even mentioned him once, that Miyauchi Hikage had written the guess in his diary that she might have turned into Kaguya-chan.
And as for why Miyauchi Hikage, even in an internet cafe, knew the situation of these girls like the back of his hand, it was naturally because of the reward he had received last night.