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V2 – Episode 26 – Halloween and Sweets
After successfully completing the mock exam ……
And a few days later, Friday.
The end of October.
From early in the morning, Yuzuru was tangled up with a couple of people.
“Yuzurun!　You have to give me some sweets!!”
“I’ll play a trick on you!　Gao!!”
He was attacked by Ayaka, who was dressed up as a vampire, and Chiharu, who wore fox ears and a tail.
In the setting, Chiharu may possibly be a werewolf man, as she says “Gao”. She’s a girl, though.
Of course, neither of them are full-fledged characters.
Ayaka is wearing a black cloak as a suspicious person would wear and a hairband that resembles bat wings, and Chiharu is wearing only decorative ears and a tail.
It’s a modest masquerade, but ……
I wonder if it’s okay according to school rules. Yuzuru tilted his head.
“Why don’t you just go to Soichiro’s side?”
Yuzuru suggested the name of the owner of the two.
If Soichiro knew about this behavior of the two of them, he would grab them by the scruff of the neck and take them away.
So presumably he hasn’t come to school yet or the two of them are just hiding from Soichiro.
” Soichiro-kun is allowed to play tricks on us.”
“It’s more like we want it. Oh, but it’s not good if Yuzuru-san does it.”
“Oh, I see. My bad”
I wonder if he’ll get stabbed to death someday.
Hurry up and do ‘Nice boat’. ( TN: ‘Nice Boat’ is a reference to an anime/dating sim called “School Days” which has a lot of gruesome bad endings. you can google it)
Yuzuru inwardly uttered a curse to Soichiro.
However, this is not the first time that Ayaka and Chiharu have behaved this way.
They have known each other for a long time.
So, he had prepared some snacks for them.
“Here, take the feed.”
Yuzuru threw a beautifully wrapped cookie from his bag.
The two of them caught it.
“Oh, that’s from a good place. That’s what I’m talking about, Yuzurun.”
“You’re a very attentive man, after all.”
They also took out some sweets from their bags.
It seems that Ayaka has madeleines and Chiharu has cupcakes.
Both are slightly yellow, probably because they have pumpkins in them for Halloween.
“It’s homemade.”
“Savor every bite.”
“Yes, yes.”
Receiving a homemade gift from a stranger makes one feel “hmmm”. But in this respect, Ayaka and Chiharu can be trusted.
They both seem to be good cooks, so the food is expected to taste good.
Well, the early morning event passed like this.
And lunchtime.
“Here, boys. I’ll give you this.”
Yuzuru and Soichiro were given a set of assorted sweets by Hijiri.
The sweets were not the fancy ones that Ayaka and Chiharu had given them.
It was more like a bag of commercially available snacks and chocolates.
However, the bags themselves are wrapped with pictures of pumpkins and bats and decorated with ribbons,……, making them very cute and feminine.
Unintentionally, Yuzuru and Soichiro looked at each other.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t prepared anything in return.”
“I didn’t think you were the type to do something like this.”
Yuzuru and Soichiro don’t give each other gifts for birthdays or Christmas because they say it’s too much trouble to prepare a gift in return.
And of course, Halloween.
They thought that Hijiri would be a similar type to them.
Rather, they didn’t expect this delinquent-looking man with bad behavior to be so fairytale-like and festive as to prepare Halloween candy.
Rather, the image is of the type that says, “You’re Japanese, but you’re crazy about Halloween, aren’t you? “
“No, I don’t want anything in return. It’s unpleasant. …… We give out candy every year on Halloween. Well,  It’s like sharing a bit of your fortune.”
Immediately, Yuzuru and Soichiro got the point.
An unimportant piece of knowledge appeared in their minds, “Yakuza give out candy on Halloween”.
“I see. …… By the way, are these chocolates or normal chocolates?　It’s not like it’s some kind of cryptic chocolate, is it?”
“There are no drugs in it, are there?”
“What do you people think of us?”
” “Yakuza.” “
Yuzuru and Soichiro answered together.
Now, after school.
When Yuzuru was leaving school, he was stopped by a girl.
“Wait, Takasegawa-kun.”
“Nagiri-san?”
A beautiful girl with black hair, a tall body, and a slender figure.
It was Tenka Nagiri.
She was carrying a beautifully wrapped cookie.
“Could it be ……?”
“Yes, Halloween. Ah, you don’t need to return the favor. I’m just handing them out to people I know so as not to be unfair.”
Yuzuru received a cookie from Tenka.
Apparently, it was a commercial product.
“It’s a commercial product. It doesn’t contain anything dangerous like Hijiri-kun’s.”
“That’s a relief.”
Of course, Hijiri’s sweets were also store-bought.
Yuzuru placed the cookies in his bag without going into details.
Then he asked Tenka.
“By the way, …… I’m very curious, is it doctrinally okay?　Halloween.”
“Even Chiharu-san is handing them out, right?　And she’s a human deity.”
“…… No, well, …… I think Uenishi is a special case because they are quite secular.”
Chiharu Uenishi.
Uenishi, also known as ” Jinzai”.
She is the heiress to a large shrine in the Kansai region.
It is an extremely unusual matrilineal inheritance family and has maintained a very unique faith since the time of Shinto.
Doctrinally, Chiharu is a human deity, and that is why she proudly walks through the middle of the torii gate.
That said, Uenishi is quite worldly.
Rather than earning money as a shrine, They earn more as the largest landowner in western Japan, and as the ruler of tourism, industry, and local politics in the Kansai region, and they are keen on running that side of the business.
Right now, they seem to be busier with “entertaining” foreigners than with rituals.
In fact, Nagiri is probably taking their “religion” more seriously.
(Well, I don’t know much about Uenishi’s situation, but ……)
In fact, Takasegawa and Uenishi used to be enemies.
About a hundred and fifty years ago, Takasegawa and Uenishi, who were the vanguard of the new government, had a major conflict.
Since then, no one from the Takasegawa family has been allowed to pass through the torii gate of Uenishi Shrine.
However, talks are now underway in the direction of improving relations.
This is the reason why Yuzuru and Chiharu are childhood friends.
At one point, there was even talk of an “engagement” between Yuzuru and Chiharu, so the relationship between the two is already good.
But so far, Yuzuru has never passed through the torii gate of Uenishi Shrine.
“Oh, and of course …… I definitely didn’t put any marijuana or anything in there, okay?”
“It’s a little suspicious when you insist like that.”
However, if she was really handing out marijuana-infused sweets, her house would have been destroyed long ago.
So it’s a joke.
….hopefully a joke.
“Why don’t you join us, Takasegawa-kun?　It’s a lot of fun.　”
“For starters, we’re protestants you know.”
It’s not modern Buddhism, but modern Protestantism, and he’s a member of it because of his association with it.
So there are no special feelings about it, and it’s not that he absolutely hates it. ……
But there is no point in converting.
“Oh, what a shame.”
It seems that Tenka was only joking, so the conversation ended there.
Yuzuru decided to eat Ayaka’s and Chiharu’s sweets, which seemed to be perishable, by the end of the day.
Then, on the way, a thought occurred to him.
(Will I be able to get something from Arisa tomorrow?)