Friday, after the first class in the afternoon.
Mio rested her chin on one hand, watching the popular kids' clique—the ones living their best lives with friends and romance—discuss their weekend plans.
This made her start thinking about what she should do on her own weekend.
If the system didn't cause trouble, Mio figured she'd probably just stay home and write some scripts and novels.
The Undead River Library Grand Prize was still in full swing. The prize money was secondary—she mainly wanted to use this opportunity to serialize a novel, so she wouldn't waste the task completion reward by selecting pocket money.
Of course, if she could randomly pull seventy or eighty thousand yen in pocket money every time, that'd be pretty nice too.
Too bad that was basically impossible.
Just then, Yui Yuigahama's voice suddenly sounded in her ear. "Mio, do you have any plans this weekend?"
Mio shook her head lightly. "If nothing unexpected happens, I'll probably just stay home. Oh right, I remember you mentioned wanting to come over to my place before, Yui. Do you have time this weekend?"
Hearing Mio's words, Yui nodded without hesitation, then asked quietly, "Um, who's usually at your place on weekends? Is there anything I should be careful about?"
"No need to worry about that stuff. It's just me at home. Just come over."
"Eh!?"
Yui blinked in surprise, instinctively thinking back to the first day she'd met Mio. She was wondering if the reason Mio hadn't wanted to go home back then might be related to this.
Seeing the hesitant expression on Yui's face, Mio knew she'd misunderstood something. She hadn't deliberately guided Yui to think in that direction just now, but this worked out fine. Later she'd just tell her the setting about her parents dying in a car accident.
"By the way, you don't know where I live yet, do you, Yui? I'll send you the address on your phone right now."
"Okay."
Yui hesitated a bit, but didn't ask about her doubts in the classroom.
Just then, Yumiko Miura suddenly turned to look at Mio. "Is Yui going to your place this weekend?"
"Yep. Want to come too, Yumiko? My place is pretty big. You're welcome to come play, and if you get tired, you can just sleep over. It's totally fine."
Yumiko glanced at Hayato Hayama, her face showing obvious hesitation. In the end, she shook her head. "I'll pass this time. Next chance I get, I'll visit."
"Alright then. Hope you make some progress."
Just hearing the word "progress" almost made Yumiko's expression crumble. She and Hayato had known each other for a long time, and she'd already been pretty obvious about her feelings, yet he still hadn't given any particular response.
Seeing Yumiko's dejected look, Mio quietly leaned close to her ear and whispered, "If you have any problems, you can actually ask me, you know. Don't look at me like this—I'm actually pretty experienced."
Mio's experience referred to her experience playing romance simulation games, especially the 18+ kind.
Ahem.
"I... I don't have any problems." Yumiko looked away from Mio in a bit of a panic.
Though she didn't like other people discussing her relationship with Hayama, Mio wasn't wrong. Some things she might not figure out on her own, but if she could find someone to discuss them with, maybe there'd be some unexpected progress.
She'd find time to have a good chat with Mio later.
Mio smiled as she looked at the somewhat shy Yumiko. Since she hadn't triggered any tasks related to Yumiko, she felt pretty relaxed interacting with her.
She just didn't know what the system's task trigger conditions actually were. She'd asked the system before, but it had just deflected and given her no answer.
Thinking carefully, the three people who currently had conquest ratings with her all had major roles in their respective original works. Following that pattern, she might need to avoid people with major roles in the originals from now on.
Though it might not work, there was nothing to lose by trying. What if it did?
However, as the number of people with conquest ratings with her increased, the number of tasks didn't seem to be increasing accordingly. Like after Eriri started having a conquest rating with her, on a lucky day there'd be no tasks, and on an unlucky day maybe two or three. If the number of people with conquest ratings increased a bit more, wouldn't that suppress the speed of conquest rating growth?
But Mio quickly thought of the drawback to this method. While it could temporarily solve the problem of conquest ratings rising too fast, once everyone's conquest ratings all rose, her own problems would become even more complex. Plus, the system wouldn't evenly distribute tasks—if her luck was bad, having more or fewer people wouldn't matter.
Forget it. Let things flow naturally. If it really didn't work out, she'd just rely on failing tasks to lower conquest ratings.
The host's highest conquest rating was with Yui at only 25 points anyway. No need to rush.
As the class bell rang, Mio temporarily stopped her pondering.
······
Saturday, 8 AM.
Yui Yuigahama appeared in the living room fully dressed and ready.
Mrs. Yuigahama, who was making breakfast, saw her daughter's outfit and said with a smile, "Yui, are you going out later? Could it be to meet a boyfriend?"
"Of course not! I'm just going to Mio's place to hang out." Yui said irritably.
"Oh, I see." The excited expression on Mrs. Yuigahama's face cooled down quite a bit. "The past few days I've noticed you've been distracted when you come home, and you even cover your face and roll around on your bed. I thought you'd fallen in love or something."
"H-how did you know I was rolling around on my bed!?"
"Your bedroom door wasn't closed all the way. I saw when I was closing it for you. You were busy rolling around at the time, so of course you didn't notice me." At this point, Mrs. Yuigahama still wouldn't give up. "You really don't have a boyfriend?"
"Really not!"
"Then can you explain why you were covering your face and rolling around on your bed?"
"That was because... because I got emotional reading a novel." Yui stammered out an excuse. She couldn't very well say she'd been acting like that because she'd accidentally kissed Mio, could she?
······