Speaking of the Dengeki Expo, Yukino Yukinoshita had brought it up again at school that morning.
After all, tomorrow was the first official day of the Dengeki Expo.
Naturally, Yukino Yukinoshita, Yui Yuigahama, and Megumi Kato, who had already agreed to attend together, weren't ready to give up. They invited Kotomi to join them once again.
But Kotomi still turned them down.
The reason was simple. Kotomi wasn't particularly interested in anime conventions.
Back when she'd never attended one and had only seen them depicted in anime, she'd always had all sorts of wonderful expectations about what they would be like. However, after actually attending one herself, more than half of those expectations had disappeared.
Kotomi Izumi loved reading manga and novels and watching anime. But once she discovered that real-life anime conventions were quite different from their anime portrayals, her enthusiasm for them gradually faded until she became as uninterested as she was now.
Throughout the entire year, there was only one convention Kotomi Izumi would willingly attend—Comic Market!
Comic Market, organized by the Comic Market Preparatory Committee, was the largest self-published fanwork convention in Japan and arguably the entire world. Commonly abbreviated to Comiket or CM, it was also affectionately known as the Otaku Holy War, or simply the Holy War.
Comic Market primarily focused on the sale and exhibition of self-published works relating to anime, manga, games, novels, and merchandise.
Both creators and readers eagerly anticipated Comic Market every year.
Of course, the main reason Comic Market inspired such excitement was that every time it took place, new doujinshi of every imaginable variety would erupt onto the market like a volcano!
And that was the real reason Kotomi Izumi was so enthusiastic about attending Comic Market!
Whenever Comic Market came around, the balance in Kotomi Izumi's wallet, the available space on her bookshelves, the capacity of her hard drive, and her phone's remaining storage would all become alarmingly strained.
If this year's Dengeki Expo had been organized in collaboration with Comic Market, Kotomi Izumi might genuinely have attended, even if she hadn't been given a place at the convention's autograph session.
Unfortunately, Dengeki Bunko had never collaborated with Comic Market since it first began organizing the Dengeki Expo. The event was also being held at a commercial plaza near Dengeki Bunko's offices.
Although it was a large-scale event, Kotomi Izumi still wasn't particularly interested.
While thinking about all this, Kotomi Izumi answered the call from Haruno Yukinoshita.
"Kotomi, good evening!"
The moment Haruno Yukinoshita realized that Kotomi had finally answered her call, she spoke with such overwhelming excitement that anyone listening might have suspected she was about to burst into tears.
"G-Good evening..."
Kotomi Izumi froze for a moment. They hadn't seen each other in a while, but why was Haruno acting as though she'd missed her this much?
"Waaaaah! I've been sending you messages on LINE for an entire week, and you haven't replied to a single one! You haven't even read any of them! Waaaaah! Kotomi, did I do something to upset you? If I did, just tell me! I'll change, okay? Just please don't ignore me! Waaaaah... I was even thinking that if you didn't reply to my LINE messages or answer my calls, I'd go straight to your house to find you!"
Haruno Yukinoshita grew increasingly emotional as she spoke. By the end, there was even a hint of tears in her voice.
"Huh?"
Hearing Haruno's aggrieved complaints, which made her sound as though she were on the verge of crying, Kotomi Izumi was completely dumbfounded. She didn't even know what to say. She hadn't been deliberately ignoring Haruno at all!
I haven't replied to her LINE messages for an entire week?
But I haven't received any LINE messages from you in the first place!
Kotomi Izumi's thoughts were a complete mess. Her mind, which had been perfectly alert while she was playing games, had suddenly descended into utter confusion.
She rubbed her head and remained silent for almost two minutes before finally managing to speak.
"You nearly scrambled my brain with everything you just said! What do you mean, I haven't been replying to your messages? I haven't received a single message from you this entire week!"
"What? You haven't received them? That's impossible! I definitely sent them! LINE even shows that they were successfully sent!"
Now it was Haruno Yukinoshita's turn to be dumbfounded.
"Impossible, impossible! I'm not the kind of person who gets so busy that she forgets to check her phone. If anything, no matter how busy I am, I always keep my phone nearby so I can sneak in a little screen time whenever I get the chance. If you really sent me messages, there's absolutely no way I wouldn't have seen them!"
Since Kotomi Izumi genuinely hadn't received any messages from Haruno Yukinoshita, she was completely confident in what she was saying!
At the same time, Kotomi Izumi switched her call to speakerphone, minimized the call interface, opened LINE, and brought up her conversation with Haruno.
According to their chat history, the last time she'd spoken to Haruno had been Friday, two weeks ago.
Kotomi Izumi casually tapped her screen twice, activating her phone's screenshot shortcut. She then sent the screenshot of their conversation to Haruno Yukinoshita.
"I just sent you a screenshot through LINE. Take a look," Kotomi Izumi said.
"Ah, I got it. Huh? That's strange. You really haven't received a single message on your end! And even though you've opened our conversation now, none of the messages I've sent you this week are showing as read."
Haruno Yukinoshita scratched her head, completely unable to figure out what was going on.
Kotomi Izumi was just about to say that she didn't know either when she suddenly remembered experiencing what seemed to be the exact same problem with LINE back in middle school.
With that in mind, she decided to give something a try. Kotomi Izumi pressed and held her finger against the screen, then selected Refresh from the menu that appeared.
A little spinning circle immediately appeared at the top of her screen. After several seconds, Kotomi Izumi's phone suddenly erupted with a continuous barrage of LINE notification sounds.
Accompanied by that relentless stream of notifications, all the messages Haruno Yukinoshita had sent Kotomi over the past week finally appeared!
Kotomi Izumi's lips twitched.
It's exactly the same thing that happened back in middle school!
Remembering that incident, Kotomi Izumi couldn't help silently cursing.
Fucking LINE! Fucking phone! Because you couldn't refresh my messages properly, I ended up unintentionally breaking a younger schoolgirl's heart back in middle school!
"Mystery solved! It's not that I was deliberately ignoring you, and it's not that you didn't send the messages. All the messages you sent me were stuck outside my front door!"
Kotomi Izumi made a helpless little joke as she explained the situation to Haruno Yukinoshita.
"Hm? What happened?"
Haruno Yukinoshita still didn't know that Kotomi had just managed to refresh her messages, so she asked curiously.
"I just pressed Refresh in our chat, and all the messages you sent me this week finally appeared. The moment they loaded, I got such a long string of notification sounds that it was like someone setting off firecrackers!"
Kotomi Izumi explained with a cheerful laugh.
"What?! So that's what happened! No wonder you didn't reply to a single message I sent you all week. You hadn't even read any of them! I was starting to wonder whether that foolish little sister of mine had secretly been saying something nasty about me behind my back!"
Having finally understood what had happened, Haruno Yukinoshita couldn't help letting out a tremendous sigh of relief. Ever since she'd sent Kotomi her first message on Monday and received no reply, Haruno had been trapped in a constant state of anxiety over Kotomi's apparent refusal to respond!
She'd faithfully sent Kotomi messages every single day. To avoid disturbing Kotomi's rest while still giving her a chance to see them relatively early, Haruno had deliberately chosen to send her messages at eleven o'clock every morning. Yet no matter how many messages she sent, Kotomi never replied. None of them even showed as read.
Consequently, Haruno had spent the past several days repeatedly scrolling through her previous conversations with Kotomi while thoroughly examining her own behavior, desperately trying to figure out exactly what she'd done to upset Kotomi so badly that she'd started treating her so coldly.
Now the truth had finally come to light. Kotomi wasn't angry with her, nor had she been deliberately ignoring her. She simply hadn't received any of Haruno's messages in the first place!
Although Haruno was relieved, she also felt rather helpless. Despite racking her brains over the past several days, she'd never once considered the possibility that Kotomi simply hadn't received her messages.
After all, LINE was practically the nation's standard messaging application. Logically speaking, it shouldn't have been possible for such a bug to occur. Yet somehow, the LINE application on Kotomi's phone had developed precisely that kind of bug.
After thinking it over, Haruno Yukinoshita could only curse silently.
Fucking LINE!
Hearing Haruno's explanation, Kotomi Izumi's lips twitched helplessly. Fortunately, she wasn't currently sitting beside Yukino. Otherwise, with her call on speakerphone, Yukino would undoubtedly have heard what Haruno had just said.
The Yukinoshita sisters already had a rather strained relationship. If Yukino had overheard that remark, their relationship might very well have deteriorated even further.
The funny thing was that the two sisters even used practically identical expressions when referring to each other.
Haruno's favorite phrase was: That foolish little sister of mine.
Meanwhile, Yukino's favorite phrase was: That foolish older sister of mine.
Kotomi couldn't help wondering whether the two of them had watched too much Naruto. Perhaps that was why they were so fond of talking like this.
"Haruno, you know, I'm starting to have my doubts about something," Kotomi Izumi couldn't resist remarking.
"Hm? Doubts about what?"
"Whether you genuinely want to improve your relationship with your sister. You should consider yourself lucky I'm not sitting beside Yukino right now. I've got you on speakerphone, you know. If Yukino had been sitting beside me, she would've heard every word you just said."
"Ah, I see... That really would've been pretty bad."
Haruno Yukinoshita immediately understood and gave an awkward little laugh. Of course, she couldn't resist making another joke.
"It's almost six in the evening already, isn't it? If you were still with Yukino at this hour, I'd have every reason to suspect that the two of you had secretly started living together behind my back! Hmph! Just so we're clear, even though I really like you, if you're planning to become my brother-in-law, I'll be the very first person to object!"
For some inexplicable reason, when Haruno said that final sentence, she felt a faint but unmistakable trace of genuine seriousness stirring in her heart.
It wasn't because she disapproved of Kotomi. Rather, it was jealousy. It was almost as though a voice inside Haruno's heart were shouting at the top of its lungs.
I don't want Kotomi to become my brother-in-law! I want Kotomi to become my wife!
Following that train of thought, Haruno Yukinoshita suddenly found herself feeling somewhat bewildered.
Do I really feel that way?
Meanwhile, Kotomi Izumi's cheeks had begun to grow faintly warm after hearing Haruno's teasing remarks. She desperately wanted to tell Haruno that she'd guessed correctly.
You guessed it! Yukino really does like me! She confessed her feelings to me just a few days ago! I just haven't given her an answer yet.
She almost blurted it out...
Fortunately, she managed to stop herself before the words escaped her lips.
Kotomi Izumi didn't want to tell Haruno. At least, not right now. She had a feeling that if she revealed the truth, Haruno would absolutely latch onto her and bombard her with an endless stream of questions!
In the end, the countless things Kotomi wanted to say were condensed into a single, casual remark.
"Keep talking like that, and I might just tell Yukino what you said later."
"Ah! Don't, don't! I was only joking!"
Haruno Yukinoshita hurriedly corrected herself.
Since she'd already switched to speakerphone anyway, Kotomi Izumi placed her phone on her computer desk, picked up her controller, and resumed playing Atomic Heart.
She chatted with Haruno while playing her game.
"Anyway, you've been sending me messages for an entire week, and now you've even called me. What exactly did you want to talk about?"
"Huh? Haven't all my messages appeared now? You still haven't read them?" Haruno Yukinoshita asked in confusion.
"Nope. I'm playing a game," Kotomi Izumi declared with complete confidence.
"Well, I can pretty much tell that without you saying it. I can already hear the game sounds coming from your end. But... those lines and that voice acting... Are you sure you're actually playing a game and not watching porn? Miss Izumi~ Even if you are watching porn, there's no need to be embarrassed and lie about it! We've all been through puberty. Who hasn't had a phase where they watched ten adult videos a day?"
Haruno Yukinoshita teased her with a mischievous laugh.
To be fair, Haruno couldn't really be blamed for getting the wrong idea. After all, the refrigerator in Atomic Heart was genuinely something else, both in terms of its dialogue and its voice acting.
Being teased like that made Kotomi Izumi's cheeks grow faintly hot. She immediately protested in embarrassment.
"Don't get the wrong idea! I really am just playing a game!"
"Sure, sure! I get it, I get it. You're definitely playing a game~"
Haruno Yukinoshita continued laughing mischievously.
Kotomi Izumi puffed out her cheeks, unable to be bothered explaining herself any further. After all, ever since her former private Twitter account had become the official Twitter account for Izumi Ki, her true nature as a hopeless pervert had become common knowledge.
Haruno certainly hadn't missed many opportunities to tease her about it.
What frustrated Kotomi the most was that she had absolutely no way to explain herself. After all, those tens of thousands of tweets she'd previously retweeted were all posts she'd personally admired and shared, one by one.
The only thing Kotomi could possibly argue was:
I'm not an old pervert! I'm not old!
"All right, all right. Just tell me already. I'm in the middle of a game, so I don't have time to read through all those messages you sent. Just give me a quick summary."
Kotomi Izumi spoke casually, figuring that it probably wasn't anything particularly important.
"All right."
Haruno Yukinoshita agreed before continuing.
"You know about the Dengeki Expo, right?"
"Of course."
"And you know that Volume One of Sword Art Online is getting a convention-exclusive edition released at the Dengeki Expo?"
"Of course I know. I heard the preorder and proxy-buying listings on secondhand marketplaces have already driven the price through the roof."
Kotomi Izumi answered casually, her eyes never leaving her computer screen.
"Okay! Congratulations! You've become the first long-running light novel author in Dengeki Bunko's entire history to qualify for an autograph session at the Dengeki Expo after publishing just a single volume of your light novel!" Haruno Yukinoshita congratulated her.
"Oh, I see..."
Kotomi Izumi responded absentmindedly and continued playing her game.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Until, one minute later...
"Huh?"
Sitting in front of her computer, Kotomi Izumi suddenly froze, as though she'd finally realized that something about what she'd just heard wasn't quite right.
Another minute passed.
"WHAAAAAT?!!!!!"
Kotomi Izumi let out an astonished cry that was equal parts shock and overwhelming delight.
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