The following morning, Nishikata was headed downstairs feeling sad and tired. "Morning." He said to his mom as he walked into the kitchen.

"Huh? Oh, good morning." His mom replied from next to the coffee maker. "You look tired, did you get enough sleep?"

Nishikata grabbed a small bowl and scooped some rice into it from the rice cooker. "Have you ever been so happy that it felt like nothing could ruin your mood, only to then have the world prove you wrong?"

"Ohhhh." She said as she looked at her son with concern in her eyes. "My little boy's fallen in love, hasn't he?"

'Of course.' He thought to himself. He walked over to the table and took a seat, but strangely, he didn't feel embarrassed. 'Maybe I have grown a little ... or maybe I'm just so sad that it's not affecting me.' "Yeah, is it that obvious?"

"Oh my, you must really be sad if you're not even going to get embarrassed or deny it."

"Yeah, well, it's either that or it's because I've just come to accept it." He picked up a pair of chopsticks and began eating. "And it's more of ... I've realized that I like her, rather than I've fallen for her."

"Wow, when did this happen?"

"Last night, after I made up with her; we've been ... huh?" He tried to think of the exact problem, but for some reason, came up blank. "I ... I actually can't remember."

"That just means that it wasn't a big enough deal that you would let it come between you."

"No, that's not it." He began thinking as hard as he could, trying to remember exactly what happened. "It was ... this week! Yeah, it all started this week. One of her friends came up to me for advice, some people took it way out of context and though that me and her friend were going out." A sad sensation came over him. "After that, she wasn't talking to me so ... I assumed the worst. A few days later, some people take something I said out of context, again, and suddenly, the whole school thinks I hate her." He hung his head in shame. "I could never hate her." He shook his head and went back to his breakfast. "Anyway, we made up last night and I realized that I like her more than just a friend."

His mom smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder. "That's so sweet of you, and I'm sure that you'll make her very happy when she finds out."

"I wouldn't be so sure, there's no way she feels the same way about me."

"And why's that?"

Nishikata's head fell onto the table. "Because she's amazing, even her flaws make me happy to some degree, even if they annoy me."

She began to rub his shoulder as her smile turned mischievous. "So does that mean you're going to admit defeat and just accept that Takagi will never like you?"

A surge of energy pulsed through Nishikata as he sat up and accidentally snapped his chopsticks in his hand. "NO! Not that easy!" He stood up as he slammed his hands onto the table. "First I'm going to get back at her for teasing me so much, that'll be the first step to impressing Takagi!" He froze as he realized the words that just came out of his mouth. 'What a second.' He turned to his mom who still had the mischievous smile on her face. "How did you-"

"Please, I'm your mother, I've known that you had feelings for Takagi for quite some time" She walked back to the coffee maker and poured herself a cup.

"Just like everyone else I've talked to." He mumbled.

"But if your plan involves getting back at her first, then I'm probably never going to be a grandmother."

Nishikata's face turned bright red as he turned to face his mother. "HUH! I can totally ... and we ... I mean ... it's ..."

"I see you're finally back to normal." She sipped her coffee as she smiled. "That's good to see. But you should really reconsider waiting until you get back at her."

Nishikata groaned as he turned away. "I'll ... think about it." He said as he went to get a new pair of chopsticks.

He went back to eating his breakfast in relative silence, all the while thinking about what he was going to do next. 'If I want to best her, I'm going to have to stay away from things that could hurt her feelings. Not like I was able to pull those off without self sabotaging it anyway, but still.' He finished up his breakfast and bid his mom farewell before leaving for school.

'I should definitely try to focus on one thing at a time, I'll never be able to pull of both teasing her and making her fall for me at once. But how am I supposed to get her to fall for me? I don't even know her type.' He continued down the road, and stopped at the place where he usually met up with Takagi. 'Takagawa might know ... but ... after what happened last time, I don't think I want to tell her about my newly discovered feelings.' He sighed and leaned his head to the side. 'Takagi did say that she has a crush on someone in our class, I could always find out her type by finding out who that is. Then again, how am I going to do that?'

"Hey Nishikata." Takagi greeted.

Nishikata looked up to greet her back but as soon as he saw her, he froze. There was absolutely itching different about her today, except that she didn't have her bike, but for some reason, just the sight of her made Nishikata's heart go into overdrive. 'Wow, she really is pretty ... have I really been this in denial?'

"Nishikata?" She asked again.

"Oh, good morning Takagi." He said as he finally managed to get himself to move. "Sorry, it's just ... it's been a while."

"Yeah, I know." She smiled and walked up to him. "So, shall we get going?"

The two of them walked to school together and as far as anyone could tell, nothing had changed, though for Nishikata, this wasn't exactly true, and Takagi was a bit more active than usual.

'Twenty times.' Nishikata thought to himself as they got to school. 'She's teased me twenty times already.' He let out a sigh as he finished changing his shoes and smiled. 'I can't believe how much I missed this.'

"Nishikata?" Takagi asked catching his attention.

"What's up?"

"First, thanks again for ... last night, and second ... seeing as ... we're officially friends now ... you remember that concert that's happening tonight?"

Nishikata's eyes went wide as he remembered the very trigger that started this week of misfortune. 'Did I seriously forget about the contest?' "Um, one second." He quickly pulled out his phone and began searching through his messages. 'Hamachi and Takao are supposed to message me if one of them wins ... but I have no message yet so-' "Takagi?" Nishikata began. "I ... do remember, and I think I may be able to get my hands on a pair of tickets."

"Huh?"

"I mean ... I might be late but if I can, would you want to ... go to the concert with me tonight?"

Takagi looked at him a little surprised by what he said. "I mean ... yeah, I would but-"

"Great." He grabbed her right hand and they began running down the hall as he tried to hold back a blush. 'Just don't think about it, I need those tickets' He continued down the hall, looking around at every intersection until he finally found Yukari walking down the hall with her two friends Mina and Sanae.

"Amakawa!" He called out as he ran up to her with Takagi. "The others haven't won yet, have they?"

They all turned around and Mina looked at Yukari confused. "Wait." Mina began. "What's going on?"

Yukari laughed as she shook her head. "No, they haven't, but could you have been any more last minute?" She looked down and saw that Nishikata and Takagi were holding hands. "I mean, what was I supposed to do with the tickets if none of you made it in time?"

"Tickets?" Mina asked.

"Well ..." Nishikata began as he scratched the back of his head with his free hand. "I don't know, I guess that never crossed our minds."

"It didn't cross mine either." She began looking for her bag. "I just need to confirm, Takagi, he did ask you to the concert, right?"

"Yeah ..." She turned to Nishikata. "What's going on?"

Before Nishikata could give her an answer, Yukari pulled out two tickets and handed them to Nishikata. "Congratulations, you win."

"Yes!" He took the tickets and smiled triumphantly.

"Wait a second, Yukari, you had tickets?" Mina asked as she looked at the tickets Nishikata took. "You could have given them to us and we all could have gone."

Sanae looked to the side and groaned. "I told you I'm not interested."

"Yeah, and I was just holding onto them, they weren't actually mine."

"So, can someone tell me what's going on now?" Takagi asked again.

"Oh, right." He turned to Takagi and smiled sheepishly. "Well, Hamaguchi, Takao, and I were ... kinda having a contest. You see, remember Monday when I was trying to get concert tickets?"

"Yeah, you said you couldn't get one."

"Well that was true, but the thing is, they weren't completely sold out, though Hamaguchi and Takao managed to get to the counter at the same time I did. We each wanted two and there weren't enough for all of us so ... we had a contest."

"I figured the contest part out after talking to Hamaguchi yesterday."

"Wait-" he turned to Yukari. "Does that mean-"

"The rule was, whoever mentioned the contest was disqualified, so you're safe. Also, it's only if they mentioned it. You guys said nothing about someone else figuring it out on their own."

"Okay, that's good to hear." He turned back to Takagi. "Anyway, none of us thought that either of the other two would actually be able to ask the person they wanted to take, so to make sure that they didn't go to waste, the winner would be the first to ask the person they wanted to take." He turned to the side as he began to blush. "Also I ... had to be holding your hand when I collected the tickets."

"Speaking of which." Yukari began as she held out her hand. "We need to get a picture as proof to send to the others."

"Oh, right." Nishikata put his bag down and pulled out his phone. "Oh, uh." He turned back to Takagi. "Takagi, do you want to be in the picture or-"

"Sure." She said as she leaned closer to him making him blush more.

"Uh, thanks." He unlocked his phone and handed it to Yukari.

"Okay." Yukari took a few steps back as Nishikata held up the tickets and the two of them smiled. "Say cheese!" There was a flash, then Yukari handed the phone back to Nishikata. "Please thank the others for the extra ticket."

"I will."

"Wait, you only got one extra?" Mina asked.

"Mina, I didn't even know you wanted to go until yesterday." Yukari said as they all walked off, leaving Nishikata and Takagi alone.

"So ... did I forget anything?" Nishikata asked.

"So that competition was the 'blood feud' that Sumire said you couldn't talk about?"

"I didn't know she referred to it as a blood feud, but yeah; that's why my friends were trying to make my life miserable." Nishikata said as he sent his victory message to Hamaguchi and Takao.

As Nishikata finished up with his phone, Takagi was desperately trying to hold back a laugh, something that didn't last long as she soon burst into laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"I don't even know where to start." She said as she regained her composure. "Okay ... I think ... there are three things. First, You did forget about the concert until I mentioned it, right?"

"Yeah, thanks for that by the way." He looked at Takagi's smiling face as something began to occur to him. "Wait ... why did you bring that up?" She held back a laugh as Nishikata realized what she found so funny. "Please don't tell me ... you already had tickets?"

Takagi nodded and Nishikata almost groaned as he almost burst into tears. "Did you really think that I wouldn't get tickets for my favorite band? I got three as soon as they went on sale."

"Three?" Nishikata asked as he stopped groaning.

"Yeah, one for me, one for Sumire, and one for another friend who had to cancel last week because of a family gathering."

"So ... that last ticket ..."

"I was going to ask you if you wanted to come Monday, but you seemed to be hiding something when you said you weren't able to get your hands on a ticket, so I decided to wait and see what happened."

Nishikata hung his head and sighed. "All that ... this whole week ... could have been avoided."

"Come on." Takagi motioned for them to move. "Let's make our way to class before we're late."

Nishikata picked his bag back up as he walked alongside her. "Well, at least one good thing came from all this."

"That we officially became friends?"

Nishikata nodded as his face turned red. "Ye-yeah, that's true."

"Speaking of which." Takagi began as Nishikata looked back at her. "You said you had to ask out the person you wanted to take with you." Nishikata's face turned bright red again as Takagi smiled. "Does that mean you have a crush on me?"

"NO, THAT'S NOT IT AT ALL!" Nishikata exclaimed. "I just thought that it would have been my best chance to get back at you since you would likely have your guard down!" His throat closed up as his mind finally caught up with his voice, leaving his mouth wide open. 'I just ... blew my whole plan! All of that effort that proved to be pointless is now also wasted.'

"Seriously?" Takagi said before laughing again. "Good idea, but there's no way it would have worked. How did you plan on asking me without it sounding like a date anyway?"

"I hadn't figured that part out yet, a lot of things came up."

"I noticed, so I guess that plan is going to be harder then, isn't it?"

"Well yeah, you know I'm plotting something, and Takagawa's going to be there making it harder." He paused as a thought came to his mind. "Speaking of which, what do we do with the extra tickets?"

"That's right." Takagi said as she looked ahead. "We have two extras now, so who do we give them to?"

"Well what about Takagawa's crush?"

"Mizuki? No, I don't think he likes concerts, also I don't think Sumire actually has the courage to ask him out yet."

Nishikata thought to himself for a moment before speaking up. "Nikai said that he wanted to get tickets so he could take Mano with him, or rather, Mano wanted to go so he wanted tickets."

"That's a great idea! All five of us can go as a group, it'll be so much more fun that way!"

"Uh." Nishikata looked away as he breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, sure it would." He paused again as he remembered that Takagi said that there were three things she points she wanted to talk about. "By the way, what was that third thing?"

Takagi smiled and pointed to the space between them. "You're still holding my hand."

Nishikata slowly turned down to look and see Takagi's hand still held in his. 'How ... WHAT!!!' He became flustered as his body refused to move. 'STOP! Stop what? Why? HOW!? What do I do? I need to stop holding her hand. Do I over react? Should I be casual? She'll think I love her if I do that!' "AAAAAAH." He screamed as he jumped to the side, finally letting go. "I ... I'm sorry! completely forgot!"

She laughed again as he stood there embarrassed. "You don't need to apologize, now come on."

Nishikata resumed walking next to Takagi as he silently cursed his luck. 'Damn, even when I win, I lose.' He looked over at Takagi and felt his heart rate spike again. 'Then again, things didn't really align in the best way for me to try and trick her so, I guess it'll just be normal ... friends hanging out.'