When Saori mentioned making money, Shiratori Seiya's chopsticks paused mid-air. The noodles slipped back onto the plate with a soft, barely audible sound.
'You're only dating Takahashi Mio for the money, aren't you?'
He couldn't shake the feeling that this was the unspoken subtext beneath her words. But when he looked at her—at those clear, artless, utterly guileless eyes—he convinced himself he was overthinking things. Saori's mind didn't work in such convoluted layers. She said what she meant. Nothing more, nothing less.
Indeed, meeting his searching gaze, Saori continued in that same soft, wistful tone:
"If Saori could earn that much money... she wouldn't have to worry about going hungry anymore. Not even once."
As she spoke, she used her chopsticks to gather an enormous bundle of fried noodles, stuffed them into her mouth with the unselfconscious efficiency of someone who had known real hunger, and chewed. Her cheeks ballooned outward—puffed up like a little frog—and she looked so utterly, comically ridiculous that Shiratori Seiya felt the complicated tension in his chest dissolve into something warmer. Something helplessly fond.
"As for eating your fill... that much is still possible," he said, his voice carrying a weight of unspoken promises. I can still afford to feed you until you're full. I can still take care of you. You don't need to worry about that. But the words felt too sentimental, too nakedly sincere, so he swallowed them down and left the simpler version hanging in the air.
Hasegawa Saori finished her mouthful with a satisfied swallow and fixed him with a wide, foolish, radiant grin.
"Mm. Saori knows. Saori knows Seiya won't ever abandon Saori."
"Mm..."
Shiratori Seiya nodded, his gaze dropping to the table. He waited—in patient, contemplative silence—as Saori polished off the entire plate of fried noodles with the methodical dedication of someone who understood the value of every grain. When she was done, licking a smudge of oil from the corner of her lips, he drew a quiet breath and summoned the System interface in his mind.
"Saori. Will you agree to be my girlfriend?"
"..."
The question landed like a stone in still water.
Saori froze. Her chopsticks hovered motionless in her grip. And then—slowly, impossibly—her luminous dark eyes filled with sudden, glistening tears. They trembled on the edges of her lashes, catching the lamplight like scattered diamonds, and her voice emerged small and raw and deeply, profoundly aggrieved.
"Saori... Saori was never... Seiya's girlfriend? All this time?"
"No—that's not what I meant." Shiratori Seiya pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the early stirrings of a headache. "We broke up before. Years ago. Remember? Now I'm asking again. Properly. Officially. Will you be my girlfriend?"
"Isn't Saori supposed to be Seiya's fiancée...? Why is it only girlfriend now...? Did Saori get demoted...?"
The headache arrived in full force. Shiratori Seiya pressed his fingers to his temples, massaging slow circles against the ache.
"So. Are you willing or not? Simple question. One word answer."
"Willing." The response came instantly, tearfully, without a shred of hesitation. "If Seiya asks a thousand times... Saori will agree a thousand times. A million times. Every single time."
Despite the overwhelming sincerity of the words, her tone carried an unmistakable undercurrent of grievance. Nine parts devotion, one part pout. Shiratori Seiya chose to ignore the latter entirely and focused his attention on the translucent System interface hovering in his peripheral vision.
'Ding.'
[Detected that the Host currently maintains an active romantic relationship with another individual. Please first terminate the existing relationship with [Takahashi Mio] before initiating a new bond.]
"..."
So that's how it is, after all.
Shiratori Seiya stroked his chin, his thoughts clicking into alignment like tumblers in a lock. He had suspected the System might impose such restrictions. The confirmation was almost satisfying.
What he was contemplating now was a deliberate exploitation of a System loophole. A carefully orchestrated sequence of breakups and reconciliations, designed to maximize the flow of resources and accelerate the growth of everyone involved.
The logic ran as follows: if he broke up with Takahashi Mio first, then immediately established a relationship with Hojo Shione... yes, the System would impose a four-month cooldown period. During those months, various System-rewarded funds—relationship subsidies, the daily sign-in bonuses, all the steady, passive income streams—would be frozen. But Takahashi Mio needed at least three to four months of intensive training and production before she would be ready to film a television series anyway. The timing aligned almost perfectly.
And during that same window, he could compound his earnings through Hojo Shione. Even though she couldn't sing at this exact moment—her voice still recovering, her hiatus still ongoing—she would recover. She would return to the stage. And when she did, the songs he exchanged from the System, channeled through her voice and her fame, would generate returns that far outstripped the frozen subsidies.
Of course, there was a catch. Items exchanged from the System could only be utilized by the corresponding romantic partner. That was an immutable rule. But if he rotated strategically—cultivating Mio, then Shione, then cycling back—the efficiency of earning would more than double. Compound interest applied to relationships. A portfolio of hearts.
The reason he hadn't attempted this approach before was twofold.
First: guilt. Plain, stubborn, inconvenient moral guilt. He had genuinely believed that Hojo Shione, with her intense, all-consuming personality, might not be able to emotionally withstand the alternating heat and cold of being cycled in and out of a relationship.
He had assumed—naively, perhaps—that once they broke up, their connection would be severed cleanly. That they would have no further romantic entanglement. That he would be free to date and cultivate whoever he wanted, unencumbered by the ghosts of past relationships. The reality had proven far messier.
More pragmatically, if Hojo Shione had married him within a short timeframe—driven by her desperate, possessive love—what money would he be generating then? The System's rewards were tied to the girlfriend status, not the wife status. Marriage was a hard stop. An end condition. A game-over screen for his financial strategy.
Second: the System's intelligence. The four-month cooldown was one obstacle. But there was another, more insidious restriction: the System would freeze all reward amounts for romantic partners across the board. Not just the next partner, but the previous one as well. Breaking up with Mio wouldn't just pause new rewards for Shione—it would slam the brakes on everything Mio had been accumulating. A total shutdown. A fiscal ice age lasting a third of a year.
But now, with the current circumstances... both obstacles seemed marginally surmountable.
Hojo Shione's demeanor in the hospital had clearly signaled compromise. Surrender. A willingness to accept whatever terms he offered, as long as those terms included her continued presence in his life. She had written it out herself, in shaky characters on a notepad: "I don't have to get married."
She was prepared to live without official status. Without a ring. Without the public declaration she had once craved. That kind of emotional concession changed the calculus entirely.
Meanwhile, Takahashi Mio's situation genuinely required a lengthy cultivation period. Three to four months of intensive training, script study, and on-set experience before she'd be ready for a leading role. That timeline wasn't going to compress, no matter how talented she was. The frozen period and her development period overlapped nearly perfectly.
Exchange songs for Hojo Shione to sing. The money she earns can compensate for the frozen System funds. It can even flow back to support Takahashi Mio's acting career. And the money Mio eventually earns from acting can then cycle back into Shione's music. A closed loop. A self-sustaining ecosystem. A win-win-win scenario.
Shiratori Seiya felt the plan crystallize in his mind with the satisfying click of a well-designed mechanism. It was elegant. Efficient. Perhaps a little cold-blooded, but undeniably effective. He decided he would re-establish his relationship with Shione the next time he saw her. The sooner the cycle began, the sooner the returns would compound.
But the thought had barely finished forming when the System interface flickered. A new notification bloomed before his eyes.
'Ding.'
[Detected: The affection level of romantic target [Hasegawa Saori] has reached the maximum threshold of 100.]
[Out of humanitarian consideration: If romantic partner [Takahashi Mio] achieves Skill Level: Master and her affection level reaches 100, the girlfriend limit can be expanded. 1/1 → 1/2.]
[Warning: Terminating a relationship may result in a decrease in the romantic partner's affection level, onset of psychological abnormalities, or other adverse effects. Please choose carefully, Host.]
"..."
Shiratori Seiya stared at the notification. Read it again. Read it a third time. The System—cold, mechanical, relentlessly transactional—had just offered him a path. A legitimate, sanctioned, humanitarian path. Two girlfriends simultaneously. No need to cycle. No need to break hearts and pick up the pieces four months later. Just... two. At the same time. Officially. System-approved.
The condition was steep. Mio would need to reach Master level—a monumental achievement—and her affection would need to hit the absolute cap. But the path existed. For the first time, it existed.
In a private hospital room at Tokyo Yokohama Hospital, the atmosphere was considerably less calm.
Mrs. Hojo stood frozen beside the bed, her hands half-raised in the awkward, arrested gesture of a woman who had tried to intervene in a disaster and found herself utterly unequipped.
She had watched, wide-eyed and speechless, as her two daughters—her two precious, well-raised, seemingly harmonious daughters—had wrestled on the hospital bed like feral cats. Slapping. Shrieking. Accusing. The memory of Hojo Suzune's palm cracking across Shione's cheek replayed in her mind on a merciless loop.
She didn't fully understand what had transpired between them. Just days ago, at the family dinner table in Kyoto, they had seemed perfectly normal. Affectionate, even. Shione had smiled. Suzune had pouted about something trivial. They had bickered, but gently—the way sisters do. What had happened between then and now to transform them into this?
She had pulled them apart physically, her voice sharp with maternal authority, demanding an explanation. But neither of them spoke. Hojo Suzune, who had been screaming accusations just moments before, had suddenly gone mute—her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, her small fists clenched so tightly at her sides that her knuckles had blanched white. Hojo Shione, still mute from her condition, could only offer that thin, rasping laughter that chilled her mother's blood.
Despite their mutual, stubborn silence, Mrs. Hojo had pieced together enough. The fragments of Suzune's shouted accusations. The name that kept surfacing like a persistent ghost: Shiratori Seiya. This was about him. All of it. Her eldest daughter's collapse. Her youngest daughter's fury. The shattered concert. The secret medications. Everything traced back to that young man.
When Mrs. Hojo had first learned of Shione's depression—of the long-term antidepressant regimen she had been secretly maintaining since the breakup—she had blamed Shiratori Seiya. How could she not? He had left. He had walked away from her daughter, and her daughter had crumbled.
But strictly speaking, breakups were a normal part of life. Young people fell in and out of love. Hearts were broken and mended and broken again. She could only, in her private heart, morally condemn the scoundrel who had wounded her child.
But this—a concert was not a small matter. A concert was her daughter's career. Her future. Her entire life's trajectory. This was no longer a simple romantic disappointment. This was a catastrophe. And it demanded accountability.
Resolve hardening in her chest, Mrs. Hojo pulled out her phone. Her fingers navigated to her contacts, scrolling until they found the name she was looking for: Ando Norika. Shiratori Seiya's aunt. The woman who had, in happier times, been practically family. If anyone could explain this mess—if anyone could pressure that young man into taking responsibility—it was her.
But before she could press the call button, the phone was ripped from her hands.
Mrs. Hojo gasped, jerking backward. Hojo Shione had thrown off her blankets and lunged from the bed with a speed that should have been impossible for someone in her condition. She stood now on the cold linoleum floor, barefoot, her hospital gown hanging loose on her too-thin frame.
Her dark, narrow eyes were fixed on her mother with an intensity that bordered on ferocity. The phone, clutched in her pale fingers, was already being manipulated—her thumb swiping, tapping, deleting.
"Shione! What are you—give that back!"
But Hojo Shione didn't respond. She finished her task—Ando Norika's contact information, years of history, erased with two decisive taps—and lowered the phone. When she lifted her gaze to meet her mother's bewildered, frightened eyes, her expression had softened into something gentler. Something almost pleading.
"Mama." The word scraped out of her damaged throat, dry and broken and painful to hear. "Please. Don't... call... Auntie Ando. Okay?"
"Don't... cause... trouble... for Seiya. Please."
Each word was a battle. Her voice—what remained of it—sounded like a rusted bellows struggling to draw breath, like sand scraping against cracked leather. Just listening to it made Mrs. Hojo's eyes sting with fresh tears. She stepped forward, her hands rising to cup her daughter's pale, drawn face.
"Shione, don't talk. Please. Save your voice. Rest. We can discuss this later, when you're better—"
But Hojo Shione didn't move. She endured a dry, hacking cough, her shoulders convulsing with the effort, and then lifted her gaze to her mother once more. Her eyes, though rimmed with red and glistening with moisture, were utterly unwavering.
"Mama... first... promise me. Please."
Looking at her daughter—at her cracked, bloodless lips, at the visible effort it took to produce every sound, at the desperate, pleading light in her dark eyes—Mrs. Hojo felt the last of her resistance crumble. Hot tears spilled over her cheeks. Her voice trembled uncontrollably.
"Shione... is it truly worth it? Going this far? For him? For that young man who left you?"
Hearing this, Hojo Shione's mouth opened, then closed. A gentle, pure, almost radiant smile bloomed across her pale features—a smile so full of quiet, unshakeable certainty that it made her mother's heart ache.
"Worth it. It's... cough... worth it."
A pause. She swallowed, the motion visibly painful.
"Mama... loving someone... is truly the most blissful feeling in the world."
As she spoke, a dreamy, faraway look settled over Hojo Shione's face. She was no longer seeing the sterile hospital room or her mother's tear-streaked face. She was somewhere else entirely. Somewhen else. The memories rose up like photographs scattered across a table.
"Before Shione liked Seiya... Shione had never been so happy. Not once. Not ever. Every day was gray. Every song was just notes. But then..."
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. Then another. They traced silver paths down her hollow cheeks, but her smile never wavered.
"So this is what it feels like... to love someone completely. To be loved completely back."
"Everything Shione has now... the career, the fame, the stage... Seiya gave it all to me. Every song. Every opportunity. Every moment of happiness. He built me with his own hands. So..."
Another cough. Harder this time. Her thin shoulders shook.
"Even if Shione only gives back a tiny, tiny piece of that... even if it hurts... if it can make him turn around and look at me again... if it can make him love me again..." Her voice, broken as it was, filled with a fierce, trembling conviction. "...then Shione will have won. Not just for a day or a month. For a lifetime."
Mrs. Hojo's composure shattered entirely. A sob wrenched from her throat, and she surged forward, wrapping her arms around her daughter and pulling her close. She held her tightly—too tightly, perhaps—as if she could shield her from the world, from her own heart, from the terrifying depth of her devotion.
"Foolish girl... my foolish, foolish girl..."
"So Mama..." Hojo Shione's chin rested on her mother's shoulder, her cracked lips brushing against the fabric of her blouse. Her whisper was barely audible, a ghost of sound meant for no one else. "...please don't trouble Seiya. Don't make things hard for him. I'm begging you."
A pause. Then, quieter still—so quiet her mother almost missed it:
"Mama... if Shione ever makes Seiya sad... then Shione's life has no meaning anymore. Not a single bit."
The words sent a cold, visceral shudder through Mrs. Hojo's entire body. She pulled back just enough to stare into her daughter's face, searching for some sign that this was exaggeration, manipulation, anything but the terrifying, absolute truth it appeared to be. She found nothing. Only calm, serene certainty.
Trembling, she nodded. "I understand. I won't... I won't call. I won't interfere. I promise."
Satisfaction flickered across Hojo Shione's pale features. The tension bled from her shoulders, and she allowed herself to sag against her mother's support. Then, slowly, her gaze shifted—drifting past her mother's shoulder, toward the figure still standing rigid and silent beside the hospital bed.
The sisters' eyes met.
Hojo Suzune hadn't moved. She stood motionless as a statue, her small hands balled into white-knuckled fists at her sides, her thin shoulders trembling with suppressed emotion. Her dark eyes—so similar to her sister's, yet so different in their fierce, wounded intensity—glistened with jealous, bitter, helpless tears. The tears of someone watching another person live out the confession they themselves had been denied.
My love for Seiya... is not one bit less than yours. Not one single bit.
So why... why do you get to say all of that out loud? Why do you get to declare your devotion for the whole world to hear, while I have to keep everything locked inside? Why do you get to collapse on stage and have him rush to your side, while I have to stand in the shadows and watch?
Why do you get to be the tragic heroine, and I have to be the supportive little sister?
Her lips moved. Silent words. A secret, sacred protest meant for no one's ears but her own.
I loved him first. Before you ever did. I was the first one to fall.