Roll was momentarily stunned by the sheer amount of personal information being divulged to her. Listening to Meiru listen to her friends was one thing, but there were only two people in the world who talked to Roll like this, one-on-one. (Well, one person and one Navi.) For a moment, she had no idea what to say.
“Should I talk to him?” Rockman asked. “He knows I’m here, and all.”
“Maybe? But…” Netto had said it all to her. That meant something, didn’t it?
While she was pondering the enormity of the messages in front of her, Rockman wrote,
[MSG: ] I don’t think my Netto-kun thinks of you as a ‘good soldier’, exactly…
[MSG: ] After you two met up in your apartment, I don’t think I ever heard anything like that from him.
(If anything, Netto-kun was the one who was too much of a 'good soldier', or who at least pretended to be. It felt strange to see Netto-san refer to himself that way.)
That brought to Rockman’s mind the strangeness with Rockman-san in the computer, and how rapidly things had fallen apart afterward. They’d talked to Rockman-san after that, but they’d never set the record straight with Netto-san. It felt like a major oversight, now.
In the meantime, though, Roll was carefully feeling a message of her own out.
[MSG: ] It… isn’t the tournament that Meiru-chan feels she can’t talk to you over, really. This started a long time ago, now.
Though it certainly hadn’t helped his case any. But Netto was clearly remorseful about it all, even when Roll was fairly certain half of that ‘crazy’ behavior hadn’t entirely been his fault. And if he'd just been preoccupied the times before, that explained a lot...
So she continued,
[MSG: ] But at the same time, that was all a long time ago, right?
[MSG: ] Meiru-chan’s making her own path toward moving on and setting things right, after what happened because of the rescue mission. So maybe we shouldn’t feel all awkward around you anymore, either.
[MSG: ] You seem really different from our Netto, but that’s not a problem for Meiru-chan with Netto-chan or Netto-ko. So it shouldn’t be a problem with Meiru-chan and you!
Really, the things that felt strangest to Roll were nothing to do with her and Meiru personally any longer—the way he’d made Mel feel, the way Netto-chan didn’t want anything to do with him.
[MSG: ] …Though, a lot of our friends seem ill-at-ease around you, too. So I wonder if she just feels as if she’s picked a side, by being friends with Netto-chan and Mel-chan…
She was still typing, this time about Netto’s opening line, when she noticed that the piano music had stopped. Meiru was probably getting herself a cup of tea, getting ready to settle in for the evening…
[MSG: ] Wanna see if Meiru-chan wants to talk about it? She just finished her piano practice for the night. ( ܸ.ˬ.ܸ)
(Roll figured it was better for Netto to ask than for Meiru to walk back in and discover she’d gone and messaged him on a whim. That was kinda weird.)