What do couples do?
Sakurai Saki, having just slipped back into his silent apartment in the predawn gloom, held his phone like it was a live grenade. The existential question pulsed in his sleep-deprived brain.
The immediate dilemma: to send a 'good morning' text to his… girlfriend. The shift from 'friend' to 'girlfriend' was a single character, yet it felt like crossing a continental divide.
Moreover, her reply would be the ultimate litmus test. Her tone would confirm whether yesterday's confession had, in fact, been accepted. But how to begin?
[Greetings, Hayasaka-san. The morning's solar illumination appears optimal…]
"Ugh… are you an idiot, Sakurai Saki?!"
He flopped backward onto the sofa, staring at the ceiling. 'Is it scientifically proven that romantic affection causes cognitive degradation?' He lifted the phone again, his thumb hovering over her LINE icon—a cute, close-up selfie. (Gyaru girls didn't use anime avatars; this wasn't a dig at a certain council member, merely an observation. Though, few boys used a chibi orca as their avatar, either. Sakurai Saki simply admired the orca's ruthless efficiency. Watching them toy with seals was a valid hobby. All seals must die.)
"Since we're a couple now… we can do things we couldn't before, right?" he mused aloud, though the specifics were a thrilling, terrifying blur.
Ding-dong~
The notification chime made him jolt, nearly smashing the phone into his own face. He fumbled, catching it with a clumsy, one-handed grab that was pure luck.
He glanced at the screen.
Ai-chan: Good morning~! ♥
Phew. Just a good morning text.
…Wait. A good morning text?
"Why does this feel… familiar?"
A cold suspicion dawned. He scrolled up.
Yesterday — 6:31 AM
Ai-chan: Good morning~! ♥
Self: [Orca waving.jpg]
He scrolled further. The day before. The day before that. He kept scrolling, a montage of hearts and orcas stretching back over a dozen days.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He gently tapped the back of his head against the sofa cushion. "...Romance does induce intellectual atrophy." The evidence was irrefutable. He had completely erased the months-long ritual of their morning exchanges from his memory.
"Well… then I can just reply normally, right?"
His thumbs hovered over the keypad, beginning to type a generic reply.
Ding-dong~
Ai-chan: Today's energy supply~ ♥ [Photo Attached]
Sakurai Saki tapped the image. It loaded.
The photo was taken from a daringly close angle. Hayasaka Ai's damp, golden hair spilled over one shoulder. Her arm was curled, cradling the full, devastating curve of her—ahem—northern hemisphere, barely contained by a simple white bathrobe that did nothing to obscure the implication of softness beneath…
...Lewd.
Is it standard protocol to send a post-shower photo first thing in the morning?!
Sakurai Saki pressed a hand to his nose, as if checking for a hemorrhage. "You lead with this?"
No constitution, superpowered or otherwise, was equipped for this. Was this standard couple behavior? Was there a manual he hadn't received?
With tactical speed, he saved the image to a heavily encrypted, password-protected album. He then deleted the half-typed, utterly inadequate message in his reply box.
His only possible response: [Orca with a dramatic nosebleed.jpg]
If she's sending photos like this… we're definitely a couple, right? The confirmation felt both exhilarating and mildly terrifying.
"Read instantly?"
Hayasaka Ai, leaning against the wall outside Kaguya's room, watched the 'Seen' notification appear mere seconds after her send. Her heart did a foolish little flip.
Then we're definitely a couple, right?
She was killing time, waiting for Kaguya to summon her. She brought her phone to her face, the cool glass against her warm cheek, a shy smile escaping. That photo hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision. She'd deliberated, her thumb hovering over 'send' for a solid minute. Seeing him read the good morning text so immediately had been the final push. The alternative—being rejected after sending something so brazen—would have branded her a irredeemable weirdo.
…Not that she wasn't skating close to that line already.
What kind of face is he making right now~? The curiosity was delicious.
Buzz. Buzz.
Her phone vibrated. The reply. Her own morning greeting, mirrored back to her in his usual, slightly detached style. Yet, today, the same words carried a different charge—a secret, shared current humming beneath the text. A wave of pure, giddy happiness washed over her.
"Hayasaka~" Kaguya's voice, slightly muffled, came from within the room, followed by a quick correction. "Hasaka~"
The names were almost identical, separated only by a single syllable.
Tucking her phone away—a precious secret in her pocket—Hayasaka Ai smoothed her expression into one of professional neutrality and pushed open the door.
Inside, Kaguya Shinomiya and Fujiwara Chika were already dressed, yesterday's fluffy pajamas folded neatly nearby.
"Does Hasaka-kun usually help Kaguya-san get dressed?" Chika asked, her eyes bright with unabashed curiosity. She'd just been hearing about the intricacies of the young lady's morning routine.
"Yes, Fujiwara-sama," Hayasaka Ai replied with a practiced, serene nod, the perfect picture of a dutiful attendant, even as her mind was still miles away, replaying a single, scandalous photograph and an orca with a nosebleed.
Kaguya had just been roused from sleep; Chika had kept her up until one in the morning. For a girl whose internal clock was calibrated for a strict pre-midnight bedtime, she was operating in a persistent, soft-focus haze.
She'd nearly slipped up with Hayasaka's name earlier. The schedule she'd described to Chika was, of course, from Hayasaka Ai's perspective: the hands-on assistance with dressing, the nightly debriefing sessions.
"So thrilling!" Chika whispered, barely containing herself.
Hand-dressing was intimate enough, but then private evening chats, just the two of them…
It was a perfectly logical pipeline for escalation! Fujiwara Chika's imagination painted in vivid, blush-inducing detail.
"Kaguya-sama, your collar is uneven." Hayasaka Ai noted the slight disarray, gliding over to adjust it with deft fingers.
Still half-asleep, Kaguya instinctively leaned into the familiar, reliable presence, her head resting briefly against Ai-chan's shoulder. The proximity was effortless, intimate.
Fujiwara Secretary's inner fangirl combusted on the spot. She had successfully pivoted from the brink of standard fujoshi territory and plunged headlong into a new, equally deep obsession: Pseudo-Yuri. The aesthetic of forbidden love, master and servant, hidden in plain sight… it was perfect.
On the other side of the city, a very different crisis was unfolding.
Sakurai Saki stared at his phone. He had been staring at it, in the same position, for several minutes. Waiting. The screen remained unchanged.
"…Is the internet wrong about couples having endless things to talk about?"
Why did his chat history with Ai-chan only span four lines on screen? This was the treatment reserved for… a backup, wasn't it?
And the latest message stubbornly refused to show a 'Read' receipt. (A critical flaw in LINE's system: it only registers as 'read' when the app is opened to the specific chat. A notification-preview, as Hayasaka had used, left the sender in agonizing limbo.)
This silent treatment was making Sakurai Saki deeply, irrationally anxious.
"No way. Are we not dating?"
Do friends send… those kinds of private photographs? That defied all social coding. That was her northern hemisphere! Are breasts shown to a 'backup'?
"…" A cold, intrusive thought slithered in: Hayasaka-kun.
Kaguya's butler. The boy who had confessed to Hayasaka Ai. His love rival.
Kaguya had also stated she and Hayasaka Ai were friends.
Could the entire confession have been a coordinated tactic?
What was Kaguya Shinomiya's—and 'Hasaka's'—true objective? To incite jealousy? To maneuver him into confessing first? Given Kaguya's labyrinthine strategic mind, it was plausible. But why would Ai-chan agree to such a scheme…?
Sakurai Saki's head throbbed. His girlfriend had entered a state of quantum superposition—both existing and not existing as his romantic partner.
"…The entanglement of existence and non-existence. This condition can only be described as a quantum state."
He groaned, running both hands through his hair in frustration. "ARE WE DATING OR NOT?!"
Thus, Sakurai Saki wasted his entire morning trapped in a recursive loop of paranoid deduction, his productivity annihilated by a single un-replied-to message.
[Today's Outcome: Sakurai Saki's Crushing Defeat! (Casualty: One entire morning, obliterated by Hayasaka Ai's unconscious radio silence.)]
Breakfast at the Shinomiya Estate.
As a close attendant, Hayasaka Ai was not permitted to dine at the same table as her master. She stood at a respectful distance by the doorway, posture perfect. Only then did she discreetly retrieve her phone.
A small jolt of realization. She'd forgotten to reply.
'Sakura-chan… he wouldn't be upset, would he?' A flicker of genuine concern crossed her features, completely unaware of the psychological war zone she'd left in her wake across the city. The master strategist of romance was, in this moment, utterly tactless.