[According to Herta, Ruan Mei would still take some time to arrive at the space station. With nothing better to do in the meantime, Stelle wandered around the station and discovered a staff member who was completely neglecting his duties.]
["Witty? No, better to go with something more affectionate. Elegant? Hmm, slang probably shouldn't go into poetry." Rocky carefully pondered every word of the love poem. "Should it be 'black hair like silk' or 'white skirt hems'? Ugh, my scalp's tingling..."]
["What are you doing?" Stelle curiously leaned over.]
["Ah? I'm writing poetry, can't you see? There are already several drafts piled up on the table over there." Rocky drooped his brows, pointing somewhat dejectedly at the stack of poem drafts on the table. "Sigh, your interruption actually reminded me—I've written so many versions already, so why hasn't Lesley replied to me yet?"]
[A snort came from behind. The veteran staff member Bernard slowly sipped his coffee. "Heh, Lesley? She's the star researcher in [Herta • Light Abyss Codex Department]. The only visiting scholar in this Amber Era to be dispatched to the Abundance star domain. You think she has time to bother with you?"]
["Of course she has time for me!" Rocky's face immediately flushed red. "Ever since Lesley left, we've been in intermittent contact through the galactic radio relay. Even across tens of thousands of light-years, she wouldn't ignore me."]
["She just hasn't replied on time this once—must be some special circumstance!" Rocky lowered his head, his voice growing smaller and smaller, like a deflating balloon. "I... I wrote her a letter confessing my feelings. It wasn't like usual—just telling her how many kinds of rocks and mud there are in the Geology Department..."]
["I really don't understand... why right after I confessed, Lesley stopped replying to me... We used to talk about so much—from which of the 101 Aeon secrets in the Codex Department require using Gun's beard, to... how to [assess soil and stone] with prospecting drills to judge a planet's divine favor prosperity or decline based on soil quality."]
——
KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!
Seeing the pure, innocent look on Rocky's face, Darkness couldn't help but be deeply moved, her own cheeks flushing with shyness.
"Eh? Love poems and such... they're really romantic." Darkness shyly covered her slightly heated cheeks. "But compared to words, I think personality and shared interests are more important."
"Working in the same place, their personalities probably aren't too different, right?" Kazuma looked at the scattered poems piled on the table behind Rocky. "Still, I'm surprised. I didn't expect the staff in Herta Space Station to still use this kind of medieval confession style."
Kazuma spread his hands, putting on the air of a seasoned romantic. "But when chatting with a girl you like, how can you only talk about topics you're interested in? Of course you have to cater to her tastes~"
"Heh..." Aqua let out a disdainful snort. "A shut-in like you actually understands romance? I thought at night in the stable you were planning to—"
"Hey hey! Don't say that kind of thing out loud!!"
Kazuma's face turned bright red, his voice rising several notches involuntarily. "I at least had experience with 100 galgame titles before reincarnating! I have some authority on this subject, okay!?"
"Oh~ So that kind of thing counts too?" Seeing Kazuma's utterly embarrassed expression, Aqua finally couldn't hold back and burst into laughter. "Never even touched a girl's hand, yet you dare teach others about romance experience? Hahahahaha—!!"
"Why wouldn't it count?" Kazuma was now stumbling over his words. "V-Virtual experience is still experience!"
——
[Rocky explained that in the communication session right before his confession, Lesley had described an extraordinarily magnificent stellar quake to him.]
[Faced with the grand spectacle of a star's decline, her tone had been extremely joyful. In short, Rocky believed there had been no sign whatsoever that she would reject his confession. The fact that he hadn't received a reply as expected must mean there was a problem with the galactic radio relay.]
[Unfortunately, his mentor Bernard had no intention of letting him go check, nor would he allow Stelle to help.]
["All you think about is relay this, relay that—haven't done a single proper day's work in over ten days. Useless!" Seeing his disciple like this, Bernard's beard was practically twitching with anger.]
["Old man, sometimes it's better to guide than to block~" Stelle gave a "hehe" laugh. She was also willing to help facilitate this good deed.]
[Rocky said the relay was in a large abandoned curio warehouse. As long as Stelle helped him out, once everything was successful, he would invite her to be the bridesmaid!]
[Stelle immediately headed to the location Rocky specified, successfully found and repaired the relay. There were records of his recent communications with Lesley on it.]
[Although peeking at someone else's chat logs wasn't exactly proper, curiosity was only human. Stelle's fingers lightly slid across the screen, and countless conversations flowed before her eyes like a starry river. The words were like tender sprouts trembling on early spring branches—carrying the softness and sincerity of the person who wrote them.]
[But ever since Lesley described that stellar quake to Rocky, her reply frequency had grown slower and slower. After Rocky's confession, their contact had come to an abrupt halt—no more exchanges at all.]
[Stelle felt as though someone had tampered with the relay. She decided to check the monitoring room. It didn't matter at first glance—but upon looking, she indeed caught a big fish. The one who had been secretly tampering with the relay all along to interfere with the two of them... was actually Rocky's mentor, Bernard!]
——
Monogatari Series.
Amid the cicada cries of a summer night, Araragi Koyomi sat on the balcony, looking up at the Celestial Screen floating in the night sky. He watched as Stelle confronted Bernard in the scene, yet the other party acted as if nothing was wrong.
"This is going too far..." Koyomi frowned. "Even if he opposes his disciple's romance, there's no need to go to this extent, right?"
Shinobu Oshino, perched on the railing, gently swung her pale little legs. Her pupils gleamed with a clear light under the moonlight.
"You live too short a life to see through things~" Shinobu tilted her head back slightly, her peripheral vision reflecting Koyomi's figure. "This Bernard—his behavior is extremely incongruous."
"Incongruous?"
The vampire girl's lips curved into a smile that had seen through the ways of the world. She extended a slender finger and tapped Koyomi's forehead. "Humans are the most interesting—I've seen far too many who say one thing and mean another over hundreds of years. This Bernard fits perfectly."
"His methods of obstructing this romance are very clumsy—earlier he mocked and ridiculed Rocky, clearly hoping to make Rocky realize he wasn't worthy of the star researcher Lesley. Yet he so crudely cut off their communications... as if he already knew they were mutually in love but still insisted on interfering."
"If he truly wanted Rocky to give up and obediently abandon romance, he could have just kept mocking and suppressing him. There was no need for such crude interference. Unless..."
"Unless what?"
Shinobu Oshino calmly shook her head. "Unless he had already decided long ago that the two of them could never be together from the very beginning."