Chapter 233.<b>Chapter 233. The Valentine’s Day School Dance: I Said I Won’t Let Go. (1/4)</b>


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Who the hell does that guy think he is!” Rosa fumed in her seat.


    <span style="font-weight:400">When we returned to the ssroom, she kicked the back leg of her chair in frustration, pulled it out, and plopped herself down with a visibly disgusted expression on her face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, the student council president, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No shit! That guy gets on my nerves. He thinks he’s some sort of knight in shining armor, it ticks me off how he pretends to be a good guy when he’s just a piece of shit.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Why would you think of him that way? He seemed like a pretty nice guy.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Nice guy? He’s scum. Do you know how many girls he’s leading on? When they confess their feelings to him, he neither epts them nor rejects them and asks them to give him some time to think. In reality, they’re all pitiful backups for him. They exist solely to stroke his ego.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“He’s had his eyes on Alicia for a long time now and actually seems to be seriously chasing after her. Alicia has known him since her first year. She used to be on a few sporting teams for the girls before she quit this semester because of work. She also had an elective together with him in the second semester of her first year. This semester she has third-year physics together with that guy after lunch every day. He even sits next to her and acts all chummy. He’s nothing but an eyesore.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Ahhhhh! I can’t stand guys like him the most,” she snarled.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re going to get wrinkles,” I joked and poked her forehead between her eyes.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Wha- wrinkles, no way~” She felt her forehead and frowned.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Hurry up and do something so I don’t get wrinkles.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Do something? What am I supposed to do? I’m just a little first-year while he’s a scary third-year. The student council president with many people around him who’d support him.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you don’t do something… then I’ll make him disappear.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Woah now, would you calm down a bit? You can’t go around saying stuff like that.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaaah. I get it. I just really don’t like him… the way he looks at Alicia gives me the creeps. Alicia doesn’t notice anything weird and thinks he’s a really nice person.” Well, Rosa was quite sensitive to the way guys looked at her, so if she said there was something strange about it, there likely was.


    <span style="font-weight:400">The appearance of the student council president had stopped Jass from saying anything more. He’s been turned into a viin, the enemy of the student council president the second he intervened.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Alicia had a troubled look. She tried to say something but was prevented from doing so with a single look from the student council president.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Everyone who’s seen the scene fell under the impression that it had been the truth. They were now convinced that Alicia and the student council president were an item because Alicia couldn’t bring herself to say anything. If she did, it would be embarrassing him in front of everyone when he was just trying to help her out of the situation she found herself in.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She wasn’t on bad terms with him.


    <span style="font-weight:400">It seemed many people already had a sneaking suspicion that the two of them were in some sort of rtionship.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Alicia’s reaction to his intervention had further convinced them that this was the case.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Haaaaaah. Things were getting more and more troublesome.


    <span style="font-weight:400">First Jass, and then, the student council president.


    <span style="font-weight:400">How would one resolve this situation without getting directly involved?


    <span style="font-weight:400">It was at that moment the ssroom door slid open and Jass entered. I’d dragged Rosa away when the student council president made his appearance to prevent Rosa fromshing out. I determined that was the best course of action rather than getting involved there.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I’d rather not raise the student council president’s guard toward me. I intended to hook that goth girl up with the student council president to eliminate him, but judging by what Rosa said, that likely wouldn’t be very easy if she was correct.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Presently, that goth girl hadn’t contacted me for anything since we split up on Sunday. I’d been on the lookout for her this morning at the school’s front entrance, but I didn’t see her arrive. She might have taken the side entrance, back entrance, or simply arrived before me though. She still wasn’t aware that we went to the same school.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaaaaah. Ran… it was a disaster.” Jass immediately approached me when he entered the ssroom and fell backward onto the empty chair at the desk to my front.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Well, that’s a shame. Better luck next time.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“How was I supposed to know it was the student council president of all people? As soon as he appeared, I felt like I was turned into the bad guy. I had no choice but to throw in the towel and retreat. Man, I really let my imagination run wild this time though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“That’s a shame. So, are you giving up on her then?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Giving up? I feelpletely defeated. But I don’t really want to give up so easily. I want to at least slow dance with her to one song. If I could get that much, I could die a happy man.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You’re way too desperate.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You think?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Also, can you please stoping to me every time you want to spill your troubles?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haha…e on man, lighten up a bit. You’ve got such a pretty girlfriend, at least bless and bestow less fortunate guys like me with some of your skills.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I rolled my eyes and scolded, “Less fortunate my ass. If you didn’t have your bar set so high, I’m sure you’d already have a girlfriend.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Actually, please bless and bestow me with your inability to get a girlfriend. It seems I’ve gotten rusty when ites to keeping them away.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No way, if someone gloomy like you can get a girl like Rosa, I’m sure I can do even better. The sky’s the limit.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Where his confidence came from, I had no idea.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Dumbass, just lower your bar and get a girlfriend already. If you get even one girl to be your girlfriend, your stocks automatically rise in other girls'' eyes. You gain thebel of someone who is datable.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What? No way, for real? Having a girlfriend has such an effect?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I looked over to Rosa. Jass followed my line of sight and saw Rosa nod affirmatively to my im.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Seriously?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa opened her mouth and confirmed, “Yes. Ran is correct. A guy who has had a girlfriend before appeals more to girls as he’s been broken in. He has experience already and a track record. It’s effectively the same as what prior work experience for a job is to an employer.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">When Jass heard her analogy, he stood up from his seat in shock. He looked like he’d just been told Santa us really exists.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then the more girlfriends I have in life, the more appealing I’ll be, right? Then I’ll be able to level up to even more attractive girls. So if I start low I can work my way up the food chain.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I opened my mouth and asked, “Why are you so simple-minded? Nobody said you should have an excessive number of girlfriends in life. At some point, having too many bes a negative rather than a positive. If you keep changing girlfriends like you’re changing clothes, girls wille to another conclusion. The conclusion that there’s something wrong with you for so many rtionships to not work out. The first one or two could be exined away as things not working out between you and that girl. But when your rtionship history bes excessively long, the problem is obviously a systematic one.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Oh… I get it. That’s also the same with employers too, isn’t it?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes. Exactly. So think of a girlfriend as you would an employer. So long as your rtionship ends on good terms with her, she can be a good reference for future rtionships should your rtionship with her not work out.” Why did it feel like I was ying the role of a teacher?


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So by your logic, at the school dance, I should try to slow dance with some other girls first before I try to ask the girl I really like to dance.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Well… I guess that sort of makes sense. You’d demonstrate your experience and have a reference.” I didn’t know if it worked that way for this sort of thing as well. After all, I’d never slow danced with a girl before.


    <span style="font-weight:400">As for the talk of girlfriends, I could only imagine it was true. After I started dating Rosa, that was the conclusion I’d drawn based upon the reaction of other girls.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Alright, I understand, I’ll do my best.” Jass gave that sort of confident response as he took out a sandwich from his bag and started to eat.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Rosa had also taken out a container with some food to eat for lunch. To forget the incident that transpired, she switched gears by pushing her desk up beside mine.


    <span style="font-weight:400">Jass looked on enviously at me with the way Rosa openly fed me half of her food. “Man… I want that. It’s not fair.” He shook his head dejectedly.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I don’t know why he was envious of this, I didn’t have a choice in the matter. She’d force-feed me if I put up any resistance. It was simply a matter of whether I did things the easy way or the hard way. The hard way wasted more energy just for things to end up like this in the end so I’d long abandoned the hard way and resigned myself to suffer this embarrassing fate during lunch.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She didn’t do this every day, just on the days she didn’t go to spend lunch with Alicia. I still hadn’t corrected my bad habit of skipping out on eating lunch. She forced me to eat breakfast on the days she went to eat with Alicia. The way I knew whether I was having lunch with Rosa on a given day was determined by whether or not she made breakfast for me in the morning.


    <span style="font-weight:400">She was on ‘make sure Ran at least eats breakfast or lunch everyday duty.’ Why didn’t she simply prepare a container of food for me every day and have me eat on my own? Well, it seemed she enjoyed feeding me.