Seiji contemplated whether or not he should ask Mayuzumi about Shouhei Hirai as he escorted her home.

It seemed like Sensei didn’t want to bring it up by herself, so, in the end, he decided to forget about it and not pry too deeply.

Seiji said goodbye and left after he accompanied Peach-sensei to her apartment.

After leaving the apartment, he called and confirmed that it wouldn’t be an inconvenience for him to visit Natsuya in the hospital. He then considered what he should purchase as a get-well present.

The most typical get-well presents were obviously fruits or flowers, but Seiji didn’t want to buy such a common item. While he was in the middle of thinking, he pa.s.sed by a small specialty store.

"Oh... let’s go with this!"

Haruta-kun returned.

Well, he checked himself out of the hospital and was now visiting the patients' ward, which sort of counted as "returning," although maybe it technically didn’t.

The important part was that he’d returned.

Natsuya was feeling happy about this.

Seiji walked in holding a bag with unknown contents and a big grin plastered on his face, causing her to become slightly curious.

"Has Milady ever tried this sort of snack before?"

Seiji placed the bag on the table and used a napkin to take out a fish-shaped object from it.

It was taiyaki!

This was the favorite snack of Golden Darkness, and characters from Kanon, K-ON, and Bleach also loved it. It was a traditional j.a.panese snack that often appeared in many of his previous world’s animes.

Taiyaki was a simple snack made with common ingredients that everyone could enjoy.

Seiji felt that its high rate of appearance was mainly due to its cute shape.

It seemed cla.s.sically cute to have a beautiful girl eating taiyaki!

Especially if you fed one to a cat-eared loli... heh heh~

With nothing but pure and gentlemanly intentions, Seiji had purchased some taiyaki as a get-well present.

"This is... taiyaki!" Natsuya’s eyes lit up. "I’ve seen it before... and know about it, but I’ve never tasted it."

She’s seen it before? Was it in an anime? Hmm, that seemed rather possible. After all, she enjoyed anime about the supernatural.

"Because it’s a commoner’s snack, you’ve never tried it before?" Seiji chuckled as he handed the taiyaki on the napkin to her. "Why don’t you try one right now?"

Natsuya took the napkin from him and hesitated on where to begin eating from before she opened her mouth slightly and took a tiny bite from the fish-shaped snack’s head.

‘So cute!’

Seiji was moved at how cute this scene seemed to him.

"So sweet... it’s delicious." Natsuya gave her a.s.sessment.

The beautiful scene of the scion in a hospital gown holding the taiyaki and carefully nibbling on it etched itself deeply in Seiji’s memories.

This scene was added to his CG collection alb.u.m!

"It’ll taste even better if you pair it with tea." Seiji fetched the teapot and poured some tea.

He also took a taiyaki and sat next to Natsuya. They enjoyed the snacks together and chatted about various topics.

After they both finished eating one taiyaki, the two of them got up and left Natsuya’s hospital room while taking the bag of remaining taiyaki with them.

They visited Hitaka Shuho’s hospital room.

The red-haired girl was resting quietly on the hospital bed with a breathing apparatus attached to her face.

She turned around and opened her eyes when she heard the sound of the door opening and saw Seiji and Natsuya entering her room.

"Hitaka, Haruta-kun’s here to see you," Natsuya explained.

The red-haired girl blinked and looked towards Seiji’s face.

It was obvious that she was grateful for his visit.

"Shuho-san, rest well for your recovery," Seiji said gently. "After you’re healed, we can talk about various topics together." 

Natsuya clutched Hitaka’s hand and also spoke some gentle words to her.

After their visit with the seriously injured Hitaka, Seiji and Natsuya went to the next hospital room.

When they opened the door and entered, they saw Rana Kirin sitting on a large couch with a game controller in her hands. She was wholly focused on playing a video game!

On the television screen was a white girl wearing a black one-piece dress with a short miniskirt, stockings, and boots that revealed a mesmerizing absolute territory. This game character was currently jumping between a bunch of mechanical monsters while wielding destruction in the form of a two-meter longsword.

‘Oh, she’s pretty good.’ Seiji inwardly praised Rana for her video gaming skills.

"Rana…" Natsuya could only smile wryly at seeing this scene.

When she looked towards Seiji, he merely revealed an expression of ‘I don’t mind at all.’

Rana’s cat ears twitched when she heard them entering her hospital room, and she quickly glanced at them in between slaying monsters before concentrating on her game again.

Seiji walked up to Rana and sat beside her as he took a taiyaki out of the bag and held it next to her mouth.

The cat-eared loli opened her tiny mouth, took a bite of the fish head, and chewed.

Her expression was currently one of delight.

‘This scene is just so cute!’ Seiji was moved once again.

He continued feeding Rana and enjoyed the process.

Natsuya was rendered speechless by this scene.

She could only silently pour a cup of tea for everyone as she sat beside Seiji, took out another taiyaki, and ate it in silence as she watched Rana.

Seiji felt that his life had become more meaningful after he successfully fed an entire taiyaki to the cat girl.

Then, he helped Rana to drink some tea by holding her cup for her, before he also drank some of his own tea.

After that, he picked up another game controller.

"Let me join in."

The cat girl nodded as she paused the game, exited, and restarted.

This time she chose the two-player mode.

Seiji was using a white boy wearing a black outfit, black shorts, and sneakers, while Rana was still using that girl in the lace one-piece dress. The two of them fought against the mechanical army together!

After defeating a boss, Seiji took the opportunity while the game was loading its next scene to stuff another taiyaki into Rana’s mouth as he also took a taiyaki for himself and ate it slowly.

And so, the group of three teenagers sat together while eating the fish-shaped snacks, and two of them were even immersed in video games, such a scene was…

‘This is the best!’ Seiji was having a graet time.

He had excellent teamwork with Rana. One of them focused on offense, while the other focused on defense; one was melee and the other ranged; and they split the equipment and combined their techniques for a finis.h.i.+ng move. Everything was performed extremely well as they understood each other’s intentions and took the best course of action.

It felt as if they were old friends that had played together for many years already.

They were unstoppable!

They finished beating the level and reached the next level.

But instead of continuing on, Rana exited the story mode and selected the versus mode where two players could practice against each other!

‘Oh? You want to fight against me? Perfect, I was just wanting to test myself as well!’

Seiji shot a hot-blooded look at Rana and saw that she had a gaze which was similarly burning with pa.s.sion.

As they exchanged glances, they felt as if they understood each other perfectly once again.

‘How nice that we’re synchronized to such a degree.’

And so, their versus match was about to begin.

Three, two, one… Seiji’s boy character in black shorts and Rana’s girl character in the black miniskirt rushed towards each other as they both unsheathed their longswords!

Attacking, defending, dodging, reflecting, shooting, exploding, chaotically dancing, using items, and using ultimate abilities…

On the television screen, the game characters’ amazingly fierce battle seemed to be on the scale of a clash between mortal enemies.

Even Natsuya, who had originally been somewhat bored, got immersed in the video game battle without her realizing it.

Slowly, both sides ran out of items.

Their energy bars were empty.

Their HP values were reaching the bottom.

Even their weapons’ durabilities had reached zero and were destroyed, so the boy and girl were now using their hands and fists for the final portion of the battle while wearing clothes that were now tattered from the drawn-out fight.

"Meow!" Rana was so excited that she rose to her feet. Her cat ears p.r.i.c.ked up, and her eyes flashed with a sharp gleam as the battle came to a climax.

"Ahhh!" Seiji learned forward with widened eyes as he shouted in a low voice while b.u.t.ton mas.h.i.+ng at top speed.

‘I don’t want to lose!’

‘I have to win!’

Both players injected their wills into their fingers through the controllers to the characters on the screen.

The girl, who was almost naked now from sustaining so much damage to her clothes, grabbed a split-second chance and successfully kicked the boy and prepared to kick once more again to deplete the last remaining portion of the boy’s HP bar.

However, at this instant, her plan was thwarted! Seiji had expected this attack and was gambling on this chance.

Seiji used a reflect-attack defense!

There was only a small timeframe available in which the game character would be able to successfully reflect the attack, which would result in an unavoidable high-damage attack reflected back at the enemy. But if the reflect-attack was not timed appropriately, additional damage would be taken.

Seiji’s game character’s HP was already so low that he wouldn’t be able to take another hit.

If this reflect-attack failed, he would lose!

And the result was…

The boy character coolly managed to block the girl’s second kick, as he flashed and used a high elbow attack that viciously struck against the female character’s chest!

There was a clear sound of an impact.

And then, the girl character kneeled and collapsed listlessly on the ground.

KO!

"I won!" Seiji clenched his fist and struck a victory pose as he looked towards Rana with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

He was instantly smacked by a half-eaten taiyaki on his face!

"MEOW!"

He heard Rana meowing angrily and felt a sudden pain in his wrist.

When he looked down, he discovered that the cat-eared loli was actually biting his wrist!

Seiji was stunned at this.

‘Hey, hey, don’t do this to me!’