“Let's promise.”
“Really!?”
“It's not like making that kind of promise is a complete loss for me either after all.”
“Thank you, Kiriha!”
The moment Kiriha said she'd promise, a smile returned to Sanae's face. With a sigh of relief she dropped her shoulders. Since this was one of the most tense moments in her life, the relief she felt was enormous.
“...Aaahh, thank god... with this there's no need to worry about Kiriha for now...”
“We'll eventually need to bring this up to everyone.”
“You're right. That might be for the best.”
Kiriha and Sanae weren't the only ones that cared for Koutarou, and those others who did were irreplaceable to both Kiriha and Sanae. They wanted to avoid any scenario that would make it difficult to look at each other. For that purpose, this promise was a very useful measure.
“But I think it might be better to aim for the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
“Rather than making sure Koutarou can choose anyone, we make it so he can't choose anyone.”
“Not choose anyone... what do you mean?”
“It means getting along with Koutarou even more than now. Doing that would make it next to impossible for Koutarou to choose only one and reject the others.”
“That's a good one.”
“Normally one would make a choice before that happens, but with Koutarou's psychological problems, that choice is being delayed. That's why we should just deepen our bonds before he makes his decision.”
“How would we do that?”
“There's nothing special about it. We only need to act like normal, just by doing that our invasion will advance to the next stage.”
“Hehe, I'm sure Koutarou would be troubled.”
Sanae flashed a small smile. Sanae normally had no intention of bothering Koutarou, but regarding this one point, she needed him to be troubled.
“Yeah. He's a very serious man. If that kind of situation happens, he would be incredibly troubled.”
“But we want him to be troubled. I bet everything would be a lot more fun together.”
“Fortunately, we are invaders. We've had the right to trouble Koutarou since we arrived.”
“Let's do our best to invade.”
“Yeah.”
With their secret discussion over, Sanae and Kiriha exchanged smiles. A year and four months had already passed since the girls invaded Koutarou. And now their invasion was finally about to begin for real. However, it was a large-scale invasion where they would be holding hands.
“Koutarou, save us Ho-!”
“Hoaaaa, if we're important to you, do your best to protect us Ho-!”
“Calm down already! Nothing worse than that will happen!”
“You don't know that Ho-!”
“Don't be so irresponsible Ho-!”
“Owaaaaaaa!!”
Koutarou didn't know anything.
He had no clue of the frightening plans being formed by the invaders behind him, and that what he himself was vaguely noticing was about to become a reality.