"Everyone, I'd like you to give a warm welcome to Hiro Yamada." Ms Yume said, introducing the main character to the class.

Oh no, he's hot, you thought, anxiously chewing on your pen. Then, Of course he's hot, you idiot. He's the main character, who turned not one, not two, but four girls into yanderes.

He really was a beautiful boy. His build, his face, everything... Just gorgeous. Almost too handsome, to the point it entered the uncanny valley. It was as if the game had plucked the visage of the most attractive boy you could imagine from your head and then threw him in the game.

Now that you thought about it, that very well could have been what happened. The main character was never pictured or described, after all.

You looked over at Minoru to see her reaction to him and froze when you saw she was looking right at you with a frown.

"Get that out of your mouth," she scolded in a whisper, plucking the pen from your lips. "You have no idea where it's been."

And you relaxed again. She wasn't mad at you for simply looking at Hiro in appreciation. Then again, she wasn't especially jealous as a yandere, just overly protective and controlling. Kimiko, on the other hand, would have gouged your eyes out with that pen.

Hopefully, Minoru didn't pass along the message of who you'd been looking at this time.

Everything's fine. Everything's okay. You did what you set out to do! You're friends with all the capture targets. Sure, your friendship with Kimiko and Oshiro was a little rocky, but they still accepted you as part of the group! That counted for something, right?

No matter how hard you tried to convince yourself, you still didn't feel safe. Your whole body was clenched like a fist, and your nerves made you sick to your stomach.

You knew the tutorial like the back of your hand. You had to play it over a dozen times to get all the endings with all the girls. The only problem was, as you deviated further from how events were supposed to unfold, the less you would be able to see into the future.

He's going to sit down in front of me, Ms Yume's gonna start class, and he's gonna ask me for a pen. You repeated to yourself over and over again like a crazy person.

Sure enough, Hiro chose to sit at the empty desk right in front of you. Sure enough, Ms Yume started class and he turned around in his seat to look at you.

"Can I-"

"I don't have one!" You blurted out, a little too loudly, before he could even finish his sentence.

"Okay," he said, just blinking at you before turning to Minoru. "Uh, do you have a pen I can borrow?"

"Yes." Thankfully, she didn't hand him the spit-soaked pen she just pulled out of your mouth. Instead, she tucked that one away in her pencil case and pulled out a cute brown pen with Chairoikoguma's head on the end of the plunger. "Just give it back at the end of class."

Crisis averted. The best course of action would be to avoid interacting with Hiro as much as possible.

If only he would leave you the fuck alone.

...

"Aina... That's your name, right? Uh, would you like to have lunch with me today?"

"No thank you! I don't think my friends would like that very much."

...

"Aina, can you show me around school? I'm still struggling with the layout. Haruki High is so much bigger than my last school!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm very busy right now."

...

"Aina!"

...

"Aina!"

...

"Aina!"

...

This was obviously the universe's way of paying you back for all that time you spent annoying Minoru. You'd never had anyone so aggressively try to be your friend before. Except you didn't think Hiro wanted to stop at friends.

"Someone has a crush on Aina." Minoru declared at the lunch table later that week.

It was official. She was actively trying to get you killed, just so she could swoop in and save you at the last second.

Oshiro, Kimiko, and Hinata looked at each other and Minoru as if she just declared one of the people sitting at the table was a murderer and it definitely wasn't you. Which was true, just not yet.

"Don't be silly!" Hinata laughed, high and shrill.

"Impossible!" Kimiko shouted.

"What's there to like?" Oshiro asked in a monotone.

Ouch! And these were your friends.

"He does not have a crush on me. He's just a player. He talks to Minoru more than me anyway."

"That's because you refuse to talk to him for longer than two minutes. And, when we talk, we talk about you." Minoru said, narrowing her eyes and pointing her chopsticks at you.

You couldn't do more than sputter in response. The three girls on the other hand were full of questions.

"He? Who's he?"

"What's his name?"

"Is he handsome? Is he funny?"

"Are you sure he's not just a butch lesbian?"

"What the fuck, Oshiro? Yes, I'm sure." You said, exasperated and not dignifying the other questions with a response. You only answered that one because it was so far out of left field.

"Just asking. It would make sense." What did that even mean?

"His name is-" Minoru started to say before you interrupted her.

"Can we please not talk about this?" You beseeched her, hunching in on yourself and giving her your best puppy dog eyes.

She looked at you for a moment before sighing and reaching over to card her fingers through your hair, like you really were her pet.

"Of course, sweetness."

"What the hell, Minoru? You're really not going to tell us?" Oshiro demanded. She was rarely happy with Minoru's decisions, but she wasn't usually this vocal about it either.

"Aina said no. Please respect that."

You could relax for the time being. Your friends hadn't gone crazy over this guy yet. They didn't even know his name. You were safe... For now.

Ignoring this boy clearly was not working. It looked like he wasn't going to start pursuing the real capture targets until you were in the ground. Maybe he just needed a nudge in the right direction.