When Reina called out to him, Haruto froze for a beat. Then his expression returned to its usual calm, and he gave her a small, polite smile.
"Reina… Reina Fujimoto? Huh, it's been a while. Did you come over to say hi because you needed something?"
Hearing his tone and seeing how unbothered he looked, Reina felt an inexplicable spark of irritation flare in her chest.
To her, Haruto was no longer just a classmate from another building. He was the rival who had tormented her for nearly three months.
At school, at home, late at night, even while studying, her thoughts always circled the same question.
What would Haruto write next? What direction would he take? How good would his new work be? Would it surpass Blue Spring Ride? Or would it fall short?
A whole month had passed since she last saw him, yet the name "Haruto" had surfaced in her mind countless times every single day.
She had assumed that after meeting at Yukino's place dozens of times, and after playing over a hundred matches against each other, their relationship should have shifted into something… more familiar.
Just like how she and Yukino had somehow become friends through those meetings.
So surely, through that same time together, she and Haruto counted as half-friends at least, even if they were also fierce competitors.
And yet, despite being in the same school, separated by just one teaching building, despite the fact that walking from Class Seven to Class Three took three minutes if you moved quickly…
Haruto had not sought her out once in a full month. He had not brought up writing even a single time.
Today, she had come here, deliberately staging an accidental encounter just so she could talk to him, and this was the attitude she got?
She had been treating him like a rival.
But it felt like he did not even see her that way.
"Can't I greet you unless I have a reason?" Reina Fujimoto's voice stayed cool, but there was a faint, unmistakable resentment underneath it.
Haruto chuckled.
"Of course you can."
He continued walking down the street, and Reina immediately matched his pace, moving alongside him at a distance of about a meter.
"How's your progress in the game?" Haruto suddenly asked.
The sunset dyed the street in warm orange light. In the evening breeze, Reina's soft hair fluttered lightly along her shoulder, and the side of her pale face seemed outlined with a thin golden edge.
"…Not great," Reina replied, stiffening slightly.
Truthfully, she did not care much about games.
What she cared about was defeating Haruto.
That two-player duel game, True Iron Soul, without an opponent, held far less appeal for her than a set of challenging math problems.
"Oh, I see." Haruto nodded solemnly, as though he were delivering a lecture. "If you want to improve, you can't practice on and off. You have to reflect on yourself, refine your technique, pursue the limit, and never slack. Otherwise, if you always quit halfway, it's hard to achieve anything."
He gave her a full-blown motivational speech, clearly dissatisfied that his so-called student had started treating training so casually without his supervision.
"…" Reina felt something hot rise inside her.
Since childhood, nobody had ever spoken to her like this, the way people scold underachievers.
Hearing him go on and on, she suddenly asked,
"So after Blue Spring Ride ended, have you just been playing games this whole time?"
The words slipped out before she could stop them, because his lecture made her picture him as a full-on gaming addict.
"Hm, sometimes," Haruto answered.
Reina quietly let out a breath of relief.
At least he was not completely lost. At least he still understood that writing mattered more than wasting time.
"Then the rest of the time you've been working on your new novel?" she asked, trying to sound casual.
"Not really." Haruto sighed like someone finally freed from a long prison sentence. "When I'm not gaming, I've mostly been watching anime. Sometimes movies. Sometimes short videos. I'll watch people fishing, chopping wood, cooking, or skipping stones. During serialization I had to write drafts every night, so after the ending, I kind of… relaxed."
Reina stopped in place.
For the first time, her steady expression shifted, and emotion seeped into her voice.
"Then what about your new work?"
"My new work…" Haruto repeated, as if thinking.
"Last week, I spent about a week and wrote the first three chapters."
Reina's chest tightened.
A week?
He had only seen the first three episodes of that anime he was adapting from Shiori's memories, and submitting to an editorial meeting only required the first three chapters anyway.
So once he decided on the project, he had simply worked quickly and converted the plot into a novel format.
But to Reina, what she heard was something else entirely.
"A week," she said slowly, voice turning sharper.
"Are you saying you went from concept to draft, and you wrote three chapters in one week?"
"More or less," Haruto answered instinctively.