Saturday morning.

Ayabe Yuuma’s morning began with an utterly hopeless lack of sleep.

Last night, he had received an artistic voyeuristic photo from his childhood friend Akane, along with a final notice saying, “I’ll ask you about this in detail tomorrow.” Because of that, he hadn’t managed to even close his eyes once.

The wall clock pointed at 9:00 AM. In another hour, he would have to head toward the guillotine disguised as a study session with Tachibana Rena.

“Haa…”

His habitual sigh dissolved into the stagnant air of the room.

A perfect plan to spend a peaceful weekend alone in his room and clear up his backlog of unread books had already vanished without a trace.

◇

In the end, the study session with Rena was hell.

As soon as he sat down at the café seat near the station, Rena immediately hit him with a direct question while smiling broadly.

“Nee, Ayabe-chi, who was that person yesterday? Your childhood friend?”

The fact that he had been kissed on the cheek and secretly photographed by Akane. That fact was unknown to Rena herself. Yet her question was precise as if she knew everything.

“A, uh… well… something like that.”

“Huh? It’s the student council president, right? She’s famous. You can’t keep someone like that in the corner, Ayabe-chi.”

Yuuma wiped his sweat while opening a math textbook, but Rena’s demonic-like interrogation didn’t stop.

Faced with the complex vector of human relationships more complicated than a quadratic function graph, Yuuma’s brain had completely exceeded its processing capacity limit.

After two hours of torture like that, exhausted Yuuma returned home to be greeted by a smartphone notification frenzy.

First from Akane:

“Yuuma. For tomorrow’s ‘Kumashiro Marathon’ volunteer work, we need to gather at the site at 7:00 AM. Please absolutely don’t be late. I’m monitoring you with GPS.”

Then from Shizuku:

“Senpai! I’m so happy that you’ll come and cheer me on before the marathon starts tomorrow! I’ll be waiting in the starting area!”

And finally, from Rena:

“Ayabe-chi, tomorrow I’m on duty to watch over the volunteers along the road. Please take care of it! I’m assigned to the busiest spot on the south side, so if you don’t keep an eye out, I might get harassed by some weird guy—”

All three had different places and roles.

All of them were concentrated on Sunday morning.

Yuuma held his smartphone tightly while looking up at the ceiling.

“…This is impossible.”

Physically.

But without realizing it, he had replied to all three messages with “Understood!” accompanied by a cheerful bear emoji.

And then came the fateful Sunday.

◇

The day of the “Kumashiro Marathon 202X”.

Wrapped in the annual heat of the main street, Ayabe Yuuma stood alone, his face showing signs of death.

“Haa… haa… haa…”

He was currently undertaking a super-difficult mission that would make even special forces soldiers run away barefoot. A reckless task to simultaneously complete three missions from three different girls.

First, the starting area.

“Senpai! You came!”

Nanakusa Shizuku, wrapped in track uniform, ran over while doing warm-up exercises. Sweat glistened on her forehead, and her cheeks were flushed with tension and anticipation.

“O-oh. Of course. I came to cheer for Shizuku-chan.”

Despite the despair in his heart, his mouth smoothly uttered those words without hesitation.

“I’m going to do my best today! I’ll be so determined!”

For a moment, he was healed by the Hokkaido-style enthusiasm mixed into her Kumamoto dialect, but there wasn’t time to dwell on sentiment. Checking his watch, he realized only five minutes remained until the gathering time.

“Shizuku-chan, do your best! I’ll be waiting at the finish line!”

“Yes! I’ll go now!”

As Shizuku waved cheerfully and turned her back, Yuuma started running full speed toward the operations headquarters tent set up at the foot of Kumashiro Castle.

Pushing through the crowd and panting heavily as he slid into the tent, there stood Hinomiya Akane, the student council president, arms crossed, standing like a statue.

“Yuuma. You’re two minutes and thirty-seven seconds late.”

“S-sorry… it’s just that the roads were crowded…”

“Hmm? It seems you ran from the starting area, but according to GPS logs, you were near Shizuku-san for several minutes.”

Her icy gaze pierced directly into Yuuma’s heart.

On Akane’s tablet, a clear record showed that the blue dot indicating Yuuma had stopped next to the pink dot indicating Shizuku for several minutes.

“I-I mean! That was just… I was detouring to avoid interfering with the runners, so it happened by chance…”

“Excuses are not needed. There’s a mountain of work waiting. Yuuma, you’re the liaison between the headquarters and the first aid station. Do your job properly.”

Akane said that and handed him a sports drink bottle.

“You forget to hydrate when I’m not around, so you need to be properly taken care of.”

Yuuma could only respond with “Ah, thank you…” under Akane’s perfect combination of candy and whip (a Japanese expression similar to ‘carrot and stick’).

(Akane is definitely the one who cares about me the most…)

Forgetting his previous three seconds of terror, he thought that. But at that moment,  the phone his pocket vibrated – a message from Tachibana Rena.

“Ayabe-chi, still not here? It’s super crowded here and I’m scared—”

The attached photo showed Rena pouting with her lips, her selfie shot. Behind her was a massive crowd.

“……!”

Yuuma drank the sports drink in one go and stole a glance at Akane before running off again.

“Hey, Yuuma! Where are you going!”

A sharp voice came from behind, but he had no time to turn around.

(This is bad, I can’t leave Rena alone!)

His thoughts had already shifted into their full【Liquid Self】 form. His mind molded itself perfectly to the “vessel” before him.

About 800 meters from the operations headquarters, when he spotted Tachibana Rena in a yellow vest along the roadside, Yuuma’s lungs were screaming for mercy.

“Haa… haa… R-Rena…! Are you okay!”

“A-Ayabe-chi! You’re late—!”

Rena wrapped her arm around his and looked up at him with a worried expression.

“I-I’m sorry… I wanted to come as soon as possible…”

“Uun, it’s fine. Since Ayabe-chi came, I’m already safe. Hey, maybe take a break in the shade over there?”

Her sweet voice and soft touch caused Yuuma’s brain to short-circuit again.

(I have to protect Rena…!)

Thus, Yuuma’s hellish triathlon began.

Encouraging Shizuku at the starting area, being monitored by Akane at the operations headquarters, and guarding Rena along the roadside. He continued running through this hellish triangle of three points, gasping for breath.

“It’s only Shizuku-san that I’m cheering for!”

That statement made Shizuku respond with a full smile saying “Yes!” and she put even more effort into her race.

With Shizuku’s smiling face behind him, Yuuma ran breathlessly back to the operations headquarters.

“Akane comes first. Helping you is my top priority!”

Akane said “Of course” while raising the corner of her mouth, but didn’t forget to remind him, “Don’t turn off GPS.”

Trying to escape Akane’s freezing gaze, he was now driven by his smartphone notification toward the roadside again.

“Im so worried about you that I can’t get anything else done!”

Rena said “Eh? Really?” while being cute and secretly thinking Ayabe-chi way too easy, this is hilarious.

At each location, he repeated honest yet completely empty lip service as he was carried along.

There was no lie in those words. At that moment, he genuinely believed what he was saying.

But the shelf life of that “genuine” feeling was only about three seconds.

One hour after the race started, Yuuma’s stamina had long exceeded its limit. He knelt on asphalt and repeated ragged breathing.

“Already… I can’t do it anymore… What am I fighting against…?”

It wasn’t the three girls he was fighting. What he truly battled against was his own hopeless nature — the one called “being easily swayed.”

◇

The race had reached its final stretch.

Yuuma, battered and bruised, used his last strength to wait for Shizuku at the finish line.

The cheers from the roadside echoed like a ground tremor.

The announcer’s excited voice came through the speakers.

“And now, the women’s division! The leader is entering the final stretch! It’s Shizuku Nanakusa from Kumakura High School, first-year student!”

At that voice, Yuuma lifted his face as if pushed by a spring.

He saw it. Shizuku’s determined expression, her arms flailing, her teeth clenched as she ran toward him.

Yuuma gripped the water bottle and waited for her at the finish line tape.

A few seconds later.

Shizuku crossed the finish line first.

“I did it…!”

Shizuku collapsed on the spot, dropping to her knees as if her strength had given out.

“Shizuku-chan!”

Yuuma rushed over and supported her shoulder.

“Senpai… I did it…”

“Yes! I saw it! You did amazing, Shizuku-chan! You really worked hard!”

Yuuma offered her the trembling water bottle. As Shizuku took it and looked at him with grateful eyes, something happened.

Dun…

As if accompanied by a sound effect, a huge shadow suddenly appeared behind Yuuma.

What?

Yuuma slowly turned around.

There stood a giant bear costume with unfocused eyes – Kumamoto City’s official mascot, “Kumakiyo.”

It was standing silently at the finish line area, directly behind Yuuma where it shouldn’t have been.

The surrounding spectators noticed the oddity and started murmuring.

As Yuuma froze in terror, the giant head of the costume made a creepy grinding sound when it was lifted up.

And then emerged from inside…

“Yuuma, I found you.”

With hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, but her eyes glowing brightly, Hinomiya Akane stood there. Her eyes weren’t smiling.

“A… Akane…? Why are you dressed like that…”

“Why?”

Akane repeated the words like a broken record.

“Why Nanakusa-san? Why Tachibana-san? Why won’t Yuuma look at me alone!”

Her scream carried a painful resonance. It was the cry of a pitiful girl’s soul twisted by the continuous betrayal of pure affection.

“Yuuma can’t do anything without me, right? If I don’t properly take care of you, you’ll just wander off somewhere suddenly…”

“N-no, Akane, this is…”

Before Yuuma could start making excuses, it was already too late.

Akane took something out from the inside pocket of the costume.

Reflecting the weak winter sunlight, a cold silver object glimmered.

It was a typical kitchen knife used in home economics classes, familiar to everyone.

“So that’s why, Yuuma. I’ll make sure you can’t go anywhere else.”

A final word of love mixed with madness and innocence.

Gasps rose from around.

“Senpai, it’s dangerous!”

Shizuku shouted.

But Yuuma’s body didn’t move due to fatigue and fear.

“Be mine alone, Yuuma.”

The next instant, Akane raised the knife. Yuuma instinctively closed his eyes.

—but no pain came.

Instead, his legs buckled and he lost balance, tilting forward.

“Uwa!”

Yuuma fell forward, the knife that Akane swung down struck the soft belly of “Kumakiyo.”

A dull gupuri sound echoed.

The impact nearly made Yuuma lose consciousness. A burning heat ran through his abdomen.

No, it wasn’t hot. There was only a heavy, muffled pressure, like being wrapped in thick cotton.

The world suddenly slowed down.

As he collapsed, several scenes burned into Yuuma’s fading vision.

First, the knife stuck into the costume and Akane gripping its handle, her face pale with panic as she realized what she had done: “E…? No… blood… isn’t coming out… but I stabbed… I stabbed Yuuma… this wasn’t supposed to happen…”

Her yandere impulses had always backfired. She hadn’t even calculated the outcome.

Next— a short distance away stood Tachibana Rena, calmly recording the entire spectacle on her phone. Her expression said it all: “Wait, what is this? This twist is hilarious. Seriously, how popular is Ayabe-chi? This is a god-tier scene—I have to record it.”

And in the fading consciousness, Shizuku’s scream echoed through his eardrums: “Senpaiiiiii! Don’t die, please!”

The pain was no longer felt.

But the impact pierced through the costume and into Yuuma’s abdomen, causing a sensation of complete loss of strength throughout his body.

His heavy breathing gradually stopped.

(Ah… I’m going to die)

It wasn’t so much from the shock of being stabbed itself but from the sheer absurdity, the hopelessly surreal situation that shattered his will to go on.

(Dragged along again… Even at the moment of death, I’m still being swept away… If there’s a next life… No, even then, I’d probably just get dragged along by someone again… I’m not even allowed to die peacefully…!)

The worst.

That was Ayabe Yuuma’s final thought in life.

And then, with a faint pop, his vision was swallowed by complete darkness.

―When he opened his eyes again, he was standing inside a temple made of pure white marble.