After stopping by a foreign-style knick-knack shop and buying Sasaki a new headband, we stepped out of the store.
“Thanks for the headband!”
“You gave your old one to a fan the other day, right? So don’t give this one away.”
“Of course not. I’ll treasure it.”
With that, Sasaki happily put on the wine-red headband.
“Write your name on it. You’ll cry if you lose it.”
“Huh? Don’t treat me like a kid! I’m not old enough to be losing stuff.”
“…That sounds like a flag.”
“It’s not!”
Sasaki squeezed my pinky with her absurd grip strength.
“Owowowow! O-Okay! My bad! It’s my fault, so at least spare my pinky!”
When I begged, Sasaki finally released me.
What the hell is with her grip strength…?
Sasaki returned to her usual gentle hold and grabbed my pinky again as we walked.
“If you treat me like a kid again, it won’t end with just that.”
“L-Like what… exactly?”
“…Maybe I’ll show Aihara-san that picture I secretly took of you sleeping the other day.”
Sasaki pulled up the photo of me sleeping and showed it to me with little glances.
“Why did you even take that!?”
“I wanted to get some dirt on you.”
“Delete it right now!”
“Nope.”
“You little—”
Cute face or not, what she’s doing is basically illegal sneaky photography.
…I’m not letting her keep the upper hand like this.
“Fine. If you won’t delete it, maybe I’ll spread your sleeping face everywhere too.”
“You don’t have any.”
“…How do you know that?”
“Because when you were sleeping, your phone—”
Sasaki stopped mid-sentence, suddenly looked away, and fell silent.
“Hm? You were about to say something just now.”
“N-Nothing! Anyway, where should we go next? I kinda want pancakes again.”
“What—? We already went to four cafés today. You can still eat pancakes?”
“Crème-brûlée pancakes… I want them.”
We’ve been eating sweets since noon, and I’m on the verge of getting whipped-cream drunk, but Sasaki looks completely fine.
Girls’ stomachs are seriously something else.
✳︎✳︎
The next place Makishima-kun and his girlfriend headed to was… another café? Seriously, how many cafés is this couple planning to visit today?
What kind of stomachs do they have…?
I dragged my heavy body into what would be my fifth café of the day.
Still, all the cafés they visited had private rooms, so I hadn’t actually seen them eating.
“Right over here, please.”
The kimono-clad waitress guided me to a private room diagonally across from theirs.
“Here is the menu.”
They were flirting nonstop on the way here, and every place they choose is a private café…
Could it be that they’re doing things inside those rooms that are too indecent to even say out loud…?
So Makishima-kun was actually a huge playboy pretending to be a cherry boy…?
“Um, may I take your order?”
“One milkshake.”
“Certainly.”
Well, waiting outside the store is boring anyway, so today I’ll follow this couple’s entire date course to the very end.
A few minutes later, the waitress from earlier pushed a cart toward their private room, carrying pancakes.
…Pancakes.
Every time I see them, I remember that girl.
It was around the time when our first dome concert was only a month away. As the leader, I decided to meet all 89 members one-on-one.
The place Kiraboshi Ayane brought me to was a small café hidden in a residential area of Tokyo.
Her eyes sparkled at the shop’s soufflé pancakes.
Back then, she spoke with a childish, syrupy voice she never used on stage—
“Yaaay, crème-brûlée pancakes!”
Yes, just like that. That happy voice—huh!?
I turned toward the hallway.
For a split second, mixed in with the café noise, I heard that same spoiled-sweet voice.
Was that… something my memory created? A hallucination…?
“Your milkshake is here—huh? Ma’am?”
My cheeks were as drenched in sweat as the glass holding the milkshake.
“Are you all right? If you’re not feeling well—”
“…May I see the menu?”
I took the menu from her worried hands and my eyes went straight to the limited-time section.
“…Crème-brûlée pancakes.”
“Ma’am?”
So the voice I heard… really was Kiraboshi Ayane…?
“The customers diagonally behind me… did they order the crème-brûlée pancakes?”
“I—I’m afraid I can’t answer that due to privacy.”
“Then bring one more plate of crème-brûlée pancakes to that room. Put it on my bill.”
“Eh—? Understood…”
The waitress looked bewildered, then hurried out of the room.
This isn’t something I should be doing.
But if there’s a reason they insist on private rooms, then this possibility is too real to ignore.
The waitress stopped the cart in front of the private room behind me.
I stepped into the hallway pretending to go to the restroom, passing by their room while straining my ears.
“Um, we didn’t order two.”
“What? You said you didn’t want anything that sweet, but now you wanna eat too, Makishima?”
“I didn’t order it!”
This voice…
I suspected it might be her, but I couldn’t be sure… but now—
I turned around and returned to my own room.
Then the waitress came in with a new receipt.
“Here is the updated bill. If you know the customers in that room, we can move you—”
“No need… I’m just an old friend. That’s all.”
✳︎✳︎
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