Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious - Chapter 137 - 2

Chapter 137: Chapter 2

The Fujiwara Café bid farewell to its last guest for the night, the warm scent of roasted Arabica beans and vanilla syrup still lingering in the air as the “Closed” sign had been flipped.

In the dim light of the staff locker room, Fujiwara Touka stood frozen before a full-length mirror, her breath hitching as she stared at the stranger looking back at her.

The transformation was so striking that she couldn’t even believe it was her face she was looking at.

For years, Touka had used her hair as a fortress, allowing long, thick bangs to shroud her face like a safety curtain.

It was a shield against a world she found too loud, too bright, and too judgmental.

But today, that shield was gone.

Well, although she had said that she was going to cut her bangs the day after the party, she actually only gained courage to do it today.

Earlier, she had visited a high-end salon after school, her heart hammering against her ribs the entire time.

Now, her forehead was visible, her brows were perfectly shaped, and her deep, soulful brown eyes, previously hidden behind thick bangs and her glasses, were exposed to the world through the clarity of contact lenses.

She looked less like a “library ghost” and more like a hidden masterpiece finally unveiled.

To match her new look, she had discarded her baggy, oversized sweaters she used to wear in their house.

Instead, she wore a form-fitting black turtleneck and high-waisted black leggings.

The fabric clung to her like a second skin, ruthlessly emphasizing the hourglass silhouette she had spent her life trying to camouflage.

Her chest, which she had always felt self-conscious about, was prominent; she was certain she was even more well-endowed than Yukina, a fact that made her face heat up with a mix of pride and sheer terror.

(Image)

“W-Would Seijirou-kun like me like this?” she wondered, her fingers tracing the line of her new jawline. “Or did he prefer the quiet, invisible girl in the corner of the library?”

She let out a frustrated groan and covered her face with her hands.

“N-No good! No good at all!” she whispered to the empty room. “Everything is Seijirou-kun! My brain is 90% Kageyama and 10% caffeine at this point!”

The obsession was starting to have terrifying consequences.

Although she doesn’t look like it, Touka was a girl who lived for academic perfection.

And though not as efficient as the android Himejima Haruka, her mind was also a high-speed processor capable of memorizing complex chemical formulas and historical timelines with a single glance.

But lately, that processor was glitching.

In the math quiz yesterday, her second favourite subject, she had made a fundamental error in a calculus proof, and for the first time in her life, she had received a 99/100.

A ninety-nine!

It was a stain on her record.

And science? Her most favourite subject?

A 98/100! She had practically felt the cold hand of academic death on her shoulder when she saw the red ink.

“If this continues, my grade point average will drop to a 4.9, or worse, 4.8…” she muttered, her eyes wide with genuine horror. “I’ll be a laughingstock. I’ll be… average! It’s unacceptable! I have to study! Study!”

If her other subjects scores dropped to 99 or 98 she might as well die of shame and evaporate into smoke!

Forget about your silly crush for a moment. For now, you must focus on the exam like a mature person.

Speaking of mature, she wondered if Seijirou’s tastes leaned toward the more mature, sophisticated look she was trying to project, or if he was more into the petite, sharp energy of girls like Rindou-senpai or that new classmate of hers, Erina-chan.

Ah, gosh darn it! She had done it again! Why can’t she get Seijirou out of her head?! If her GPA dropped, she must make him take responsibility!

“Love sucks!” she declared, throwing her head back. “It’s a neurological hijack! It’s a chemical imbalance that ruins your focus and makes you care about things like ’eye contact’ more than the Laws of Thermodynamics!”

Although Touka has always appeared shy, that is only because she doesn’t know how to interact with other people.

She was actually quite vocal in her mind, where she would silently think of a retort or act like the straight man in conversation, although she couldn’t voice it out.

But in her house? Within the comfort of her home? That shyness evaporates!

“Need to get him off my mind for just a day!”

Desperate to escape her own thoughts, she left the locker room and headed upstairs.

Her family lived in the spacious apartment directly above the café, a cozy space filled with books and the faint hum of the industrial refrigerator downstairs.

She reached her bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and collapsed face-first onto her bed.

The soft duvet did nothing to muffle her frustrated groan as she began to roll around ungracefully.

Her black turtleneck rode up slightly, her hair fanned out across the pillows in a tangled mess, but she didn’t seem to notice, or rather, she didn’t seem to care.

“Seijirou-kun… Seijirou-kun… Seijirou-kun…” she chanted, the name a mantra that refused to leave her tongue. “Please, just leave my prefrontal cortex for three hours so I can finish this chemistry assignment!”

She flipped onto her back, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars she had stuck to her ceiling in middle school.

Her mind drifted back to the very beginning, that quiet afternoon in the school library where their paths had first crossed.

She doesn’t know what had came over her and she decided to approach.

She knew then that it was Kageyama Seijirou, the most dangerous man in the school, a beast of a man who thrived on violence and took what he wanted, but her legs just moved to approach him.

And the moment their eyes had met as they both aimed for that one book, Touka had felt a jolt of electricity that bypassed her logic entirely.

It was as if something deep within her had steered awake, wanting to return to the embrace of the man rumored to be evil.

She blinked, a strange, fleeting thought crossing her mind. ’Hmm, back then, why did it feel like I was returning to him?’

The word “return” echoed in her head, it was haunting and familiar.

Her memory was legendary, at least, that’s what she believes.

She was no Haruka, but she could recall a 3,000-word essay after a single reading, but when she tried to search for a past meeting with Seijirou, she found nothing but a blank wall.

They hadn’t gone to the same middle school.

They didn’t live in the same neighborhood.

Yet, something deep within her soul, a side of her she didn’t fully understand, was calling out to him as if they were two halves of a broken whole.

It was as if she were a traveler who had finally found the landmark that pointed toward home.

“It’s just my imagination,” she sighed, rubbing her temples. “I’m probably just projecting my loneliness onto him. There’s no such thing as ’fate’ in a logical world.”

But her heart told a different story.

She sat up, her expression turning somber as she looked toward her desk, where a small radio was tuned to a local news station.

She knew that tonight wasn’t just any night, as while she was worrying about math scores and hair lengths, Seijirou and his “army” were marching toward a confrontation that was promised a month ago, to get revenge on his humiliation at the hands of that boy called Ayano.

The Saint Shinomiya war.

An elite school who prided themselves as the best in the 24th District, where one of their students had once beaten Seijirou and the others.

Touka actually once admired that school. In fact, she actually passed the entrance exam for that school and was planning to atten there, but for some reason, she felt like a huge part of her would disappear if she did that.

So she ultimately chose Shunji High, but even so, she still held longing for that school.

But a month ago, that longing vanished.

Hmph, she prays Seijirou and the others break that trashy school!

“…still, please don’t get hurt,” she whispered, her hands clenching into fists against the bedsheets. “If you get hurt, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

Seeing him hurt, beaten like that last month was enough.

Back then, Touka felt physical pain seeing Seijirou getting beaten, and she hope that nothing of sort ever happen again.

She stood up, walked to her desk, and opened her chemistry textbook with a newfound, grim determination.

She wouldn’t let her scores drop. If Seijirou was fighting a war out there, she would fight her own war here.

She would become the smartest, most capable version of herself, a woman worthy of standing beside him!

“A ninety-nine is not an option,” she told her reflection in the window, her brown eyes glowing with a sharp, intellectual fire. “I will get a hundred. For him.”

Oh, and she also needs to review the sales of the Barcade, and also handle the logistics, and also check the inventory, and she would also have to—

…Gosh darn it! No wonder her scores dropped!

Not only was she always thinking of Seijirou almost 24/7, but she also needs to handle their business!

It leave her little time to study!

No, this cannot go on, she must find a capable assistant!

Her first thought was immediately Haruka, after all, that woman is like an android, when it comes to math, she could probably outperform a supercomputer.

Yes, that’s it!

She must ask Haruka to be her assistant!