Conquering Villains and Capturing Targets Is Harder in Real Life than in Games

9: I don't like being even ten steps away from you.

Madoka nodded as he put his finger down.

"Why didn't you return to the classroom?"

Madoka gazed at Shizuka with a grave expression in his face. "I realized something important."

His seriousness made Shizuka suddenly become concerned. "What is it?"

"We didn't decide where we would meet for lunch."

Shizuka blinked...Did you really just wait here to tell me this?

"We're in the same classroom...When the bell rings, I'd just have to walk about ten steps to reach your desk," remarked Shizuka slowly.

"Oh," breathed Madoka, seemingly appearing as if this fact had occurred to him only now.

"Yeah..."

Appearing adorably downcast, Madoka softly murmured, "Somehow it had seemed further...the distance between you and I."

Before Shizuka could respond, Madoka suddenly stepped in closer and pulled at her sleeve. Peering into her eyes, he solemnly proclaimed, "I don't like it."

Looking at the boy who had already touched her face twice and held onto her sleeve the same number of times, all in the short span of twenty minutes, Shizuka could only ask in a dumbfounded voice, "You don't like...what?"

"I don't like being even ten steps away from you."

What are these CG like lines?! Did I trigger a flag somehow?

As Shizuka stood in the middle of the hallway, slack jawed, a freshman girl who had been repressing the urge to interrupt finally became unable to hold back any further and shouted, "Madoka-senpai, do you like Shizuka-senpai?!"

Spurred on by this first outburst the crowd automatically erupted into shouts, "Seniors, are you dating???"

"Say it's not true, Semi-sama!" wailed a petite male junior.

"OMGOMGOMG my ship has sailed!" shrieked another overly passionate senior.

"Madoka-sama, it isn't what I think it is right?!" someone else bawled.

Madoka, evidently unaffected by the turbulent crowd, turned around and revealed a blindingly bright smile. "Yes. From today onwards, we're dating."

When Shizuka later re-described the aftermath of Madoka's blunt confession to Fuyuki and Mika, she would compare it to the sort of pandemonium one would expect to see at the end of the world.

In her defense, it wasn't even an over exaggeration because shortly after, everyone present, excluding the newly formed couple, exploded into a blend of blood-curling, shocked, furious, ecstatic, and heartbroken cries.

As Shizuka covered her bleeding ears, she thought wryly to herself that the combined scream power of the students at the scene could supply the fictional world of Monsters Inc with enough electricity for tens of thousands of years.

When they finally noticed the commotion, several teachers ran over to see what was going on.

Kawasaki-sensei, who had been in a nearby classroom, ran out into the hallways with a baseball bat in hand because he had thought that the students were fighting one another.

Nakamura-sensei, who had been applying lipstick dashed out of the bathroom, without realizing that she had a giant red lipstick smudge on her face, because she had assumed that a celebrity had dropped by.

Towa-sensei, who had been returning from the teacher's lounge holding a coffee, spilled the beverage on himself because he believed that someone might have cut off the school's internet connection.