Ayanokouji What If: Popularity Time

V7.5 Chapter 3: Special Date: Movie Time

                              Kiyotaka Pov

What an interesting day this is going to shape up to be.

Christmas Day is the day of love and affection. Many people enjoy celebrating it with a significant other. Gifts are also given on this day, making it quite beneficial to somebody like me.

How, you may ask?

Talk to the pile of presents I haven't opened, that's how.

Today will prove to be very interesting, however. The night I defeated Ryuen, Kikyo confessed her love for me.

This paints all of her previous actions differently. Sleeping over and being hostile whenever I make connections with girls were activities that I have to examine more thoroughly due to this revelation.

Inviting her along on my date with Sato was to test her words, and see how far she goes. Sure, having a pretty girl crushing on you is pleasing to most boys, but for me, I want to see how willing she is to throw everything she has to do what I want.

She has proven to be a good pawn up until the Paper Shuffle where she betrayed me, but now she loves me. This would allow my actions to become riskier.

If she loves me, she must trust me, and I will abuse this trust like nothing before.

I spent the rest of the early morning getting ready while sending out and responding to Merry Christmas texts.

Outside of the mall, I stood waiting for Sato. Kikyo was scheduled to come a minute after, by "coincidence". Then, I will get very close to Sato to provoke some reaction from Kikyo.

As I thought, a happy voice piped up, "Ayanokouji-Kun!"

Looking in the direction of the voice, I spotted Sato running over with a smile. She stopped right in front of me and her smile grew wider.

"Merry Christmas!"

"To you as well, Sato. Before our movie, is there anything you want to do?" I asked, beaming at the girl. The reason I ask is because of something with holiday-themed wrapped paper protruding from her small bag.

She blushed slightly and said, "No unless you have something special in mind?"

"Nothing of the sort, let's go then," I said, nudging her slightly.

Sato was nervous because when I nudged her, she let out a small squeak before saying, "Yeah, let's go then!"

Down the sidewalk, we went until we entered the mall itself. The place was filled with couples and decorations, things that I had frequently observed over the past few days.

"So," she suddenly said, interrupting our conversation, "We must look like a couple to everybody else, right?"

A couple to everybody else, hm? That's plausible if this event were in a vacuum, but within the context that I also went out with some other girls, it would mean I'm in more than 7 couples.

Instead of shining that dark light on the girl's mood, I just nodded and pretended to be flustered, "A-ah, maybe!"

Taking this opportunity, Sato said, "Hehe, something wrong Ayanokouji-Kun?"

Did this girl just use my neutral non-teasing response to somebody acting flustered due to something I said?

Maybe I should trademark more than just my smile...

"Nothing at all," I said, pretending to recover from a fictitious event, "Are you excited for the movie?"

"Yeah! I've heard from Satsuki-Chan that it's really good, so I'm looking forward to it!"