"So if you lose, you lose?"
How could he say something like that so easily?
Wouldn't losing hurt? Wouldn't it be painful? Or was it that he had already grown used to failure, so numb that it no longer mattered?
But with that level of talent in writing, how could he possibly have such an attitude?
Reina stopped walking. The cool composure on her face faded by more than half, replaced by a kind of anger that had nowhere to go, leaving her cheeks faintly flushed.
Her emotions surged. She wanted to say something, anything, but…
What could she say?
Haruto was free. If he wanted to slack off, that was his choice.
"All right, I'm home. I'll head in now," Haruto said, pointing toward the apartment complex he had recently moved into.
"Your home… wasn't it somewhere you had to take the train to get to?" Reina started, then stopped.
"That place was sealed by the court because of my father's debts," Haruto said with a smile. "I can't go back there anymore."
He turned and walked toward the complex. After taking two steps, he paused, turned back, and smiled at her again.
"Reina, I may not be as smart as you, but I'm not that clueless either. I can roughly sense how you see me."
"After all, when Blue Spring Ride and Yesterday's Starlight ended, Yesterday's Starlight ranked second in both score and votes in Fleeting Blossoms, while Blue Spring Ride took first in both."
Reina looked at him silently.
"If the gap were several ranks, it probably wouldn't matter much," Haruto continued. "I've never felt frustrated just because my test scores were worse than the top student in class. After all, I'm usually near the bottom."
"But when you're just one rank away from being number one," he said calmly, "if that were me, I'd definitely feel unwilling to accept it."
"You want to take revenge on me with your next novel, right? After playing so many games together, I have a pretty good idea what kind of person you are."
"The more you lose, the more you want to win."
Reina stared at Haruto, who stood a few meters away, smiling faintly, completely at ease.
From their first meeting in the elevator at Crimson Maple Literature until now, she had known him for four months.
Finally, he understood her.
Finally, he noticed her existence.
At that moment, a wave of indescribable emotion welled up from deep inside her chest.
Her nose stung slightly.
"But," Haruto added gently, "my new work probably won't be that easy to beat."
He spoke as softly as he could.
After all, they had spent more than two months together. He did feel a certain fondness for her, his former game student.
He was simply giving her a precaution, so that if his new work really did have some unexpected brilliance later on and she lost again, it would not hurt quite as much.
Haruto meant it sincerely. There was no mockery in his words. But to Reina, the earlier sense of warmth vanished instantly.
In her ears, Haruto's sentence…
"My new work probably won't be that easy to beat."
….had already been automatically translated into…
"You have no chance of winning against me."
This was the difference in how people with different personalities interpreted the same words.
Her fist clenched.
Too arrogant. Far too arrogant.
But the loser, even a temporary one, had no way to refute such words. Anything she said would only sound like powerless rage in the eyes of the winner.
"Heh."
After hearing Reina let out a strange laugh that did not fit her usual image at all, Haruto slung his bag over his shoulder and walked straight ahead without looking back.
Under the setting sun, her fighting spirit burned intensely.
Shaking his head, Haruto headed home.
He could tell that Reina had a strong competitive drive toward him, but he had never realized just how intense it was.
April passed quietly.
In early May, the second volumes of Blue Spring Ride and Yesterday's Starlight were released as scheduled.
By now, the first volume of Blue Spring Ride had surpassed four hundred thousand copies sold. Thanks to strong support from readers outside the prefecture, its sales growth in the later stage exceeded expectations.
As for the second volume of Blue Spring Ride, because Crimson Maple Literature treated it as a top-tier release, its sales improved noticeably compared to the first volume.
First-week sales reached two hundred and ten thousand copies, instantly claiming first place on the prefectural light novel single-volume sales ranking in early May.
Tankōbon sales were a key indicator of a novel's performance. The most important metric was average sales per volume. Light novels varied greatly in length. Comparing the total sales of a twenty-volume series to a two-volume series was obviously unfair.
Average volume sales, however, told a different story, though they required a longer time span to calculate.