As I spoke, I unfriended him on EPEX.
“Well, Seeker’s real face was leaked on the net, and it was, without a doubt, the face of a real dog.”
“Ah, no, that was a fake.”
“Is that so? What makes you so confident about that?”
“Er… Well… Um…”
My cursor paused on the screen, hovering above the UNFRIEND button on Wizcode.
Looking for a suitable excuse, I cast my gaze downward.
The time displayed on the bottom right corner of my screen read NINE PM.
“Oops, look at the time. I have to go and make dinner.”
“Dodging the issue, eh?”
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m the type who prefers to cook my own meals at home.”
“Hmm, hmm. I can’t see how I’ll get any sleep tonight, after you’ve displayed such highly suspicious behavior…”
“Just put ‘Laughter at the Bottom of the Ocean’ on endless repeat; that’ll sort ya. Okay, bye!”
I forcefully ended the conversation and quit the chat. Zeke seemed like he still had stuff he wanted to say, but if I had let him continue, I had the feeling I’d end up saying something I shouldn’t.
But of course, I felt bad, so I re-followed him on Twoitter and friended him again on EPEX. Now we were even.
All right, I seemed to have gotten out of that one. I took a deep breath, turned off my computer, and stood up.
Leaving my room, I headed to the kitchen. Opening the cupboard above the sink, I grabbed a container of instant ramen from the precarious stack, ripped off the plastic with a practiced hand, and poured in boiling water from the electric kettle. Bon appétit.
What was that I said about preferring to cook for myself? Indeed, I do. I mean, it’s far better than eating junk food or convenience store food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s healthier. People who don’t cook for themselves are total idiots, if you want my opinion. Yet…
(Such a hassle! I don’t wanna!)
Yes, I prefer to cook for myself, but that’s not to say that I actually DO it. People don’t always do the things they believe to be best, after all.
Besides, even if you do want to cook, ingredients alone are quite expensive these days. A healthy diet is a luxury. Such is the world we live in now.
After preparing instant ramen for two, I grabbed two pairs of cheap blue-and-pink plastic chopsticks and hurriedly headed for the room next to mine.
“Time to eat.”
I called out, then opened the door. Now, some might say it’s not right to open the door before receiving a response, but those people don’t know us. For us, this was a totally standard operating procedure.
The room was pitch-black inside. Even though I had just entered, there was no movement from anyone within.
I flipped on the lights to reveal the room in a terrible state. Clothes lying all over the place, mail-order cardboard boxes just discarded after being opened. It looked as if the room had been raided by burglars. But I did not panic at the sight.
After all, this was par for the course. This was the way this room was supposed to be. Honestly, if I had walked in to find it neat and tidy, then I’d start to worry that some sort of incident had occurred.
“You couldn’t hear me again, could you? Far too absorbed, I keep telling you.”
In the seemingly uninhabited room, I sighed and made my way to the closet with a practiced step.
“…Whoa!”
The very moment I opened the closet, a fog of muggy air came wafting out, and I reeled backward.
“I have no idea how you can stand being cooped up in there for such long periods of time.”
“Mmm… What do you want, Gak?”
A sleepy voice, only perceptible if one strained their ears.
The creature that slowly turned around, emanating an aura of weakness akin to a dried-out jellyfish, with no signs of vitality at all, was a young girl.
Without a visit to the beauty salon in well over a year, her hair was left to grow long. It was an odd silver shade… But no, that was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Still, it seemed to have undergone some sort of chemical change. It hadn’t been exposed to sunlight in a while and was only washed once every three days. In the dim darkness of the closet, it seemed to sparkle in an eerie way.
She wore a loose, baggy T-shirt that came down to her thighs. She clearly had no pants on. No doubt she only had underwear on underneath.
The only thing truly beautiful about her was her face. From my subjective point of view, I felt qualified to make that assessment. But her bangs were so long that they obscured her eyes and nose, making her features difficult to discern. If someone who didn’t know about her pretty face saw her, they’d just assume she was ugly, and you could hardly blame them.
“Dinner, Shiika.”
“…Pork bone broth?”
“One of them is. The other’s chili tomato flavor. You can have whichever one you prefer.”
“I don’t like spicy food.”
As she spoke, my little sister, Shiika Ikebukuro, snatched the container of pork bone broth noodles from my hand.
She peeled off the weakened sticker that held the lid down and frowned for a moment when the hot steam hit her face, then…
“Time to eat… Mm, that’s good.”
“It hasn’t been three minutes yet.”
“I like my noodles firm.”
“It’s instant ramen; they all turn out the same.”
Sighing, I peered into the closet.
A closed-off space, devoid of air-conditioning.
This space, built specifically to store clothes, was obviously not being used for its intended purposes.
A desk and a PC. A condenser microphone, an audio interface, headphones, and sound-absorbing material to prevent reverb.
The desktop’s wallpaper was an illustration of a beautiful female character with a steel harness on her head.
“Were you recording?”
“No. I’ve been editing.”
“I see.”
“Yeah.”
“My friend raved about the last video.”
“‘Laughter at the Bottom of the Ocean’?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I see. So he likes blue. Poor guy.”