Childhood Friend Heroine V1 Chapter 9
Chapter 9: Bento
The two-day holiday ended, and school began again.
Though with Monday and Tuesday off, I’d only be attending three days this week—a strange schedule that left me feeling oddly disoriented as I hefted my knapsack stuffed with gym clothes that definitely shouldn’t be there after a holiday break.
But the gym bag wasn’t the only unusual thing today. My childhood friend was carrying something extra.
You might assume it was obviously related to the gym clothes, but you’d be wrong.
In addition to her athletic bag, Lily carried another mysterious small handbag—one that had no business being there on what should be an ordinary school day after our forest trip.
I racked my brain trying to remember if I’d forgotten something, but came up empty. Earlier, I’d even confirmed with Kai and Haruki whether we needed to bring anything special today.
Which meant Lily’s extra bag remained a complete mystery.
And it bothered me immensely.
Once something caught my attention like this, I couldn’t let it go—that was just my nature. So I sidled up beside Lily and whispered directly into her ear.
“Hey, what’s in that handbag?”
Her reaction was immediate.
“Hyu!”
Lily let out a strange, startled cry, slapped both hands over her ears, and practically leaped away from me.
(Seriously? Was that really necessary?)
My childhood friend’s exaggerated response left me thoroughly exasperated. I mean, whispering on a crowded train was perfectly normal etiquette, wasn’t it?
“So,” I tried again, approaching from the front this time so I wouldn’t startle her. “What’s in that thing you’re carrying?”
“Bento,” she answered simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
(Ah, so it’s an insulated bag.)
That cleared up my confusion instantly.
The handbag she was clutching was actually an insulated lunch bag to protect her bento from the warming weather.
Come to think of it, temperatures had risen considerably since the entrance ceremony. Certain foods would spoil much faster now, and this was apparently her countermeasure against that.
Simple-minded as I was, I’d just been stuffing my bento and cooling pack into my regular school bag. I casually decided I’d start bringing an insulated bag tomorrow too.
I should have wondered why she was deliberately carrying something in her hand that could easily fit inside her school bag.
But that significance completely escaped me, and I simply waited for the swaying train to reach our station as usual.
“Hey, I heard there’s some kind of showdown happening over there right now.”
“And apparently it’s two of our school’s proud Five Great Angels fighting over some plain-looking guy.”
“For real? That sounds super interesting. Let’s go check it out.”
“It’s getting pretty noisy over there.”
“I wonder what’s going on.”
When we arrived at school, the entire building buzzed with excited chatter. Both Saito and Lily tilted their heads in confusion at the commotion.
We stored our shoes in the lockers, changed into our indoor slippers, and headed toward our classroom. The closer we got, the denser the crowd became—students clustering together, craning their necks to see something ahead.
By the time we reached our classroom, the area in front of it had devolved into absolute chaos, overflowing with spectators.
While Saito wondered what the hell could possibly cause such a scene, Lily—armed with the perspective of someone living her second life—understood the cause immediately and grimaced with bitter resignation. So it’s finally started, she thought.
We pushed through the crowd and somehow squeezed our way to the classroom door. There, Saito finally understood what had captivated all these spectators.
“Haruki promised to eat with Mizuki today desu! Go away desu!”
“That’s why I’m telling you—when I invited him yesterday, I already confirmed no such promise existed! So the one who should back down is you!”
“Ow, ow! You two are seriously going to tear my arms off!”
In the middle of the crowd, within a clear circular space like the eye of a storm, two beautiful girls—both on Lily’s level of stunning—sparked with electricity as they fought over our mutual friend, each gripping one of his arms in a territorial tug-of-war.
The scene truly resembled a battlefield.
It made perfect sense why gossip-loving high schoolers would swarm like moths to a flame.
“Ah, Saito-kun!” Haruki spotted me and his face lit up with desperate hope. “H-help me, please!”
While I stood there calmly analyzing the situation like an observer at a zoo, my friend in the center of the maelstrom made eye contact with me and pleaded for backup.
“Sorry,” I said with an apologetic shrug. “Looks like this one’s beyond my pay grade. Good luck, Mr. Popular.”
I wouldn’t have minded helping a friend out, but when two sets of eyes simultaneously shot me threatening glares that clearly communicated don’t you dare interfere, even I couldn’t bring myself to step into that minefield.
“You heartless bastard!” Haruki cried out in anguish.
I deliberately looked away and entered the classroom, hearing my friend’s agonized wail behind me, but I purposefully ignored it.
That was the burden—no, the fate—of being adored by beautiful girls. There was nothing Saito could do about forces beyond mortal comprehension.
“Rest in peace,” I said solemnly.
“Rest in peace,” Kai echoed from his front-row seat.
We offered a prayer for Haruki’s soul and clasped our hands together in mock reverence.
“So what exactly happened to cause that disaster?” I asked, settling into my seat.
Joking aside, I figured the gossip circulating among the rubberneckers wouldn’t be reliable. Better to ask Kai, a classmate who’d arrived early and likely witnessed the beginning of this mess firsthand.
“Allow me to explain,” Kai began dramatically. “It all began several thousand years ago, when the heavens and earth first—”
“Way too far back. Keep it short, will you?”
He looked like he was about to launch into an epic creation myth, so I bonked him on the head to fast-forward through his nonsense.
“—Haruki abandoned his usual lunch companion and childhood friend to promise eating lunch with another girl. The end.”
When I released him at just the right moment, he gave me a concise explanation of what had transpired.
“I see. So it’s entirely Haruki’s fault for not communicating properly.”
“Guilty as charged.”
After hearing the details, Saito’s verdict was swift and decisive: guilty.
Since Haruki’s failure to communicate had caused the double booking, it was clearly his fault. The showdown was perfectly justified.
(But harem protagonists like that really do exist in real life, huh.)
Saito stowed his belongings in his bag while contemplating this revelation.
Honestly, until witnessing that scene with my own eyes, I hadn’t believed typical harem protagonists existed outside of fiction.
I’d assumed the only guys surrounded by multiple girls were either smooth-talking player types or impossibly handsome actors on television—that had been my understanding of reality.
But seeing my friend Haruki completely overturned that assumption.
Haruki had a baby face with cute, well-arranged features, but compared to the celebrities on TV, he fell two or three levels below them. His style wasn’t flashy either—aside from slightly long bangs that gave him a gentle appearance, he dressed like a model student, unassuming and ordinary.
Yet here was living proof that even someone with average looks could be fawned over by beautiful girls.
Of course, it came with conditions—Haruki’s naturally caring personality and his complete inability to ignore anyone in trouble probably played significant roles.
(No way I could handle that kind of attention.)
Saito possessed the normal, healthy desire to be popular with girls.
But could he actually manage multiple romantic interests simultaneously? Obviously not.
He wasn’t skilled enough to keep multiple people happy at once—he already occasionally stepped on conversational landmines and got thoroughly chewed out when dealing with just one girl.
If he tried juggling multiple relationships, he’d be struck by lightning constantly and end up nothing but charred remains.
Imagining himself reduced to ash and disappearing on the wind, Saito shuddered involuntarily just as the bell rang.
“Alright everyone, it’s time for morning homeroom!” Chie’s voice cut through the lingering chaos. “Please return to your classrooms immediately!”
Even after hearing that announcement, the rubberneckers still gazed longingly at the unresolved showdown, reluctant to abandon such prime entertainment. But Chie’s commanding shout—surprisingly authoritative for such a new teacher—scattered them like baby spiders fleeing from a broom, each retreating to their respective classrooms.
(Incredible.)
Saito looked at Chie with newfound respect. Then the parties involved in the commotion—Haruki and Mizuki—finally returned to the classroom properly.
(Amazing. His arms are still attached.)
Saito regarded his friend, who’d somehow survived with all limbs intact, with the same respectful gaze he’d just given their homeroom teacher.
After that initial spectacle, every single break period brought visits from Shirayuri Koyuki-senpai from the student council, who would promptly engage in fierce battles with Mizuki over Haruki’s lunch companionship. Otherwise, time passed relatively peacefully until the truly problematic lunch break finally arrived.
Why problematic? Because Haruki still hadn’t decided whether he’d eat lunch with Koyuki or Mizuki.
That’s right—despite discussing it exhaustively during every break, both sides remained too stubborn to reach any reasonable compromise.
At first, watching my friend flounder had been mildly entertaining.
But after the pattern repeated several times, rather than amusement, I felt mounting irritation and desperately wanted him to just make a damn decision already.
“Mizuki desu!”
“It’s me!”
“Ugh, this is such a pain in the ass!” I announced, stepping forcefully between them. “Let’s settle it with rock-paper-scissors!”
While no one else dared speak up under the oppressive pressure radiating from these two, I’d reached my absolute limit.
“Saito, don’t interfere desu,” Mizuki said sharply.
“That’s right. Outsiders should stay out of this,” Koyuki added icily.
“I’m not an outsider!” I shot back, my patience finally snapping. “You’ve been squeaking away in our classroom all morning and I’m sick of it! You’re not children, so seriously, just decide already!”
“…It’s because senpai won’t back down desu,” Mizuki muttered, looking away.
“…It’s because Mizuki-san won’t back down,” Koyuki countered, also averting her gaze.
Both beautiful girls glared at me with expressions that could freeze hell itself, but I was far too irritated to back down now.
After I thoroughly lectured them both, even these two seemed to feel somewhat guilty about dragging the situation out interminably. They looked away awkwardly while still insisting the other party was at fault.
“Whoever beats me gets to eat with Haruki. Rock-paper-scissors!” I declared, forcing the issue.
Thinking this would drag on forever otherwise, I unilaterally initiated the game.
Mizuki and Koyuki panicked and hastily threw out their hands.
I threw paper.
Mizuki threw scissors.
Koyuki threw rock.
Mizuki won.
“I did it desu!” Mizuki thrust her scissors high in the air triumphantly.
“Nooo!” Koyuki stared at her tightly clenched fist and collapsed to her knees in theatrical despair.
“Alright, so today Mizuki eats with Haruki,” I announced with finality. “I don’t know about tomorrow—that’s future Saito’s problem. Haruki, you’d better coordinate this properly from now on.”
“Ah, yeah. Thanks, Saito-kun. I really owe you one.”
“Sure, whatever. Now I can finally eat my lunch in peace—wait, where’s my bento?”
With the winner and loser decided, Saito wrapped everything up neatly and returned to his seat. But his lunch box was conspicuously absent from where he’d left it.
“Let’s eat together today, Saito,” Lily said, appearing beside him.
“Sure, but hold on. My bento is—”
While searching around frantically, Lily invited me to eat lunch together.
That was unusual—she’d been eating with Shuri and Minaka lately.
It was a nice opportunity, actually. I wanted to eat with her too, but my bento had mysteriously vanished.
“I have it, so don’t worry,” Lily said with a mischievous smile. “Come on, let’s hurry to the rooftop.”
“Really? Don’t scare me like that, seriously,” I said, relief flooding through me. “I thought I’d have to skip lunch today.”
“Hehe, I wanted to see you panic,” she admitted playfully. “Did you panic?”
“Hell yeah I panicked, you dummy.”
When I’d been genuinely panicking about my missing bento, Lily revealed she’d had it all along.
Apparently she’d hidden it deliberately just to tease me and watch my reaction.
While complaining about my mean childhood friend’s prank, we headed to the rooftop together.
The rooftop during lunch was typically popular as a relaxation space for students, but there were noticeably fewer people than usual today—probably because everyone was still gathered in various classrooms, gossiping about Mizuki and Koyuki’s dramatic showdown.
Saito and Lily settled down in a shady spot that would normally be occupied.
“Here, this is your portion,” Lily said, handing me a container.
“Huh? This isn’t my bento, is it?” I opened it and froze. “What’s going on?”
After all that commotion during break time, I’d burned through crazy amounts of energy and my stomach was growling insistently.
I immediately opened the bento Lily handed me, then stopped dead.
The contents were completely different from what I’d packed.
This morning I’d thrown in leftover stir-fry and imitation crab—simple, practical, uninspired.
But the bento in my hands contained golden tamagoyaki and perfectly cooked hamburger steak, fresh coleslaw, adorable octopus-shaped wieners, and precisely cut apple slices arranged in a colorful, appetizing display.
This definitely wasn’t my bento.
“Ahaha! You really do give the best reactions, Saito,” Lily burst out laughing like she couldn’t contain it anymore. “You’re so fun to surprise.”
When I looked at Lily in utter confusion, she doubled over with laughter.
After laughing for a solid minute, she finally began explaining how she’d come to make this elaborate bento.
“Yesterday I was talking about cooking with Shuri-chan and Minaka-chan,” she said. “When I mentioned I was good at cooking, they got super excited and said they really wanted to try my food. But I haven’t been cooking much lately, so I was worried whether I could still do it well. That’s when I remembered—I have a convenient guinea pig… I mean, person who’d definitely eat my cooking.”
“Hey, Lily,” I said flatly. “Even after correcting yourself, that’s still pretty harsh, you know.”
To summarize her explanation: she was nervous about cooking for her friends, so she wanted her childhood friend Saito to taste-test everything first.
The ominous words “guinea pig” had slipped out halfway through, making me incredibly anxious about what I might be about to consume. But if she was planning to serve this to friends, she probably hadn’t mixed in anything dangerous.
I understood that logically. But knowing this particular childhood friend and her history of pranks, literally anything could happen.
Gulp.
I unconsciously swallowed hard and steeled my resolve before taking a tentative bite of my favorite hamburger steak.
“…It’s good,” I said, genuinely surprised.
My honest first impression was that it tasted genuinely delicious.
No strange death sauce lurked within—just an excellent hamburger steak where I could taste the meat’s natural sweetness with every bite, perfectly seasoned and cooked to juicy perfection.
If I had to rate it: five out of five points. Flawless execution.
When Saito gave his sincere assessment, Lily’s face relaxed with visible happiness, her expression glowing.
(Wh-what’s with that smile?)
But to Saito in that moment, even though she appeared purely happy, something about her expression seemed loaded with deeper meaning—an intensity that made his heart skip strangely.
Misunderstanding that something dangerous might still be mixed in somewhere, he nervously continued eating his bento bit by bit, sampling each item with cautious optimism.
The coleslaw had exactly the right amount of tang and was delicious. The tamagoyaki turned out to be the dashimaki type he loved—it tasted remarkably like the ones from home, familiar and comforting.
The octopus wieners and apple slices were simply cut and prepared as-is, so there wasn’t any special flavor transformation. But he could feel Lily’s thoughtfulness in how the wieners were cooked to crispy perfection and she’d selected the sweetest, most flavorful part of the apple.
“…Thanks for the meal,” I said when I’d finished every last bite. “It was really good. You could definitely serve this to Yakumo and the others without any problems whatsoever.”
“You’re welcome,” Lily replied, her relief palpable. “I’m so glad. I was a little worried you might say it wasn’t very good.”
Overall assessment: extremely delicious. A perfect ten out of ten bento that left me completely satisfied and surprisingly touched.
When I gave it my official seal of approval for serving to friends, Lily let out a long sigh of relief and beamed with unrestrained joy.
(Hm?)
At that precise moment, I sensed something strange behind me—a presence, a gaze, something.
Saito quickly whipped around, but no one was there. The rooftop space behind him remained empty.
I tilted my head, thinking it must have been my imagination playing tricks.
“Why did you suddenly turn around like that?” Lily asked, startled by his abrupt movement.
“No, I just felt like someone was watching us,” I explained. “Well, it was probably just my imagination.”
“Maybe it was Akashi-kun?” she suggested with a slight frown.
Since my sudden movement seemed strange, Lily naturally questioned what had prompted it.
There was nothing worth hiding, so I honestly told her I’d felt like someone was observing us. She immediately brought up our friend who’d caused various troubles recently.
“No, he’s supposed to be in the photography club room today,” I said, shaking my head. “The club president specifically called him in.”
But I dismissed that possibility immediately.
Kai could certainly be unpredictable, sometimes disappearing to who-knows-where without warning. But today his location was definitively known—something about it being photo development day, and Kai had been grumbling extensively about being summoned by the president. I was absolutely certain about his whereabouts.
“Then maybe a ghost?” Lily suggested half-jokingly.
“Could be,” I replied in the same playful tone.
That left only mysterious supernatural entities like ghosts, but such things couldn’t actually exist in reality.
Saito and Lily looked at each other and smiled, sharing a moment of lighthearted absurdity.
“Hey, what happened to the bento I actually brought?” I asked, returning to practical matters.
“I have it safe and sound,” Lily assured me. “I was planning to give it to you after you finished eating mine.”
“I see. Hand it over then,” I said eagerly. “Honestly, one bento is never enough for me. If I eat that too, today I might actually feel properly satisfied for once.”
“I made quite a lot though,” Lily said, producing my original bento. “Here you go. Well, considering how much you usually eat, I guess just one bento really isn’t sufficient.”
“Exactly,” I agreed enthusiastically. “I keep asking them to make it bigger at home, but we don’t have a large enough bento box, so I reluctantly end up buying bread or meat buns at the convenience store on the way home to fill the remaining void.”
When Saito retrieved his mother’s bento that Lily had hidden and expressed genuine joy at being able to properly satisfy his hunger for once, Lily looked somewhat taken aback by his enthusiasm.
But remembering the astonishing quantity of food Saito had consumed during their weekend together, she quickly understood his predicament.
I confessed that I’d actually been regularly buying supplementary snacks to satisfy my perpetual hunger.
“…!”
Hearing that confession, Lily’s mouth opened slightly as if she wanted to say something. But no sound emerged—whatever words she’d been forming were swept away by the wind before taking shape.
(What was she about to say?)
My childhood friend’s puzzling behavior piqued my curiosity, but I couldn’t decipher what she’d been trying to express from that reaction alone.
I quickly gave up trying to figure it out and started enthusiastically eating my second bento.
“Your bento tastes better though,” I said between bites. “Make me something again sometime, even if you only see me as a guinea pig.”
“~~!?”
The observation came out naturally—I’d realized that my childhood friend’s cooking suited my personal tastes better than what my mother prepared, despite her years of experience.
It was genuinely mysterious how Lily somehow aligned more closely with my preferences than mom, who’d been cooking for me my entire life.
That was my honest assessment after eating both bentos.
So when I casually told her that, my childhood friend immediately covered her face with both hands, her reaction swift and dramatic.
From the small patches of skin visible through the gaps between her fingers, I could see she was blushing intensely, her face bright red.
I thought she was being remarkably dramatic about receiving a simple compliment on her cooking, and I took another bite of the stir-fry without thinking much of it.
Completely unaware that this single offhand comment had scored a direct, devastating hit on her heart.
The next day arrived.
“Here, your bento,” Lily said, holding out a handbag.
“Huh, seriously!?” I exclaimed in surprise. “You’re giving me one today too!? Thanks!”
On the way to school, when I met up with Lily at the station platform as usual, she immediately handed me a handbag containing another bento—a delightful surprise I hadn’t expected to continue.
“The two of them requested quite a lot of different dishes,” Lily explained matter-of-factly. “Until I’ve made them all, you’re going to be my guinea pig, okay?”
“If I get to eat your cooking, I genuinely don’t care what you call me,” I said enthusiastically. “What’s on today’s menu?”
“Karaage and twice-cooked pork,” she answered. “The rest is mostly the same as yesterday.”
“What kind of dishes are those that so perfectly understand a guy’s heart?” I marveled. “Either Yakumo or Minaka was definitely a man in a previous life.”
She casually declared me her official guinea pig, but after yesterday’s transcendent experience of having my stomach completely won over, I didn’t mind the designation at all—not if it meant continuing to eat her incredible cooking.
When I heard today’s bento contents from Lily, I got excited like a kid hearing about Christmas presents, my enthusiasm completely unguarded.
And so began my daily relationship with Lily where I received elaborate bentos every day under the convenient pretense of taste-testing for her friends.
“Saito-kun,” Haruki approached me with a desperate expression. “Could you please do the rock-paper-scissors arbiter thing again today?”
But if there are good things in life, there are naturally bad things too—balance must be maintained.
When we arrived at school, Mizuki and Koyuki were having their territorial showdown over Haruki again, precisely like yesterday—a perfect replay of the previous day’s chaos.
I thought what are they doing now? while deliberately ignoring them. But then the next break period arrived, and Haruki came seeking my intervention once more.
“Huh? I specifically told you to decide this properly yesterday,” I said with obvious irritation.
“I know, I know,” Haruki said apologetically. “But the pressure from those two is absolutely incredible. I honestly don’t know what they’d do if I turned either of them down. So please, I’m begging you. Won’t you become my official rock-paper-scissors coordinator to decide who I eat lunch with each day?”
I’d explicitly told him to make a proper decision yesterday, so I angrily demanded an explanation for why he hadn’t chosen someone. He explained that the intense pressure from both girls was genuinely terrifying, and he’d been receiving threatening messages that basically said “you know what happens if you refuse me, right?”
“No way. You can handle your own rock-paper-scissors,” I said firmly.
“But wouldn’t that be like deciding arbitrarily on my own?” Haruki protested. “That seems really insincere to both of them.”
“You’re weirdly principled about the strangest things…”
“Please, Saito-kun!” He grabbed my leg desperately. “You’re the only one I can rely on!”
I figured that even if he was being threatened, he still needed to make an actual decision rather than dodging responsibility forever. I didn’t see why I had to be the one conducting daily rock-paper-scissors sessions for his romantic problems.
However, Haruki refused to give up.
He clung to my leg with an expression of absolute desperation, pleading so earnestly that other students started staring.
Feeling genuine pity for Haruki’s pathetic state, I reluctantly agreed to take on the rock-paper-scissors arbiter role just for today—surely this would end soon.
And from that moment on, I somehow became permanently assigned as the official coordinator of Haruki’s harem rock-paper-scissors tournaments, a role I never asked for and definitely didn’t want.
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