Chapter 9: Vol 1 Chapter 2.1

Mission 2

“Kuahh….. ‘m tired”

While yawning, Yata pulled his slippers out of the shoe rack and glanced into it for a second time. Something was sticking in one of the slippers. It looked like a piece of paper folded four times. “What’s that, a written challenge? Wonderful, they’ll get their asses handed to them again.”

Boasting to nobody in particular, his voice had gotten excited.

On the edge of the folded paper there was a decorative pink ribbon visible. H- hey, hey, isn’t something like this put into the shoe rack something that only exists in manga nowadays……?

Yata promptly looked around. Students were walking here and there while sleepily exchanging greetings, but there was nobody who looked in his direction.

He opened the slip of paper by holding it’s edges with two fingers. On paper with a fancy pattern was a short paragraph written in roundish letters. This definitely didn’t look like a written challenge.

Yata Misaki-sama

Couldn’t we go watch the night view together today?

Aya

N-…..no way, is this really that thing this thing could be!? Yata’s heartbeat rose and the moment he jerked he loudly crashed into the shoe rack on the opposite side. Yata hurriedly shoved the letter into his pocket because people who were startled by the sound had turned around.

He ran through the hall while paying attention to his surroundings, looking like he had just drawn a lot of money from the bank. The moment he had leapt into the classroom he grabbed the door and stopped sharply. He immediately entered through the front door, let his bag fall on the desk in the front of the first row closest to the corridor and sat down backwards on the chair. Although this was not Yata’s seat, Fushimi’s was the second one from the front in this row. Fushimi who was resting his chin on his hand, using his PDA with a bored look on his face lifted his eyes slightly. Yata cleared his throat.

“Ah, Fushimi. There’s something I’d like to show you.”

With this overdone preface he pushed the letter against Fushimi’s stomach. The letter crumpled while doing this and when Yata noticed he felt a bit remorse.

“Don’t give me garbage.”

“It’s not garbage! It was stuffed in my shoe box.”

“Ah. A letter of misfortune.”

“N-no! If you look at it you’ll see, it’s a lov-”

He had started to talk with a loud voice but abruptly choked down that word. He put his elbows on the desk and when he brought his face close to Fushimi, Fushimi frowned and took the letter out of Yata’s hands.

“It’s a lo-love letter, no matter how you look at it…”

When Yata tried to say it his stomach fluttered and made him twist, and Fushimi looked at him with a cold glare, opened the letter in front of his torso and skimmed over it from left to right.

"Who’s Aya?”

“Keep your voice down! She isn’t in our class so she should be in a different one.”

“Hhn.” Because Fushimi carelessly put the letter on the desk Yata hurriedly took it in his custody. “Don’t let it just lie there!”

Hanayama, the actual owner of the seat Yata remained sitting on had a look on his face as if he was about to say something to make Yata leave. When Yata stared at him with defiant eyes Hanayama looked away and approached the seat the former friends of the Yata-team were gathered at.

“So, what should I do? Should I go?”

When Yata returned to their conversation and asked a bit fidgety, Fushimi who was already working with his PDA again with an I-don’t-care expression reacted in an unusually surprised way and raised his eyes.

“Ha? You’re the one they invited, why’re you asking me?”

“Because I haven’t really ever gone out with a girl and I wouldn’t really know what to do.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“So you wouldn’t go, Fushimi?”

“There’s no way I’d go.”

Declared Fushimi sharply and returned his eyes to his PDA. The hard light reflected on his glasses emphasized the cold impression he gave. Yata stared at Fushimi’s pale forehead with a disgruntled face for a bit but then he crumbled the letter into a ball and shoved it into his pocket.

“Then I won’t go.”

“Why. What if you’d go? Weren’t you in high spirits just now.”

“I-I wasn’t? A-and it’s not like I actually wanted a love letter? And sometimes hanging out with guys is more interesting than with girls?”

“Though you don’t have anybody to hang out with.”

“Y-” you hang out with me, don’t you…… Yata scowled with an unsatisfied feeling but he was aware that Fushimi put a limit on such words, and as if to efface what Yata was about to say Fushimi didn’t look up from his PDA.

†

Even though he said this, Yata couldn’t help but have the letter’s sender on his mind and because he had nobody to talk about it he was fidgety all day long. School however ended without a sign of the sender getting in contact with him. If Yata would be honest he’d admit that he was disappointed after all. Maybe he had just been made fun of, he wondered…….

This week’s cleaning duty was to clean the entrance. When Yata was pretending to play ice hockey with the broom while cleaning the concrete in the most careless way possible, he spotted Fushimi’s person carrying his school bag on his shoulder and on his ways home.

“Ah, Fushimi, wait a sec! Let’s go home together. I’m done in a minute. No, thirty seconds. Hey, let’s go someplace on the way. I’ll show you my old town, Shizume City.”

While swinging the broom sloppily from left to right in a way that totally didn’t give of the impression of cleaning, Yata approached Fushimi who was changing into his shoes in front of the shoe rack. He swore he didn’t do it on purpose but Yata sent Fushimi’s shoes that were right next to him flying with the broom, and from Fushimi who was squatting down rose an irked aura. Because he had made him angry again Yata drew back his head. “Uah, sorry…..”

“Micha~kibyun”

When he thought he heard the voice of a high-tension girl who sounded like she’d make a heart with her hands sway over from behind his back, he was grabbed by something soft.

“Uwaaaaah!”

With a shout Yata pushed away the girl and grabbed onto Fushimi without thinking.

“Ukyu”, uttered the girl in a sweet voice.

“So- sorr….uwaaahh-”

Because she had fallen down on her butt Yata could see under her skirt and his apology got interrupted by another shout.

“Ah, even if you saw it that’s, like, okay. Because I’m wearing hot pants. See.”

With that the girl, while still on the floor, lifted her skirt and showed what was under it. From short pants that bulged out like a pumpkin’s shape were her slender thighs visible. For Yata to see under a skirt was enough already and if it was underwear or hot pants didn’t make a difference. He yelled for a third time and hid behind Fushimi’s back.

“Annoying…” Tedious, Fushimi shoved him back but while Yata continued to let out a shriek, he grabbed onto Fushimi’s elbow as if to shield himself.

„Michakibyu~n’s, like, naive, right?“

When the girl hopped once and rose to her feet, long bunny-like ears swayed with her. Thinking about it they were decorations that resembled bunny ears attached to the rucksack on her back. Because for the time being her panties weren’t visible anymore Yata appeared timidly from behind Fushimi.

“I’m, like, sorry that I’m late. I was in the school infirmary the whole day so I, like, wasn’t able to meet you.”

Despite having been in the infirmary she looked like she was bursting with energy. Even with girls in his class Yata was rather on the short site and that frustrated him everyday (From now on his plan was to welcome the growth spurt and quickly grow taller!) but this girl was even in Yata’s eyes much shorter. The image of her with her hair tied to pigtails and the straps of her pink checked backpack in both hands certainly made her look like a child, and despite wearing Himuka middle school’s uniform she could pass off as an elementary school student with no problem. The girl saluted cheerfully and introduced herself.

“I’m, like, Oogai Aya."

Wasn’t her way of talking kinda weird?, thought Yata but more important than complaining about this girl’s speech pattern was to mention that he did not know her.

"Oogai…..”

he didn’t know if it was to match her name, but the decorative bow on her hair ties looked exactly like shells. (1)

“…Aya”

the same name like the letter’s sender.

“Have you, like, seen the letter?”

“Le- leleleletter? Geez, I wo-wonder what tha-that was, nah, Fushimi? Tha-that is, aren’t we goin’ home-”

Because Fushimi had quickly put on his shoes and coldheartedly started to walk away Yata grabbed him by his arm.

“Eh, so you, like, haven’t seen it?”

The girl that had introduced herself as Aya put on a shocked expression. Her big pupils trembled and because she slowly started to tear up Yata got into a panic.

“Ah? Ah-ah-ah- the letter, you meant that? Ah, ahh, I saw it?”

“Then today, you’ll go together with me, right?”

“Ah-no, no no today Fushimi and I planned to spend time together. I already promised, so… I’m sorry though.”

“We didn’t plan that, though.”

“B-but we did? We did, right?”

Drawing closer Yata pinched Fushimi’s elbow.

Aya’s eyes shifted to Fushimi’s face. Both their pupils narrowed and their expressions turned cold.

“Saruhiko. Why have you, like, lately dropped from the jcube ranking?”

Yata was surprised and checked Fushimi’s and Aya’s faces.

“What, you two know each other? You schould’ve told me this morning, y’know.”

“I didn’t remember anymore. This one’s name, that is.”

To Fushimi’s cold answer Aya retorted in a sharp way.

"Did you quit because it was scary for you to be, like, losing to Aya?”

“I stopped only because I had become bored of it.”

“Quitting is just like you, but then why did you when you, like, fought against Aya for the last time not strip Aya off everything she has? Somebody who wins and then runs away is a coward.”

Annoying, cursed Fushimi quietly. Right now too he clearly gave off an aura of wanting to walk away quickly.

“Hm. Well, whatever. Regarding Aya then there’s something she’s more interested in than jcube right now.”

Aya twisted her body and took her PDA out from the side pocket of her backpack. A spiral-like cord tied to her backpack jumped up. On her PDA she had a bunny mascot strap, that is, her PDA had three of such stuffed animals hanging down from it. Aya turned towards the boys and showed them the screen in which an avatar looking much like a bunny was walking around. So that was Aya’s avatar. It was totally different from Fushimi’s impersonal avatar that hadn’t been edited at all, and was customized with unique items. The scenery was probably from a fantasy RPG and the interior reminded of „The Adventurer’s Bar“(2). Next to Aya’s bunny there were other adventurer avatars loitering around. Assuming this was an underground shop buried right under a big tree, there were entangled roots crawling along the walls. From under an avatar who was at the counter and looked like the bar’s master popped speech bubbles up.

[shell-san’s current active mission

>capture the Kappa(3) that lives in hiding in the abandoned factory

>create a mystery circle     2nd time

>get in contact with the mysterious individual who travels in the blimp

>see more]

This looked kinda interesting. Yata whose interest had been woken brought his face closer to the screen.

“Capture the Kappa?”

“You can forget, like, about the Kappa. Look at the third line.”

“The third……..the blimp…….?”

“Exactly. Aya’ll go get on the blimp. According to Aya’s calculations, the blimp should, like, pass through Shizume City’s sky tonight. We will ambush it there.”

“‘We’….you mean us? Can’t you go with your g-girlfriends?”

Because Yata’s face was close to Aya’s, he blushed and while putting distance between them he purposely said that in a blunt way. Just in that moment,

plop,

with a sound effect like a bubble rising to the surface appeared in the middle of the screen a new speech bubble. It was a different bubble than from the conversation with the bar’s master. Yata immediately knew that it was a notification from jungle’s group chat and bad memories swept in his heart.

[Can’t Aya just die already.]

He hadn’t planned to read it but his gaze fell on it and the message’s content startled him. Following the first speech bubble, plop, another one appeared. Plop. Plop. Plop. They multiplied like bubbles bursting.

[She’s making her middle school debut. In her elementary school graduation picture she looked super plain lol]

[But isn’t her character totally wrong for a debut?]

[Her way to talk. If she does that because she thinks that it’s cute than that just hurts.]

[Ouch!]

[She so embarrassing I can’t walk together with her.]

[I really want her to die.]

“…..Michakibyun? Is something wrong?”

Because Yata was completely absorbed and staring at the screen, Aya wondered about it and right after she had turned the PDA to herself, her face stiffened.

Plop. Plop. Plop plop plop plop…….the small notification sound continued. The speech bubbles quickly multiplied.

“You……that…..”

With his own experience heavy on his mind Yata could feel his body become terribly cold. Even though he did not want to, he paid attention to the PDA, and before he knew he himself was being badmouthed, mocked——

“….Hmph.”

Aya suddenly turned defiant, threw her head back and showed the other two her PDA once more. By now the screen was buried in all sorts of negative phrases so that it made one feel sick.

“This isn’t, like, the first time. Aya noticed it over two weeks ago.”

Over two weeks….then it should’ve been at the same time Yata had seen the message exchange from the former Yata-team members on his PDA.

“They are the girls I had formed a group with right after entering school. Aya had the same looks, the same belongings, the same speech pattern, they, like, make me feel sick, those stupid women. They are the ones who are embarrassing! It’s Aya who can’t walk together with them.”

Surprisingly for her immature looks she could talk a lot and with a sharp tongue. But the corners of her mouth were trembling.

“They, like, also have the plan to do the blimp mission. But Aya wasn’t invited by them. So we’ll get a head start. So we’ll go capture the blimp together, right?”

When Aya said that Yata couldn’t find a reason to decline anymore.

———

Oogai (大貝) means “big shell”

from the video game Dragon Quest X

Kappa, a japanese mythical creature, associated with water

On Aya’s speech pattern: she ends her sentences with なんです/んです (nandesu/ndesu) which really doesn’t translate but usually puts emphasis on what was said; on top of that she talks about herself in third person