Tokyo: Oreimo

Tian Zhongxue nodded vigorously, crossed his arms, and struck a pose of someone who had been there all along. "Campus romance, that's the highest form of youth! Although I haven't experienced it myself, I can definitely say that!"

"President, aren't you just admitting you haven't dated anyone?" Yosuke Kobayashi bluntly exposed.

"Kobayashi, why have you been undermining me all day?!"

"Because you've been desperately setting flags since just now."

Okubo leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply.

"But thinking about it carefully, it seems like all of us in the anime club are single."

He counted on his fingers, "Me, Kobayashi, the president, Asakura-kun, we all have zero dating experience. No, it's not even zero, it's negative. We start sweating as soon as we talk to a girl more than three times."

"Please don't include me." Misaki Asakura puffed out her cheeks.

"Asakura-san, you cried for ten minutes over a single line at the S;G appreciation event last time. It will be very difficult for you to find a boyfriend in the real world if you keep doing that."

"That...that was because I was moved by the story..."

Okubo ignored her protests and launched a wide-area attack, exposing the secrets of everyone present.

Halfway through his speech, he suddenly remembered something, turned to Ryosuke, and looked at him intently.

"Wait, Gao Cheng, you haven't said anything just now, you wouldn't... be single, would you?"

Ryosuke's hand, which was about to take the oolong tea, froze in mid-air.

All the other pairs of eyes turned to look.

Tian Zhongxue's expression was particularly exaggerated, with his mouth slightly open and his hands still in the same position as before, with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Takashiro, you... have a girlfriend?"

Ryosuke was silent for two seconds before putting down the teapot.

"Have."

The activity room was quiet for a moment.

Shota Okubo slapped his forehead and looked up at the ceiling.

"I knew it. This world is just so unfair. Some people are good-looking, talented, and have a beautiful stepsister, and then they even have a girlfriend."

He turned to Ryosuke, his eyes filled with genuine curiosity, "You started dating in high school?"

"Ah."

"Which girl has such good taste?"

"She's not from our school."

"From another school? That's even more enviable."

Okubo slumped back in his chair, looking up at the buzzing fluorescent light on the ceiling. "And me? My weekend social activities consist of waiting tables at a family restaurant. Life is too hard."

Yosuke Kobayashi pushed up his glasses. Although he didn't say anything, the corners of his mouth clearly showed a hint of schadenfreude.

Tanaka looked at Ryosuke with a complicated expression, his lips moved, and finally he let out a long, unreadable sigh.

"Takashiro-kun, I originally thought you were only good at writing novels... I didn't expect you to have mastered such a difficult skill as romance."

"Is this really that surprising?" Ryosuke smiled helplessly.

"Of course I'm surprised! What do you think the current situation of otaku in the dating market is like?!"

Okubo sat up abruptly, gesturing with his fingers in the air.

"First of all, most girls frown when they hear the word 'otaku'. Secondly, the topics we usually talk about, like new anime, voice actors, and doujinshi conventions, are things that ordinary girls can't really discuss. Last time, I tried to talk about anime with a female colleague at my part-time job, and she replied, 'You still watch anime?' I said that I don't like that kind of anime, and then she ignored me."

"Okubo, she just wanted you to pour her coffee," Kobayashi quietly reminded her. The two worked at the same shop, and he happened to be there when the other person mentioned it.

"what?"

“That female colleague’s cup is empty; she doesn’t want to chat with you.”

A brief silence fell over the activity room.

Then Tanaka burst out laughing first, followed by Asakura Misaki covering her mouth and laughing, and even Ryosuke couldn't help but smile.

"So I really want to ask, Gao Cheng, how did you find a girlfriend? Can you teach me a couple of tricks? I promise I'll use them for good!"

Looking into Okubo's sincere eyes, Ryosuke decided he couldn't continue this topic. Any conversation about Saori was unlikely to end smoothly without revealing the truth.

But precisely because of this, deliberately avoiding it would only make one more suspicious.

There's no special technique involved.

Ryosuke put down his oolong tea, leaned back in his chair, and spoke casually as if he were talking about what the cafeteria set meal was today: "It's just that I happened to run into someone with similar interests, and we like each other."

"Shared interests?"

Okubo muttered the word to himself, his eyebrows furrowing. "No, tell me more specifically, what kind of interests do we share? Is it that we both like watching anime? Both like playing games? Or both like going to doujinshi conventions?"

"Let's count them all."

Ryosuke thought for a moment and decided to use a safe way of putting it, "She's also an otaku, and we met at a doujinshi event."

The activity room fell silent for a moment.

Then Tian Zhongxue suddenly jumped up from his chair.

"We met at a fan event?! My girlfriend is an otaku?! Or did we meet because we share similar interests?!"

His voice grew louder and louder, each question mark rising a half-tone higher than the last.

"President, you're being too loud."

Yosuke Kobayashi pushed up his glasses, but his expression wasn't exactly calm. "It's really surprising, though. A girlfriend I met at a doujinshi event is an otaku... Generally speaking, this kind of encounter only exists in galgames."

Okubo grabbed his hair and said, "It's so enviable I could cry."

Asakura Misaki held the strawberry milk in both hands, her eyes sparkling, her tone filled with a strange longing: "So what do you usually do on your dates? Go to Akihabara together? Play games together? Or go to doujinshi conventions together?"

Ryosuke was somewhat exasperated by the question, but he still answered truthfully.

"Yes, we have both. As for games, we played FSN together before, and also a few recent titles from the company."

When he said "play together," he was referring to those works where Saori was the lead programmer and he was the scriptwriter.

From a developer's perspective, this certainly counts as "playing together".

However, the people who heard this understood it in completely different ways.

"You even played FSN together?" Tian Zhongxue clutched his chest, as if struck by something. "And it's an Aniplex game? Your dates consisted of playing visual novels together?"

Okubo buried his face in his hands.

"I can't take it anymore, this is too dazzling. I originally thought Gao Cheng was just good-looking and could write novels, but I didn't expect that even his love life is on par with the male protagonist in a gal game. Where exactly did my life go wrong?"

“Okubo, you have to think of it this way.” Kobayashi Yosuke patted him on the shoulder, his tone calm yet deadly, “This is all fate’s arrangement. Maybe you’re destined to grow old alone for the rest of your life?”

"Kobayashi, shut up! Are you trying to comfort me or just adding insult to injury?!"

Misaki Asakura laughed out loud, but quickly composed herself. "But it's so nice to have the same hobbies as my girlfriend. No matter what we talk about, there's never a dull moment, and I don't have to worry about being looked at strangely by her."

"She'll probably be the first to read Gao Cheng's novels," Tian Zhongxue remarked with some emotion.

Ryosuke picked up the bottle of oolong tea, about to bring it to his lips.

Speaking of the first one I watched...

He paused for a moment in mid-air, then brought the tea bottle to his lips, took a sip, and remained calm.

"That's it."

This topic cannot be continued.

Tian Zhongxue leaned back, put his hands behind his head, looked at the buzzing fluorescent light on the ceiling of the activity room, and let out a long sigh.

"To be honest, I do understand why most girls don't like introverted guys."

"They don't understand the topics we talk about, and their first choice for dates is either Akihabara or Ikebukuro. They can't even get up in the morning for Disneyland because they haven't been out for too many days. But Takashiro's example at least shows one thing: even if you're a homebody, as long as you find the right kindred spirits, you can be just as popular as a social butterfly, right?"

“Well, after all, the scope of being an otaku is actually quite broad, and there are always some overlaps,” Ryosuke responded candidly.

"That's right! So I shouldn't give up hope!"

Okubo rallied, clenching his fist. "At the next CM convention, besides helping the club set up a booth, I also want to find someone there who understands our ACG culture! Then we can proudly say that we met at a doujinshi convention."

Tian Zhongxue also stood up, "Then I want one too! As the student council president, I can't keep falling behind in the dating scene! And maybe I can even recruit a new member for the club!"

"You two should finish getting the Dong COMI notebook sorted out first."

Ayumi's voice came from the direction of the cubicle.

She pushed open the door to the cubicle and walked out, with Ling Nai following behind her, her blonde ponytail swaying in the light.

Chapter 246 Stunning Blonde Beauty! (Combined chapter, including bonus chapter for monthly votes, April's accounts are settled~)

Horiuchi Ayumi's words were like a bucket of cold water, completely dousing the budding romantic passion that Tanaka and Okubo had just begun to develop.

"Ayumi! When did you come out?!" Tian Zhongxue clutched his chest.

"When you say 'I want one too'."

Ayumi walked to her seat and began to pack up her sketchbook and pencils. "President, you should learn how to use the typesetting software first before you think about finding a girlfriend at the CM Expo."

"These two things don't conflict!"

"You said last year that you wanted to learn typesetting, but you still haven't. Judging by this efficiency, the probability of you finding a girlfriend at the CM Expo is probably about the same as the probability of you learning typesetting."

As she spoke, Ayumi glared at him.

Seriously, there are girls in the club, what are they saying in front of everyone?

He has no sense of propriety whatsoever; he's a failure as a president.

Tian Zhongxue opened his mouth, then slowly slid back into his chair as if he had been precisely sniped.

Okubo was laughing so hard he was slapping the table.

Misaki Asakura covered her mouth and chuckled softly.

Ryosuke glanced at the clock on the wall of the activity room; the hands were already pointing to 5:30.

He stood up and threw the oolong tea bottle into the recycling bin.