"Well, senpai did promise to grant me one request after the date ends. I figured if I didn't at least try to behave, that'd be a little unfair."
Mio delivered this at a perfectly steady volume.
On the inside, she was not steady at all.
But this had been inevitable. Her performance today had been way too obvious—she'd made basically zero effort to hide it. With Haruno's observational skills, not noticing would've been the shocking outcome.
Fine. Found out. But as long as Haruno didn't figure out why—as long as she never connected it to "Mio literally cannot say no to anything right now"—it was manageable.
If that particular secret came out, there was no telling what Haruno would do with it. Given her track record with mischief? Catastrophic.
Haruno considered the explanation and gave a slow, thoughtful nod. It held up.
"In that case—can I kiss you real quick?"
"...Why are you so fixated on kissing, senpai?"
"Because the last one counts as my first kiss, and I feel like I barely got to experience it before it was over. I've been feeling a little cheated, honestly." Haruno delivered this with complete seriousness.
"If senpai means it, I'm not opposed to cooperating."
Haruno raised an eyebrow. She couldn't tell if Mio was calling her bluff—or if the promise hanging over the end of the day was making her bold enough to agree to basically anything.
She was starting to get genuinely curious about what Mio was going to ask for.
While they'd been talking, the Ferris wheel had been quietly spinning them upward. They were nearly at the top now.
Haruno noticed.
She made her move.
The plan was simple: lean in, watch Mio panic, leave it at that. A performance. A scare tactic. Nothing more.
But the second she got close, Mio's eyes slipped shut.
Just like that. No flinch. No hesitation.
Waiting.
Haruno found herself suddenly at a complete loss.
If she pulled back now, she was the one who'd been played. But she couldn't exactly think of what to do if she followed through.
Her gaze drifted to Mio's lips.
The gloss caught the light—soft, luminous, somehow magnetic.
No.
She caught herself. Pulled back from the edge. She was not about to be seduced by a girl. That was new and unwelcome information about herself, and she was filing it under never happened.
She wouldn't actually go through with it. But she wasn't going to just do nothing—that felt like conceding something. She needed a move.
In the silence, Mio must have sensed that nothing was coming. Her eyes opened.
She found Haruno right there, smiling at her.
"I just thought my kouhai looked really pretty, so I moved in for a closer look. Why did you close your eyes?"
She'd called this entirely.
Mio arranged her face into something appropriately flustered. "Because you leaned over, senpai. What was I supposed to think?"
She let a trace of disappointment bleed through—just for flavor. The look of someone mildly let down by a failure to follow through.
Watching the performance, Haruno felt a pang of genuine regret. If she'd just gone for it, the expression on Mio's face would've been priceless.
But if she had—
Then I'd be the yuri one.
...Not that gender was ever really the problem. What mattered was whether something could actually go anywhere. And that was a longer, more complicated question.
Something about that train of thought made Haruno go quiet. She turned toward the window and looked out at the city spread below—the skyline, small and ordered from up here.
She always did that when her mood dipped. Found something high up and stared down at it until the feeling passed.
Mio picked up the shift the moment it happened. Haruno's energy had just quietly deflated.
Because I trolled her back? Probably not—she'd just retaliate. More likely something crossed her mind.
But if Haruno wasn't going to say it, there wasn't much Mio could do. She picked the practical option.
"Hey—we've hit everything in the park now. Anywhere else you want to go after this?"
"Of course." Haruno's mysterious smile was back in an instant. "You'll see."
The cabin settled back to the bottom. A staff member waved them out.
Haruno stretched lazily, arms overhead—her loose top doing absolutely nothing to hide her figure. Mio looked. More than once.
In her previous life, she wouldn't have dared. But she was a beautiful girl now, and if anyone caught her staring, they'd just assume she was envious.
She wanted out of this park. Badly. But the last stretch was exactly when you couldn't afford to let it show.
They rested at a nearby bench, then drifted—leisurely—toward the exit.
The moment they stepped through the gates, the world paused.
"Congratulations, Host! Task complete. Yukinoshita Haruno's conquest rating with the Host has increased by 5 points. Please select your reward."
[Haruno's Responsibility] All cards in the Yukinoshita Haruno series deck are promoted one level. This card is itself part of the Yukinoshita Haruno deck and cannot be upgraded.
[Reward Refresh] Usable when the Host is selecting a reward. One use per completed task. Non-cumulative. Cannot be upgraded.
[High-Potency Purification Card] Designates and removes one card of any type. Single-use. Disappears after activation.
Mio stared at the three options.
...Okay. These are genuinely good.
This was what happened when you cleared a task with a Trial Card active—the rewards jumped to a completely different tier. She wanted all three.
Too bad she'd already burned [I Want It All]. If she still had that, this wouldn't even be a decision.
After a long internal deliberation, she settled on [Reward Refresh].
The fact that a basic system function had been shoved into the card pool as a lootable reward...
This system definitely learned its tricks from some gacha scoundrel.
...