The purple-haired beauty's expression was rather flirtatious as she said this, and Seiji couldn't help but feel moved by it.

"...Sure," he agreed.

'Since she's willing to create the game together with me, then she's going to be my partner from now on, and that's a step up from being normal friends, so of course it'll be fine if she calls me by name.' That was what Seiji was thinking.

Of course, Yukari was thinking something entirely different.

"Go ahead and call me 'Yukari' from now on as well."

"Alright."

The purple-haired girl was delighted to have achieved her important goal.

The two of them continued eating together.

"By the way, what type of game storyline are you intending to write... Seigo?" Yukari asked. Her heart pounded rather quickly at calling him directly for the first time.

Seiji told her the result of last night's discussion with Hisas.h.i.+.

"A boy in female clothing as the main topic... not bad!" Yukari's eyes lit up. "I also think that this is an interesting topic, and I agree with it!"

"That's good, then. Do you have any specific ideas or thoughts on this matter?"

"Hmm... I think that the standard fake lesbian relations.h.i.+p is a good one, but if it were me... I'd want something more special." Yukari pondered on it for a moment. "How about using the cla.s.sical story outline of a cute boy wearing female clothing and sneaking into a girls' school, but there are actually two boys sneaking in... how about that?"

"Oh?" Seiji's eyes also lit up at hearing this. "This sounds pretty good; do you have any more details?"

Yukari gave the matter some more thought. "We can have the two boys as opponents! These two boys actually have the same goal—perhaps they are searching for some type of artifact, which was why they both disguised themselves as girls and entered the girls' school. These two boys don't know each other's ident.i.ty, but know of the other's existence and are competing with each other to find the artifact or reveal the other's existence and get the other kicked out of the girls' school... something like this."

"So, we're adding mystery, suspense, and a compet.i.tion of smarts... Yep, this seems quite promising!"

Two cute boys both disguising themselves as girls and dueling in a battle of wits against each other? It definitely sounded interesting to Seiji.

"We can use one of the traps as the main character. He faked his ident.i.ty as a girl and became a new student at the girls' school, and after he entered the dormitory, he learned that he has a compet.i.tor who also joined the school in the same way and is even in the same dormitory! Likewise, his rival also learns about him..." Seiji began imagining the basic plot of the story out loud.

"In the female dormitory," Seiji continued, "there are actually two boys with the same goal who are uncompromising enemies! One will focus on self-preservation and play the part of a girl as perfectly as possible, while the other wants to expose his rival, or reach his goal first at all costs!

"I think... this type of storyline will be great! I think it'll work, and I really feel like writing it right away!

"If we make the artifact require a condition where you need a girl to truly be in love with you, the main character will need to both be cautious of his rival and also date the girls, and different girls will have different routes, and one of the girls will even include his rival, where the two of them will end up... er..."

When Seiji thought about this idea, he suddenly paused.

A misunderstanding route between two traps?

No!

It sounded interesting, but he was going to be the writer!

It might give him a dark memory or mental injury that would be impossible to cure!!

Yukari chuckled upon seeing Seiji freeze.

"How about giving the artifact the power to change a person's gender?" she suggested. "This way, it won't end up being a boy with a boy, and it can still be a boy with a girl."

"...No, that's no good." Seiji rejected this suggestion with great difficulty. "In the end, I feel that this type of change is somewhat meaningless. Instead we could consider a surprise reveal, where he believed his rival to be male, but she was actually female, and it was all a misunderstanding by the main character. But this... feels like we'd be tricking the players too much."

Seiji thought hard on the direction of the storyline.

"Or, after the storyline progressed to a certain point, and the main character and his rival found each other, the mistaken beginnings of love turned into friends.h.i.+p. The two of them allied in retrieving the artifact and managed to cooperate and solve an underlying vicious plot. Alternatively, they could duel against each other to determine the rightful owner of the artifact—something like that.

"This... seems like it would work, and it would be reasonable as well, emotionally speaking. After finding out that a love target was actually a boy and even your rival, normally speaking, very few people would still be able to retain their feelings of love! After some small conflicts, the two of them becoming friends sounds much more reasonable."

"I think that this sounds fine and that the players will be able to accept it." Yukari praised his idea.

"Yep, that's what it's going to be then!"

Seiji thus settled on boys love between traps... whoops, a friends.h.i.+p between the two male rivals as the basic storyline.

"This friends.h.i.+p route... should it be just treated as a normal route at first, or should it be a hidden route that's the true ending? We'll consider it slowly later; we need to get the story background settled first."

Seiji continued to eat his lunch and think.

Yukari looked at him and felt that boys were always more handsome when they were being serious. As Seiji was already exceedingly handsome to begin with, his handsomeness was now shooting through the roof!

She felt as if she were about to become a nymphomaniac.

The purple-haired beauty did her best to maintain her sense of reason and logic as she listened to him, chatted with him, and gave her own ideas and advice.

They pa.s.sed the time together having fun just like this.

Mika, Chiaki, and Kaho were waiting for Seiji's return.

"Yukari did indeed have something important to say to me. I promised her that I wouldn't tell about it, so..."

Seiji honestly explained everything to three girls.

Mika and the other girls exchanged awkward glances.

"You're calling her 'Yukari' now," Chiaki observed.

Seiji smiled. "Yep, our relations.h.i.+p with each other became closer." 

Mika had a complex expression, and Chiaki appeared rather calm on the surface. Kaho grew nervous as she detected something was wrong with the atmosphere.

Seiji considered things as he looked at the girls.

He couldn't tell them about how Yukari was an artist, but the other things were still okay.

"I've almost finished writing Brother Monogatari. After I've finished, I'm going to write a storyline for a game." He sat down and told them about it.

"A game storyline?"

"Yep, a dating sim game's storyline." Seiji smiled. "Mika, do you still remember? I mentioned it to you before..."

He began chatting with them about the game and didn't mention Yukari Asamiya again.

Chiaki suddenly thought of something and came to a realization while they were chatting.

After lunch break, during cla.s.s.

"I can probably guess at what the 'Princess' did now," Chiaki said to Mika while Seiji was taking a bathroom break.

"What did she do?" Mika asked curiously.

"After Seigo returned to us, he suddenly began talking about writing a game storyline. I suspect that he was chatting with Yukari Asamiya about this same topic." The tomboy's eyes flashed. "Creating a dating sim game will require more than one person.

"Seiji said that his friend is taking care of the programming and that he's providing the script. Then, the remaining jobs will be the artist and the musician... probably. I'm going to make a daring guess and say that Yukari Asamiya most likely joined his game group as the game's artist or musician!

"As for why she needs it to be kept secret—and seeing how Seiji is willing to keep it a secret, even from us, it probably means that... she's an artist! An artist who knows how to draw ecchi drawings!

"Dating sim games typically have art which pushes the boundaries of taboo. Yukari Asamiya must be an ero artist that knows how to draw s.e.xy drawings! In order to prevent people from looking at her in a different light, she needs it to be kept secret. Yes... this all makes sense!" Chiaki posed like a famous detective and a.s.sumed an expression of having seen through the truth.

Mika was dazed at all this.

In this moment, she felt that her good friend truly was just like a famous detective... amazing.