"Is that the name of a friend you know? I'm very sorry, but I grew up in the Japanese countryside and have never even seen many foreigners, so I really don't know anyone named Tom."
Shiina Mashiro just kept staring at Renji Miyauchi, seemingly having already connected the boy in front of her with the Mysterious Person who wrote the diary.
Moreover, Kazuho had said that she had a younger sister who had just started school!
Although it was just this small connection, Mashiro, whose thoughts were usually simple, thus locked her gaze onto Renji.
But to talk about certainty?
Mashiro didn't even have half a chance.
She simply trusted her own feelings.
The sun-like aura on him couldn't be faked!
Even if he wasn't the Mysterious Person, he definitely had other secrets!
Feeling Mashiro's persistent gaze, Renji couldn't help but feel a headache.
It seemed that compared to those shrewd girls, Mashiro, who didn't need any evidence and only trusted her intuition, posed a greater threat to him.
Once she set her mind on a goal, she would never give up.
The only good news was that this girl in front of him had not joined the diary chat groups formed by those girls, nor would she reveal these things.
Renji turned to look at Shiina Mahiru, who was also a bit confused about the situation: "Uh, Mahiru, is your cousin perhaps mistaking me for a friend she met while studying abroad?"
Mahiru had only recently learned about Mashiro's situation in the past few days, but she also didn't quite understand Mashiro's time studying in London.
She could only walk over to her cousin and quietly ask her.
After her cousin's inquiry, a clear look of confusion flashed in Mashiro's eyes.
She subconsciously took out her diary; she knew that when she didn't know what to say, this diary would help her solve the problem.
This was also the first time Renji had seen a girl take out her diary up close.
It was also a black diary, but its size was clearly not as large as his, probably specially adapted to better fit the user's hand size.
However, Renji didn't dare to look too much, and he also made a gesture to everyone as if he couldn't see anything.
Seeing everyone present, just like in London, ignoring the diary she took out, Mashiro even deliberately placed the diary in front of Renji and waved it vigorously: "Can you see it?"
She even planned to directly hand her diary to Renji.
Renji can be said to have brought his acting skills to the extreme, displaying completely normal reactions.
It was Mahiru on the side who felt a bit embarrassed and quickly pulled her cousin.
Making such bold gestures, reaching out and waving continuously, in front of a boy she had just met, was simply too unladylike. If the elders at home knew about this, they would probably say that she failed to take good care of her cousin.
It wasn't until Mashiro finished all this and found that the boy in front of her had no reaction at all that a look of disappointment appeared in her eyes.
Could it be that he really wasn't the Mysterious Person?
Renji finally breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that this should be the end of it.
Then, the next moment, he was astonished to find that the girl in front of him was actually starting to use the power of Ripple Breathing directly on the street!
Seeing golden electric arcs already starting to emanate from her hands, Renji quickly cursed in his heart that this foolish woman was truly not afraid of being discovered and then taken for slicing and research!
In a hurry, Renji directly reached out and pressed down on Mashiro's hand, which was activating Ripple Breathing, telling her not to continue.
The next moment, he saw Mashiro's eyes begin to glow.
"You saw it!"
She grabbed Renji's hand in return, completely unwilling to let go.
It wasn't until he saw that neither the boys behind him nor the girls behind Mashiro seemed to have noticed the changes on Mashiro's body and hands just now that Renji quickly realized what the problem was.
Renji knew that the diary would automatically block the perception of ordinary people who did not possess a diary.
Through his eavesdropping function, he could also roughly understand that the diary would actively issue warnings when the diary holder performed dangerous operations, and could provide defense through reading values.
If he hadn't guessed wrong, Mashiro just now might have used a similar function, extending this perception-blocking function to Ripple Breathing.
The result was that only he could clearly see the Ripple emanating from Mashiro, and then Renji, worried that her dangerous behavior would be discovered, subconsciously made a move to stop her.
At this moment, Renji finally realized something.
Mashiro was indeed slow to react to the outside world, was a natural airhead, lacked common sense and self-care abilities, and would even starve to death in a few days if no one took care of her.
But she wasn't a fool; on the contrary, she was a true genius.
And at certain moments, her sudden flashes of creativity might achieve unexpected results.
Just like now, Mashiro simply felt the aura on him was like the sun, and she proactively questioned him, wanting to figure out if he was the Mysterious Person who wrote the diary.
To be honest, this possibility was probably less than ten percent.
For such a possibility, other girls would at most just note him down and prepare to test him a few times later before making a decision.
Only someone like Mashiro, who completely trusted her intuition, would go all-in on this less than ten percent possibility.
So, he was exposed to this natural airhead girl during their first meeting due to his own negligence?
Renji had indeed thought about who would be the first to discover him if his identity were exposed, and what his fate would be after being discovered.
But he truly couldn't have imagined that person would be Mashiro, even if he looked at the list of anime heroines he recorded from memory a hundred times.
However, what he needed to worry about now was not this natural airhead, Mashiro, exposing his identity to other diary-holding girls.
Instead, it was how to explain his action of pressing down on Mashiro's hands to the people nearby, as well as Mashiro's even more direct and astonishing act of grabbing his hand in return.
Mahiru, who had never had such a bold interaction with the opposite sex, immediately turned crimson.
Why was her cousin so bold? Could she directly shake hands with a boy she had just met?
Should she intervene in such a matter, and how should she do so?
She looked at Kazuho beside her, seemingly wanting her to help.
Kazuho was still in shock.
Her younger brother actually made a move!
Was this still her younger brother?
It wasn't until she felt Mahiru's pleading gaze that she realized they were still on the street, and the girl's cousin was still watching.
She also didn't know how to pay attention to appearances.
If you really have feelings, then you should do it secretly in private, would I, your second sister, not help you?
So she lightly coughed: "Uh, Renji, aren't you taking advantage of this girl? That's not right."
Renji rolled his eyes at his second sister.
Can't you see she's holding my hand and won't let go?
If he used force, he could naturally break free easily, but currently, there were at least five or six diary-holding girls and more than a dozen bodyguards sent by Shinomiya Kaguya lurking on Akihabara Street.
He didn't want his actions to be too large and attract the attention of Ai Hayasaka in the café again.
So he could only nod slightly towards Mashiro, then whispered: "How about you let go first, and we find a time to talk later?"
Mashiro remained motionless.
From her gaze, it seemed she believed that if she let go now, Renji would disappear again.
In response, Renji could only helplessly introduce his second sister to her.
"This is Miyauchi Kōka, my twin sister. She's your cousin Shiina Mahiru's neighbor, and she was the one who picked you up at the station yesterday."
"Although we don't live together now, I'll be going to her place tomorrow, and we can talk together then."
Mashiro, who hadn't been listening carefully to Renji's self-introduction earlier, blinked and looked back and forth between Renji's and Kōka's faces for a while.
Ignoring the sun-like feeling emanating from Renji, their appearances actually seemed quite similar.
Thinking of this, Mashiro let go of Renji's hand and instead quite naturally grabbed Kōka's arm, while her gaze continued to fix on Renji.
That look seemed to say, don't even think about taking your sister with you and leaving.
This action still left everyone present bewildered, but Renji couldn't help but secretly breathe a sigh of relief, and took the opportunity to offer an explanation.
"I think it might be because Kazuho and I look very similar, and Kōka was the one who picked her up at the station yesterday, so she subconsciously feels closer to me," Renji explained with difficulty.
Mashiro originally wanted to explain, but seeing Renji's gaze fixed on her, she still held back those words and continued to obediently hold Kazuho's arm.
Although this explanation sounded very questionable, it happened to hit Kazuho, who had always felt inferior to her younger brother, right in the heart.
So it was because of her charm that Mashiro immediately took a liking to her younger brother at their first meeting?
It sounded quite reasonable!
So she kindly explained to Mashiro, who was holding her arm: "Although my younger brother and I do look quite similar, there are actually many differences between us. You should look more carefully next time."
Because of Kazuho's inexplicable confidence, Mahiru also became a bit uncertain.
Is it really... like that?
Although Kazuho and Mashiro seemed quite familiar when Kazuho picked her up yesterday, were they really that familiar?
In short, for now, he had successfully shifted her attention from himself to his not-so-bright second sister.
Of course, these explanations definitely couldn't fool Katō Megumi and Sakakibara Kōichi, two intelligent people who were observing from a bystander's perspective.
However, without a diary, they could never possibly figure out the whole truth.
And given their personalities, they wouldn't actively step forward to expose Renji anyway.
Unless Megumi could also get a diary.
But from Renji's current findings, only one character in a single work currently gets a diary. With Kasumigaoka Utaha already having obtained a diary, even if the diaries started being distributed in a second round, the possibility of Megumi getting a diary should not be high.
Renji pondered this in his heart.
In any case, due to the unexpected appearance of Shiina Mashiro, Renji Miyauchi, who should have been leisurely choosing photography equipment, was temporarily unable to get away.
Because as soon as he made a move to leave, he could feel Mashiro's unwavering gaze on him.
Then they had no choice but to go to the bookstore where Kasumigaoka Utaha was holding her autograph session.
Of course, this wasn't actually proposed by Mashiro; she just wanted to buy some manga at a Japanese bookstore, and then Kōka actively recommended this place to her.
Looking at the five or six bodyguards lurking in the bookstore and the one or two girls still helping out, Renji, whose identity had just been discovered by Mashiro, felt a slight sense of guilt at this moment.
However, looking at it from another perspective, this outcome was not entirely unacceptable.
Their group now consisted of three males and four females, a total of 7 people, including one girl who held a diary and Katō Megumi, who everyone knew was the heroine.
In such a situation, as long as Mashiro could keep her mouth shut, who would suspect him of being the Mysterious Person?
"That person seems to be an upperclassman from our school, right?"
Soon after entering the bookstore, Megumi noticed the autograph session location in the distance and recognized Utaha, who had caused quite a stir at school recently.
After all, the story of the second-year top student cornering the first-year mixed-race girl had already spread throughout the entire school.
The names Kasumigaoka Utaha and Eriri Spencer Sawamura were naturally already well-known within the school.
Therefore, seeing this upperclassman as the author of this autograph session, Megumi couldn't help but exclaim with little change in her expression.
However, Kazuho, who enjoyed watching the excitement, immediately brightened her eyes after recognizing Utaha and began telling the Shiina sisters about Utaha's deeds.
"Although they seem to be doing that thing, I didn't expect that upperclassman Kasumigaoka to be an already debuted author. Should we go and take a look?"
Hearing Utaha's name, Mashiro's ears twitched slightly, and then she turned to look at Renji.
Renji then said to his sister: "She's holding an autograph session. If you're interested, go buy one of her new books."
Then he walked over to Mashiro and asked her if she was interested in the autograph session.
Mashiro blinked.
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