It was just another loud cicada-cry filled day of the summer.
On the first through the third day of summer vacation, Yuuto, Kengo, Suehiko, and I spent our time in the biggest house of the four, Yuutoâs, blasting through our summer vacation homework.
Last summer vacationâs result after thinking âHey, Iâll just copy his homework on the last dayâ resulted in nothing but the four of us having a mountain of empty paper to turn in, and we were only able to fill half of it before we went back to school.
Of course, thatâs not the end of the story, and on the first day back, our teacher, Mr. Ogane said, âWhat? What is this? Are you mocking me with this crap? Huh? What the?â and cut us up into mince meat with cruel words and a face that would scare Frankensteinâs monster.
We turned pale and cold sweat emerged, and after spending quite a bit of time in that awkward situation, for one month I had to fight with all the printouts he gave me to grade.
Because of that, someone then said, âWhy donât we all just work together on the first day? If we do it on the last day, everything we studied is gone from our heads anyway!â and came up with a crazy plan, and after two days and nights of work we were able to finally put all that work away.
ăWhoohoo, wow, the sun is so yellow.ă
The bright light of the sun pierced through the windows and into our blinking eyes, as I tried avoiding passing out and stifling a yawn for the nth time.
I was on another personâs sofa, but, I didnât feel like sleeping much longer, and I wanted to get some of this tiredness out of me by bending my body back to get rid of all this fatigue.
Either way I was stuck here with my older than old friends, and we were friendly and formal with one another so we were able to put up with this all.
ăAhah hah hah, these two late nights really make you realize itâs summer vacation. I drank some, but you want some of my coffee, Kaito?ă
ăYuutoâsâŠyour coffee? Sorry, Iâm afraid I might catch some handsome virus from you, boy.ă
ăWhat? What the hell is a handsome virus?ă
He took the can of coffee and though he had been in the same scholastic battlefield as me, light uttered âPhew, a little tiredâ as I teased him for his handsomeness as usual,.
I always teased him about that, but this time we were so tired our reactions were more the usual. With all this power wasted on late nights, even a good-looking guy gets down.
ăKaito, no, itâs not handsome virus heâs got, but livinâ the life virus. Give me some of your essence, then I can finally get a girlfriend.ă
Then a voice like a zombie came from under the table out of that muscle head idiot Kengo.
ăWhat the hell is Yuuto essence? Thatâs disgusting, Kengo.ă
ăOkay, Iâll sell it to you for 1500 yen.ă
ăCould you not pay him for that, Kaito? And Kengo too. You donât have to work to get a girlfriend.ă
ăPhewwwâŠ.to have a girlfriend. Give ME ONE! I want a cute girl!ă
ăâŠif you have to say it, itâs impossible, right?ă
ăUgh.ă
ăAh, heâs dead.ă
Yuuto looked expressionless at Kengoâs death.
His soul had left him pale.
ăHey, how did Kengo die in the five minutes I was in the bathroom?ă
Clack, who entered and shut the sliding door was a guy with glasses and a glossy picture of a girl on his shirt, Suehiko.
ăHe died choking on his own desires. Too bad.ă
ăI see, I told him to just search for a two-dimensional girlfriend instead.ă
ăA girl you canât touch has no meaning!ă
ăInstead of a dirty, inferior third dimension, a forever-beautiful two-dimensional one is way better! I guess Iâd make an exception for a real life magic girl like Tilel⊠(from Shakugan no Shana?)ă
As he said this, Suehiko stretched out his shirt, and showed the emphasized face of his blond lolita with black butterfly wings.
ăBoth of you are perverts, itâs not even spring yet!ă
ăăShut up you sister-lovinâ perv!ăă
After a short breath, the reaction took a bit too long to be produced.
ăWho are you calling a sister-lover?!ăI said.
ăYou! Once when we went out on a mixed date with girls from Hoshi Girls school, you called your sister and said she asked to go and then left us in the middle with her!ă
ăWell, you were going to use a young girl like her in some perverted game, so since you were going after those other girls I had to say âI donât want Mai to figure out what youâre up toâ.ă
ăEven though we tried to get you with those girls you said âI have to take sis shoppingâ and left!ă
ăAnd when weâre not together at school, youâre usually always with your sister. You two are together too much.ă
ăUgh!ă
I was about to respond to the unexpected statement, but the anger made me stop my words.
ăLast yearâs Christmas present you couldnât choose between this or that, and then you go too far and get her a BRACELET?! Thatâs less of a present for a sister and more for a girlfriend!ă
ăNot you too, Yuuto?!ă
No, it was different. It was true that we were closer than most brothers and sisters, but there wasnât anything perverse about it.
Well, a sister a year younger than you is cute too, and if she brings home a boyfriend you want to beat the hell out of him.
ăI mean, Kaito, if we were to tell you to stop hanging around your sister, do you think you could do it before you could claim you had a girlfriend as a reason?ă
ăNo, I think she would understand. A child has the image of having a weak body, but since sheâs a bit mature sheâd expect it, right? I mean, even so, she really does like being around me, so sheâd cry if I were to leave her suddenlyâŠă
ăâŠitâs because you say stuff like that we think youâre after her.ă
ăHm? You said that so quietly, I couldnât hear what your were saying.ă
ăKaito understands whatâs going on. Even though he knows most of the answers to everything, for some reason he canât get a girlfriend.ă
ăWhat?ă
Along with me turning my neck, for some reason looking around I saw both Kengo and Suehiko turn their neck in confusion too.
ăWell, spring IS still far away.ă
ăăăWe donât like to be mocked by some guy living it up!!ăăă
I donât know why, but a sad feeling seemed to loom over us all, HEY!
ăItâs weird, thinking about it maybe we all didnât need to work on this, right? Iâm so sleepy, hey Suehiko, youâre way weaker than me and youâre still roaring to go.ă
ăWell, I donât dislike studying, so I donât have time to do anything else. And even more, an otaku like me is used to situations like this one.ă
ăHeh, why, your hair is everywhere and your face is pale, and youâve got a painfully nerdy t-shirt but you still look pretty cool!ă
ăKaito, come back to earth. I donât look cool at all.ă
Whoa, as soon as he said that, thump, Yuuto tapped my shoulder.
ăRemembering those reports aboutăWrite a huge report about how your parents or other people working around you put their heart into their work and the reason whyăand so on makes me sick.ă
ăWell, the contents back then in elementary school really were ăAsk your mom and dad about the work they doăand so on, right?ă
ăSuehiko, I donât who youâre talking about, but donât you think thatâs gross?ă
Suehiko pushed up his glasses with his pointer and middle finger and then responded with a laughless smile and a deep voice.
ăAnyway, weâre done for today. We canât do our final reports together anyway.ă
ăYeah, I need to get done with these anime that I let sit here these past two days too.ă
From hearing my words, we all grabbed our bags and packed up.
ăWell, I think Iâm going to make my report all up. I hate studying, but reports just make my blood boil.ă
ăNo, studying doesnât boil anything. And donât blame me if you get caught.ă
After that banter and getting all the packing done, we collected all the candy wrappers and all the empty energy drink containers.
The room was clean again, and we all left Yuutoâs house.
ăSee ya! Iâm going to sleep.ă
ăBye, Iâll call you during the break so we can go pick up girls with Yuuto again.ă
ăImpossible because he loves his girlfriend. Invite Suehiko.ă
ăAfter he destroyed my chance the first time I invited him, I decided never again.ă
ăI donât want to go either. I donât know whatâs fun about that at all.ă
ăAh, let me say I wonât go either as well. Mai will lecture me with tears falling from her eyes.ă
ăIâve heard too much of that from you.ă
We said our goodbyes, and waved as we left the house.
After leaving the house, I went the opposite way of the other two.
ăAh, today isâŠSunday!ă
After two late nights, I got back my sense of days by checking and seeing today was Sunday. On my cellphone was a picture of my younger sister.
Mai was good fooling around with computers so she messed with my phone and set her picture as my phoneâs wallpaper. No matter how much I changed my password, that picture would come up soon after, so I just gave up and left it.
Itâs true, I can be blamed for having a sister complex.
Iâd like to do something to change it sometime.
ăI should talk about my report with my daad. I canât let him get away without asking about it.ă
My father was pretty well known by the businesses around, as he ordered furniture and interior design items from overseas for them.
His routine work was pretty much going overseas on business trips, and if I asked him he would probably have one or two good stories.
While listening to the sound of the cicadas descend on me, I walked the asphalt thinking about nonsense while feeling how hot today would become.
As I looked up there were the usual cumulonimbus clouds of summer flowing through the sky on this sunny day.
â
During the middle of my trip, we found a beautiful river to rest by as noon arrived.
Then, I now spread out a place away from the river in preparation for lunch. Well, Minnalis and Shuria did most of the cooking, so I just made sure that they didnât burn the pot by stirring every once in a while until the food was done.
Minnalis and Shuria werenât around. They must be playing around with water behind the wood blind.
Maybe because I was alone, I just looked up in the sky, and remembered the last day of summer vacation.
ăâŠback then, what did father tell me?ă
It was a day that was pretty much unrecognizable.
I had just wasted the day, and I really shouldnât have remembered it, but it was a day that made you laugh and rememberăthat happened too, huh?ă
However, that unchanging blue sky, somehow reminded me of it all.
That sky almost seemed to be multi-layered.
ăAh, yeah, ăHave trust in the value of things.ăă
ăWhat did you say?ă
Minnalis asked me.
It seems that they were done playing in the water, as they both had shimmering hair still wet with the water.
ăNothing, are you going to make lunch?ă
They shrugged, and got the pot and food ready as they sat, ready to help.
ăAh, Kaito-sama, I donât want a lot of vegetables.ă
ăNo, Shuria, you canât have everything your way.ă
Minnalis chided Shuria.
ăYeah, Minnalis is right. Iâll put a little more meat in for you, so just bear it.ă
ăGood! Thank you Kaito-sama, can I give you a kiss?ă
ăDonât go too, FAR!ă
ăOw! That hurt!ă
She was messing around trying to kiss me so I flicked her forehead with a bit of power for a forehead flick.
We were used to travelling, so Shuria started acting like a child like she usually did when we were on the trail we blazed.
It was mean, but the flirtatious manner of approaching me somehow reminded me of the family dog.
Somehow, it felt like punishing a dog the way I reacted to her.
ăStop messing around, after coming this far Dartlas isnât that far away. If we get there quickly than we can get a good place to stay.ă
ăUnderstood, master.ă
ăRoger!ă
At this pace weâd be in Dartlas again soon.
And, thatâs where Grond lived.
Ah, his last moment, I wonder how he felt.
Thinking about regrets, grief, envy.
Whatever it was, the last thing he saw wasâŠ
âŠcomplete anguish, and the depths of despair.
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