Am I being simulated by their love affair?

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Natsumi Imokawa turned around and strode towards Jun Matsueda, seemingly wanting to repeat her observation method from before, but before the girl's chest could touch the boy's, the gazes from the two actors made her stop in her tracks.

"Matsugi, mess up your hair a little." To keep her actors calm, she had to give instructions remotely.

"Is that so?" The boy scratched his hair.

The girl nodded in satisfaction. "From now on, you are Hikaru Kashiwabara."

She turned back to Tomatsu Yuka, "You are Konno An."

"You two have been childhood friends for six years and have feelings for each other, but you are facing separation because the Konno family is about to move away."

"And today is your high school graduation ceremony, the day you will soon be parting ways."

"Are you ready?"

The boy and girl nodded.

"We'll start shooting the first scene in five minutes!" Natsumi Imokawa took out the clapperboard from her bag and wrote "Farewell, Scene 1" with an oil-based pen.

She handed the clapperboard to the girl standing to the side, "Could you please help me with the clapperboard later, Mochizuki-san?"

Mochizuki Haruka took the square board. "You just close it up, right?"

"Yes!"

“No problem.” She turned around and looked at the two people standing by the river, rehearsing their lines.

Tomatsu Yuka was listening to Matsueda Jun speak with her head down, both of them holding cylinders containing graduation certificates.

The boy said something, and a faint blush appeared on the girl's face. She looked up with a coquettish expression, patted the arm of the person in front of her, and a few cherry blossom petals fell from their cheeks, making for an extremely romantic scene.

It seemed like they really were childhood sweethearts, and Mochizuki Haruka felt a pang of jealousy.

Originally, the girl wasn't very enthusiastic about acting, as she had a natural aversion to the idea of ​​"acting."

But the thought that all these scenes would be captured on camera, edited into beautiful clips, recording the sincere and radiant emotions of the characters they portrayed…

She couldn't wait to bring her "Fujii Kaede" on stage.

"Imokawa, if you need to film again in the future, just let my family's car pick you up and drop you off. It will save you some time."

"Huh? Is that okay? Thank you so much!"

"As payment, please make sure you take a good picture of me."

"Well... I'll try my best!"

Chapter 513 The Countdown to the End

Tomatsu Yuka sat under the cherry blossom tree, watching the petals flutter down in front of her.

Her scenes were over, and now standing in front of Matsueda Jun was Mochizuki Haruka, who had changed into a black dress. The two were acting in the middle of the bridge over the river—the boy in the white shirt and the girl in the swaying black dress looked exceptionally well-matched.

Tomatsu Yuka picked up the bottled water that was placed at her feet and tilted her slender neck back.

"Being an actor is much more complicated than I imagined," the girl remarked as she tightened the bottle cap.

“I think being an actor is harder than being a director,” said Natsumi Imokawa, sitting next to her while watching the video on the camera.

"The director only needs to be responsible for the imagination and arrangement, while the actors are responsible for expressing those imagined emotions."

“If it’s just one performance, that’s fine, but in many cases, even if the director is satisfied with your performance, they will still ask you to do it again or to perform it in a different way.”

"At times like these, one needs not only a delicate and affectionate heart to showcase one's acting skills, but also the stability and patience of a manual laborer."

"So becoming a qualified actor is a very difficult thing."

"I can already feel it," Tomatsu Yuka nodded helplessly.

That was just a brief shot of her looking up at Jun Matsueda. Because the angle and speed of her looking up were not satisfactory, it was filmed three times at the director's request.

"Tomatsu-kun has done very well." Natsumi Imokawa pointed the camera screen at the girl. "You got into the zone quickly, and you had a good sense of the camera. You took far fewer unusable shots than I expected."

"I'm glad I didn't slow everyone down." Tomatsu Yuka smiled with relief. "But Imokawa-san surprised me too."

"Huh?" Natsumi Imokawa put down her camera.

"The Imokawa I met today is completely different from what I remembered," the girl continued. "I always thought you were the kind of person who didn't like to talk or express yourself."

But she just talked so much and looked so serious during the shoot... Is she usually like this in front of Tsunku?

I've heard that people become especially attractive when they're focused on something...

Tomatsu Yuka looked at the girl in front of her as if she wanted to uncover everything she had hidden.

“Uh…” Natsumi Imokawa suddenly felt a little flustered. “It’s just that I know these things better, so I talked a bit more.”

"Hmm." Tomatsu Yuka didn't speak, she just smiled lightly.

The boy on the bridge waved in their direction, and Natsumi Imokawa quickly stood up with her camera.

"Um, Songzhi and the others are ready, let's continue filming!"

The girl ran towards the bridge, her steps unsteady. Tomatsu Yuka calmly picked up the clapperboard that was placed to the side, stood up and followed behind her.

Half an hour later, Jun Matsue stepped out of the camera's field of view and walked toward the girl standing not far away.

"Tsun-kun's scenes are finished?" Tomatsu Yuka, who had been waiting for a long time, smiled brightly and handed over the bottled water she was holding in her arms.

"We should be done filming for today, right?" The boy turned around and glanced at the girl in the black dress still standing in the camera's view. "Next up, it seems like we're filming the scene of Fujii Kaede taking a walk by the river."

"Then you can rest now~"

"I am indeed a bit tired." Jun Matsue nodded and took a big gulp of water.

The repeated emotional maneuvering brought him not physical exhaustion, but mental fatigue. He is now even more grateful that he did not enter the entertainment industry.

"Now I can finally get some rest," Tomatsu Yuka said, patting the bench next to her.

The boy obediently sat down, then looked into the distance. Imokawa Natsumi changed the camera angle, and Mochizuki Haruka was holding the hem of her dress, looking at him with a haughty, cat-like gaze.

"I feel like Imokawa-san's short film will be a huge project." The girl's words next to him drew his attention back.

"The time span will be quite large, right?" the boy thought for a moment. "Almost ten years have passed in the story."

"But Konno An's time only ended after graduating from high school. After that, she never saw Kashiwabara Hikaru again and could only communicate through letters..." Tomatsu Yuka's tone was somewhat melancholy.

"It's said that the family is going to inherit a shrine or something, Imokawa's character setting is really wicked." Jun Matsueda recalled the content of the story.

The whole family moved to a remote island and lived in a traditional shrine. They could only communicate with their loved ones through slow letters, and the young man and woman who admired each other entered into different rhythms of life.

To exaggerate a bit, it's no different from living in a different era.

When watching this scene, he always thinks of Yamami Maki's smile.

"Fortunately, it's just a fictional story." Tomatsu Yuka smiled. "In reality, I don't need to experience the life-and-death separation with Tsunku."

Matsueda Jun fell silent, looking at Mochizuki Haruka's figure strolling along the riverbank in the distance.

Actually, he's been thinking about this relationship for the past few days, but he hasn't mentioned it to the girl next to him yet.

"What are you thinking about, Chun-kun? Are you figuring out how to play the role of a 'socialite' when the time comes?" the girl asked with a smile, while the boy remained silent.

"Actually, I know," Tomatsu Yuka blinked. "You're thinking about when we're going to break up, right?"

Jun Matsue looked at her, and the girl smiled gently.

“I know Tsun-kun—once things calmed down after what happened with Senpai, you probably started thinking about what should become of our relationship, right?”

"Hey, how about you consider making me a permanent employee?"

Upon hearing this question, Jun Matsue's mind immediately conjured up the face of Haruka Mochizuki—her stubborn yet sorrowful expression.

The girl had been waiting for him for a long time since she returned from her drifting through the boundless world.

"Hmm..." Tomatsu Yuka's smile faded slightly. "Then how about we gradually act indifferent in front of everyone, and then announce the breakup after a while?"

After learning so many lessons, the girl understood this principle: if you are not greedy, you will not make mistakes.

So even though she was extremely unwilling, she still said those words.

Jun Matsue wanted to apologize, but he remembered that the girl in front of him didn't seem to like those two words, so he could only nod.

After the sun set, the day's filming came to an end. The eldest daughter of the Mochizuki family arrived in her family's car and drove the girls home one by one.

Finally, only the boy and girl remained in the back seat of the black sedan. On the way to Mitaka, Mochizuki Haruka looked at the boy sitting next to her.

What did you and Tomatsu Yuka talk about while I was filming?

Matsueda Jun watched the streetlights outside the car window light up, forming a straight line. "We just chatted about the plot written by Imagawa."

I'll tell Mochizuki about this when this relationship is completely over.

Chapter 514 The Two's Daily Life After Returning Home

The black sedan carrying the teenagers was stopped by its owner as it approached the apartment.

"We need to buy some things," Mochizuki Haruka said to the driver in the front seat, glancing at the shopping mall outside the car window.

"Let's leave it here."

Matsueda Jun opened the car door, and Mochizuki Haruka followed him out of the car—the girl liked to get out of the car with him, whether she was used to sticking to the boy's side or used to someone opening the car door for her, it was hard to tell.

The sound of a car driving away rang out behind them as they entered the supermarket. Mochizuki Haruka handed the boy her schoolbag containing her school uniform and then pushed a shopping cart from the doorway.

Mochizuki Haruka never uses a shopping basket at the supermarket; she always uses a trolley because carrying a basket is both unsightly and tiring.

"Is Mochizuki planning to cook today?" Jun Matsue asked casually.

"Hmm." The girl in the black dress nodded slightly. "We can't always have Songzhi cook, can we?"

The two headed straight for the fresh produce section. Jun Matsue watched the girl stroll leisurely in front of the vegetables, pondering what dinner would be like tonight.

"How about mushroom and scrambled egg rice for dinner?" Mochizuki Haruka asked, turning her head to him.

"No problem." The boy nodded.

So the girl walked skillfully to the shelf displaying mushrooms, glanced at them, and picked up a bag of king oyster mushrooms, a bag of shiitake mushrooms, and a bag of oyster mushrooms, all of which were the most beautiful of their kind—the young lady of the Mochizuki family only picked the freshest and prettiest vegetables when buying groceries, never looking at the price.

"Are the eggs at home almost gone?" she asked, turning around.

Jun Matsue recalled the scene when he opened the refrigerator this morning, "There were still three left."

"With pine branches around, there's no need for a memo."

The girl walked to the shelf displaying eggs, picked up two cartons of eggs, and put them in the cart.

Then came some seasoned vegetables, and Jun Matsue casually put a box of pork and chicken breast into the car—Mochizuki didn't like handling meat, so he had to pick out these things.

While queuing at the cashier, Mochizuki Haruka looked down and took out her phone. Matsueda Jun glanced at it and saw that she was actually memorizing vocabulary words.

"So diligent?" the boy asked in surprise.

"How can you get into Tokyo University if you don't study hard?" The girl glanced at him.

"...But you still need to learn to balance work and rest, right?"

So Mochizuki Haruka put down her phone and stared intently at the boy beside her who was helping her push the cart.

"What are you doing now?" Jun Matsueda touched his face.

"I'm relaxing my eyes." The girl's gaze swept over his face.

The boy couldn't help but smile, and Mochizuki Haruka followed suit with a smile. Her smile made the cashier lower her head as she bowed.

Returning to 507 with their spoils, Mochizuki Haruka took out mushrooms from the bag and headed to the kitchen, while Matsueda Jun was responsible for stuffing the rest of the items into the refrigerator.

When he walked into the kitchen with the eggs, the girl had already rinsed the rice and was about to put it into the rice cooker.

"Matsue likes to eat rice a little harder, right?" Mochizuki Haruka turned around to confirm.

She had tied her hair up in a ponytail and changed into a black and white checkered apron. Her usual aloof demeanor had faded considerably, and she looked obedient and virtuous.

"Hmm." Jun Matsue imagined how interesting it would be if the girl wore her maid's outfit.

"That's good." She nodded. "I added a little less water, so the rice should suit your taste."

Jun Matsue watched as the girl took out a kitchen knife and cut the oyster mushrooms into sections, and the shiitake and king oyster mushrooms into thin slices.

Her knife skills weren't very proficient, and her movements as she chopped vegetables were slow. This clumsiness made her, who was usually aloof, look especially adorable.

After chopping the ingredients, Mochizuki Haruka took out a small dish and poured in bonito flakes, light soy sauce, mirin, and white sugar to make a sauce for stir-frying.

Next, sesame oil was heated in a wok, and once hot, the mushrooms were added and stir-fried until fragrant, followed by the sauce. While waiting for them to cook through, the girl cracked open the eggs placed to the side and stirred the egg mixture in a bowl.