Honestly, I'm pretty ashamed... you know it's been long since you updated when there isn't a single chapter of this story in my updating list... That means it's been over 3 months since I updated this.

In any case, Let's just do it...

Chihiro… Keima's eyes narrowed. Was he in for another tongue lashing, or was this something else? He slowly started walking toward the table, but it felt like his legs were made out of lead.

In any case, her eyes didn't leave her mug. So she didn't hear the footsteps that were echoing in Keima's head… He was a half a meter from her table before he cautiously cleared his throat. As he had expected, she jumped lightly in her seat.

"Yo…" Keima greeted, a syllable that was surprisingly difficult to get out of his throat. Chihiro was looking at him now, except unlike normal… more like he had grown another limb. She shook her head roughly.

"Hi…" she replied, motioning for him to sit opposite her, but her face was turning red in shame… why was he greeting her so normally when she'd just… what was it, even? Even though she hadn't raised her voice or used one of her normal insults, somehow, she knew that what she'd said at that time had hurt more than any of the empty insults she'd thrown in high school…

God, then there were those insults… Otamega… cockroach… freak… go die… those were things she threw around happily in her past. No matter how you looked at it, Chihiro was a horrible person to Katsuragi, from the start even… why did she deserve to apologize for the cherry on top of her insult cake, when she'd never accounted for the rest of it?

She really was the worst!

"Chihiro!" the girl's head jolted up, and she suddenly felt something warm streak down her face, "Are you alright?"

Chihiro felt another wave of loathing at herself. She quickly wiped her eyes.

"I'll be better once I talk…" she muttered back. She sat up straight… if she was going to apologize, she'd do it properly… for all the stuff she'd said in the past… and for what she'd said, barely twenty minutes ago.

Keima felt himself both relax and become even more awkward… for one, as how she was acting, it seemed unlikely she was going to get angry at him… but now she was crying, which wasn't any better.

"Alright…" she said clearly, before she slumped slightly, "l-look, I'm only going to say this once…"

Her face turned a light shade of pink, as her pride reared its ugly head. She gulped down the contents of her mouth, which was making it harder to speak.

"What is it?" Keima asked.

"I want to apologize…" she muttered. The boy on the other side of the table lifted an eyebrow. He hadn't expected that… not that he'd known what to expect anyway. Chihiro wasn't happy at how that had come out.

She swallowed again.

"I want to apologize… both about what I'd said before in Ellie's room, and what I used to say when we were still in the same class."

"What did you say before?" Keima asked curiously. Chihiro's face turned incredulous… did he actually forget?

"You know… all the names and insults…" from how she saw it, no recognition passed his face, "'cockroach'… 'game brain'… 'the loser who transcends time'…" he snickered at the last one, before remembering that she was being serious.

"Well, I can hardly fault you for something everyone in our grade did…" he replied, shrugging.

"Even still," Chihiro burst out, "I shouldn't have, especially coz I…" she bit her tongue quickly, "coz I didn't hate you…" she averted her eyes suddenly. She had never talked about that before… much less with him.

Keima, as quick-minded as he was, had an inkling what she had been planning to say.

"Look, in any case, I went through most of school being hated for being creepy… it hardly bothered me… don't apol-"

"No, I will still apologize," Chihiro replied, her forehead knitting up in a flash of anger, which threw Keima off.

He'd given her an easy route out of talking about that, and now she's angry that he'd forgiven her… this was exactly why Game Girls were so much easier to deal with…

"Look…" she puffed down a bit, "while I can't speak for everyone, it wasn't fair on you… school is about making friends, not being hated for who you are… I should have been nicer to you, when I wanted us to be friends in the first place…"

Keima's eyes widened… that was the first time he'd heard that. Chihiro took a deep breath, trying to control her face's temperature properly.

"You wanted… to be friends… with me…" he spoke, a questioning tinge to the end. Chihiro tried, and mostly failed, to stop the effect of this conversation show on her face.

"I did… you seemed interesting… and I did want to get to know you better…" she noticed him watching her very closely, "can you please look somewhere else!"

Keima apologized and looked at the table. He didn't like the thought of cutting of his sense of sight when trying to make sense of this, but Chihiro had actually given him plenty. It didn't stop his curiosity from piquing up anyway… like the last time when she'd confessed to him on the roof.

But Chihiro's pride had reached its limit… she was done baring her feelings about that.

"In any case, I'm sorry about I said today, as well…" Keima internally groaned, "it was none of my business, and I didn't actually know about anything…"

"It's fine," he sighed, "Tenri's the type of girl who would never question my decisions, nor show me how she felt about it… in a way, you calling me out on it actually meant that I talked to her properly…"

Chihiro felt herself get annoyed once more… he was doing it again.

"You should be angrier…" Chihiro retorted, "don't try to justify my actions or look for a silver lining…"

Keima sighed… she was doing it again.

"What do you want from me?" he asked, becoming annoyed himself. That face actually calmed Chihiro considerably.

"That…" she motioned at him, "or at least let me make it up to you, somehow…"

"Make it up to me?"

"You know… like do something to make it better… like treat you to something or something nice like that…" Chihiro explained, her arms waving, somewhat frantically.

"Let's go try that new Chinese place by the station…" Keima heard in his head, in the same animated voice the girl in front of him was using now.

After that horrible mishap during the Eve of the festival, Keima revisited Chihiro's conquest a couple of times inside his brain, trying to explain what she had been saying… there must've been some signs… some kind of foreshadowing. In the end, the closest he had gotten to a hint was that invitation… at the time, he'd assumed it to be her trying to waste time and postpone her asking out Yuuta-kun… if she had already liked him by that point, that could have been a wayward invitation to a date… Chihiro's saying she wanted to get close to him only supported that hypothesis.

So was this… an invitation for him to invite her on a date?

"Can I rather ask you a question?" Keima asked, frowning… if it wasn't the fact that it sounded too good to be true, he wanted to do this apology in his way. If he followed through with that, he'd just end up at her pace, again. That was never a good idea.

"That's lame…" she said blankly, "that's like choosing Truth in Truth or Dare…"

"So I can…"

"Yeah… I'll answer as best as I can," she replied. Though what information could he possibly want from her?

"Can I ask multiple questions?" he asked, not hesitating.

"Yeah, I guess…" it took Chihiro longer to answer.

"How did you know I was with Tenri?" Keima asked. The normal girl cringed slightly.

"I saw you… I went to DesneySea yesterday as well… I mentioned I had plans with a friend, didn't I?" Keima nodded. That made sense… though what were the chances that their plans would coincide in both place and time?

"So is that all?" Chihiro asked, standing up. She regretted offering the option for multiple questions, considering where that first question came from. If she could leave now, though…

"Obviously not," he retorted, waving a hand down for her to sit again, which she reluctantly did, "my next question… when did you see us?" Chihiro's cringing was visible this time.

"Before you guys got on the Ferris Wheel…" she answered truthfully. She was happy at the word choice too, solely because it didn't imply where she was… she could have easily been walking past that area, or spotted them from those cool magnifying glasses they had facing over the sea, which could easily be spun to face the rides… also, before didn't imply that she saw them on the ride, either…

Despite Chihiro's best intention of not steering the conversation to what happened on the ride, Keima's head was already whirring in that direction… if she had seen them before, she could have been around during the trip… she could have been in one of the other cabins…

But on the flipside, she could just have been at one of the shops, or just walking past, where she would just catch a glimpse of them… should he actually ask for clarification, or just leave it there?

"Look, are you done now?" she asked, her voice desperate. They were on good terms now, so couldn't Chihiro leave before she said something weird that would throw things off again?

"Last one…" he promised, "then you can go home…"

"Fine…" she muttered back, her nails tapping against the table.

"When you saw us… how did that make you feel?" Chihiro's fingers slipped mid-tap, so they were splayed flat on the table. In her brain, her mantra of "oh crap" started dominating most of her thoughts, but a small part of her was trying to think of an answer… She had asked herself that earlier today, but she had no concrete answer.

She was jealous, because she wanted what they had…

She was jealous, because he was able to move on when she couldn't…

Oh crap oh crap oh crap

SHUT UP!

Suddenly, her brain cleared.

"I'll only answer if you answer a question of mines first…" she replied. That brought her a couple of moments to think of an answer that wouldn't give him the wrong idea that she still liked him, or something foolish like that. Keima frowned, but it was to be expected… Chihiro never made things easy for him… plus, this kind of question was a lot more personal than the other two. He could at least comply with that.

"Fine, what is it?" Keima asked.

"Tenri-san said you liked someone… who is it?"

To say Keima was flabbergasted was an understatement. True, his question was to infer her feelings towards him, but she just asked all out… that was more like something he'd do…

Unlike Chihiro, Keima's head worked through the idea logically and smoothly, weighing the different options.

If he told the truth, she'd know for certain. That could easily make her mad, or make her happy. Then of course, how she'd react was still up in the air. Considering the whole nature of the conversation, and the fact that she was hesitating with showing her own feelings, it might be quite possible that she felt the same toward him. If that was the case, this could be the start of the HAPPY END.

But it was also arguable that her reluctance was due more to pride, than actual emotion. If she didn't feel the same way, whatever progress he had made down her route would go back to zero.

Of course, another option is to just lie. Keima was very good at that, but with Chihiro's observation skills, he could be caught out on that…

If he didn't answer all together, there would be no chance she'd answer his question either…

In the end, Keima shut his eyes and gave up thinking. In real life terms, there were many risks and parameters he'd encounter, regardless of what he'd say…

However, in gaming terms, the confession would blow out the entirety of today. No matter how he saw it, Chihiro and Tenri meeting had been a mess, and a simple "I love you" would go at sweeping it all out of Chihiro's mind. Also, it would inform her of his intentions from the get go, which could only lead to an improvement of their relationship.

"The person I like…" he started, but his head felt strange… like that spinning feeling he got before he would faint from not eating, "it's you…"

Two things happened simultaneously: Chihiro's eyes widened, and the door of Café Grandpa opened. Keima's eyes were focused on the latter, suddenly glad he was interrupted. They both were, in fact.

"Keima-kun, Keima-kun," Tenri burst in, before rushing to their table. While she appeared mostly normal, she was holding a tea cosy on top of her hand.

"What happened, Tenri?" Keima asked, surveying the situation. It must have been an emergency for her to run in… but the cosy wasn't soaked with blood or any other liquid.

"Keima-kun, something happened," she replied, her eyes drifting to where Chihiro was still sitting in shock, "can I show you something… a bit more privately?"

Keima immediately stood up, which shook Chihiro out of her sudden daze as well.

"I should… go…" she said weakly, but the other two didn't seem to hear her… or care… Chihiro was a little offended, but she brushed it off and started walking herself out. At the door, she turned around, where the two of them were talking in hushed voices, but Tenri had removed the cosy off her hand, revealing something white and crystalline, which even Chihiro could see from there.

This is a private discussion? Chihiro scoffed and started walking back. If they were acting that obviously, she may as well point that out.

"This suddenly started forming in my hand," Chihiro heard the other girl say, while showing the contents of her previously covered hand. From what the normal girl could tell, it looked like a snowball…

Keima took the ball out of her hand, feeling at the texture. It was definitely ice, considering it was melting in his hand already. He glanced back up, where there were little ice crystals flying around her hand… what the hell was that?

"You know," a third voice interrupted, only a foot or so from Keima's ear, "if this was a secret conversation, you'd be better off doing that inside his house, coz you're failing epicly here…"

Keima groaned… didn't Chihiro leave just before?

"I'll talk to you later, Chihiro," he replied, closing his eyes in annoyance, "can you go so I can try and figure this out?"

He put his hand on Tenri's shoulder and steered her into the house.

"Ya know…" Chihiro muttered, "I've seen that before…"

Both Tenri and Keima stopped in their tracks, before turning around.

"Y-yeah… Ayumi can do that as well…"

I know I said on TFPD, I'd do a double post, but considering it's midnight, and I was hoping to reply to all the reviews that are piling up, I'll get the second chapter posted later today.

I don't know what happened today, but today, I just sat and wrote and wrote and wrote, being assisted on my background music, namely the Akagami no Shirayukihime opening and closing song (eyelis, banzai!)

So yeah, I'll be back later. I have the next chapter complete, so once I just complete the author's note, which is bound to be really long, I'll post it.