From the Bottom to the Top

Volume 1: Chapter 1

"I was wrong! You're not an idiot, Kuze-kun… t-the idiot was me…"

He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

It almost felt like a dream of some sort.

A dream that he'd wake up from at any second, because there's no way that this was actually happening.

"Я тот, кто беспомощен, когда я один…" ¹

—but it was, and he couldn't deny the undeniable taste of satisfaction that he felt from seeing this girl in her current state.

As much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn't stop his lip from curling upwards into a visible smirk.

Seeing her like this was giving him a twisted form of pleasure that he unknowingly liked.

"Please… I'm begging you…"

The once proud and willful Student Council President, whose beautiful face and iconic silver hair that were admired by many in their school, was on her knees in the dogeza position.

He couldn't see her face but he could her sniffles, a clear sign that she was crying.

"Don't throw me away… I can't survive being alone…"

Naked as the day she was born, Alisa Kujou willingly prostrated herself as a way to show her remorse for her actions.

Her actions towards the one person who has always been by her side for the past two years.

The one person whom she can't survive without.

.

Masachika Kuze groaned in displeasure as he struggled to carry a pile of lumber back to the house. He had already made several trips to the forest and back doing this for the past hour, with this being the fourth and final time.

Suffice to say, he would rather be somewhere else, helping whoever needs him instead of carrying all this wood.

"Why do I have to carry all this lumber again?"

He turned towards his companion, who didn't seem to care that he was having a hard time.

"Again, it's for the raft that we'll be constructing in the future."

Chisaki Sarashina explained the reason for why they were collecting the lumber, to which Masachika sneered.

"If we're not gonna build it right now, then why bother collecting this stuff in the first place?"

"It's only for special cases in which we'll need it! Just think. We can use it when we want to go fishing for food, or if we want to go look for a ship out there and fire off a distress flare for help."

Masachika thought about those reasons and while they kind of made, he wasn't totally convinced.

It's not like they were in dire need of food at the moment, and last he checked, they can't go firing off distress flares every time they see a ship in the horizon.

Therefore, there must be another reason why Sarashina-senpai wants to build a raft!

"You sure it's not because you want to go looking for Kenzaki-senpai yourself?" he asked her.

"Wha—?! D-Don't be ridiculous! There's no way of knowing where Touya is so how would I even look for him?"

"But you must miss him, right?" he pressed on. "It's quite alright, Sarashina-senpai. I can understand why you would feel that way. He's your boyfriend, after all."