"Ohhh! It's the newest flagship model of the Fruit Phone! The weight, the titanium finish—it feels amazing!"
Rikka held up Eiri's brand-new phone high above her head, like the hero of some old-school RPG who just picked up a rare treasure. Her excitement spilled over without restraint.
Do you like it? Eiri thought bitterly. I only got it by breaking my heart.
Still, seeing Rikka so thrilled—combined with the fact that tonight's gathering didn't include that mysterious girl who had been on TV alongside Minamoto Senya—Eiri felt a little lighter.
That lasted right up until Utaha Kasumigaoka gracefully approached and took a seat on Rikka's other side.
Eiri's smile, which had been mirroring Rikka's, froze and fell.
She had expected this black-stockinged woman to show up. Even if their personalities didn't mesh well, there wasn't much she could do. After all, she wasn't the one hosting tonight's gathering.
As a guest, she had no right to complain.
On Kasumigaoka's end, the feeling was mutual. She had no fondness for Eiri, who always flaunted her childhood-friend status with Senya.
But today, her mind was too heavy to waste time worrying about that sort of thing.
There were some questions she couldn't ask Senya directly.
Going through someone close to him might be a better route.
Of course, she couldn't look too eager—this had to be done carefully, step by step.
With a smile that looked casual, as though noticing it for the first time, Kasumigaoka asked:
"Rikka, are you really that interested in tech gadgets?"
"Not particularly," Rikka replied, handing the phone back to Eiri. "It's just that I've never really gotten to play around with one before, so I thought it was fun."
With Eiri's permission, she had unlocked the screen and tried it out for a bit. But after a few minutes, she realized it wasn't that different from her own phone. Worse, the unfamiliar system made it feel clunky in her hands. The charm had worn off instantly.
"Oh, right! Did you guys see Senya's TV appearance last night? I posted about it in our group chat, but nobody replied."
Kasumigaoka and Eiri exchanged surprised looks.
Neither of them had expected Rikka to bring up that topic on her own.
But neither had an answer for her, either.
One of them had been so shocked that she'd dropped her phone on the spot, shattering the screen to pieces.
The other had handled it a little better… if sulking in her room, too upset to eat dinner, and spending a sleepless night spiraling in her thoughts could be called "better."
Under those circumstances, who would have the energy to reply in the group chat?
So, the two girls each scrambled for excuses to brush off Rikka's question.
"Rikka, do you know who that girl with Senya was? She didn't look like someone from our school. A new friend of his?"
Eiri finally blurted the question she had been bottling up for nearly a full day.
With Senya in the kitchen helping Saeko and Yukino prepare Christmas dinner, this was her only chance.
Kasumigaoka's eyes sharpened slightly—she wanted to know the same thing.
Rikka, on the other hand, actually knew. After all, she had been there yesterday morning when Senya explained things to her sister.
"I'm not sure if you'd call her a friend exactly. But I can tell you for sure she's not from our school.
Eiri, you remember what I told you before? How Senya said something offhand that ended up saving someone's life?"
"I remember! And afterward, that person gave your family a huge sum of money as thanks, right?"
"Exactly! Well, that girl on TV last night? She's the daughter of that person. Apparently, her mom asked Senya to look after her, so that's why he went out with her."
"Why him specifically?" Eiri asked, frowning.
"I guess her mom didn't have anyone else she could turn to… I wasn't really paying attention to the details since I was watching TV at the time, so I didn't catch everything Senya said to my sister."
Rikka gave an awkward laugh.
You were watching TV at a time like that?!
The air fell still for a few seconds.
Eiri and Kasumigaoka both sank into thought.
That was enough information, though.
They didn't know the full details of last night's events, but if Senya had gone because of a request from someone's mother—and not out of his own initiative—then the situation looked a lot better than they had feared.
"Oh, and Senya brought home that capybara plushie he got during the interview yesterday. He gave it to me! I'll go grab it, it's super cute!"
Rikka darted off to her room and came back clutching the plush.
He gave it to Rikka?
That alone proved the TV hosts and so-called "guests" were full of nonsense.
Kasumigaoka's face brightened instantly, her smile blooming with relief.
Eiri was slower to catch on, but she, too, relaxed as the realization set in.
"Man, just sitting here waiting for dinner is such a luxury," Senya said as he glanced from the kitchen toward the living room, where the three girls were laughing and taking selfies together.
It puzzled him, though.
Weren't Eiri and Utaha usually at odds? Yet now they had Rikka sandwiched between them, giggling like best friends at a sleepover.
Maybe the holiday atmosphere really did bring people closer together.
Senya wiped his hands on a kitchen towel and leaned against the counter for a moment. From his vantage point, the three girls were huddled together on the couch, the glow of the Christmas tree lights scattering over their hair and faces. Laughter spilled out in bursts, light and almost too harmonious for what he remembered of their usual dynamic.
It was strange. Utaha and Eiri weren't exactly enemies, but "friendly" had never been a word anyone would use for them either. If they weren't ignoring each other, they were tossing barbed remarks back and forth, thinly veiled as casual conversation.
Yet tonight, with Rikka sitting cheerfully between them like a bridge, their tension had softened into something almost… warm. They looked, for lack of a better word, like friends.
"…Maybe it's just the holiday spirit," Senya muttered under his breath.
Saeko, balancing a tray of hors d'oeuvres, overheard him and smirked knowingly. "Or maybe you're underestimating the influence you have on them."
Senya blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Never mind," Saeko said, slipping past him with a smile that gave away nothing.
Dinner was finally ready. The living room table, usually the site of Rikka's scattered textbooks and Eiri's art supplies, was transformed into something out of a magazine: roast chicken glistening with herbs, bowls of simmering side dishes, plates of bright seasonal fruit, and a cake waiting off to the side for later.
As everyone gathered around, Senya found himself sandwiched between Rikka and Yukino, while Eiri and Utaha sat directly across from him. The seating arrangement felt… precarious.
But maybe that was just in his head.
Rikka clasped her hands together and exclaimed, "Merry Christmas, everyone!"
The others followed with their own quieter, more composed greetings, but the atmosphere had already shifted. It wasn't awkward anymore. It felt like a real holiday dinner—a rare moment of peace where none of them had to pretend or compete.
They ate, they laughed, they teased each other over the smallest things. Rikka tried to steal extra chicken wings, Eiri scolded her but then secretly slid one onto her plate anyway, and Utaha, ever the observer, watched with an amused smile that seemed far more genuine than the sharp smirks she usually wore.
Even Yukino, who almost always maintained her cool, unshakable composure, allowed herself to soften at the edges, her voice gentler as she chimed in now and then.
For Senya, it was surreal. He had braced himself for tension, arguments, maybe even tears. Instead, what he got was… harmony.
As the night wore on and the cake was finally cut, Senya leaned back in his chair, a little dazed from the warmth of it all.
For a brief moment, he let himself believe that things could stay like this—that the complicated undercurrents between everyone might settle into something this simple and comfortable.
But as Yukino quietly passed him a plate with a small, meaningful look, and Eiri laughed a little too loudly at one of Utaha's sarcastic remarks, Senya was reminded that peace like this was fragile.
Beautiful, yes. But fragile.
And yet, surrounded by friends under the glow of the tree, he couldn't help but smile.
For tonight at least, that was enough.