The bell rang five minutes later.
It was a gentle sound, soft chimes echoing through the hallway, almost musical in their cadence. In any normal school, it would've simply meant the start of class, nothing more remarkable than the transition from one period to another.
Here, though, it felt more like the opening notes of a disaster I couldn't prevent.
Kaori guided me toward the second-year classroom, her steps light and unhurried, as if nothing remotely strange had happened in the courtyard. Meanwhile, I could still feel eyes tracking my movement, whispers trailing behind us like persistent static that refused to fade.
"…he's really a boy, though…"
"…but there's already one here…"
"…do you think he's cute?"
I chose not to acknowledge any of it, keeping my eyes forward and my expression as neutral as possible. Engaging with any of this would only make it worse, and I'd already had enough attention for one morning.
The classroom door slid open with a soft click, and the noise inside, the casual chatter of students before class, dropped instantly to nothing.
Thirty pairs of eyes turned toward us in perfect synchronization.
Correction, thirty pairs of female eyes, all suddenly very interested in who'd just walked through the door.
Kaori cleared her throat, and I noticed her confidence wavering slightly for the first time since we'd met. "E-everyone, this is the new transfer student. He'll be joining our class starting today."
A beat of silence passed.
Then another.
And another, stretching out long enough that I started to wonder if they'd somehow all frozen in place.
I gave a small, polite bow, the way I'd seen countless anime characters do. "Nice to meet you."
That was apparently the wrong move.
The class erupted.
"EH?!"
"A BOY?!"
"But we already have one!"
"Wait, so there's TWO now?!"
"Is that even allowed?!"
Chairs scraped against the floor as girls leaned forward, craning their necks to get a better look at me. A few whispered excitedly to each other, their hands covering their mouths in that exaggerated way people do when they're not really trying to hide anything. Others stared openly, unabashedly curious, and at least one girl near the back covered her face entirely, as she'd just witnessed something scandalous that she couldn't process.
The homeroom teacher, a woman in her late twenties with neatly styled hair and thin-framed glasses, clapped her hands sharply, the sound cutting through the chaos. "Settle down! This is still a classroom, not a marketplace."
The noise dimmed somewhat, though excited whispers continued rippling through the room like stubborn echoes.
Miss Hayashida, I'd caught her name from the placard on the desk, adjusted her glasses, and looked at me with what I could only describe as mild curiosity mixed with administrative resignation. Like she'd been told about this situation approximately ten minutes before I walked in and hadn't had time to fully process it yet.
"Please introduce yourself properly," she said, gesturing toward the front of the class.
Thirty pairs of eyes returned to me, this time with even more intensity.
I swallowed hard, suddenly very aware of how dry my throat felt.
"My name is, "
I paused mid-sentence.
Right. Names mattered here. In dating sims, names carried weight and significance, and sometimes even triggered specific routes or responses. Choosing the wrong name could mean accidentally activating flags I didn't want anywhere near me.
"I'm… Shun," I said after a moment's consideration, settling on something simple and unremarkable. "It's nice to meet you all."
A simple introduction. Nothing that should trigger any particular interest or route activation.
Miss Hayashida nodded, seemingly satisfied with the bare minimum. "You'll be seated at the empty desk near the window. Third row from the front."
Of course.
The window seat.
In the game, in virtually every dating sim I'd ever played, actually, that seat was always reserved for important characters. The protagonist sat there. The mysterious transfer student sat there. The character with a tragic backstory and a secret they couldn't share sat there.
It was never just a regular seat.
I walked toward it slowly, acutely aware of every single step I took, every breath I drew. The classroom wasn't large, but the distance felt immense, like crossing a stage with an audience analyzing my every movement. As I passed by rows of desks, conversations died down completely, only to spring back to life the moment I moved paas iflikwere was creating a wave of silence and whispered commentary in my wake.
"He's so close…"
"Did you see his eyes?"
"Is he shorter than Kaito-senpai?"
"Who cares? He's here, isn't he?"
I reached the desk and sat down carefully, facing forward and placing my bag on the floor beside me. I kept my posture straight, my expression neutral, pretending with every fiber of my being that I didn't hear any of the commentary swirling around me.
Then I heard a chair move directly beside me.
I stiffened involuntarily.
A girl sat down at the desk to my right, settling in with the casual grace of someone who belonged exactly where they were. She rested her chin on her hand, her elbow propped on the desk, and looked at me with an expression that hovered somewhere between bored curiosity and genuine intrigue.
She had long black hair that fell past her shoulders in perfect waves, sharp eyes that seemed to analyze everything they looked at, and the kind of composed demeanor that suggested she rarely did anything without calculating it first.
Yumi Kirisaki.
The ice-cold honor student. The untouchable genius. In the game, she was notoriously difficult to approach, her route required specific dialogue choices and perfect timing, and she never, ever initiated conversation with anyone first. That was her entire character trait: she waited for others to prove themselves worthy of her attention.
And yet—
"Nice shirt," she said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper, her eyes never leaving me.
I turned slightly, caught completely off guard. "Thanks. I think."
The corner of her mouth twitched upward, just barely. "You don't act like someone who enjoys attention."
She said it like an observation, clinical and detached, but there was something underneath it, curiosity, maybe, or recognition of a kindred spirit who also preferred to remain unnoticed.
Because I don't enjoy it, I thought. Not even a little.
Before I could formulate any kind of response that wouldn't sound defensive or weird, another chair scraped loudly against the floor.
On my other side.
A girl with short brown hair and an energetic presence that seemed to fill the space around her leaned over far too close, her elbow landing squarely on my desk, her grin wide and unabashedly playful.
"So you're the new boy, huh?" she said, her voice bright and teasing. "I'm Mina Takahashi. Try not to fall in love too fast, okay? I know it's tempting."
I blinked, genuinely at a loss for words.
Two girls.
One on each side.
In the game, this kind of situation, being flanked by two different heroines simultaneously, wasn't supposed to happen until at least five or six chapters in, after you'd already made significant progress on individual routes. This was advanced-level flag territory, the kind of scenario that required careful navigation and deliberate choices.
I'd been here for less than an hour.
Miss Hayashida cleared her throat loudly, her tone sharpening with obvious irritation. "Enough chatting. Open your textbooks to page forty-seven. We're covering modern literature today, and I expect everyone to actually pay attention."
Reluctantly, the class settled into something resembling order. Girls pulled out textbooks, opened notebooks, and at least pretended to focus on the lesson beginning at the front of the room.
But the damage was already done, and I could feel it in every fiber of my being.
Routes were shifting, adjusting to accommodate my unexpected presence. Flags were raised that shouldn't exist yet, interactions occurring out of sequence, the careful structure of the game's narrative beginning to warp around the anomaly I represented.
And I hadn't even survived my first class yet.
As I stared at the blackboard, barely processing Miss Hayashida's explanation of some literary technique I should probably care about, one thought echoed persistently in my head, drowning out everything else.
This seating arrangement is going to kill me.
Not metaphorically.
Actually, kill me.
Because in a dating sim, proximity mattered. Seating arrangements determined who you interacted with, which routes became accessible, and which events triggered naturally. And sitting between two heroines, with Yumi's calculating gaze occasionally flicking toward me from the right and Mina's cheerful energy radiating from the left, meant I was already caught in the middle of something I had no idea how to navigate.
I pulled out my own textbook mechanically, opened it to the correct page, and tried to focus on the words printed there.
But all I could think about was the fact that somewhere across campus, Kaito was probably sitting in his own classroom, completely unaware that the game he thought he was playing had just fundamentally changed.
And I was the reason why.