The pudding was decent. Sweet, creamy, with a layer of bitter caramel that cut through the excess sweetness. Kaito ate in silence, his spoon moving in a methodical rhythm. It was a momentary pause in processing the day's radioactive aftermath.
Mai watched him over her own cup of pudding, a small smile playing on her lips. "You seem very confident for someone who just declared himself public enemy number one of the first-year class."
"Confidence is an irrelevant emotional variable," Kaito replied, without taking his eyes off the pudding. "The plan has a high probability of success in achieving the main objective. The collateral social damage to my reputation is an acceptable cost."
"Acceptable cost," she repeated, savoring the words as if they were a strange delicacy. "Most people would call that 'being hated by everyone'."
"Whatever."
She took another spoonful. "I still don't get it. The pretending to be her boyfriend part. It's so... dramatic. So loud. It's not your style."
Kaito finished his pudding and placed the empty cup on the table. He leaned back in his beanbag chair. "That is where you are wrong. It is precisely my style, because it avoids a larger, more time-consuming problem. The original protagonist of this world, Sakuta Azusagawa, made a fundamental error in his approach to Tomoe Koga. An emotional programming error that generated cascading complications."
Mai stopped with her spoon mid-air, genuinely intrigued. "An error?"
"AN ERROR?!" Fia's voice exploded in Kaito's mind, full of indignation. "THE 'AZUSAGAWA METHOD' IS THE GOLD STANDARD FOR BOND FORMATION! HE SAVED SHE! HE SAVED KOGA! HE IS A HERO!"
"He is an inefficient romantic comedy protagonist," Kaito thought back, with cutting coldness. He continued aloud to Mai. "His strategy was based on kindness and ambiguity. He helped her. He listened to her. He acted like a supportive friend while pretending to be her boyfriend. He never established a clear protocol of emotional distancing."
He paused, looking at the turned-off TV as if analyzing source code. "The result was a predictable 'bug': the target, Koga, developed a genuine affective dependency. The fake relationship generated real feelings. This transformed a simple time loop debugging mission into a prolonged romantic drama, which required more confessions, more headaches, and ultimately, more effort to resolve. It was a waste of resources."
Mai rested her chin on her hand, fascinated by that clinical autopsy of a romance. "So... what is your solution? Your 'patch' for this bug?"
Kaito stared at her, his eyes void of any emotion. "I am not going to make the same mistake."
His tone was so definitive that it sent a shiver down Mai's spine.
"Tomorrow," Kaito continued, "at our first 'contract meeting,' my first agenda item will be to establish, unequivocally and verbally, that I do not like her. That I find her troublesome, noisy, and a waste of time. That I am doing this solely to solve a problem she created and that, in exchange, she owes me a favor. I will make it clear that I have absolutely no interest in her as a person."
"My God, Kaito," Mai whispered, a mix of horror and amusement in her voice. "You're going to... bully her so she doesn't fall in love with you while pretending to be her boyfriend."
"It is the most efficient approach to avoid future complications," Kaito said, with the logic of an exterminator. "I will eradicate the 'romantic feelings' variable before it can compile. No ambiguity. No unnecessary kindness. Just a service contract. That way, when the loop is broken, we can terminate the agreement cleanly, without the troublesome residue of emotional drama."
He seemed genuinely proud of his solution. It was a plan only Kaito could conceive: a display of calculated cruelty, not out of malice, but out of absolute dedication to the principle of minimum effort.
Mai shook her head slowly, an incredulous smile spreading across her face. She looked at that strange boy, who discussed feelings as if they were lines of faulty code. He was, at the same time, the simplest and most complicated person she had ever met.
She finished her pudding, the humor of the situation outweighing the shock. His logic was insane, but in a twisted way, it made sense within his own universe of rules.
"Well," she said, placing the empty cup next to his. "It seems you've thought of everything."
"I try," said Kaito.
Mai looked around the silent apartment. At the new TV. At the beanbag chair. At the bookshelf. Her gaze lingered for a long second on the closed closet door near the entrance.
She turned back to Kaito, who looked satisfied with his perfect solution for managing a troublesome girl and her unwanted feelings. Her face was perfectly neutral, but her eyes danced with pure irony.
"By the way, Kaito," she said, her voice casual. "Where is Fia?"
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