After Eiren Kanagawa gave a brief introduction of the presidential suite to Kotomi Izumi and Mashiro Shiina, she didn’t linger and quietly left.

Kotomi kicked off her shoes, and her little feet wrapped in black stockings leapt out like a mischievous little black rabbit.

“Takeoff!”

With both feet, she jumped straight onto the bed.

Although the presidential suite only had one bed, the bed was so large that even with four girls sleeping on it, there would still be plenty of space.

What’s more, it would be just her and Mashiro staying in the presidential suite, so Kotomi could roll around on the bed just like she did at home—or rather, roll around while hugging Mashiro.

After finishing a macaron, Hibiki Naegi sat on the sofa and discussed the plans for the next three days with Kotomi, then got up to leave.

“I’m going to my room to unpack my luggage.”

“Chief, want to find a restaurant and eat together later?”

Kotomi had been thinking about food for a while. Even though she had eaten breakfast at home, a hamburger at the train station, and an entire bag of date cakes on the Shinkansen… she was still hungry.

When you’re hungry, you need to eat.

Three meals a day—Kotomi couldn’t miss a single one.

Faced with her invitation, Hibiki wasn’t very hungry yet and shook her head. “I’m not really hungry. I just feel really tired and sleepy. After I unpack, I want to take a shower and get some sleep.”

Looking at those big dark circles under Hibiki’s eyes, her words were quite convincing.

No one knew how long she had been working hard last night to end up with such huge dark circles.

If nothing else, her stamina was certainly impressive.

“If you sleep now, be careful you won’t be able to fall asleep at night,” Kotomi reminded her with a mischievous smile.

Hibiki lightly knocked Kotomi on the head. “You shouldn’t tease your seniors.”

“Hehehe.” Kotomi stuck out her soft pink tongue.

After Hibiki left, the spacious presidential suite was left with just Kotomi and Mashiro. The two of them would be living here for the next three days.

However, with such a well-equipped presidential suite, even staying for three years would be perfectly fine.

Everything was available, including the internet.

Speaking of the internet…

Kotomi wandered around the suite and, just as she expected, there was a dedicated desk and office chair, along with a considerate eye-protection desk lamp.

The desk looked sturdy, and even the office chair was a high-end ergonomic chair from the Okamura brand.

It was perfect as her workspace for writing over the next three days.

“Yay! I was worried there wouldn’t be a place to write when I came here.”

Originally, Kotomi thought that as long as there was a sofa and coffee table, she could write there. If not, she could even bring her laptop to bed and put it on her lap.

She had tried writing on the bed before.

Although every time she did that, she would usually get distracted after typing just a few hundred words.

Sometimes, she’d lean her little head back and fall asleep.

After plugging in the power cord to keep her laptop fully charged at all times and connecting the mouse, Kotomi let out a long, satisfied sigh.

If she had to mention one thing that wasn’t quite perfect, it would be that she didn’t bring an external mechanical keyboard or electrostatic capacitive keyboard.

She would have to write for the next three days using only the laptop’s built-in keyboard.

If it were a ThinkPad, Kotomi would have liked the built-in keyboard.

But the laptop she had now was a gaming laptop, and the keyboard’s feel… well, it left much to be desired.

Although there are gaming laptops with low-profile mechanical switches built into the keyboard, Kotomi thought those were too expensive for their specs. The performance wasn’t as good as other, cheaper gaming laptops—people were just paying for the novelty of the keyboard.

She found it flashy but impractical, so she didn’t buy it.

“Forget it. My fingers have really gotten spoiled by good keyboards. Back when I was writing the manuscript for volume one of Sword Art Online, those hundreds of thousands of words were all typed using the built-in keyboard of a laptop. I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all back then. Now, I just have to get used to it again.”

Kotomi chuckled and muttered to herself.

“Kotomi, I’m going to the bathroom,” Mashiro said as she walked over.

“Ah? Oh, okay.”

Kotomi nodded and sat in her chair, waiting for Mashiro to come out.

With nothing else to do, she sent a message to her parents and younger sister letting them know she had arrived safely in Kyoto.

She also snapped a photo of the view outside the presidential suite.

Even though it was still daytime and she couldn’t see the night scenery, the daytime cityscape from high above had its own charm.

Just as Kotomi was about to message Megumi Kato and the others, a text from Yui Yuigahama popped up first:

[Yui: Kotomi, have you arrived in Kyoto?]

[Kotomi: Actually, I arrived four hours ago. After we gathered in the hotel lobby, we stood there listening to the judges give passionate speeches from their seats.]

[Yui: Wow! You stood and listened to the judges talk for four hours? At least at school assemblies, students can sit while the principal and directors speak. No chairs at all? Just imagining it sounds painful.]

[Kotomi: But now that I’m in the room, I feel like it was all worth it—because this is a five-star hotel!!!]

Kotomi wasn’t about to miss the chance to brag to her friends that she was staying at a five-star hotel.

[Yui: Five-star hotel! So jealous, I want to stay in one too.]

Kotomi smugly replied: [No need to be jealous. Just tell Sister Izumi, and Sister Izumi will buy you meat to eat. In the future, I’ll take you to stay in seven-star hotels every day.]

[Yui: Deal!]

Kotomi chatted with her little dumpling (Yui) for a bit. There was no need to worry about her phone being confiscated—after all, it was lunchtime and break time at Sōbu High School.

Only Class 1-B would still get their phones taken away during lunch break.

Mashiro came out of the bathroom early, but seeing Kotomi engrossed in her messages, she quietly sat down beside her without saying a word or peeking at her phone. She waited patiently until Kotomi finished chatting.

“Kotomi, shall we go?” she asked.

Kotomi snapped out of it—afternoon had almost arrived and she still hadn’t eaten. She’d been so caught up in chatting with Yui that she didn’t even notice Mashiro sitting next to her.

She quickly wrapped up the conversation, saying she was going to grab something to eat.

“Sorry, I got a bit too into the conversation. Let’s go! Since we’re eating this late, we need to eat a big meal! Mashiro, what do you want to eat?”

“Fried chicken pizza!” Mashiro’s eyes sparkled—it looked like she’d been craving it for a long time.

But… coming all the way to Kyoto, and the first meal is pizza?

“Why did we travel all the way to Kyoto just to eat pizza…”

“I’ve wanted fried chicken pizza since the start of the month. But my cousin’s been trying to lose weight since last month and kept saying she didn’t want to be tempted by high-calorie food like fried chicken pizza. So I never got to eat it.”

Kotomi thought about it—honestly, it didn’t seem like Chihiro’s figure had changed at all lately.

Looked like Chihiro’s diet probably failed.

Of course, Kotomi wouldn’t dare say that in front of Chihiro Sengoku. If she accidentally overheard, Kotomi’s pretty little face would definitely get ruthlessly squished!

“Alright then, let’s go eat fried chicken pizza. It’s been a long time since I’ve had pizza too.”

Kotomi and Mashiro had come to Japan’s spiritual homeland—Kyoto.

And their first lunch there? Fried chicken pizza, a dish you could find in just about any city.

Megumi sipped her yogurt while chatting intermittently with Yukino Yukinoshita about Murder on the Orient Express.

In the end, Megumi had overestimated her own “literary level.” Even though she had read Murder on the Orient Express before, after a few exchanges with Yukino, she found it hard to keep up with her pace.

When Megumi read a book, she usually just followed the plot. Yukino, on the other hand, not only followed the plot but also deeply understood the themes hidden beneath the story.

Luckily, they weren’t talking about the kind of foreign literature Yukino usually read—those with covers that already looked difficult and obscure… Megumi sighed in relief in her heart, then braced herself and continued discussing what kind of thoughts Agatha Christie might have had when writing that passage.

If Kotomi were there, she would’ve found the whole conversation incredibly vivid.

Isn’t this just like a reading comprehension exercise?!

But if Kotomi were still at school now, Megumi probably wouldn’t be bored enough to be chatting about Agatha Christie with Yukino.

Thinking of that, Megumi glanced over at Yui’s seat. A moment ago, Yui had sent someone a text and then walked out of the classroom with a smile on her lips.

No way… could she be secretly texting Kotomi behind my back, without telling Yukino or me? Megumi thought.

At this time, Kotomi would definitely have already arrived in Kyoto. Normally, Megumi would have taken out her phone and started secretly chatting with her.

It hadn’t even been half a day, and Megumi already missed Kotomi terribly.

The only reason she wasn’t texting her now was because…

Her phone was dead.

That’s right—Megumi’s phone had run out of battery.

She had forgotten to charge it last night before bed, and when she woke up this morning, the battery was below 10%. Although she charged it for a bit before leaving for school, by the time she left the house, it had only reached 50%.

To make things worse, her phone was a cheap model, since her mom believed that as a student, Megumi’s main job was to study. So when she bought her a phone, she picked an entry-level model.

And the kicker? It only had 32GB of storage.

It’s nearly impossible to find phones with just 32GB of storage on the market these days.

She had been using the same phone since junior high, and never asked to replace it. After all, even if she did ask, her mom wouldn’t agree. She figured she might as well use it for three years of high school, and get a new one after entering university.

That was her original plan.

Now, Megumi just wanted to get a new phone with a large storage capacity as soon as possible.

Because just the number of photos she had of Kotomi in her gallery was almost enough to fill it up!

Plus, the longer a phone is used, the more the battery degrades. Even 100% battery barely lasted half a day now. Not to mention that today, she had started with only 50%.

By the time the four morning classes were over, the battery was completely drained. Thirty seconds later, it shut off automatically.

When a phone has no battery, it might as well be a brick. Megumi glanced at her phone in the desk pocket and sighed silently in her heart. She really wanted to talk to Kotomi!

Why is this phone’s battery so unreliable!

Yukino, mid-sentence, glanced at Megumi. She didn’t continue praising the brilliant clues in Murder on the Orient Express, but instead gently asked:

“Am I boring you, Megumi?”

“Not at all,” Megumi softly shook her head.

“When someone is bored, it shows in their eyes, in tiny expressions. I can tell you’re feeling bored right now.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not upset. The reason you started talking to me about books just now was because you were bored, wasn’t it?”

“Your phone ran out of battery, so you couldn’t chat with Kotomi, and now you don’t know how to pass the time?”

Megumi looked at Yukino with a mock-serious face. “Yukino, can you read minds or something?”

Yukino could naturally tell it was a joke and smiled in return. “If only I really could read minds…”

With the topic shifting away from books, the atmosphere between Megumi and Yukino actually grew more relaxed.

They chatted back and forth, looking surprisingly in sync.

“I always thought you didn’t like talking, Yukino, since you usually seem so cold.”

“It’s not that I dislike it. I’m just not good at it—I don’t really know how to keep a conversation going. If I talk more than three sentences, things usually go silent. You too, Megumi. When you first joined the class, if it hadn’t been for the self-introduction part, I might not have even noticed you. It might sound a bit rude, but the first time I saw you, your presence was so faint it was scary.”

“Hehehe, my low presence is kind of natural.”

Megumi never minded her lack of presence. In fact, sometimes it had its perks.

Halfway through their chat, Yui Yuigahama, who had suddenly left the classroom earlier, returned.

She held her phone in hand, and the faint smile at the corner of her lips made Megumi even more curious—just who had Yui been messaging?

Megumi thought for a moment, then asked, “Yui, can I borrow your phone for a sec?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

Megumi smiled a bit sheepishly. “It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I actually like buying light novels and manga volumes. Just yesterday, I ordered a new light novel I like on Dengeki Bunko’s official website. I wanted to check if it’s been shipped yet.”

As she said that, Megumi pulled out her completely dead phone from her desk pocket and gave it a little shake.

“My phone is totally out of battery.”

Yui believed her easily, though just before handing over her phone, she hesitated slightly. Maybe she was being too cautious, but she quietly hid her chat history with Kotomi.

Once she was sure it was hidden, Yui handed the phone to Megumi and smiled. “I didn’t expect you to be into light novels too.”

“Yeah, just got into them.”

As she replied, Megumi opened Google Chrome, searched for Dengeki Bunko, and logged into her registered account.

She hadn’t ordered any books. Checking on a shipment was just a cover to get Yui’s phone.

After logging in, she quickly opened the messaging apps—SMS and Line—and located the conversation between Yui and Kotomi.

But upon opening it, she found no messages from today. Their last exchange was from yesterday, where Yui asked Kotomi what kind of cake she wanted, and Kotomi replied that she wanted shredded pork and seaweed bread. Yui had sent a crying face emoji, saying she didn’t know how to make it.

Did I overthink things…? Megumi wondered.

“By the way, Megumi, what’s the title of the light novel you bought?” Yui suddenly asked.

Other than the ones Kotomi wrote, Megumi had no idea what light novels were even published by Dengeki Bunko. But she didn’t panic and calmly said:

“Sword Art Online, the one written by Izumi Ki. After I finished reading the web version she posted on Dengeki Bunko’s official site, I thought it was really good, so I wanted to buy the print version to collect.”

Yui’s eyes lit up when she heard that. She smiled brightly like she had found a fellow fan.

“So you like Sword Art Online too, Megumi! That’s actually the series that got me into light novels. The first time I read the web version, I was so amazed—I ended up reading it all night without realizing it.”

“I’m so curious what kind of person the author is in real life. I heard that Izumi Ki is a female author. Maybe she’s a kind, intellectual big sister type with gold-rimmed glasses.”

White hair, pink eyes, tall, and really pretty… Megumi thought to herself with a smile, but didn’t reveal that Kotomi was actually Izumi Ki. She had promised to keep Kotomi’s secret!

It was a secret just between her and Kotomi—one that no third person could ever know!

Since she hadn’t found any chat logs between Kotomi and Yui from today, Megumi figured she must have been overthinking it. After all, she even checked the call logs—there hadn’t been any calls between them either.

She closed the messaging apps and deleted the background history from when she had opened them. Then she logged out of her Dengeki Bunko account, making sure there were no traces left of her snooping, and handed the phone back to Yui.

“Thanks, Yui. I just checked—volume one of Sword Art Online, the one I ordered yesterday, finally shipped.”

Yui froze for a moment at those words. Her eyes widened slightly before she forced a casual smile and shook her head. “No problem. Glad it shipped.”

After lunch break, while Megumi and Yukino went out to buy drinks, Yui took out her phone again and restored the chat history between her and Kotomi.

Recalling the strange sentence Megumi said when borrowing her phone, Yui’s expression gradually darkened.

“Volume one of Sword Art Online finally shipped yesterday… Megumi, you could’ve said any other title and I would’ve believed you. But you had to say Sword Art Online. Don’t you know that volume one sold out days ago?

Since the day before yesterday, you can only buy Sword Art Online volume one by pre-ordering the reprint. And if it’s a reprint, there’s no way it would ship today.

Did Megumi make up that excuse just to check my chat history with Kotomi?”

At that thought, Yui put her phone down, feeling relieved that she had hidden her messages with Kotomi before handing it over.

“Why is Megumi so concerned about whether I talked to Kotomi? Or rather, why is she so fixated on Kotomi?”

After realizing that Megumi had lied to borrow her phone, Yui didn’t feel any better. In fact, a heavy feeling settled in her chest.

Cracks had quietly started to form in the relationship between Megumi and Yui.

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep