Chapter 158 | This Magical Girl Is a Bit Strange

Shizuru's pupils dilated slightly, her hand almost knocking over the cup of shaved ice next to her, which had already melted into sweet syrup.

She picked up her phone, her finger hovering over the screen for a long time before she finally tapped in. Staring at the line reading “You and Lightweaver are now friends,” she read it over and over. Slowly, she turned the phone over, placing it face down on the table.

After completing this sequence, she looked up and offered Qiluo a calm smile. “It's just a message from the class group chat.”

“Really?” Qiluo pulled her straw out of her shaved ice cup and slowly stirred the contents. “Does a message from the class group chat require you to stare at it for so long before putting it face down?”

“The class representative posted a rather long announcement.” Shizuru picked up her shaved ice cup, realized there was no ice left, and set it back down.

Her fingers, laced together on the tabletop, pinched each other. She was clearly holding back an emotion that was on the verge of overflowing, but in front of Tian Gong-san, she had to maintain her composure.

Nuomi poked its head out from her shoulder, peering curiously toward the phone screen. Before it could get a clear look, Shizuru gently pressed it back with her hand.

“You said earlier that the person who left their contact info gets nervous around you?” Qiluo rested her chin in her hand.

“Yes. She might not be very good at expressing herself.”

“Then you two can take your time and chat now. Since she gave you her contact info, it means she wanted you to find her too.” Qiluo placed her empty cup on the table and stood up to stretch.

Since the friend request had been accepted, she would definitely want to chat with “Lightweaver” right away.

If I keep staying here, she'll have to go through the trouble of maintaining her calm “Kirishima-senpai” persona in front of me. That's too exhausting.

I might as well be tactful and leave, giving her some space to herself so she can smile like an idiot at her phone to her heart's content.

“I'm going to see how the raffle is going. Do you want to come along, Kirishima-senpai?”

Shizuru shook her head, her hand still resting on the back of her phone.

“I'll just wait here,” Shizuru said, picking her phone back up. “...I still have some messages to reply to.”

Qiluo didn't expose her. She simply said, “Then I'll head over first,” and turned to walk toward the raffle stall.

She didn't walk fast, even stopping along the way to watch a club's street dance performance for a bit, leaving Shizuru with plenty of time.

Shizuru watched Tian Gong-san's back disappear into the crowd before excitedly picking up her phone again, opening the chat window of her newly added friend.

Tian Gong-san is so nice. She must have seen that I was restless and intentionally left to give me some space.

Now it's just me and Nuomi here, but I'm still so nervous. My heart is beating so fast.

What should I say? This is so frustrating. Why is the very first sentence so hard?

Nuomi slid down from her shoulder and crouched on the table. “If you don't send a message soon, Tian Gong-san will be back from the raffle.”

“I'm thinking about how to start the conversation.” Shizuru placed her phone on the table, crossing her hands over the screen as if afraid Nuomi would peek.

“The first sentence is very important. It's all about her first impression of me! I have to make a good first impression!”

“If you don't send a message, I'll send one for you.”

As Nuomi spoke, it reached out a paw to grab the phone on the table. Shizuru, quick with her hands, lifted the phone high while using her other hand to press down on Nuomi's approaching head.

“No! I'll do it myself.”

How could she possibly let a mere Nuomi send the very first sentence!

But Nuomi watched Shizuru still staring at the blank input box, hesitating.

She typed a few words and then deleted them, Nuomi's tail swaying anxiously from side to side in sync with Shizuru's movements.

“If you don't send it, I'm really going to do it for you.” Just as Nuomi was about to reach its paw over, a new message suddenly popped up at the top of the screen.

Qiluo Tian Gong had switched over to Star-trail and waited for a long time. She pulled her consciousness back, waited in the crowd for a bit, and then switched back to take another look.

There was still no message in the chat window.

The “The other party is typing...” status above the input box flickered back and forth, and in the end, even this prompt vanished completely.

“This girl...” she muttered softly, tossing her empty bamboo skewer into a nearby trash can.

Shizuru clearly had a lot to say, yet she insisted on waiting for her to speak first.

Every time they met, she had that look of wanting to speak but holding back. She had run faster than anyone when chasing after her, yet when it came time to actually speak, she froze.

Without an external push, someone like this would probably stand in the same spot until dawn.

“Fine, I'll do it then.”

Shizuru's hand froze over the screen, and Nuomi was stunned as well.

Lightweaver had sent a sticker: a silver-white cat poking its head out of a cardboard box, with the word “Hello” floating above its head.

Directly following it was a sentence: “The performance was great. I watched the whole thing.”

Then came two photos. One was a picture Qiluo had taken in the theater of Shizuru on stage, and the other was a selfie of Lightweaver with the stage in the background.

After this message was sent, the other side's response was much faster.

The typing prompt flashed only a few times before a reply popped up.

“Thank you. I didn't expect you to take photos.”

“They didn't turn out great. The theater lighting was too dark,” Star-trail sent the message that had been prepared in the chat box.

“They're already very well-shot. Better than any performance photo of me.”

Shizuru had clearly gathered enough courage, quickly following up with another message: “Can I save this photo?”

“Of course.”

After Star-trail replied, it pulled up another photo taken earlier while Shizuru wasn't paying attention.

It showed her backstage, head lowered as she bit into a piece of bread while memorizing her lines, completely oblivious. Her laurel crown was slightly askew, her brow was knitted a bit, and the notebook in her hand was densely packed with annotations.

This one was taken on the sly. The angle wasn't particularly refined, but Qiluo felt it was far more worth keeping than the stage photos.

Shizuru stared at the photo, her finger tracing across the screen as if she were caressing the person in the picture.

She saved Lightweaver's selfie to her album and set it as her chat background, as well as her phone wallpaper.

Nuomi slid down from her shoulder, squatted on the table, and watched its contractor's silly display for a good while.

“Shizuru, you've been grinning like an idiot for a long time.”

“I have not!”

“You clearly have been! You haven't stopped since you started chatting with Lightweaver!”

Shizuru pulled her phone a bit further away, preventing Nuomi from peeking at the screen.

Nuomi hopped from one end of the table to the other, attempting to bypass her arm defense.

“Then why did you take a screenshot? I heard the screenshot sound! And you set it as your chat background, didn't you!”

“I didn't!”

“You're lying!” Nuomi pointed its tail at Shizuru's face. “When Tian Gong-san was here just now, you were acting all deep and serious, but the moment she left, you started grinning like a fool. You really are two-faced!”