Monday arrived, bringing with it not only the start of a new school week, but also the Darwinian evolution of high school gossip.
Kaito walked toward school, his headphones at maximum volume playing pure white noise. He appreciated the efficiency of the sound isolation, but unfortunately, he didn't possess equivalent technology to block the stares.
And the stares were different.
Last week, they were stares of disdain and confusion ("Who is that weirdo who shouted in the courtyard?"). Today, however, there was a new ingredient in the atmosphere: reverent fear and morbid curiosity.
"Social Environment Analysis complete," Fia's voice echoed in his mind, sounding worried. "Kaito, the 'Murmur Rate' has increased by 40%. Apparently, the news that Koga-san spent Saturday at your house 'working' underwent a viral mutation over the weekend."
"Mutation?" Kaito thought, without slowing his pace. "I just made her clean the bathroom. It's a domestic fact."
"Ah, but the teenage 'Telephone Game' is a powerful tool of distortion!" Fia explained. "The current version of the story, circulating in Line Group 2-C, is that as punishment for her looking at another boy, you forced her to scrub the floor with a toothbrush while wearing a collar."
Kaito stopped walking for a microsecond, then resumed his pace.
"That is absurd," he thought. "I don't own a collar. And toothbrushes are inefficient for large surfaces."
"They think you are an 'S-Rank Domineering Sadist'!" Fia shouted. "Your 'Villain' reputation is solidifying! This should drive people away, but paradoxically it is attracting a very specific niche of masochistic admirers! Beware of the Occult Club!"
"How troublesome," Kaito sighed.
He reached the shoe lockers. As expected, the hallway parted like the Red Sea. First-year students backed up against the lockers, whispering.
And there she was. Tomoe Koga.
Unlike Friday, she wasn't shaking like a chihuahua in the snow. She was standing in front of his locker, posture rigid, holding something wrapped in a cloth with a bunny print.
The object of the crime. The harbinger of the logistical apocalypse.
A bento box.
Kaito stopped in front of her. He didn't open his locker immediately. He looked at the package in her hands, then at her face. She was red, but her eyes held that defiant stubbornness he was starting to find annoying.
"What is this?" Kaito asked, monotone.
"It's lunch," Koga replied, forcing the package against his chest with a considerable lack of subtlety. "Take it, before I change my mind."
Kaito didn't move his hands. He let the package press against his sternum, held up only by her force.
"This was not in the contract," he said. "Rule 2: No emotional deepening. Rule 3: I am not your real boyfriend. Homemade bentos are a cultural symbol of domestic affection or romantic submission. Both violate the distancing guidelines."
"It's not affection, you idiot!" she hissed, looking around at the audience of students pretending not to listen. "It's... it's payment! You gave me food on Saturday. Expensive bread and fancy coffee from Sakurajima-senpai. My mother taught me not to have debts, especially to demons. These are leftovers from last night's dinner. Consider it interest on the cleaning debt."
"Leftovers," Kaito repeated. He analyzed the logic. Free food = money saved = efficiency. Refusing = prolonged public scene = inefficiency.
"SYSTEM ALERT!" Fia bellowed. "THIS IS A TRAP! THE 'LEFTOVERS BENTO' IS A CLASSIC 'TSUNDERE' TROPE! IF YOU EAT IT, AFFINITY WILL SKYROCKET! SHE WILL FEEL THE PLEASURE OF CARING FOR YOU!"
"It's free food, Fia. Shut up."
Kaito took the package. "Leftovers are acceptable. Reduces global waste. I will consume it."
Koga released the breath she was holding, shoulders relaxing visibly. "Great. And... um... we're eating together. Behind the gym. Again."
"Why? The delivery transaction is complete."
"Because," she lowered her voice, leaning closer, "Maezawa-senpai is watching me. Over there, near the entrance."
Kaito moved his eyes minimally. Indeed, the basketball team captain and time loop antagonist was leaning against the wall, watching them with an expression mixing disdain and doubt.
The "villain" needed to act.
Kaito sighed, the sound of a tire slowly deflating. "Very well. But if there are pickled vegetables touching the rice and making it soggy, the contract will be reviewed."
Lunch break arrived. The spot behind the gym, now their unofficial crisis management office, was hot and stuffy.
Kaito sat on his usual box. Koga sat on the grass in front of him, opening her own bento (much smaller and cuter).
Kaito unwrapped the bunny cloth. Opened the lid.
It wasn't just leftovers.
There was rice molded, not into hearts (thank God), but into precise geometric shapes. There was bright yellow tamagoyaki (rolled omelet). There were sausages cut to look like octopuses (an annoying cliché, but tolerable). And there was fried chicken that smelled irritatingly good.
These weren't leftovers thrown together haphazardly. This was assembled. With effort.
"You said leftovers," Kaito accused, picking up a sausage octopus with his chopsticks and staring at it as if it were evidence of a crime. "This has decorative cuts. No one cuts leftovers into the shape of cephalopods at eleven at night."
Koga blushed furiously, shoving a piece of broccoli into her mouth to buy time. "I-I was practicing! For home economics class! You are the test dump! Just eat it and stop complaining!"
"LIE DETECTED!" Fia sang. "SHE WOKE UP 30 MINUTES EARLY! SHE CHECKED THE WEATHER TO ENSURE THE FOOD WOULDN'T SPOIL! KAITO, SHE IS 'INVESTING' IN THE FAKE RELATIONSHIP!"
Kaito bit into the sausage. It was good. Salty, slightly smoky.
"How troublesome," he thought. "If the food was bad, it would be easy to maintain distance. Good food creates dopamine. Dopamine creates positive association. I need to neutralize this."
"It is edible," he said aloud. "The salt level is adequate to replenish the electrolytes I lost sweating from having to walk here with you."
Koga rolled her eyes, but Kaito noticed the small smile of satisfaction she tried to hide behind her tea bottle.
That smile was the problem.
"Koga," Kaito said, setting the bento box aside. "We need to talk about the Loop."
Her smile vanished. The light mood evaporated. "The... the loop?"
"Today is Day 1," Kaito said. "Technically, the day passed. The loop of the 27th hasn't happened yet. We are in new territory. But..." He stared at her. "Fia—my source—says the quantum instability around you hasn't disappeared. It's shifted."
"Shifted how?"
"Before, the loop was fueled by your fear of rejection and social exclusion," Kaito explained, with his surgical frankness. "Now, it seems to be fueled by something else. The System calls it 'Comfort Stagnation'."
Koga frowned. "Stagnation...?"
"You aren't afraid of Maezawa anymore," Kaito said. "Because I am an effective shield. But now you are... too comfortable here." He gestured to the space between them, to the empty bento, to the shared isolation. "You traded the stress of pretending to be perfect with your friends for the relief of being imperfect with me. And you don't want this to end."
Koga opened her mouth to protest, but closed it. Her eyes drifted to the grass.
"This is dangerous," Kaito continued, relentless. "If you start preferring this lie to your reality, the loop might reset not to avoid a bad future, but to preserve this mediocre present."
"It's not mediocre!" she blurted out suddenly.
Kaito paused.
Koga looked at him, her eyes shining with a sudden intensity. "It's not mediocre. It's... easy. With them..." she pointed toward the main school building, "...I have to laugh when nothing's funny. I have to agree with opinions I don't have. I have to read the air all the time so I don't suffocate. But with you..."
She clenched her hands in her lap.
"...With you, I can say I hate you. I can complain. I can be ugly, sweaty, and wear rubber gloves. And you don't care. You don't walk away because you 'didn't read the room.' You only walk away if it's logistically inefficient."
She looked into his eyes.
"You're an idiot, Tanaka. But you're an honest idiot. And that is... relaxing."
Silence fell over them. Only the buzzing of cicadas filled the air.
"CRITICAL ALERT! CRITICAL ALERT!" Fia was shouting so loud Kaito had to suppress a physical grimace. "AFFINITY: +50! STATUS: 'EMOTIONAL REFUGE'! KAITO, THE HATE PROTOCOL FAILED! SHE DOESN'T HATE YOU! SHE LIKES HATING YOU! THIS IS AN OLD MARRIED COUPLE DYNAMIC!"
Kaito felt a tension headache forming behind his eyes.
His "apathetic villain" strategy had backfired spectacularly. By being brutally honest and demanding nothing of her, he had accidentally become the thing she desired most: a place where she didn't have to act.
He had created a comfort paradox.
"This is unacceptable," Kaito said, standing up and grabbing the empty bento.
"What?" Koga asked, startled by the abrupt change in tone.
"You are relaxing," Kaito said, looking at her with calculated coldness. "Relaxation breeds complacency. Complacency breeds time loops. I need you to want to leave this situation, Koga. Not for you to want to live in it."
He tossed the bunny cloth back to her. She caught it in the air, clumsily.
"Tomorrow," Kaito said, "we are raising the stakes. The fake relationship is too stable. We need to introduce chaos."
"Chaos? What kind of chaos?"
"The kind that reminds you why being with me is a nightmare, not a refuge," Kaito said. "Prepare yourself. Tomorrow we will have a 'date' after school. And I guarantee: you will hate every second."
He turned and walked away, leaving her confused on the grass.
"What are you going to do, Kaito?!" Fia asked, trembling. "Are you going to hit her with a magazine?"
"Worse," Kaito thought, his dead eyes fixed on the horizon. "I'm taking her shopping for clothes. With me choosing. And I'm going to use the most humiliating and efficient fashion logic possible."
If honesty attracted her, he would have to use honesty to destroy her. He would have to be so unbearably practical that the "refuge" would become a prison of polyester and secondhand embarrassment.
The Loop had to break. And if love wouldn't break it, aesthetic embarrassment would.
________________________________________
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