How could she hurt Kaoru?
Ichika had been thinking about that question for a long time.
Even getting him expelled did not seem as though it would actually hurt him.
Someone important enough for Tsukishiro Tokinari to take this seriously—would a person like that really be ruined just because Advanced Nurturing High School expelled him?
And even assuming she somehow managed it, what would Kaoru actually lose?
Ichika quickly discarded the idea.
Then her thoughts turned toward the girls around him.
She knew essentially the same information Yagami Takuya had possessed.
Before leaving the White Room, Ichika had memorized the personal records of every second-year student at the school.
She knew about Kushida Kikyō's ugly past, for example.
If Ichika wanted to, she could use that information to destroy Kikyō's entire high-school life in one stroke.
Of course, Kaoru would notice if she targeted the girls around him.
Ichika strongly suspected that was exactly why Yagami had been expelled.
The moment she revealed too much hostile intent, she would probably follow him straight out of the school.
Still, Ichika had not given up.
Kaoru had so many girlfriends that surely there had to be an opening somewhere.
For most men, watching their entire romantic life erupt into chaos would be a nightmare.
Ichika had been absolutely convinced of that.
Unfortunately, none of the girls seemed particularly jealous of her attempts to get close to him. Kei became slightly irritated at most.
Worse, after spending a little time around them, Ichika discovered that every last one of them seemed hopelessly obsessed with Kaoru.
They showed almost no signs of turning against one another.
It was absurd.
Wasn't love supposed to make you want the person you liked all to yourself?
Ichika had eventually abandoned the plan.
What she had never expected was to suddenly blurt all of those carefully hidden thoughts directly to Kaoru himself.
"You were planning to turn them against each other?"
Kaoru laughed.
"Is that seriously all the White Room taught you?"
Ichika's thoughts were in complete disorder.
She had no idea why those words had simply fallen out of her mouth, but she understood the mockery in his tone perfectly well.
"Don't get so full of yourself. A few stupid women happen to like you, that's all. Seeing you look so pleased with yourself is disgusting."
The moment she said it, Ichika realized something was wrong.
She could not seem to control her mouth.
The cruel words came out before she even thought about them.
'Am I really that angry at him? So angry that I can't even be bothered pretending anymore?'
Ichika hid her disturbance as best she could and gave Kaoru an icy look.
"So that's what you really think?"
Kaoru sighed deeply.
"It hurts a little knowing my cute underclassman hates me this much."
"Good. I'm glad you understand, Pervert-senpai."
A smile soon returned to Ichika's face.
By now, she had definitely noticed something strange happening to her.
"When I think about it carefully, I don't actually have much reason to hate Pervert-senpai."
She tilted her head.
"But you do annoy me."
"Because of Yagami?"
Kaoru asked.
"Can Pervert-senpai stop dragging Takuya into everything? You're making me sound petty."
Ichika pouted.
"That's already over. Even if I took revenge for him, it wouldn't bring him back."
"Then I can't think of any other reason you'd dislike me."
"Really? It couldn't possibly be because Pervert-senpai keeps getting far too comfortable around girls?"
"I feel like that part is your fault."
Kaoru glanced at the girl still practically sitting on top of him.
She had been the one stopping him from pulling away earlier.
Ichika instantly understood what he meant and snorted.
"Don't act innocent after taking advantage of the situation. This is obviously Pervert-senpai's fault."
Kaoru thought for a moment.
Then he grabbed her lightly by the waist and suddenly shifted, intending to move her aside.
Ichika had apparently anticipated it.
Her legs tightened instinctively to keep her balance while her hands pressed against his chest.
"Don't do anything weird, Pervert-senpai. I'll scream for help and report you for harassing an innocent girl!"
"Go ahead."
"Gross! Where are you touching?!"
Kaoru had barely sat upright before their faces nearly collided.
Ichika immediately shoved against him, swatting him several times in irritation.
"Let go! I'm getting up!"
Then she realized Kaoru had caught her wrists.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Hey, hey. Your smell is all over me now. Don't you know that's enough to make a girl sick?"
She tried to struggle free.
Kaoru easily turned the situation around and put some distance between them, sending her backpack slipping from her shoulder as she landed on the ground staring up at him.
"I always assumed most of your personality was an act."
Kaoru smiled faintly.
"Looks like I was wrong."
He did not find anything remarkable about overpowering her physically.
"Apparently, Amasawa-san really is a good girl."
Ichika stared at him.
Kaoru had secretly used Truth Magic on her.
He had expected the spell to strip away whatever persona she was wearing.
Instead, all it had done was make her insults more brutally honest.
Everything else was almost exactly the same.
In other words, Ichika had barely been acting in the first place.
She really was a natural little devil who could smile adorably while saying exactly what she thought.
Sometimes you knew perfectly well she was insulting you, yet somehow it still sounded like flirting.
Rather than becoming angry, some people would probably end up liking her more.
In that sense, it exposed another weakness of Truth Magic.
It forced honesty.
It did not control what truths the target chose to express.
"Senpai really is disgusting."
Ichika looked at him with open contempt.
"The second you get a girl alone, you become so enthusiastic. You really do have indecent thoughts about me, don't you?"
"Not before."
Kaoru smiled.
"Now? I'm less certain."
Then his expression sharpened.
"Amasawa-san, what did Tsukishiro tell you?"
Ichika clicked her tongue.
She had known he would eventually notice something.
That did not make it any less irritating.
"Nothing special."
She spoke casually.
"He just told me Mitoma Kaoru is some incredible man, blah blah blah, and apparently even the father I've never met thinks you'd make an excellent son-in-law."
"So I'm supposed to hurry up and win you over."
The words came out naturally.
Too naturally.
Ichika frowned.
She had not intended to reveal that.
"He said that if I manage to win you over, my father will take me home."
Her tone toward her biological father was so disrespectful she sounded one step away from simply calling him an old bastard.
"I don't even know where his home is, but I suppose leaving the White Room would technically be an improvement."
"You want to go back to him?"
Kaoru asked.
"If I actually had a choice, I'd rather go out on my own."
Ichika closed her eyes.
"I was born through artificial reproductive technology. I've never even seen my parents' faces."
"I don't know what they do. I don't know who they really are. I don't even know why they threw me into the White Room."
Under the influence of Truth Magic, she continued without holding anything back.
"Maybe they thought putting me there would create a better heir."
"But apparently they had another child later anyway."
She laughed faintly.
"So what exactly am I supposed to be?"
"Am I meant to surpass everyone in the White Room, replace Ayanokōji-senpai, and become the second 'greatest masterpiece'?"
"Even saying that out loud sounds embarrassing."
Ichika opened her eyes again.
"I don't believe the White Room has any great meaning. I think my talent belonged to me from the beginning."
"And I definitely don't want them evaluating me, controlling me, and deciding every part of my life however they please."
"At minimum, I don't want to spend my entire life inside that place."
Kaoru quietly listened until she finished.
Ichika lifted her chin slightly.
She had already opened her eyes and was now studying his expression with a teasing look.
"Oho? Is Pervert-senpai feeling sorry for his adorable little underclassman?"
Her face practically screamed, 'Got you again.'
Kaoru knew better.
She was simply hiding her discomfort.
Ichika was not accustomed to someone listening to her so seriously.
"Not really."
Kaoru shrugged.
"Listening to you just made me realize the White Room is basically an orphanage with extra steps."
Ichika's expression froze.
Then she glared at him furiously.
This was the first time in her life someone had essentially called her an orphan to her face.
"Hey, hey, Pervert-senpai! Even if that's technically close to the truth, you're not supposed to say it out loud!"
She pointed accusingly at him.
"I'm still a cute girl! This is where Idiot-senpai is supposed to activate his yasashii protagonist mode!"
"You already think of yourself as an orphan. What am I supposed to say?"
"Uwaa, somehow you made me sound even more pathetic."
She sighed.
"Although I agree they hardly deserve to be called my parents."
Kaoru stared at her speechlessly.
Still, he could understand.
She had never met them once.
She had spent her entire childhood inside the White Room.
The fact that she still felt resentment toward them at least meant she acknowledged their existence as parents on some level.
If she felt absolutely nothing, she probably would not consider them her parents at all.
Kaoru was wondering whether there was anything he could do when Ichika continued.
"That's why I envy Ayanokōji-senpai."
For once, genuine longing entered her expression.
"And I sincerely hope things go well for him."
"He escaped that place and started living freely beneath an actual blue sky."
"He can go wherever he wants. Do whatever he wants."
"When I first heard about it, I thought, 'As expected of our greatest masterpiece. He accomplished something the rest of us couldn't.'"
Whatever Kiyotaka's achievements inside the White Room might have been, merely escaping it was enough to inspire envy.
If Ichika returned, she knew exactly what kind of life awaited her.
Endless education.
Endless tests.
Endless evaluation.
Unless she was eliminated from the program, it would never stop.
A place where even personal emotions were treated as something unnecessary.
Whenever she imagined returning, everything in her mind seemed gray.
"So you don't want to return to the White Room, and you don't particularly want to live with your parents either?"
By now Kaoru had gotten up and was no longer looming over her.
Ichika gave him a suspicious look.
"One option is chocolate-flavored dog shit. The other is dog-shit-flavored chocolate."
She spoke without the slightest hesitation.
"Which would Senpai rather eat?"
"I'd go find actual chocolate."
Kaoru extended a hand toward her.
"And, for what it's worth, I can give you the freedom you actually want."
"I can even help you throw the shit back where it came from."
Ichika blinked.
Then she stared uncertainly at his hand.
"Are... are you proposing to me?"
"When did I mention marriage?"
Kaoru's face darkened.
"But doesn't this look exactly like the scene where the kind protagonist tells the cute heroine, 'Leave all your problems to me'?"
Kaoru fell silent.
Then he noticed Ichika unconsciously hugging her own arms as though suffering from a sudden chill.
"Ugh. It really feels like Senpai is entering my romance route."
She shuddered theatrically.
"You'll wait until I'm emotionally vulnerable, sweep me off my feet, and then I'll turn into some hopeless idiot who can't live without you anymore. Terrifying."
Kaoru was beginning to think Ichika and Kikyō would get along disturbingly well.
Both possessed an endless supply of dirty jokes and somehow became more enthusiastic the longer they talked.
"I simply hate what they're doing."
Kaoru's voice became colder.
"Handing their own daughter over to someone else as part of a deal pisses me off."
He had encountered similar attitudes often enough during his time in the entertainment industry.
There were people who treated young talent as bargaining chips and expected everyone else to accept it as normal.
Kaoru had never tolerated that mentality when it involved the idols under his care.
And someone applying the same logic to their own daughter disgusted him even more.
"I like cute girls."
Kaoru admitted it without embarrassment.
"And Amasawa-san is certainly cute."
"But I'd rather make someone like me myself than have her delivered to me by someone else."
He paused.
"When we return to the cruise ship, I'll contact your father."
Ichika's eyes widened.
She stared at him in genuine shock.
"Senpai... are you secretly some ridiculous big shot?"
"I wasn't before."
Kaoru looked unimpressed.
"These days, I'm not so sure."
Then he kept his hand extended.
"Are you getting up or not? My arm is getting tired."
Ichika sheepishly stuck out her tongue.
She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.
"You really don't want me?"
The moment she was standing, Ichika immediately began advertising herself again.
"Look, look. I'm adorable, my waist is nice, I'm athletic, and I'm an elite White Room student."
She leaned toward him with a grin.
"Not even slightly tempted?"
"Even if I am, would Amasawa-san actually welcome me doing anything about it?"
Kaoru gave her a sidelong glance.
After Mio's habit of threatening to bite him, he had developed a healthy respect for asking before taking Ichika's provocations seriously.
Ichika subtly looked away.
She had a feeling that answering honestly would make the atmosphere between them extremely awkward.
More importantly, she was genuinely confused.
From her perspective, he had been handed an absurd opportunity.
Why did Kaoru not seem particularly excited?
From the beginning, he had remained unexpectedly calm.
Even the previous times when she deliberately flirted with him, she could not remember seeing him become flustered the way an ordinary boy would.
She constantly called him a pervert, but when she thought about it seriously, Kaoru rarely behaved like the sleazy boys who openly judged every girl they saw.
And...
Being around him was strangely pleasant.
She could insult him as much as she wanted and he almost never became angry.
Maybe staying with him would—
"Did you hypnotize me?"
Ichika abruptly snapped back to reality and blurted the question out.
"No."
Kaoru answered without hesitation.
Truth Magic did not count as hypnosis.
Probably.
Ichika stared at him suspiciously.
That answer had come far too quickly.
Something was definitely wrong.
Her behavior earlier had been strange too.
She had revealed several things she absolutely had not intended to say.
"What are you planning to tell my father?"
She quickly changed the subject.
"To abandon this arrangement."
Kaoru's voice remained steady.
"I know it's probably not my place to decide this for you, but I think Amasawa-san deserves the chance to live like a normal high-school student."
"To experience the kind of life Ayanokōji has now."
Ichika stopped moving.
Her breathing seemed to pause as she stared at him.
"Maybe you'll make a lot of friends here."
"Maybe you'll have days that make you happy and others that make you miserable."
"Maybe someday your heart will race because you genuinely fall for someone."
Kaoru looked at her calmly.
"And years from now, I hope that when you remember this part of your life, even the bitter memories still feel a little sweet."
"I hope you'll think, 'I'm glad I made that choice back then.'"
"Instead of remembering nothing but white rooms."
Then Kaoru pointed toward the distant sky.
"I think wanting to leave the White Room is the right choice."
"Look at that sky."
"The sunlight."
"You can stay outside today and watch it slowly turn into evening."
Ichika followed the direction of his finger.
A vast blue sky stretched above the island.
Nothing blocked it.
Nothing enclosed it.
Years from now, perhaps she really would still remember this exact view.
For no obvious reason, her heart skipped.
Kaoru had barely lowered his hand when someone bumped hard into his shoulder.
He turned.
Ichika stood there with her cheeks puffed out in anger.
"Pervert-senpai!"
She punched his arm several times.
"And you said you don't hypnotize girls!"
Kaoru stared at her, completely baffled.
"When did I hypnotize you?"
"Don't enter my romance route, you bastard!"
She hit him again.
Kaoru could only stand there wondering what on earth he had done this time.