Wednesday arrived, and our oddly timed pseudo-weekend came to a close.
“Good morning, Yotsy!”
“M-Morning...Makina...”
“Huh...? Yotsy?”
I’d promised Makina that I’d walk to school with her, and we met up in the morning, just as planned...but I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her. Why? Because the movie that Mio had recommended to me, The Ladies’ Academy Case Files...had turned out to be really, really good! Not only was the movie’s story just plain interesting, Makina and Mio’s chemistry had been ridiculously perfect. If I hadn’t had a handkerchief handy, I never would’ve made it through the climax!
Thanks to that experience, my internal image of Makina had gone through a rather dramatic revision. I just couldn’t stop myself from seeing her as a big-name actress now, and looking directly at her felt...I dunno, a little presumptuous, I guess? Like, this was a girl who’d won the Yotsuba Academy Award for Best Starring Actress, in a manner of speaking...and it definitely didn’t help that afterward, I’d gone on to watch as many episodes of this one TV show that Makina and Mio were both in as I could access from that streaming service. Even its theme song was great! After all this time, I was finally turning into a Shooting Star fan—or, from another perspective, I’d finally fallen into the Shooting Star pit trap.
“Heeey, Yotsy?”
“Bwaugh?!” I yelped. While I’d been lost in thought, Makina had leaned in to peer at my face! Her eyelashes were so long! And her eyes were so shapely! Her chin too! She was so pretty!
“You’re a little spacey today,” said Makina. “Did you not get enough sleep?”
“N-Nope!” I yelped. “Nope, nah, not at all! I’m the same as ever! T-Totally normal!”
“Oh, really?”
Makina was walking by my side, as if it were perfectly normal for us to be together. I’d always known how incredible of a thing that was, of course, but as time passed by, it was like I was becoming more and more aware of it on some deeper level... And aaaah, it feels like my face is on fire!
“Yotsy...?”
“Y-Yeah? What is it, Maki—”
Smch!
The next thing I knew, Makina had leaned in so close I could almost see her pores...and I felt the softness of her lips. We were on a public street—an abandoned public street in a quiet residential area, sure, but still a public street—in the middle of the morning, and she’d kissed me out of the blue?!
“M-Makina?!” I shouted.
“Hee hee! You made it so easy, I couldn’t resist,” she replied.
“You couldn’t resist...? D-Don’t you know how risky that was?! What if this ends up in the tabloids?!”
“Oh? Are you paying me back for the fib I told back when we met in the summer?”
No! I mean, okay, I guess she did lie to me about being followed around by paparazzi back then...but just because that wasn’t true doesn’t mean it couldn’t actually happen, and if it did, she might not even know about it!
“But you know, if someone did take a picture of us...that might not be so bad. It’d be nice to show our relationship off to the whole world,” said Makina. Not only was she not cowed by my warning at all, she actually got even closer and wrapped her arms around one of mine?!
“U-Uh, excuse me, Makina...?!” I said. “I sort of remember you saying a bunch of stuff about giving up on becoming my girlfriend? Does that ring a bell...?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve given up on that,” Makina replied. “That’s why my current plan’s to be your mistress instead.”
“M-My mistress?!”
“Exactly! In the ‘person you’re cheating with’ sense, just in case that wasn’t clear. We’ll have something deeper, more sensual than plain old bittersweet love,” she whispered straight into my ear, her voice breathy in just the right way to scramble my brain like an egg! “Yuna and Rinka have a lead on me now, maybe, but that’s just fine with me. Oh, and I don’t mind at all if your relationship with them stays the same as ever, of course. I just thought it’d be nice to make sure you can’t live without me on the side.”
That was a really cute way to tell me something that isn’t the slightest bit cute, content-wise! Makina had polished a powerful, adultlike sort of appeal in her time in the entertainment industry, and now she was turning the full brunt of all of it directly on me!
“Don’t worry. We have plenty of time. But then again, how about we skip school today and get a head start?”
“Bwuh, ahbwuguwaugh...”
“If you want, the two of us can head right back to my place. We’ll be nice and alone, and we can take all the time we need to—”
“Nooope!!!”
Wha—?! That was Yuna’s voice!
“Tch!”
And now Makina’s clicking her tongue?!
“Good morning, Yuna,” Makina said after a particularly pregnant pause. “And Rinka as well. I’m quite sure I remember arranging for us to meet up several blocks away from here?”
“And then I had a bad feeling and changed those plans,” said Yuna.
“A bad feeling that was clearly right on the money,” noted Rinka.
“Remarkable,” said Makina. “You have the finely honed instincts of a wild animal.”
H-Hmm? That’s weird. All three of them are smiling, but the atmosphere’s so tense I can actually hear the strain in the air...?!
“You should be more careful, Yotsuba,” said Rinka. “Even the loveliest roses have their thorns.”
“Thorns? I have no such thing,” said Makina. “I might have my fair share of sweet, sweet nectar, though.”
“You mean poison!” snapped Yuna.
Rinka peeled me and Makina apart while Yuna interposed herself between us as a human shield. Meanwhile, Makina was still smiling away as happily as ever...which was really scary! It feels like they might start duking it out at any second! What is happening here?!
“No need to be so on guard, you two,” said Makina. “I’ve settled on just being Yotsy’s mistress, after all.”
“Her mistress?!” Yuna and Rinka shouted.
“Precisely! The two of you can have your sweet little high school romances with her, and meanwhile, I’ll be taking a step ahead and leading her up the stairs to adulthood. Hee hee—that way I won’t be getting in your way at all anymore, will I?”
“You’ll be doing something way worse!” said Yuna.
“I can’t think of a more distasteful way you could’ve bounced back,” Rinka commented.
I thought the three of them were getting along way better than they used to! Did something happen over those two days off to make their relationship backslide in a major way...? None of them said anything about meeting up...so maybe this is one of those things where their mindsets naturally changed over the course of time? Or maybe they can be this openly at each other’s throats specifically because they get along well now?
One way or another...
“I think it’s clear we have to set the record straight again, Makina,” Rinka said in a very firm tone.
“We’re never, eeeeeever giving Yotsuba up to you!” declared Yuna.