That evening, Shuu lay sprawled across his bed, arms dangling off the edge, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
His guitar leaned against the wall.
His half-finished math homework lay ignored on the desk.
In his head, scenes from the day looped over and over again.
Sakura's soft smile in the courtyard.
Her laugh when Motoko interrupted them.
Motoko's smug face as she crunched on chips like she'd just stolen the scene from both of them.
"…She really is a handful," Shuu muttered.
He wasn't annoyed, exactly.
Motoko Iura wasn't malicious. She didn't tease out of spite or disrupt things out of jealousy.
She was just… chaotic.
And too self-aware for someone in a supposed background role.
"Where the hell did she come from?"
He reached over, grabbed his phone, and pulled up the anime wiki again.
No mention of her.
No scenes beyond a single background blur in episode seven.
In the original world of Horimiya, she didn't exist like this.
She wasn't supposed to be in the story at all.
Yet here she was, throwing chips into her mouth while dancing through key scenes like she'd always belonged.
And worse—Sakura didn't seem to mind her presence at all.
In fact… Sakura looked more relaxed around her.
That made Shuu's thoughts spiral even more.
Wasn't he supposed to be the one helping Sakura open up?
The one building her route, line by line?
Now Motoko was stepping in—derailing flags, hijacking events, sharing screenspace.
It made no sense.
This wasn't a love triangle.
There was no triangle in the original plot.
He had transmigrated into the story as a side character and taken control of a subplot that never got resolution.
That was the plan.
But now?
Now another side character—not even a canon one—was interfering with his interference.
"…Is that allowed?" he muttered to the ceiling.
The ceiling didn't answer.
He rolled over and buried his face into his pillow.
"Fine. If she wants to be part of this story, let her. But I'm not giving up my route."
Because if he, a transmigrator from the real world, couldn't even win over a gentle, soft-spoken girl in a romance anime… then what was even the point?