New Novel🪶

Chouko tapped open her pinned chat on Line while typing out a new message.

[Onii, my old middle school friends invited me to a karaoke mixer~]

She waited.

And waited.

Only after a while did the “unread” mark finally switch to “read.”

[Wow, I didn’t know Chouko actually had friends to hang out with! 😮] – read

[😾] – read

[Sorry, sorry! You’ve been clinging to me so much I thought after moving from Kyoto you didn’t have any friends to hang out with... 🙏] – read

This guy!

Why did she always go out of her way to message him? Didn’t he get it yet?!

That idiot! That total moron! A hopeless, emotionless brick of a man!

[So anyway? Will you come with me, Onii? ] – read

[Did they set a time?] – read

[This Friday after school!] – read

Golden Week started right after that, no way he’d be busy then, right?

Her palms were already damp with sweat as she gripped her phone tightly, heart pounding like a drum.

Then, the reply came.

[Bad timing… I’ve gotta report to cram school right after class Friday, and I’ll be stuck there all Golden Week 😅] – read

[Tch! You stupid Onii! 😾👊] – read

Enough. She’d had enough of this guy!

She’d fought tooth and nail with her family, cried in front of her mother, just to convince them to let her move to Tokyo to be near him.

And for what?!

For him to always be “busy” with club activities, hanging out with upperclassmen, and when she finally wanted to go on a date in Shinjuku or Shibuya, he was, of course, “too busy with cram school”?

Was cram school more important than her?

Was college prep more important than the childhood friend who chased him all the way here?

“Idiot Onii…”

She came all this way, he should at least take responsibility!

Still, no matter how many times he brushed her off, Chouko couldn’t bring herself to give up.

That was just how her Onii was, dense and slow as ever.

He’d always been like that since they were kids, stubborn, dull, and infuriatingly honest.

Which meant the best way to deal with him… was the same as always:

make him jealous.

Suddenly, she remembered a post she’d seen recently while browsing the school’s anonymous forum,

[Main Girl vs Mistress? 2-3’s Hoshikawa Harutaki Exposed as a Two-Timing Scumbag!]

The post accused Harutaki of chasing after two girls at once, Nogami and her follower, Hinata Sae, painting him as a shameless playboy.

Attached were two blurry photos, shot from a distance like a random passerby had snapped them.

Photo 1: A tall boy with short violet hair handed a drink to a girl with orange-red hair tied in a side ponytail and an unmistakably mature figure.

Photo 2: The same boy was seen laughing with another petite girl, his arm casually draped around her shoulder.

Harutaki’s name was already a hot topic across campus, and with that kind of clickbait title, the thread exploded within hours.

After all, who cared about bullying drama when you could gossip about a scandal?

Especially when the two girls in question happened to be two of the most beautiful girls in school:

The untouchable, queen-like Nogami Izumi.

And the bright, athletic Hinata Sae from the swim team.

Both were adored by countless students.

Of course, no one dared confess to Nogami, and Sae was practically glued to her side, so she was untouchable by association.

But now? The same guy had supposedly two-timed both of them?

Was this some kind of joke?!

Even with past rumors and fake posts as precedent, this one had photos. Surely this time it wasn’t fake, right?

After almost a hundred comments of heated debate, the boys of all three grades came to a unified conclusion,

There was no mosaic, no photoshop, nothing edited.

So how could it be fake?

Just sharing a drink with Nogami, that impossible scene was right there in the photo. How could that not be real?

Heck, in over a year, no one had ever even seen another guy within arm’s reach of Nogami, other than Sae or Minako.

And now this same guy was also hugging Sae?!

At this rate, the next victim of the “scumbag’s curse” would probably be the goddess herself, gentle, gorgeous, impossibly well-endowed Sanada Minako.

By the end of the thread, one thing was clear:

Harutaki had officially become Public Enemy Number One among the boys of Nichiya High.

And that was exactly what Chouko wanted.

If she suddenly started hanging around the school’s most infamous “scumbag,” Onii would totally freak out, right?

Besides… talking to Hoshikawa was actually fun.

Much more fun than that uptight, boring, rule-obsessed Onii who only ever told her what not to do.

As she refreshed the forum, a brand new thread popped up, posted just seconds ago:

[Karma Hits the Scumbag! Congrats, H-kun!]

[The scumbag finally got what he deserved! Just saw him at the school gate get drenched with a bucket of water by our Queen herself. Dude was standing there like a soggy chicken, LOL.]

…Wait.

Hoshikawa… hadn’t gone home yet?

He was still at the gate, after being splashed?

Chouko shot to her feet, grabbed her school bag, and ran out of the restroom,

Now was her chance to make her move!

But as she turned off her screen, she failed to notice the newest unread message waiting at the bottom of her Line chat:

[Be careful, okay? You should focus on studying too, Chouko. You dropped to eighth place this time 😅 pats your head] – unread