“W-why do I have to be the one to leave?! This is my place!”
“Stubborn people like you need to be punished! Go out and cool your head! Don’t come back for a while!” yelled Aria, swinging her fists in the air and displaying that cat-like tooth.
I’m not really sure what just took place, but I was driven out of my own home. I went to the convenience store and looked through a comic strip magazine with a scowl on my face, but then I figured I couldn’t just stand there reading without purchasing anything, so I bought the issue before heading back home. It was, indeed, my home. Yet I softly opened the door and stepped inside as if I were a burglar.
Oh? I don’t sense Aria’s presence.
I looked around the living room and the kitchen, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Thank heavens. God hasn’t forsaken me, after all. I’m not sure what happened, but it looks like she left.
I breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the lavatory to wash my hands, seeing as how I just came back from being outside.
That’s when I hear a splash of water coming from the bathroom. Upon investigating, I noticed through the opaque glass door that the light was on in the bathroom. I could slightly make out the small silhouette of a person with their legs sticking out of the bathtub, humming a song. So that’s it. She was taking a bath.
…What?!
…Taking a bath?!
I took a step backwards.
I get it. She got rid of me because she wanted to take a bath.
Nervously looking downwards, I saw Aria’s uniform placed in a plastic laundry basket. In her skirt, which had been turned inside out, were the holsters she kept concealed there and the pistols were sticking out of them.
Additionally, two short Japanese swords were jutting out from under her white blouse, which was also turned inside out. I hear the sound of the silhouette, or rather, Aria I should say, getting out of the bathtub and thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.
Impossible. This can’t be happening.
Already in a state of panic, I was further distressed by another sound.
Ding-dong.
It was the horrible chime of the doorbell.
T-This way of ringing the doorbell…Shirayuki?!
“Whoaaaa?!” As I ran out into the hallway, I stumbled over my own feet and slammed into the wall.
“Ki-kin-chan, what happened? Are you all right?” came Shirayuki’s voice from behind the door.
Uh-oh. She heard that noise just now. I can’t pretend I’m not here anymore.
“Y-yeah, I’m fine.”
Assuming an air of composure, I opened the door. Shirayuki was dressed in her shrine maiden garb consisting of a crimson hakama and white kosode. She was also carrying some sort of bundle in her hands.
“W-What are you dressed like that for?” I asked abruptly, with my eyes periodically darting back towards the bathroom.
“Oh, this? You see, I was running late because of class, but I wanted to make you dinner and deliver it to you as soon as possible, so I came here without changing first… I-If it bothers you, I can go get changed and come back.”
“No, that’s all right.”
I stopped Shirayuki right where she was because from the looks of her, she really would get changed and come back. The class she was talking about was probably SSR. SSR was short for Supernatural Searching Research, an extremely suspicious specialized course to study those with psychic abilities. I didn't know the details of the course, nor did I want to know, but apparently this shrine maiden was a model student in that area as well. But now wasn’t the time to be worrying about that. Currently, a supernatural phenomenon was taking place in my home.
“Say, Kin-chan. You know that e-mail notification that was sent out this morning about the bicycle-bombing incident? Were you…the person involved in that by any chance?”
“Y-yeah. That was me.” I mumbled the words very quickly, but when Shirayuki heard this she literally jumped up ten inches into the air.
“A-Are you okay?! Were you hurt?! Let me treat your wounds!”
“I’m fine. Don’t touch me.”
“O-Okay…. But I’m glad you’re safe. Nevertheless, the culprit is unforgivable for targeting you like that. I’m going to rip whoever did this to shreds and bury the person in concr…I mean, arrest him!” I had a feeling I heard an odd word surface in the declaration she just made, but I must have been hearing things. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that.
“Don’t worry about it. Shootouts are an everyday occurrence here, aren’t they? This conversation is over.”
“O-Okay. Um…sure.” Shirayuki looked as if she still had more to say, but nodded her head.
I wish a certain twin-pigtailed girl would take an example from Shirayuki and be a bit more compliant.
“…But…um…it feels like there’s something…different about you tonight, Kin-chan.”
“D-Different? In what way?”
“You seem to be a bit more distant than usual…”
Uh-oh. Why is this girl so perceptive?
“I-It’s just your imagination! More importantly, tell me why you’re here! What did you come for?”
What I really need to be doing is getting rid of her ASAP. If Aria comes out into the hallway with nothing but a bath towel wrapped around her, things are gonna get ugly.
“U-Um, I wanted to give you this.” Fidgeting, Shirayuki handed me the bundle she was carrying. “I made rice with bamboo sprouts for dinner. They’re in season now…and starting tomorrow I’m going to be training at Mount Osore, so I won’t be able to make you any meals for a while…”
“O-Oh. Thanks a lot. Well, that’s all you came here for, right? You should hurry on home, now. Okay?”
I accepted the bundle and Shirayuki smiled cheerfully. Her cheeks also took on a cherry-color.
“T-To think I made you two meals in one day, i-it’s almost like I’m your wife. Oh, what am I saying? Ha ha. I’m so weird. W-What do you think…Kin-chan?”
“I know, I know! I know, so please Shirayuki get going!”
“‘You know?’ K-Kin-chan, a-are you saying that…I’m like your w-wi…” In response to my reply, which I had not even given much thought, Shirayuki went into a panic and looked at me with her face brimming with emotion. …Splash.
Like an old pond…
From the bathroom…
The sound of water.
Inside my chest, my heart jumped and found a new home somewhere near my shoulder.
“Hm? Do you have company?”
“No, there’s no one here but me!” I pushed her along with an arm thrust like a professional sumo wrestler.
“…Kin-chan. Are you hiding something from me?” For some reason, the light vanished from Shirayuki’s eyes and her face became utterly expressionless.
“No! Of course not! I’m not hiding Aria-! I mean anything!”
“…I see. That’s good.” Shirayuki put on a smile as refreshing as a spring breeze and finally turned to leave.
T-thank God. That takes care of “Scylla.” Going back into the apartment, I set the bamboo sprout rice aside and ran into the bathroom.
No time to lose. Now I gotta do something about “Charybdis.”
Considering Aria’s violent nature, if she found out that I came back while she was taking a bath, there was a good chance she’d mercilessly come after me with her guns blazing. I had to take away her pistols and swords. With this single thought in my head, I kneeled down in front of the laundry basket and plunged my hand inside. And at that very instant, Miss Aria opened the door wide from the bathing section.
“……!”
There was a long silence as we stared into each other’s eyes, and that pleasant scent of gardenias wafted into the bathroom. Aria, with her twin pigtails untied and long hair flowing down around her completely adolescent body, uttered a single word.
“P-Pervert…” she said as she covered her breasts with her right arm and her lower half with her left. The goose bumps became visible on her body when she saw my hands buried in her clothes.
“I-It’s not what you think!” I stood up and presented the weapons gripped in my hand to prove my innocence.
Doing so was a mistake.
Being the nervous wreck that I was, I didn’t realize that there was a piece of cloth-like material caught on each of the two swords in my hands. One was dangling from the right sword, and the other was dangling from the left sword. I stood there hoisting Aria’s bra and panties as if they were hand flags, each decorated with a childish pattern of symbols from a deck of cards.
“DIE!!!!”
“Uwaah!”
Aria lunged at me before I had a chance to go into hysteria mode and kicked me at an angle that sent me flying backwards with my arms and legs out in front of me. She retrieved her undergarments, but I desperately held onto her weapons. “You really need to die, you pervert!!” Aria finished by using her other leg to land a flying knee strike in my face. I think my head caved in about ten inches.
Lord.
I just have one question.
What did I ever do? Why did I have to go through this?
One more question. What’s the name of this erotic game my life has turned into?
On second thought, I guess this really isn’t the time to be asking such nonsensical questions.
“Cross this line and you’re dead.”
That’s what was written next to the line which was scribbled on the floor I was looking at from the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. That was obviously written with a marker—a permanent maker.
I looked up reproachfully at the second bunk bed on the other side of the room where a single pigtail was hanging down from the top bunk.