Toko-senpai Schemes, Sending A Horny Kamkura Running!

“That… was a mistake on your part.”

Toko-senpai rested her fist against her chin, her expression grim.

It was Tuesday—the day I told her about the phone call with Karen the previous night.

We were currently gathered at a café far from the university. Aside from Toko-senpai and me, my best friend Yota Ishida and Toko-senpai’s best friend, Kazumi Kano, were with us.

This was the first time the four of us had met together. We were holding a strategy meeting to decide how to catch Kamokura-senpai and Karen in the act from here on out.

It was the first time Ishida and I had met Kazumi-san. She had her hair dyed a light brown and gave off the impression of a typical, fashionable beauty. Since Ishida belongs to the same circle as Toko-senpai, Kamokura, and me, the three of them were already acquainted.

“I guess you’re right…” I muttered dejectedly. That phone conversation was practically at the level of a couple on the verge of breaking up.

“It was bad to make Karen-san say, ‘You don’t need to call every day.’ It forced her to consciously acknowledge that your priority in her heart has dropped.”

Hearing that, Kazumi-san let go of the straw of her iced coffee and looked at me.

“Toko’s right. When a girl feels that way, she’s thinking, ‘This guy is such a nuisance. I’m done.’ When you’re doing something you don’t want your boyfriend to know about and he starts asking questions, ‘I was sleeping,’ ‘I have a headache,’ and ‘I’m tired’ are the classic go-to excuses.”

“I’m sorry. I acted on impulse and made an unnecessary call…”

As I bowed my head, Ishida spoke up to defend me.

“Hey, it couldn’t be helped. It’s normal to ask ‘What were you doing?’ if your boyfriend calls and the girlfriend doesn’t pick up, right?”

“True. If he didn’t ask anything at all, she might actually find that suspicious too,” Toko-senpai agreed. But she immediately followed up with a warning.

“However, from now on, you must absolutely stop contacting Karen-san during times when she is likely with Tetsuya. Regardless of whether she’s cheating or not, women find it incredibly annoying to get a call from their boyfriend while they are with another man.”

“Understood.”

“Our goal is to ‘dump them at the moment they are most in love with us.’ We have to be careful not to do anything that pushes her feelings further away right now.”

I had no words to offer in return. But thinking about it calmly, just “regaining the feelings of a girlfriend who has already begun to drift away” seemed like a task with an incredibly high difficulty level.

“Well, putting that aside, that’s not the main topic of today’s discussion, right? It’s about catching ‘Playboy-Kamo’ and ‘Bitch-Girl’ in the act,” Kazumi-san quipped, perhaps trying to lighten the mood.

However, Ishida was the only one who laughed at the term “Playboy-Kamo.” Toko-senpai looked dissatisfied as she spoke.

“Exactly. It doesn’t look like our current method is going to yield results. Plus, it seems Tetsuya and Karen-san are arriving at their meeting station separately. To monitor the station effectively, we’d need to station two people at each spot. Since Nippori Station has three exits, that calculates to six people being necessary.”

At that, Ishida looked at me.

“I thought the same after my failure the other day. So, how about letting my younger sister join the tailing?”

“Ishida’s sister? You mean Meika-chan?”

Ishida’s sister, Meika-chan, is a high school sophomore at a private girls’ academy. While her brother has a rather rugged appearance, Meika-chan’s features are quite cute. She’s a bit of a “brother’s girl” and has hung out with us a few times.

“Yeah. When she heard the story, she said, ‘I can’t forgive this Kamokura person! I’ll help too!’”

“You idiot! You told Meika-chan?!” I shouted, caught off guard.

“Hey, I didn’t tell her on purpose. I was in the living room when Yu called the other day. I didn’t realize my sister was sleeping behind the sofa. She heard the whole conversation.”

“Give me a break…” I buried my head in my hands.

Toko-senpai cut in with a stern tone.

“That plan is rejected. If she’s your sister, she’s still a high schooler, right?”

“Yeah, she’s a sophomore.”

“Do you really think we can let a young girl like that walk alone down streets lined with love hotels? Especially at night. Absolutely not.”

“I see… Meika was really pumped up about ‘helping with her friends,’ too.” Ishida looked a bit disappointed.

“Ishida, I appreciate the thought, but Toko-senpai is right. We can’t put Meika-chan in that kind of danger.”

After I said that, Kazumi-san spoke up.

“Toko, why don’t you go ahead and tell them the next plan you thought of? The ‘stakeout at the station’ strategy is a dead end, isn’t it?”

“‘The next plan’?”

Ishida and I asked in unison.