Kaito sat in his beanbag chair. It was nine in the evening. The echo of the social explosion he had detonated in the school courtyard still resonated in his mind. He had returned to his sanctuary, but the peace felt... contaminated. It was like the silence that follows a nuclear detonation. The main event was over, but the residual radiation still hung in the air.
The conversation with Koga behind the gym had been exactly as he predicted: an exercise in maximum effort. She screamed. She cried. She accused him of being a monster, a demon, the worst person she had ever met. He just stood there, absorbing it all with the resilience of a concrete wall, until her fury exhausted itself and turned into panicked sobs.
"Tomorrow," he had told her. "Same place, same time. And don't be late. We have to discuss the terms of our contract."
He had left her there, crying, and gone home. Job done. Phase one of the operation, complete.
"SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TODAY'S ACTIONS RESULTED IN A 250% INCREASE IN YOUR SCHOOL NOTORIETY," Fia's voice sounded in his head. She was in her ethereal form, a mutual decision to avoid further property damage. "YOU HAVE GONE FROM 'APATHETIC GHOST' STATUS TO 'UNPREDICTABLE MADMAN'. THIS COULD UNLOCK NEW MISSION ROUTES!"
"Shut up, Fia. I'm processing the aftermath."
He looked at his new TV. At his new console. They were there, waiting, but the urge to play had vanished. Apathy required a low-energy environment. Today had been the opposite. He felt exhausted, not physically, but mentally. The effort of executing such a public and loud plan had drained him.
It was then that the most troublesome sound in the world interrupted his radioactive silence.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
A knock on the door. Firm, polite, and completely unexpected.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
"IT'S A NIGHT VISIT!" Fia exclaimed. "A RARE EVENT! IT COULD BE A SECRET MISSION CHARACTER! OR A PARADOXICAL PIZZA DELIVERY!"
With a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul, Kaito got up and went to the door. He looked through the peephole.
And his annoyance deepened.
He opened the door.
Mai Sakurajima was standing in the hallway, bathed in the cold corridor light. She wasn't wearing her school uniform, but a simple blouse and a long skirt. In her hands, she held a small plastic bag from a convenience store. There was a dangerous, amused glint in her eyes.
"Good evening, Assistant," she said, her voice smooth as silk.
Kaito didn't answer. He just stared at her.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "I brought pudding."
He stepped away from the door, a silent and reluctant invitation. She walked in, taking off her shoes in the genkan with a familiarity that irritated him. The apartment, which a second earlier had felt empty and silent, suddenly felt... occupied again.
She placed the bag on the kotatsu table. "I was coming back from a photoshoot and heard the most fascinating news," she began, her tone too casual. "Apparently, my apathetic assistant decided to become the protagonist of a high school rom-com. And he didn't even consult me on the script."
She turned, crossing her arms. Her smile was sweet, but her eyes were sharp as glass. "So, Kaito-kun. Is the rumor true? Did you ask a first-year girl out in front of the entire school?"
Kaito closed the door and turned to face her. He didn't sit down. He didn't try to explain himself.
"Yes," he said.
The simple, emotionless answer seemed to disarm her for a second. She expected denials, excuses, stammering. She got a monotone fact.
"...Yes?" she repeated, blinking. "Just... 'yes'?"
"It was a fake relationship proposal with clear contractual terms," he corrected, as if clarifying a technical detail. "The word 'dating' is emotionally charged and inaccurate."
Mai stared at him for a long moment, and then, a small laugh escaped her. She sat on the floor, near the table. "You're unbelievable. Kaito, why?" The amusement in her voice was replaced by genuine curiosity. She knew him. She knew there had to be an insane, twisted logic behind the most illogical act possible.
"SHE WANTS TO KNOW YOUR MOTIVATION! IT'S A 'BOND DEEPENING EVENT'!" Fia narrated. "TELL HER YOU DID IT BECAUSE YOUR HEART WAS MOVED BY HER SITUATION! TELL HER YOU SAW A REFLECTION OF YOUR OWN LONELINESS IN HER EYES AND..."
Kaito ignored her, walked to the table, and sat in his chair. He looked at Mai. "It was a controlled social detonation."
Mai frowned. "A what?"
"The girl, Tomoe Koga, was trapped in a time loop to avoid a social problem," he explained bluntly. "The 'subtle conversation' solution would have taken weeks of effort, trust-building, and emotional drama. Inefficient. My approach was to create a social problem so large, so public, and so inescapable that her original problem became irrelevant by comparison. I became the anomaly her loop couldn't erase."
He gestured vaguely. "It's like chemotherapy for a social tumor. The side effects are severe—public humiliation, ostracism, rumors—but the treatment is fast and targeted. I eradicated her problem by creating a bigger problem for myself, one I can control and discard when the mission ends."
Mai listened, her expression shifting from amusement to astonishment, and finally to a sort of reluctant, horrified respect. She understood. It was terrifying, but she understood the logic.
"So, you threw yourself in front of a social train... to avoid having to buy a ticket," she summarized, shaking her head.
"An apt analogy," Kaito agreed.
"YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS!" Fia shouted. "THAT'S NOT ROMANTIC! IT'S LOGICAL PSYCHOPATHY! SHE ACCEPTED! THAT MEANS THE PLAN FAILED! NOW YOU'RE DATING FOR REAL!"
"She didn't accept because of the proposal," Kaito said, speaking aloud to Mai but answering Fia. "She accepted because it was the only option that gave her a way out of immediate humiliation. She's panicking. She'll spend the rest of the loop trying to get rid of me. Which gives me the leverage I need to force her to confront her original problem. It's all part of the plan."
Mai opened the bag and took out two cups of caramel pudding. She slid one across the table to him. "You are the most troublesome person I have ever met, Kaito."
She opened hers and took a spoonful. "But I must admit," she said, with a wry smile, "your method has a certain... brutal elegance."
She warned him, her tone becoming more serious. "Just be careful. Chemotherapy sometimes kills the patient. And fake relationships have a habit of becoming... real."
Kaito picked up the pudding. He didn't want it. It was an unsolicited dessert. An unsolicited interruption of his evening. An unsolicited friendship.
He peeled off the lid. The sweet scent of caramel filled the air.
First, an invisibility paradox. Then, a noisy goddess. Next, a time loop. And now, unsolicited desserts. His list of problems seemed to be growing instead of shrinking.
He took a spoonful of the pudding. It was good.
How troublesome.
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