Chapter 52: Too Easy

Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Too Easy

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I finally arrived at the café, it was surrounded with people moving left and right. The thought of Mataguchi encounter earlier just now and the fact he’s going on a date with a older lady was still on my mind. I didn’t know he had connections to other adults apart from the Mrs Meihua.

Speaking of which I haven’t actually seen her before, I wonder if his going out with her too. If so he shouldn’t be double-timing.

What have he gotten himself into?

The café was louder than I expected.

Not loud enough to make conversation difficult, but loud enough that nobody would pay attention to ours.

I had checked my phone.

That’s good. I arrived twelve minutes early. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to keep ’Yyxx’ which apparently is called Kazuki waiting.

That was only a half true of why I did that. The other half was that I wanted to see him arrive so I could from a distance tell what kind of person Yyxx was when there was no screen between us.

So all through this morning I tried my hardest to remain positive not to attract others in other ways.

I walked to the front desk to place an order, a cup of coffee and one cup of tea.

I wasn’t sure if Kazuki preferred Coffee so I just went for tea for him, he didn’t read like the type to be into those kind of things.

I assigned them my seat then went back to wait.

Online, Kazuki had been easy to talk to, too easy, sometimes. He joked constantly and could turn almost any question back on me. Whenever I tried to steer the conversation somewhere specific, he’d notice and somehow steer it somewhere else without making it obvious.

It had made extracting information from him difficult.

But that was exactly why I wanted to meet him. People could control what they typed but they were much worse at controlling everything else.

Their eyes, hands or pauses between words. The way they reacted when something unexpected came up. Though eye movements, hand placement, pauses, and posture aren’t reliable deception or omission detectors. They can be influenced by nervousness, habit, fatigue, personality, or the environment. So it’s best to use those details to develop questions rather than treating them as definitive evidence.

I chose a table near the window. From there, I could see the entrance without looking like I was watching it.

At 1:57, I saw him.

Yellow long sleeve and dark brown like hair.

Phone in one hand. He stopped outside the café for a moment and looked through the window.

His eyes moved across the room, once, twice then they stopped on me.

He lifted his phone while mine immediately vibrated. A notification popped on my screen from the Discord app from ’Yyxx’

Yyxx: You look exactly like your profile picture.

I looked up seeing Kazuki raised his phone slightly to wave at me.

I replied, his message.

Oota: Disappointing?

He smiled upon seeing the messages Then he walked inside.

He didn’t hurry or hesitate either, that was the first thing I noticed. Most people entering a place where they were meeting someone they’d only known online looked around nervously. Kazuki looked like he was checking a room.

He reached the table. "You’re the 47-year-old man?"

"Unfortunately." I added

I stood then shook hands. His grip wasn’t especially strong. The waitress brought in the order to the table. I sat down.

"Here’s your order..." she muttered, her voice was gentle and calm.

"Thanks" I replied, in response she just smile then walked away. Kazuki watched the interaction in silence before questioning.

"You ordered? Why coffee?"

"It’s what works for me" I replied talking a slow sip from the cup.

He nodded solemnly. "Tragic."

What do he mean tragic now?

"You’re Kazuki?" I asked, just to be sure.

"Do you see another Kazuki here?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I was hoping there’d be two." I responded.

"Sorry." He pulled out the chair. "Can I sit?"

"You already are." Seeing as he was already seated. Why ask at that point?

He looked down, then back at me. Taking the cup of tea from the table.

"You’re going to be annoying in person too, aren’t you?" He added

"Probably." I murmured.

"Good." He muttered, talking a sip from his tea. He put his phone on the table with his other hand. Screen down.

Which i noticed immediately and so did he.

His eyes flicked toward my phone. "You’re checking whether I brought mine?" He asked.

"I was checking the time." I directed my vision to him

"You’ve checked the time three times since I sat down." He said, pointing out my behaviour

I smiled. "You’re observant."

"More like you’re obvious." He said it casually. He didn’t bother saying it accusingly.

At this moment he was the only link to ’ Yyxx’ the other hundreds to potentially thousands of student were all decoys. After some investigations and elimination process based on they connection and surrounding connection to either anyone within my social cycle or friends cycles it turned out they all have contradictions, loopholes, reasons, possibilities, and dead-ends towards the events.

With Kazuki been the one with the highest connection rates and traces. I had considered the possibility of it been a decoy as well, seeing as it wasn’t layered, subtle and complex like the others but the others all lead to nothing.

So here I am.

That made it worse.

Kazuki called over a waiter over, and we ordered.

For the first few minutes, we talked about completely meaningless things like school, teachers, games, the café, the weather and his said crush from out school.

Apparently his friends from school had a bet with him to confess to his crush next week. Not to mention she is a cheerleader for the football team. Her boyfriend is in the team as one of the best strikers current but his friends are convincing him that the so called boyfriend might actually be her ’puppet’.

His reasoning is that she ranked higher in school class ranks.

I see, in our school, relationships aren’t always all shines and rainbows but what doesn’t that have to do with me? Nothing.

Kazuki complained about the price of his drink before he’d even taken a sip.

"This is robbery."

"It’s coffee." I corrected, why did he bother ordering it then, I got him tea before.

"It’s expensive coffee."

"You agreed to come here." I inserted.

"I didn’t agree to be financially attacked." Kazuki immediately defended himself

"You can leave." I added taking a sip from my already cold coffee. It was starting to taste a little bland.

He took a sip as well. "Too late. I’m emotionally invested."

I laughed from his replied in which he smiled.

It was easy.

Almost too easy.

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"We’re proof that friendship knows no bounds, not even Wi-Fi signals. If thoughts were miles, we’d be right next door!"

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