Prologue
I GOT MARRIED TO A CLASSMATE.
To the girl I hated most in my entire high school, in fact. She was my bitter nemesis.
In an ordinary love story, marriage is the happily ever after. But in our story, it was an inauspicious start.
Houjou Saito was trudging along the high school hallway when the sight of a girl stopped him in his tracks. It was Sakuramori Akane—famous in school for being photogenic. Everyone agreed she should have been a model.
She could have been, that is…if she never opened her mouth to speak.
Noticing Saito, Akane arched her narrow eyebrows.
Uh-oh, this could be trouble. Saito was about to turn around in the hallway to avoid her, but before he could get away, her marching footsteps indicated an imminent approach. Akane grabbed Saito’s necktie, pulling him close toward her beautiful, angular face. He noticed the piercing gleam of intelligence in her eyes. Her moist cherry-pink lips. The way that one accent strand of pigtail fell on the delicately constituted feminine build of her body. She was as perfectly cute as cute could be—at least in terms of her looks.
She was now glaring at Saito, her face so hostile you could almost see steam coming from it. Not even an ogre in the depths of hell would dare take her on in this state. Her hand tightened, pulling Saito’s necktie tight, almost suffocating him.
“If you tell the class we’re married, I’ll kill you,” Akane threatened Saito in her low, menacing whisper.
“Seems like a petty reason for murder…” Saito mumbled.
“Not at all…! It’d already be suicide if they knew, honestly. My whole world would come to an end,” remarked Akane.
“Never knew you hated me that much,” said Saito. To be fair, though, the hate was mutual.
“Listen, I don’t want them to know either. No good could come of telling people. I’ll keep it under wraps,” Saito stated.
“I don’t believe you,” Akane hissed. “You plan to tell everyone in the entire school that you get to have your way with me every night!”
“No,” asserted Saito. Akane trembled.
“Then…you plan to tell everyone in the whole wide world…?”
“Would you like that? No, I swear on my life I will keep this secret,” Saito declared.
Akane let out a small sigh.
“If you swear on your life, I guess I believe you.”
“Good.”
“So it shouldn’t be a problem if I set a voice-activated A-bomb on your body, so that if you ever mention our marriage, the recorder will blow you and everything within a one-kilometer radius into smithereens?” exclaimed Akane.
“You don’t believe me at all, do you?” Saito felt a chill go down his spine. He could hardly believe this whole situation himself—he never dreamed he would wed in his senior year of high school, much less that he’d be wed to the girl he hated most.
What did I get myself into…? Saito was in agony.
Their story began four days ago.