Kokoro bit her lip in confusion. Aki, Rion and the others all seemed so normal, and she still wondered why they wouldn’t go to school. But when it came to Ureshino – she knew exactly why.

He was one of those boys in love with the idea of love – love for love’s sake.

Everyone pitied him, and it was no wonder he didn’t go to school.

July

BY JULY, KOKORO WAS feeling even more uncomfortable going to the castle.

And it was all because of Ureshino.

‘I brought some cookies, Kokoro-chan, would you like some?’

‘Kokoro-chan, when did you first fall in love? For me it was back in kindergarten …’

She enjoyed going to the Game Room, but in the afternoon Ureshino would appear and start pestering her with personal questions. Masamune would grin, which she hated, and Kokoro found herself spending more time alone in her room in the castle.

Even when she was holed up there, Ureshino would knock – ‘Kokoro-chan, are you in?’ – and she realized there was no escape.

Whenever she decided to look for the Wishing Key, Ureshino would be right there, tagging along.

‘Can I come with you, Kokoro-chan?’

He was the one who’d said they were rivals in the search, so how could it be OK?

Kokoro picked up, somehow, from the way the others behaved, that when she wasn’t there, Ureshino took the liberty of referring to her by her first name alone, no doubt describing her as ‘not totally my type, but more the homey type …’

The guy’s a little warped, she thought.

It wasn’t that he really liked Kokoro, though. What he liked was to play up how much he enjoyed being in love.

Kokoro found she couldn’t come right out and tell him she wanted him to stop. If she behaved coldly, he’d immediately start badmouthing her to the others.

‘KOKORO-CHAN, WHAT SORT OF WISH are you hoping will come true?’

When Ureshino asked her this so light-heartedly, she said, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ She knew if she told him what she really wanted, that a girl from her class would disappear for ever, it could set him off with more questions.

‘Oh, is that right?’

As they walked along the hallway, Ureshino kept giving her looks. He seemed to want to ask her something else.

In manga, often the heroes would use weird objects to get others to do what they wanted or to manipulate them. She realized they must be as ridiculous as what she was dealing with here.

When Ureshino let Aki know that he had switched his affections to Kokoro, Aki grimaced. ‘That’s going to be rough on you,’ she said, openly sympathizing. After that, Aki started spending less time in her room.

Unlike Masamune, who teased her, Rion and Subaru never brought up any love-related conversation when Kokoro was around, which was a great relief.