Spring, when the cherry blossoms bloom in abundance...

"Graduating from here today, huh..."

On this very day, he—Ayanokōji Kiyotaka, once called the greatest masterpiece of the White Room—graduated from high school.

"Kiyotaka—!! Let's stay in touch in college too!"

"Yeah... let's do that, Kei."

With that detestable woman in his arms, he tried to walk out through the gates of the school.

I watched that upperclassman from afar.

...Unlike usual, I didn't have the courage to go up and talk to him.

Now I won't see him for at least another year... no, even if I did meet him... by then he probably wouldn't even look my way anymore...

I, who held the emotion of Worship toward Ayanokōji Kiyotaka, naturally wished for his happiness.

And in the end... he came to understand the emotion called Love and obtained a lover he could truly love from the bottom of his heart.

So! Normally this should have been something I could celebrate wholeheartedly!!...

'Hey... why!? Why!? Why won't these tears stop!?'

...To begin with, maybe this was a feeling that was never meant to come true from the start.

Even though I worshiped Kiyotaka-senpai, I was still someone sent as an enforcer from the White Room... there was no way senpai would ever truly open his heart to someone like that...

I was vaguely aware of that position myself... even so, I still wanted to stand beside him.

'Ah... Karuizawa-senpai is clinging to Kiyotaka-senpai... Kiyotaka-senpai doesn't seem entirely displeased either...'

I can't take this anymore.

If I stay here any longer, I might lose control of my sadness and end up beating Karuizawa-senpai to a pulp...

'Kiyotaka-senpai... goodbye...'

Understanding that doing something so unreasonable would make no one happy, I quietly left the place while crying…

* * *

Even after returning to my dorm room, senpai wouldn't leave my mind.

'What... am I supposed to do now...'

Now that my fellow White Room student Takuya had been expelled and the senpai I worship graduated... I truly no longer understood why I was still at this school.

What if I had revealed from the beginning that I was a White Room student?

What if instead of going about things indirectly I had simply acted to help senpai from the start?

Would the outcome have changed?

...Though even if I think that now, it's already too late...

'Uu... sniff...'

Instead of stopping, my tears only kept increasing.

Even if I remain at school, with Ayanokōji-senpai and Kōenji-senpai gone, there is no one left who can defeat me in either strength or intellect...

A normal person would probably be happy about becoming the strongest person at school.

But I don't feel even the slightest sense of joy.

On top of that, with Ishigami Kyō as a capable leader, our class has been dominating as Class A this whole time.

Graduating as Class A is practically guaranteed.

That's why even the future class battles don't feel interesting anymore...

And even if I graduate, I'm someone branded as a failure by the White Room...

I have no place left to return to.

But at the same time, I have no motivation to continue studying somewhere else or to join some company either.

'Sigh... looks like my days are going to be boring from now on...'

After calming down just a little... just a little... I rolled around on my bed while thinking about the future.

Flap!!

Perhaps because of the movement, a manga volume that had been placed near my pillow fell to the floor.

It was... a romance manga I had planned to read later.

'Hm? What's this...'

I moved to pick it up, but the page that had opened when it fell caught my interest.

'Going back to the past... and starting over...'

It was a scene where only the protagonist's consciousness returned to the past.

Maybe because I was trying to kill time... before I realized it, I had finished reading the entire romance manga.

In the end, the protagonist used knowledge gained in the future and was finally able to successfully end up with the love interest.

'I wish... if only I could start over just once like this girl! Uu... no, I want to start over again!'

Once again, large tears spilled from my eyes.

Soon... perhaps because I hadn't slept the previous night due to being nervous about senpai's graduation ceremony the next day, drowsiness began to overwhelm me along with the flowing tears.

'Kiyotaka-senpai... I want to start over one more time...'

Until the moment my consciousness faded into sleep... that was all I could think about…

◆◆◆◆◆

"...Natsu!!... Natsu!!"

'Hm?'

In my hazy consciousness... I heard a voice calling me...

Was it just my imagination?

"Hey, Ichika!? Can you hear me?"

"Y-Yes!"

It wasn't my imagination.

I turned toward the person who had called out to me.

And at the same moment—I was shocked.

'Eh!? No way!? Why are you here!?'

The boy who had called out to me had brown hair and was dressed entirely in white.

Looking closely, I was wearing the exact same outfit.

And the space we were standing in...

It was completely white, almost exactly like the White Room.

It even gave me a strange feeling of nostalgia.

...Which means his identity was—

"Eh? Taku...ya?"

"Yeah, that's right. Why weren't you answering me earlier, Ichika?"

"Ah!! S-sorry!! I was thinking about something else and spacing out..."

"Oh, I see... I thought maybe Ichika had started to hate me..."

He was someone like me—a member of the fifth generation of the White Room.

And the boy who was supposed to have parted ways with me during the first-year cultural festival...

Yagami Takuya.

The boy who harbored the emotion of Hatred toward Ayanokōji Kiyotaka.