"What am I doing…?"
In the living room of the most popular boy in his year and possibly his school, Amane Kei found himself in a peculiar situation. After he had carried a sleepy and groggy Mai, who was for some reason sleeping in front of his apartment door, into his living room and placed her on his couch, he found himself crouching beside her on the couch poking her soft cheeks. When he finally snapped out of it, he was about to stand up when he found Mai staring at him. Looking at her, it seemed like she hadn't figured out what was happening as she was still groggy from having just woken up.
"Mmmh… Kei…kun…?"
"Ah… uhmm… this is…"
"Kei…"
"Anyways, please wake up—"
When Kei was about to stand up, Mai once again wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him onto the couch while hugging him. As Kei tried to struggle, Mai was now sleeping once again. When he noticed this, he tried his best to break free from her hug without waking her up. At the end of his struggles, he finally gave up. He was already exhausted from the game earlier in the day, not to mention staying behind to help Chihaya and also staying out late, practically getting abducted by Shiki-sensei, to eat ramen.
Kei adjusted his body so as to not wake Mai up, before sitting himself on the ground whilst leaning his upper body from the shoulders up on the sofa while Mai hugged him hard. Before long, Kei found it hard to stay awake, and slowly closed his eyes and started falling asleep.
"…Haah… At the rate of things that you're doing… You're gonna start giving me wrong ideas and make me think you actually like me… Like I ever had a chance…" Kei whispered as he finally fell asleep.
***
"Hyaaaaaaaaaaa!"
In the next morning, a loud scream could be heard coming out of one of the apartments in the building. Mai had woken up before Kei did and found herself embracing Kei, who was sleeping whilst still sleeping on the ground. Her scream however, had woken him up as if a sharp alarm clock.
"I'm sorry, Mai!"
"Y-y-you… You didn't do anything to me, did you?!"
"N-no! It's just that… you were sleeping outside my apartment for some reason so I just carried you in here…"
"… I… Didn't do anything strange… did I?"
"Uhmm… You pulled me in… that's why you woke up like that…"
"… I'm sorry! I become weird when I'm sleepy…"
"It's… okay…"
In truth, Mai's behaviour is akin to a drunk person when she is very sleepy or is not woken up naturally. Hence, she never lets anyone witness her sleeping outside her home especially in school and class lest she gets taken advantage of.
"A-anyways… why were you sleeping outside my door?"
"Oh…! That's… I was waiting for you… I heard you made it out of the group stages so I wanted to cook you something to eat…"
"Ah… I see… Well, it wasn't such a big deal that it deserved any celebrations. It's not like we won the competition anyway."
"No! It is always important to celebrate, even for the small achievements. You never know when you won't ever get the chance to celebrate an achievement ever again!"
"I see… Either way, I don't think there's any need to celebrate."
"How hard do I have to try with you?!"
At this point, Mai started pouting at Kei. To Kei, he didn't know what had set her off. He started thinking about how Shiki-sensei said he was pretty much an airhead. When he looked closer at Mai, he saw that she was pouting on one hand, and down on the other.
"Haah… How about this? If we win the competition, you can do anything you'd like. How's that?"
"I can get you to do anything I want?!"
"Hmm… If it's within reason."
"Are you trying to cheer me up?"
"You can say that's part of the reason."
"Then I get 2 wishes!"
"You're pushing it… haah… fine…"
When he accepted that request, Mai's face lit up. Kei already had an idea as to what she really wanted to do but he had already resolved himself to show her the answer. He knew she had to know at some point or another, but it was ultimately up to her as to what she would be thinking about it in the end.
"Well, shall we get ready for school?"
"…Mmm…"
"Do you need any breakfast?"
"Mm!"
"Alright, you can go back and get ready and come back when you're done."
Mai enthusiastically walked towards the door. Kei immediately went to his kitchen to get breakfast ready. As usual, he cooks his breakfast before taking his bath since cooking would make him slightly sweaty from the heat and also smell oily. When he started wondering why he didn't hear his front door close, he could hear footsteps approaching as Mai came running back up to him.
"Before I go back, I want to ask you something!"
"Hmm?"
"Let's walk to school together!"
"Eh?"
"I'm not taking no for an answer!"
"But… that's going to cause so many problems for us… No one else knows about the nature of our friendship…"
Up till now, they had hidden the nature of their relationship from everyone. Only Chihaya and Azusa knew about it, and that was only thanks to Chihaya's excellent intuition. If they started walking to school together, the school would practically erupt.
"We can tell them we started talking after Saki-san and Fujinomiya-san had us have lunch together!"
"But—"
"Just today! Who knows? It might be fun! We can tell them we met up on the way."
"I… haah… fine…"