I really don't want to have a girlfriend.

Yukinoshita Yono: "..."

That was too tactful. You should have just told her that her brother had fallen into a deep sleep due to some kind of trial given by the gods, and that he didn't know when he would wake up.

Yukinoshita rubbed her temples, remained silent for a while, then composed herself and spoke again to Kasugano Sora:

"Xiao Qiong, what I'm about to tell you, don't be afraid or panicked... Although it's not a good thing, it's not too bad for now, it's really not too bad."

Kasugano Sora frowned: "Can't you just get to the point? I don't like riddle people."

"The key point?" Yukinoshita Haruno raised an eyebrow.

"Your brother suddenly fell into an unresponsive sleep on the road and is now lying in my car like a vegetable. I brought him back for you. The culprit is probably that deity again. There's no way to solve this. His vital signs are good, and he doesn't seem to have suffered any harm, but according to intelligence, he needs to complete some kind of trial before he can wake up. If he doesn't complete it, he'll probably just keep sleeping."

This long string of words, spoken without pause, exploded like a bomb, engulfing the air around the silver-haired girl.

"...?"

He watched as Kasugano Sora slowly twisted and changed, his expression blank and incredulous.

Yukino Shino shrugged and said helplessly, "Riddler is also an art of speaking. It's for your own good, but you don't like it, so there's nothing I can do about it."

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Is this a ploy to get me to play visual novels?

Outside the Sky Temple house, inside the van.

With her hands resting lightly on her knees, her fingers fidgeting awkwardly, Yukino Yukinoshita looked hesitantly at Natsukawa Masuzu, who was playing with Tenkuji Yuu's hair.

“Natsukawa-kun…”

Before she could even utter a word, Natsukawa Masaki cut her off with a single sentence.

Do you know how happy I am when I wake up in the morning and find that I still remember all the things that happened before yesterday?

"Wh-what?"

Caught off guard, she was filled with astonishment and confusion.

"As long as we don't lose anything else, then getting it completely is just around the corner."

Without looking up, Natsukawa Masaki focused intently on admiring Tenkuji Yu's features.

Those blue eyes, which were always filled with sneer, capriciousness, morbidity, and gloom, now held only pure tenderness and longing, lingering on the features of the beloved who was sleeping peacefully.

She said softly, "Now, if I just have a little more time, this deep-seated feeling will no longer be a rootless duckweed..."

"What exactly are you trying to say? Could you please explain yourself first?" Yukino Yukinoshita interrupted her monologue with some impatience.

"Don't rush." ​​Natsukawa Masaki finally raised her eyes and smiled faintly at her. "When he called me, I knew that you had successfully done what you wanted to do, and that we all had the possibility of happiness because of you."

"So to be honest, no matter how unwilling I am, I should thank you for contributing to his harem career, allowing me to focus on remembering the past without any worries... But to be honest, seeing you in this pathetic state where you know nothing, I actually feel a sense of relief and revenge."

Just like yesterday, you enjoyed my clownish performance, and as his girlfriend, you took it for granted that you pitied me as I danced ugly beside him.

With a soft sigh, Natsukawa Masuzu lowered her head again, her fingers sliding from Tenkuji Yu's forehead down his cheek, across his chin, and finally her nails gently pressed against his throat, as if to kill him in his sleep.

However, after stroking and pressing with his fingers, he eventually put them back on his hair and continued doing things that he would never normally allow himself to do, satisfying the little sweet flirtation in his heart.

"Natsukawa is so cool..."

Yukino Yukinoshita, standing to the side, naturally turned pale, but it was clear that rather than mocking herself, she was stating the facts and making self-deprecating remarks.

Moreover, there were many things about these words that Yukino Yukinoshita had to pay attention to, leaving her no room to be angry with her.

"Putting aside the 'harem business' thing, Natsukawa-kun, it seems you're not just having a crush on him... You've betrayed Yui too, haven't you? Isn't she your only friend?"

Natsukawa Masaki couldn't help but chuckle.

"So what if it is? Besides, it wasn't me who betrayed her—similarly, you, who are currently just secretly in love with Ayou, haven't betrayed your best friend either."

She looked intently at Yukino Yukinoshita, her icy blue eyes flashing with an eerie light, her tone light yet undeniably assertive.

"Because the ones who are wrong are Yui, who is so devoted to that scumbag Ayu, and him, who gave us his light and then disappeared without a word of breaking up."

Natsukawa Masaki shrugged: "As an ex-girlfriend, I just wanted to reclaim what was rightfully mine in the past, so how could it be considered betrayal... Besides, Yui, who agreed to your relationship in the past, should have been prepared for the person she liked to be a womanizer."

"So your worries are just overthinking things. Just accept this relationship honestly."

The amount of information was overwhelming. Yukino Yukinoshita stared blankly with her mouth slightly open, looking at Natsukawa Masuzu, who had lowered her head again, with surprise and confusion.

"So, you also dated Tenkuji-kun in the past... No, the biggest problem is..."

She murmured, her expression a complex mix of disbelief and relief, yet also a hint of a sigh of relief: "Yui agreed to us dating? How could this be? This is absurd... When did this happen? Why would she..."

Seeing that she was just as pitiful as her past self, Natsukawa Masuzu kindly offered some words of comfort as someone who had been through it all: "As long as you can remember as soon as possible, all these problems can be solved. As for now, don't worry too much about it, because it won't solve anything anyway."

"Most importantly, he has inexplicably fallen into a deep sleep and we don't know when he will wake up... Although I believe that Ayou will not abandon us girlfriends to be sad for him and wait for him for too long, we still have to be prepared to contact a private hospital and give him IV fluids to keep him alive like a person in a vegetative state."

"...That's true."

Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, Yukino Yukinoshita's eyes regained their clarity. She clenched her fists on her knees, temporarily putting aside her troubled thoughts, and her expression became stern again.

"I hope the following content will appear in Kasumigaoka-senpai's notebook soon... Based on my deduction, this should only be the beginning, and there are still things that she or we should do later."

“Like a mission in a game, right?” Natsukawa Masuzu raised an eyebrow at her with a slightly mischievous grin.

With an unpleasant glance, Yukino Yukinoshita tossed her long hair aside, her tone cold and sharp with sarcasm: "You're quite calm, aren't you? Why don't you do those annoying, slutty things like you used to do, making it seem like you enjoy seducing him by degrading yourself?"

Natsukawa Masuzu suddenly realized: "That's right! Why don't I do that?"

"Ok??"

Then, to Yukino's disbelief, she leaned out of the back seat and without hesitation pressed her soft lips against his steady lips.

"Well!"

That wasn't all. It seemed that the moment she kissed her beloved, a fire was ignited within her. She couldn't help but squeeze her legs together and let out a muffled, somewhat bitter gasp. Then, she suddenly increased the intensity, cupped his face, and kissed him deeply and wetly.

"Ah...so good, it's just normal mucous membrane contact, why does it feel so good...is this what damn love is...I feel like I'm going to remember things from the past again, in that case, let's kiss a little more..."

Whispering excitedly and intoxicatedly, Natsukawa Masuzu flipped over onto the back seat and awkwardly and passionately penetrated his lips and teeth in a more comfortable position.

"..."

Sitting in her seat, Yukino Yukinoshita stared blankly at the scene, as if her brain had short-circuited due to overheating, remaining frozen in place without moving.

Before him, Natsukawa Masuzu continued to forcefully kiss Tenkuji Yu, as if trying to wake him up with her kisses. Her disheveled silver hair and flushed cheeks made her look even more like the infatuated woman he had just described. She didn't care about anything else and just stubbornly and obsessively satisfied her inappropriate desires.

It wasn't until she went too far with her kisses, even starting to touch his belt, that Yukino Yukinoshita suddenly came to her senses. Her face turned bright red, whether from embarrassment or anger, like dynamite blasting away the snow on a mountaintop. She gritted her teeth and fiercely climbed onto the back seat to stop her.

"You actually dared to attack someone who's unconscious?! Are you trying to commit a crime right in front of me?!"

"Is doing N○R in front of him a crime? Oh right, he's asleep right now. Sleeping with N○R is definitely a crime, and I haven't regained my girlfriend status yet... Tsk, don't worry about such trivial matters."

"This is no small matter! Where is your moral bottom line?!"

"There's no such thing before love! At worst, we can each take one side and leave our mark on him before they finish talking to my sister, and satisfy our curiosity at the same time... Anyway, there's not enough time to do it all the way through, and the car is too cramped to do it properly."

"You, you... Shameless! Vulgar! Lewd! Only someone like my sister would associate with you. Get out of here right now, Tenkuji-kun."

"What a hypocrite! I don't believe you didn't do something far more lewd on Christmas Eve..."

"I was home alone last night, what should I do... wait, could it be...?"

"That's right, it's that one, could it be?"

Natsukawa Masaki wiped her wet lips, and with a wicked grin, she looked at Yukino Yukinoshita, whose eyes were widening and whose face was getting redder and redder, and who had subconsciously hugged her chest, and said, "Yui rested here with me last night, so you, who was still Yu's girlfriend at the time, could spend a sweet Christmas Eve with her."

"We were downstairs listening to the commotion coming from upstairs, wow... it was so intense, the whole ceiling was shaking!"

Yukino Yukinoshita staggered back a step, but was blocked by the back of the chair. Suddenly, she snapped to attention and shouted, "You're lying! You just said, 'I don't believe we haven't done anything more despicable than this,' and the apartment has top-notch soundproofing and earthquake protection. How could any noise have reached downstairs!"

"So you saw through me after all? But I wasn't lying about the first part. And what do couples who are very much in love do when they spend Christmas Eve alone in their apartment? I don't need to say more, do I?"

Natsukawa Masaki stroked her chin, squinted, and looked her up and down, her expression suddenly freezing as if she were recalling something unbearable.

"Although I think it's unlikely... Yukinoshita-san, did you put on clothes when you got up this morning?"

Yukinoshita Yukino: "..."

△

It's a bit strange.

When Yuu Tenkuji woke up in the morning, she opened her eyes in her own bed.

What's strange isn't that he's sleeping in his own bed, but that the moment he closes and opens his eyes, he's back to square one.

"What am I doing..."

He pressed his head as he got up, looking somewhat bewildered at the full-length mirror in the wardrobe.

There's not much change, at most he looks a bit more youthful, lacking the mature, weathered look of the past.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the digital clock on the desk.

The time is 6:00 AM, and the date is—

April 1, 20xx.

"I've gone back in time?"

Yuu Tenkuji blinked in surprise. As his consciousness suddenly returned, memories flooded his mind. After a moment of thought, a look of understanding gradually appeared in his eyes.

"System... is this your final trial? But what do you want me to do by going back to the first day of school...?"

Muttering something strangely, he decisively got out of bed and walked towards his desk.

On top was a white-covered notebook. I randomly flipped it open, and the first page contained the following:

"Mission Update: Complete the final trial mission and obtain the fifth Light Orb."

"Mission objective: Not yet activated. Please find the clues yourself."

"Note: During this task, the host will be unable to use the system, and reward distribution will be suspended. However, the normal rewards and money obtained so far will not be affected."

"Mission time: Unlimited. However, if no clues are found before the host graduates from high school, time will rewind to April 1, 20xx."

"Unlimited attempts, please make good use of them and complete the mission as soon as possible."

That's all for now. Yuu Tenkuji memorized every word and analyzed it carefully before closing his notebook.

"Hmph, what's with this talk about completing the mission as soon as possible... Now that you've created this endless cycle, stop pretending to be all high and mighty."

With a disdainful shrug, Yuu Tenkuji walked to the window, drew back the curtains, and greeted the clear morning sun rising in the east.

The cherry blossom trees along the street have already begun to bloom, and the whole city, like the rising sun, is gradually blossoming with the vitality and splendor that spring should have.