High-handed

The next morning, I woke up at my usual time, ate the breakfast Hayashi prepared, and left the house.

After a short train ride, I arrived at the university. The early morning campus was quiet, even the usually bustling cafeteria nearly empty at this hour.

“Phew.”

Feeling a sense of comfort in the tranquil cafeteria, I sat down and started reviewing my notes.

As I scribbled with my mechanical pencil, my mind wandered back to last night’s conversation with Hayashi.

She didn’t mention anything this morning, but come to think of it, before bed, she threw out that ridiculous demand—telling me to talk to some student today.

I let out a sigh.

Seriously, her queen-like, out-of-the-blue remarks never cease to exasperate me.

I’ve thought this before, but I’m not exactly looking for friends right now. And there’s no way I could get along with those loud, party-type people anyway.

…But, a reward, huh?

Honestly, it’s a bit of a shame to miss out on a reward.

Truth be told, I’ve been a little short on cash lately. It’s not because I’m hiding Hayashi or anything. I’ve been working part-time since high school and saved up enough that my finances aren’t dire or anything like that.

But ever since I started living with Hayashi, I’ve been going back home a lot more often.

For months, I didn’t visit my hometown at all. Yet in the last three months alone, how many times have I gone back with Hayashi?

Not that it’s a bad thing, of course, but when I checked my monthly budget last month, I was a bit taken aback, to be honest.

Well, I’d feel bad making Hayashi, who’s also strapped for cash, pay for anything, but since she’s the one who brought it up, maybe just a little.

…Speaking of being broke, is her wallet even okay?

Before she was freed from that abusive guy, she was treated like a housewife and couldn’t even work part-time, right?

Even though it’s been three months since we started living together, there’s no way she could’ve built up any significant savings.

Somehow, even if it’s just a few thousand yen, making her pay out of her own pocket feels kind of wrong.

…Yeah.

This reward thing? No good. Let’s call it off.

I’ll just say I don’t need the reward and didn’t talk to any students.

That’ll put an end to this whole thing.

Bzz.

Right on cue, my phone buzzed, and I opened the screen.

The notification showed a message from Hayashi.

I unlocked the screen and opened the message.

It seemed to be an image.

I froze.

Hayashi’s message.

It was a picture of something packed up, along with the text, “Found some leftover packing from before.”

“Wasn’t that already used up?”

In a panic, I sent a message back to Hayashi.

“I looked it up on a shopping site, and that stuff’s pretty expensive, huh?”

“Why are you looking it up when there’s no need to sell it?”

“The deal was, if I didn’t talk to a student, you’d sell the cleaning supplies, right, Yamamoto?”

“That’s not it, though?”

Something’s off.

Could it be, overnight, I somehow washed up in a parallel world with the same people but different rules?

“Then it’s a new condition!”

“New condition, my foot.”

No reply from Hayashi.

Looks like she’s decided to ignore me.

…Damn it!

This…

Is this kind of tyranny even allowed?

This… this kind of high-handed cruelty, it’s just too much!

Sure, I might’ve mumbled in front of her that we’ve been accumulating a lot of cleaning supplies lately…

And yeah, I said something about maybe organizing them a bit.

I even mentioned that some of them were hard to use, so maybe we could sell them!

…Wait, now that I think about it, that doesn’t seem like a big deal at all.

My phone vibrated again. Another message from Hayashi. Apparently, she wasn’t ignoring me—she was just busy with something.

“You’re not starting to think it’s okay to sell those cleaning supplies, are you?”

“Sharp as ever.”

“Don’t just admit it!”

An angry emoji stamp came through, followed by another message from Hayashi.

“Just go talk to someone already. It’s not that hard.”

“Yeah, that’s probably the quickest way.”

“Right?”

“Yeah.”

…Well, even if we do sell the cleaning supplies, there’s no need to trouble Hayashi with it.

In fact, if I let her deal with something like that, it’d weigh on me, and I’d end up holding back around her.

No matter what I do, I have to take the initiative myself.

Otherwise, it just doesn’t sit right with me.

That’s the kind of annoying guy I am, isn’t it?

Thinking, even for a second, that it’d be okay to let her handle it—that’s pretty pathetic of me.

Well, I guess it just shows how much I’ve let my guard down around Hayashi.

Of course, I’d never, ever say that to her face, not even if my life depended on it.

Anyway, Hayashi’s right.

Let’s just get this stupid promise over with already.

That’s it.

That’s the way to go.

Truth be told, I’ve got a plan.

A brilliant plan that just came to me.

“Hey, Hayashi.”

“What?”

“Is Kasahara safe?”

“Out.”

And just like that, my brilliant plan was crushed.

As you can probably tell, I’m trying to introduce a new character.

After slacking on updates for nearly a month, half-forgetting the personalities and speech patterns of the existing characters, I’m trying to bring in a new one.

You get what this means?

Because I sure don’t.