I tried to swipe the key back from him, but he deftly pulled his hand away. “Fine, let me put it another way,” he said. “I’m not letting you go home until you come back inside and have a nice, long conversation with me.”
“And why the hell should I, huh?!” I shot back. “I was dreading this even when I thought it would just be you, and now you wanna sic your girlfriends on me too?! No way, man. You’ve got too much of a home-field advantage here. Why should I think you’ll even allow me to get a word in edgewise, let alone say my piece?!”
“Man, you sure do love to assume the worst. I just let you get a whole paranoid rant in edgewise, didn’t I? And trust me, the girls are total sweethearts. Now c’mon, let’s go.”
Sera slipped my key into his pocket, then headed back into the café.
For a moment, I seriously considered just walking home without my bike, but since Sera had the key, I had no clue how to get it back without eventually caving and letting him have his stupid conversation. I might as well get it over with.
Damn it, man… This sucks. I knew I never should’ve come here.
And so, with regret hanging heavily over my shoulders, I followed Sera into the restaurant like a prisoner in chains, then all the way back through the seating area to the table where he and his girlfriends were sitting.
“Sorry for the wait, ladies,” said Sera. “Eriri-chan, do you think you could move over to that side for me?”
“Okaaay!” said the tanned girl, gladly moving her chair to the other side of the table. Sera then stole a chair from one of the nearby tables and dragged it over for me to sit down in before having a seat himself. Now he and I were sitting on one side, with the three girls sitting across from us, and a few coffee cups and an assortment of cookies on the table in between. The tanned girl also had a half-eaten parfait in front of her.
“Wow, this almost feels like a college mixer!” said Sera. “Whaddya think, Sakuma?”
“I think I want to go home.”
“You two wanna play King’s Game or somethin’? That’s a pretty classic icebreaker at those things. Also, who even started that trend, I wonder? Bit of weird setting for a game where you force other people to do your bidding just because you drew the lucky straw. Whoever first came up with that idea must’ve been either a real sadist or had, like, negative social skills.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Speaking of kings,” Sera went on, “did you know that Louis XIV supposedly only took three baths in his whole entire life? Crazy, right?”
“…Please let me go home.”
I already felt sick to my stomach. Why did it seem like he was having so much fun all by himself? Was he getting a twisted kick out of my misery?
“Um, Sakuma-kun, right?” said one of the girls. “Would you like to order something to drink first, or…?”
Hearing my name, I hesitantly looked up. The one who’d addressed me was the girl sitting in the middle—though “woman” or “lady” might have been a more appropriate descriptor. She did not look like a high schooler to me. She had an air of composed maturity and was the only one of the three not wearing a school uniform. Her braided hair was draped down to about chest height.
“Er, no thanks,” I replied. “I’m not planning to stay for very long…”
“But Ikkun practically dragged you back in here, didn’t he? I think it’s only fair that he treats you to something nice in exchange. Isn’t that right, Ikkun?”
Who in the hell is “Ikkun”? Does she mean Sera? Oh, right… His first name is “Itsuku,” isn’t it? Okay. Pretty dorky pet name, but whatever.
“I think I can afford a drink for my good buddy Sakuma, yeah,” said Sera. “Just one, though, so choose wisely.”
“Well, if you insist.”
I grabbed a drink menu, skimmed the price column, and picked the most expensive item: a Viennese coffee. Sera flagged down a waiter to put in my order; all that remained was to wait for it to be brought out. This petty victory made me feel a little less nauseous.
It seemed I wasn’t going to be heading home anytime soon, so I figured I might as well take this opportunity to reassess my situation. For starters, I took a better look at the three girls sitting across from me.
The tanned girl on the right I already recognized—she’d been the one Ushio and I had seen walking around town with Sera the night before. Her uniform was that of a high school from a neighboring town, if I remembered right.
In the middle was the older-looking girl who’d offered me a drink on Sera’s behalf. Unlike the tanned girl, who had bratty party-girl vibes, this one seemed so prim and proper that I couldn’t for the life of me imagine her dating a guy like Sera.
On the left, there was a girl wearing a Tsubakioka High uniform. Although we went to the same school, I had no idea who she was. She had a small frame, wore her hair in a neat little bob, and had thin-framed glasses. Compared to the other two girls, she seemed demure and fairly plain to me.
Finally, there was Sera: the guy sitting next to me, and one I knew all too well. He was a bit of a playboy who liked to have multiple girlfriends at the same time—though it wasn’t cheating, apparently, but simply his preferred style of romance. He’d told me so himself about half a year ago, and his preferences hadn’t changed in that regard. I had no way of saying for sure yet whether all three of these girls were officially his girlfriends or not, but they did seem close with him in one way or another.
“All right, how ’bout we do some introductions?” Sera suggested, then turned to the tanned girl on the right. “You go ahead and start us off, Eriri-chan.”
“Okaaay!” she said in an upbeat, girly tone. “Hiii, I’m Eriri Momozawa, and I’m a senior at Keika High! Nice to meet youuu!”