The two of them sat in silence for a long time.
Ren took the initiative to break the ice.
"Shinomiya-san… do you like me?"
The abrupt question completely crashed Kaguya's brain.
"...Amamiya, why would you suddenly think that?"
Even without looking in a mirror, she knew her expression must be incredibly stiff right now.
"Well… I just thought of it."
Ren observed Kaguya's reaction, and his suspicion grew stronger.
"Before today's club activity, you weren't emotionally affected by anything."
"Based on what I know about you, you wouldn't get overly excited in your first battle."
"You have an unbelievable talent and all the necessary conditions to test your abilities."
"You might not know your upper limit, but you can control your lower limit."
Having spent enough time with Kaguya, Ren was confident in his assessment.
"If you couldn't control your maximum output, you would have at least kept it within a manageable range."
"But in the end, you still lost control."
"That's not like you—so someone must have influenced you."
And that led him back to his initial conclusion.
Ren watched as Kaguya averted her gaze, clearly guilty.
"The only possibilities are me… or Fujiwara."
"But I know it wasn't Fujiwara!"
This gave Kaguya a chance to speak.
"Amamiya-san, why are you so sure it wasn't Fujiwara?"
Ren looked at her even more strangely.
"Because I know exactly what your relationship with Fujiwara is like."
"Sure, Fujiwara affects your mentality a lot, and she does make your brain crash often, but that's always in combination with another person. It's never just her alone that gets to you."
"In the original story, that 'other person' was Shirogane."
"But now… that person is me."
"And you're being affected just the same."
"To be honest, I wanted to play dumb about it, but I'm terrible at acting."
...Forget it.
Kaguya's mind went completely blank.
She wasn't sure how she had acted in the original story, but she had never reacted this way in front of President Shirogane before.
Yet somehow, she had done exactly that in front of Ren.
No wonder he caught on so quickly.
"I…"
Right now, Kaguya was completely frozen, like a typewriter stuck on a single key, unable to type anything else.
Seeing her like this, Ren sighed.
Although he had no idea what he had done to crack Kaguya's icy exterior, the current situation spoke for itself.
He stepped closer.
"Shinomiya, let's talk about this."
Faced with Ren's serious tone, Kaguya finally responded—even in her dazed state.
"...Yeah."
The two of them found seats and sat across from each other.
Another silence settled between them.
"Shinomiya… how did you start liking me?"
"Eh?!"
The temperature on Kaguya's face, which had just returned to normal, immediately started rising again.
"Calm down. I'm just curious."
Ren reassured her before shifting the conversation slightly.
"I don't have a very high opinion of myself. Maybe that's because of the sixteen years I lived in my previous life… and the years I've spent in this one."
He first made sure Kaguya had regained some composure before continuing.
"In my previous life, I was just an ordinary person. My looks and height were probably average at best."
"My mom used to say I was cute as a kid. She even dressed me up for a wedding photo shoot when I was little but I never really saw what was so cute about me."
"In middle school, high school, and college, I was the kind of person who was easy to push around. I learned quickly not to make trouble, because if I did, I was the one who'd get bullied."
"After graduating college and entering society, I didn't have any particularly outstanding skills. I wasn't good at studying, I lacked ability, and I didn't talk much."
"And back then, society didn't have much of a place for introverts like me."
"So I stayed at home."
"But while I was in school, I had picked up an interest in writing—notably, writing certain types of novels."
"I started seriously considering writing as a career."
"And that's the path I took."
Ren couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic about his old self.
Kaguya listened attentively, this was the first time Amamiya had ever talked about his past life.
"I was really happy when I got paid for my writing for the first time."
"But since I mostly wrote about things I liked, I never attracted a large audience."
"And because I spent all my time writing, I had even less interaction with the outside world."
"I don't remember exactly when I died in my previous life."
"Maybe it's because the dead don't always realize when they've died."
"But I do remember knowing, very clearly, that I was alive before it happened."
"When I opened my eyes again, I already had self-awareness."
"I could feel the cold around me."
"I even realized—I was a baby."
It was an indescribably surreal feeling, even now. Looking back, Ren found it both fascinating and helplessly absurd.
"Panic and helplessness hit me immediately. No matter what sound I made, all I could do was cry."
"And when I couldn't cry anymore, I just had to accept it—I was a newborn."
"I grew up in an orphanage, and I remember everything from that time."
"When the orphanage shut down when I was ten, I started looking for work, both legal and less legal—at age eleven, hoping to find someone willing to hire a kid."
"In hindsight, I'd say I was pretty lucky. People were kinder in the countryside."
"After I started making a little money, I rented a place in the countryside, balancing work and school."
"I was never a great student, but I still had some leftover knowledge from my past life, so I managed."
"I lived that way until I turned fifteen."
"That was the year I got the diary."
"And for the first time, an ordinary person like me came into contact with the extraordinary world."
(To be continued.)
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