Chapter 68: Quillan, You Must Come

"Hello!"

Quillan answered the phone, and Miyuki Sakurai’s cute voice drifted through the line: "H-Hello, Quillan! Happy weekend! Manager Oda called me earlier and... and asked if I was with you. Aren’t you and Himuro at the same place? Ah... Quillan, please don’t mind me asking! I was just curious why Manager Oda would call my house to ask about this..."

Hearing Miyuki speak so fast out of nervous anxiety, Quillan couldn’t help but chuckle.

Picturing her nervous, adorable look on the other end of the line, Quillan imagined this cute girl’s face was probably bright red right now.

"Himuro and I are about to head to the cafe..." Quillan answered her question, then asked in return, "Sakurai, did you also promise Sister Ai that you’d go to work at the cafe at noon?"

"Y-Yes!"

Miyuki had been waiting for him to ask. She quickly continued, "I originally planned to take a taxi to the cafe, but I thought that would be too wasteful. Plus, I’m scared to walk through that alley from last time alone, so..."

At this point, Miyuki trailed off into silence.

Quillan gave a soft laugh; he naturally understood what she meant.

However, Quillan was still at the high-speed rail station. It would take some time to get to Miyuki’s house, not to mention Haruka Himuro and Ruri Hosokawa were right here with him—making things a bit awkward.

"Hey, Quillan!"

Ruri Hosokawa came up to him with her hands on her hips and asked, "Who was that? And how can you just ignore my questions? You and Teacher Harada..."

"Class President-san!"

Quillan quickly covered the microphone with his hand, turned to Ruri, and said, "Please stop questioning me at every turn. I don’t need to care about your suspicions at all because we don’t have any special relationship, right? Besides, I’m on the phone right now. Could you please show some courtesy and respect other people’s privacy?"

"You..."

Ruri’s face turned sour. Clearly, it was Quillan who had done something inappropriate with their teacher, yet here he was, scolding others for being meddlesome with absolute self-righteousness!

This infuriated the young heiress, and she began shouting behind Quillan, "You jerk! Are you not even going to explain yourself?"

Ignoring her, Quillan continued speaking into the phone, "Sakurai, I’m at the high-speed rail station preparing to take the bus. If there’s a route with a stop near your house, I’ll head over!"

"The high-speed rail station?" Miyuki paused on the other end for a moment. Quillan heard what sounded like her calling out to someone, followed by a faint, muffled conversation. Soon after, Miyuki returned to the phone: "Quillan, there’s a bus at the station that goes directly to the intersection in front of my house. You can get off there—it takes about half an hour. Well... I’m going to get ready to head out now. Quillan, you must come!"

With that, Miyuki hung up the phone, giving Quillan no chance to respond.

"Strange..."

Quillan felt as though Miyuki had a specific reason for asking him to come over.

Otherwise, given her usual personality, how could she be so lively on the phone?

Putting his phone away, Quillan turned back to look at Haruka Himuro. "Himuro, let’s take the bus back together."

"Okay!" Haruka nodded obediently, though she looked preoccupied with heavy thoughts.

Seeing Haruka like this, Ruri was naturally displeased.

She took Haruka’s arm and asked Quillan, "Hey, Quillan, can’t you see Haruka is unhappy right now? Seriously, as her roommate—or as someone who cares about you deeply—how can you be such a jerk and ignore people like this?"

"Someone who cares about me deeply... isn’t that actually you?" Quillan smiled faintly, turned around, and stepped right in front of Ruri.

This girl really wouldn’t leave him alone. Quillan had always wanted to keep his distance from her, not only because she harbored misunderstandings about him, but also because of her mother—Rumiko Hosokawa, the chairperson of St. Sakura Girls’ High School. Rumiko had once asked Quillan to help her discipline Ruri, fix her spoiled rich-girl attitude, and curb her rebellious streak.

However, Quillan felt it wasn’t that simple. Otherwise, why would Rumiko have said it was fine even if Quillan and Ruri started dating?

Back in the chairperson’s office, Quillan had no choice but to temporarily agree. In truth, he had zero desire to help mentor Ruri and preferred to avoid any involvement with her altogether. Yet Ruri was now haunting his every step.

To make matters worse, Ruri was excessively curious. No matter what happened, she would come over to interrogate Quillan or even stalk him... It was fair to say she had severely disrupted his private life.

This was something Quillan could not tolerate. He decided to teach Ruri a little lesson.

To Quillan’s mind, the best way to discipline a woman was naturally a good spanking. Women like Kaoru Amatsuki became obedient after a few spanks; why should he fear a single Ruri Hosokawa?

However, in front of Haruka Himuro—and in a public place—it wasn’t appropriate to pull that off. So, Quillan thought of another approach.

"It seems our Class President-san cares a whole lot about my private life, even using Himuro as an excuse. Hey, Class President-san, you don’t seem like a shy girl. If you care about me, you can just ask me directly!" Quillan gave a mischievous smirk as he watched Ruri’s reaction.

"Seriously, you self-righteous jerk!" Furious, Ruri clenched her small fist and swung it straight toward Quillan’s chest.

"Laying hands on me again?" Quillan had expected her to strike. Fully prepared, he flashed a playful smile, grabbed Ruri’s wrist, and yanked her toward himself.

Ruri’s entire body was dragged forward by Quillan’s immense force. She felt completely unable to control her balance, but that wasn’t even the worst part!

The worst part came next: directly ahead, Quillan’s obnoxious, smiling face was waiting for her. Incapable of controlling her movement, she could only watch helplessly as Quillan’s lips drew closer and closer to her own...