Eto Rento today was planning to buy some otaku merchandise. Although he could buy a lot of light novels and games at the store near his house, he came to the Ginza commercial district.
If he was going to go, he wanted to go to the best place. In the Ginza stores, there are figures and collector's edition games and novels that small stores don't have. Even if he knew he couldn't afford these things, seeing the waifus smiling at him from the window made Eto Rento feel especially satisfied.
Everything had been planned perfectly. To save on train fares, he rode his bike from home, which was seven stops away, to Ginza.
But as he parked his bike and prepared to begin his day's enjoyment, he also noticed the figures of Kasuga no Tora and Eriri.
Did Eto Rento like Eriri?
The answer is no.
But he couldn't let Eriri have a boyfriend.
Because Eriri is an important, indispensable talent in his game development plan.
If Eriri doesn't have a boyfriend, then he can use his childhood friend status to invite her to join his team and be responsible for the art.
And as long as the plan goes smoothly, he can even use this relationship to get her amazing drawing skills for free without paying a penny.
As a childhood friend, Eto Rento knows better than anyone at Toyosaki that Eriri is someone who values relationships very much.
The relationship here doesn't have to be love, it can also be friendship and family. As long as someone can be considered a friend by her, even if they violate her interests at some point, she won't say anything, she will just silently endure it.
Therefore, as long as Eriri doesn't have a boyfriend, Eto Rento believes that his invitation is likely to be successful.
Even if it's not successful, doesn't he still have his trump card?
Just by prostrating himself, you can win over anyone, right? Even if it doesn't work in private, you can do it in school. In front of so many people, as long as he is shameless enough, Eriri will definitely not be able to resist!
But if the girl has a boyfriend, then everything is different. She can use her boyfriend as a shield. When he proposes, she can easily find an excuse to refuse. For example, after joining Eto Rento's team, she won't have time to maintain her relationship with her boyfriend.
In this way, Eto Rento has no advantage, either in reason or morality.
Even if he prostrates himself in school, people will only think that he is a bad boy who knows the girl has a boyfriend and continues to pester her.
His reputation in Toyosaki was already not very good. If he can't take the moral high ground, even if he uses his trump card, he will definitely fail.
It can only be said that in this kind of thing, Eto Rento is smarter than anyone else.
He has already figured out how to use the same plan on another person.
Develop different plans for different targets. At this moment, Eto Rento feels that he was born to be a planner.
Know people and use them well. Develop different plans for different people. Isn't this a quality that a planner should have?
…
Eriri's face became very ugly.
She didn't deny that, for a period of time, Eto Rento was a very important friend to her.
When she was very young, influenced by her mother, Eriri became interested in otaku culture.
But in a country like Japan, otaku are at the bottom of the food chain. It's even an insult.
At that time, the young girl couldn't find anyone to talk to. The people who originally gathered around her because of her appearance, after discovering that she was an otaku, also left her side, not forgetting to mock her as they left.
For those people, discovering that someone who was so much better than them was actually an otaku, how could they not take advantage of it?
This is the ugly side of human nature. When you see someone better than you, you always want to find ways to belittle them, until they are worse than you, and then you will be satisfied.
And then Eto Rento appeared.
This was a child who had been rebellious since he was young. He didn't care about the opinions of those around him, he only lived in his own world.
He shamelessly promoted his favorite works to others, forcing others to join the otaku group. When he encountered those who refused, or those who were difficult to deal with, he used his ultimate move, prostrating himself to solve all problems.
When Eriri found someone who could communicate with her about otaku culture, she was very happy. Her family's wealth allowed her to buy many collector's edition games and peripherals that Eto Rento couldn't even touch. For a period of time, they could be said to be best friends.
But because of her age, Eriri couldn't tell, how could someone as sophisticated as Sayuri Sawamura not see it?
It's said that you can tell a person's character by the time they are three years old. What kind of person you are as a child, you won't change much when you grow up.
Why else would there be that old saying in China: "Mountains can be moved, but human nature is difficult to change."?
Under Sayuri Sawamura's subtle hints, Eriri slowly discovered that Eto Rento actually had ulterior motives for approaching her.
Besides being able to get many games that he couldn't touch himself, he could also use Eriri's noble status to promote otaku culture.
"Even the upper class likes otaku. How can otaku be something bad?" Eto Rento shamelessly used Eriri's name and promoted even more crazily.
During that time, Eriri's reputation at school was simply terrible. If Sayuri Sawamura hadn't made a decisive decision and transferred, the girl wouldn't be like this now.
To some extent, this kind of tsundere personality, where you clearly think one way but refuse to admit it out loud, might be a protective color that Eriri put on herself after going through that incident.
This is the story of Eriri and Eto Rento, former childhood friends.
But the title of childhood friend is actually just Eto Rento's one-sided imagination. In Eriri's eyes, he has long been a selfish, self-centered bad image.
…
It's a long story, but from the moment Kasuga no Tora undid Eriri's hair, to the moment Eto Rento appeared out of nowhere, it had only been a minute or so.
Kato Megumi was on the other side of the street corner, watching everything that was happening.
The girl, who had originally wanted to back down, decided to just leave here.
She also cherished the rest of her high school life more.
Because after graduating from high school, it might be a pipe dream to see that boy again?
But when she saw Eto Rento rushing over, the girl's mind went blank.
She thought this otaku who appeared out of nowhere was going to do something bad to Kasuga no Tora.
Thinking about it, the girl didn't care about anything.
She didn't care about her gentle and calm image, and she didn't care about her stable and dignified image.
She just rushed directly in front of Eto Rento, dropped the umbrella in her hand, and clenched her five fingers together.
She stepped forward, lowered her waist, her white and tender hands clenched into fists, and slammed heavily into Eto Rento's nose bridge.
"Puchi!"
Blood flew everywhere.