Translator: Nefarian
「What’s wrong Natsuno-kun?」
「I’m worried」
「About?」
「No matter how you see it, this only occurs after someone eats it.」
「Yeah, I think so too. Specifically, one person’s portion is gone and they even used the wooden chopsticks」
Aoba answers and the wooden chopsticks… that were split up were broken off badly and was of different lengths.
「So I heard from the waitress that this kind of thing happens “quite often recently”. But this is a tourist destination, don’t you think it’s weird?」
「I see, nearly all of the guests here are only staying at the inn briefly.」
「Yes, it’s hard to say just how long each guest stays in the inn, but normally tourist don’t stay over for such a lengthy period.」
「That’s true, I also thought the same.」
「Even though this has occurred for quite the long period, they still haven’t searched for the culprit. Furthermore, there hasn’t been anyone in particular that declared they hold a grudge against this inn.」
「Indeed….. This is a little mysterious. Natsuno-kun, are you bothered by it?」
「Yeah.」
Taiyou nodded.
Normally, this kind of thing is not something he would be concerned about, but for some reason this caught his attention.
Even if you asked him the reason for it, he wouldn’t be able to answer very well. Still, even though that may be, he was interested in how the food was eaten.
「I understand, then let’s look for the culprit.」
「Eh?」
「You’re bothered by it right?」
「That’s true but…」
「Then let’s look for them.」
Aoba was being proactive and Taiyou agreed to her suggestion.
Though he’s started to feel this way for the past several days now, he felt like Aoba was much more cheerful in mood than when she first met him. She barely gets angry or depressed and differing from the first impression he had of her, she was actually a very lively and beautiful girl.
「Though in saying this, how are we going to find the culprit? I don’t think that they would purposefully leave breadcrumbs or footprints pointing to where they were hiding…」
「That’s true.」
The two of them looked around their surroundings and found that there weren"t any easy clues.
「Then let’s start by gathering information, perhaps we may be able to understand somethings after.」
「Alright, I guess it’s better than doing nothing.」
「There’s no need to do that desuyo~」
When the two of them were about to walk away, Hera showed up from thin air. It’s been awhile since she last appeared so Taiyou went “Ohh” as he saw her.
「You were here?」
「That’s so mean of you desu~!」
Hera pushed up both her hands as she protested.
「Ahh my bad, it’s cause I couldn’t see you all this time, so I a.s.sumed that you were staying back at home.」
「I wouldn’t do such a thing. Besides, even if I was at home, Taiyou-chan and I are barrier-free nanodesu. No matter where Taiyou-chan is, I can immediately appear before him.」
「I remember you telling me that before.」
「Yes nanodesu, I exist for Taiyou-chan desu~」
“I’ve also heard that before” he didn’t say this thought out loud and instead asked about the first thing she said when she appeared.
「What do you mean when you said that “there’s no need”?」
「I know who the culprit is desuyo. I saw them after all.」
「Over here nanodesu.」
Being led by Hera, both Taiyou and Aoba arrived to this particular building. It was a building that was about 10 minutes away from the establishment and it seemed to be deserted. Completely different from the j.a.panese style inn they were in before, this building had its own atmosphere. It was like a house that someone lived in before but is now gone from this place, or the kind of place that kids made into their secret bas.e.m.e.nt, or the type of place to be used as a test of courage by the neighborhood kids in a summer night, the building had that kind of atmosphere.
「Is the culprit in here?」
「Yes desu.」
「Na-Natsuno-kun…..」
Aoba who was very high-spirited moments ago was now tightly grabbing on to the cuff of Taiyou’s clothes. Her voice was trembling and it was obvious that she was frightened because of the atmosphere. It was the same way she reacted when the typhoon occurred just yesterday, but could it be that she was also afraid of the dark? Is what Taiyou thought to himself.
Seeing her like this, Taiyou naturally moved in to tightly hold on to her hand.
「I’m holding your hand, so it’s okay」
「Un…… Thank you.」
Aoba nods and squeezes back in return. After putting it to his mind that his top priority was to defend her if something were to happen, they both set foot inside of the building.
「Taiyou-chan, Taiyou-chan~」
「What is it?」
「Please wait here for a moment desu.」
Why? Just when he wanted to ask her this, Hera already flew inside of the building. He didn’t understand the reason but he had no choice but to reluctantly wait there.
Before a minute pa.s.ses, Hera had already warped right in front of him.
「I found them, they are in the same place as before.」
「Where is that?」
「It is in the building around the side, inside the storage room desuyo~」
Hearing this Taiyou nods, silently looking towards Aoba he maintained his grasp and walked together with her. Making sure to keep quiet as they advanced through a garden that was overgrown with weed, they went around the side of the building. When they did they found this prefab type storage room.
Taiyou silently looks at the storage room and after that looked to Hera for confirmation.
「Yes desu, that’s the place desuyo~」
Hera was talking normally and only Taiyou and the person he kisses can see her figure.
Taiyou nods and he heads to the storage room with Aoba. Unexpectedly his foot steps on a tree branch that dropped next to his feet.
a snapping sound resounded and the storage room shook as if in reaction to the sound.
In the next moment―――― The door of the storage room opens and someone from inside comes jumping out. The other party was agile and catches Taiyou off guard, however…
(Compared with Shirokiyami this is…)
He had enough surplus time to even think of this sentence in his own head. Comparing it to Shirokiyami who was able to leave afterimages from both the left and right, this person didn’t even seem like they were moving.
Taiyou extends his free hand and tries to catch the culprit. However,
――Squish.
This kind of sound effect resounded in his own brain. A soft feeling gets transmitted into the palm of his hand that tried to reach out to the culprit.
「Kyaah!」
The moment he understood what it was that he felt in his hand, a piercing scream in the night sky that seemed like it was going to tear silk apart resound.
「Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, sorry.」
Returning to the inn, he bowed his head to the girl who was now in his room alone with him over and over again.
From her looks she seemed to be quite a young girl and it was likely that she was close in age to Taiyou’s group, she seemed to either be in junior high or perhaps a high school student. She easily exceeded a height of 160 cm and she was a tall kind of girl. Furthermore, the reason she screamed so loud just before is because she boasted an overwhelmingly large breast size. He had never seen this type of huge breasted girl before.
「Ahh no, if you apologize so much, I will feel bad going home.」
「You grabbed her b.o.o.bies real good after all desuyone~」
「Please stay quiet in front of others.」
「Eh?」
When he suddenly swatted Hera who appeared suddenly in front of him, the girl was staring at him confused.
「Ahh, no nothing. More importantly, would you mind telling me your name?」
「Ah, Yes! My name is Pochi!」
「……Yes?」
「Ummm… Ah, yes. Mai neemu izu POCHI」1
「No it’s not about the language, moreover why did you speak your name so specifically the second time? 」
「After all it’s my name, so I’m used to saying it.」
「Is that how it is….? No that doesn’t really matter. Is that really… your name?」
Hesitating in calling this alluring girl by "that" name specifically, he wanted to clarify the matter.
「Yes! That is the name that my father gave me!」
「I see, for the time being let’s leave it at that. I have this one thing I wanted to ask you however…」
「Umm, yes…?」
She looked despondent. It seemed like she could already guess what Taiyou was going to ask her.
Even though he started feeling guilty after seeing her like this, he still boldly opened his mouth and decided to ask her.
「Apparently there is someone who keeps eating the dishes in this inn without permission, is that perhaps your doing?」
「Yes… That’s me. I’m sorry.」
「Why?」
「……」
She keeps silent. Placing both her hands on her thighs, she purses her lips and looks downwards. Perhaps she didn’t want to say why, or perhaps she couldn’t say why. No matter what it is, she must have her own circ.u.mstances, is what Taiyou surmised.
「I see. By the way, let me change the topic a little, but are you still hungry?」
「Eh?」
「We are about to go eat dinner soon. If you are still hungry I thought, we could prepare one more porti――」
「My stomach is empty!」
She declared it as if her life depended on it. It was enough to make you think that she led a life of hardship.
「I understand, then I will tell them to prepare more dishes. In the meantime please stay here――」
Saying that the triplets opened the sliding door and entered the room. Taiyou wanted to speak with his advisor so he left the room.
Outside was Kohaku, giving him a wink he headed outside to her direction. Before long they walked to a location that couldn’t be heard by the people inside of the building, Kohaku then proceeded to stand to a halt and turned around to face him.
「Danna-sama.」
The girl who talked to him was showing a strained smile. But it was hardly a laugh and it was more so filled with bitterness. When he saw such an unusual expression on her face, Taiyou thought something may have gone wrong.
After taking this Pochi girl home with him, Taiyou asked Kohaku to do an investigation on her background in private, so he deducted that her bitter expression is likely because of this fact.
「What’s wrong, did you manage to find something out?」
「I investigated it in a hurry jya, therefore it may be a mistake but…」
「You aren’t being articulate like usual, did something bad happen?」
「Rather than something bad… I would say it’s like an unknown experience? No even though I know this kind of thing exists, it’s an unpleasant knowledge jya.」
「Unknown? Knowledge? I’m sorry, but can you say it in a simpler way?」
「I suppose so. First I will start with the conclusion…. That girl does not have a birth certificate to identify her jya.」
「Eh?」
In a certain way. Saying this made her even more uncomfortable.
「She legally doesn’t exist as a person, she’s like a ghost girl jya.」
Looking at the deserted house, Taiyou was astonished. After hearing this story, his face changed in a similar way to how Kohaku"s looked right now.
Nefarian: she is speaking in English but it will sound something like this to us lol ↩
Translator: Nefarian
After leaving the eerie house and heading towards the main building. During that time, Kohaku did not utter a single word, she walked in a brisk pace as she led Taiyou.
Entering the main building, they pa.s.sed by some of the waitresses along the way. Though the younger girls behaved themselves and lowered their heads just as they were supposed to act towards customers, the older women in this inn purposefully made way moving any luggage aside and giving Kohaku a deep and reverent bow.
Taiyou remembers the fact that a few hours ago one of the waitresses called her “Kohaku-sama”, more so than he thought, he felt that Kohaku had quite a deep connection with this inn.
He wondered what had happened in the past and as he thought about these types of things, he was being led deeper into the inn. Eventually they ended in front of a heavy well-made door, the doork.n.o.b was twisted slowly and Taiyou was sent in the room.
Kohaku doesn’t enter and stands beside the entrance of the door.
「Wait in here for a while jya.」
「Kohaku-san?」
「I’ve called on someone who has a better understanding about these type of things jya. I also want to hear about it in more detail from them nojya.」
「Is that so?」
「Well then see you soon.」
Kohaku spoke in a more mature way than usual as she shut the door and left Taiyou inside the room.
Taiyou sighed as he saw her close the door and began to look around the room.
The room had a table that had a plate saying “living room”, there was also a fine looking carpet that made no sound even when it was stepped on. Lastly there was also a high quality sofa that your body could sink into. This location was in the most interior portion of the main building and the usual hotel guests were not allowed entry into this place.
Taiyou was left alone in this room so for the time being he sat on the sofa and looked all over the room. It was likely that this room was created to entertain guests that were planning on doing business, but there was no other characteristic to the room other than it having high quality goods so Taiyou got bored very quickly.
As he was thinking about what to do until Kohaku returned, he saw this square note-pad along with a good ballpoint pen on top of the table. After looking at it for a while, he took the pen and paper into his hands.
On it, he started to write the names of his girls.
Aoba.
Suzune, Kazane and Kotone.
Kohaku.
And lastly, Shirokiyami.
From top to bottom, he wrote each of their name full of feelings. While thinking about their appearances in his own mind, he wrote their names
They were now the names of women who lived within his heart.
Miyagi Aoba.
Having long hair and a straight pony-tail, she had a bright smile and was an attractive young girl. Her figure was delicate and slim, she had a moderately sized chest and a beautiful pair of female legs that had its own charm to them.
When they first met each other, she disliked him and called him a cheater, but that was because she was in a special type of family relationship where she had three different mothers, not only that a fourth mother was about to join her family as well. Above all, she lived her life without being informed of who her real mother was and she continued not knowing about them even until now.
After confronting her deepest issues together with Taiyou as her support, she vowed to never let her own children experience the same fears and worries she experienced and ended up living together with Taiyou.
Right now they haven’t moved past the kissing stage, but she was a woman who clearly had feelings towards Taiyou.
The three Hayakawa sisters. Suzune, Kazane, Kotone.
They were born on the same day by the same mother, even their genes were the same, they were identical triplets. Even though they had the same face, for some reason or other their sizes and height of each were in three different stages. Kotone had a body appropriate for her age, she seemed to be an ordinary high school student, Suzune is half a head shorter and was more like a junior high student, whereas Kazane was almost the same size as elementary students.
If the three of them were standing side by side, you would think they were the same girl in different stages of their life, almost like a before and after picture. These girls recognize themselves as one person even though they are triplets and since they were a child they had already planned to live together with one man. This thought strengthened as they grew up and it changed into a desire to have a harem with themselves being part of it.
And finally they met up with Taiyou and the girls were now living under the Natsuno household as his trustworthy housewives.
Azumaya Kohaku.
Her outward appearance was even more like a child even when compared to the childish looking Kazane, Kohaku’s height was at 130 centimetres. However, in reality she is a big senior in life that has lived for over eighty years. There are no lies when she calls herself a veteran beautiful girl, her cheeks were still plump and her hair was trimmed and shiny, her neck was still flawless and her physique had not changed for many years.
Her face always had a smile on it and she had a different kind of cheerfulness in comparison with Aoba…… It was the kind of smile that made you believe that she had lived her life and been to places.
She had a childish appearance yet her eyes had a depth and maturity to it. The reason behind all this is that she is one of the Eternally little, they are a group of girls who lives their whole life stuck in their 10-year-old body. Being unable to grow any further she lives the majority of her life in this form.
She was a young-old lady that had kept her body pure until she met with Taiyou, but since that one night she had given her purity over to Taiyou and began calling him “Husband” and would whisper this lovingly into his ears at every chance she got.
Shirokiyami.
Both the age and real name of this beautiful swordswoman is unknown. The color of her skin was as white as the snow and her white long hair reached the back of her knees and it reminded you of a silk thread. As if to add contrast to her look, she always wore this black gothic dress that covered her arms in a sleeve that had a bell-like shape. The dress had a skirt and she also wore a black over-knee socks that covered her leg.
She has a unique way of breathing and speaking, the expressions she showed were quite limited almost like a doll, but to contrast this, her eyes held a deep boundlessness and a strong light within them, no matter how you see it she was a very unbalanced beauty.
She was known as the strongest expert in the world and every time Taiyou met with her, he would issue her a challenge.
They made a promise with each other and she told him that if he could defeat her in a duel, she would become his woman. Since then Taiyou has continued to challenge her whenever they met.
Each time, this monochrome colored girl would wield her wooden scabbard against him and would repel his attacks.
Right now, he couldn’t even reach her feet.
That’s why his desire to win against her became even stronger.
Seeking her love, making this feeling grow, the crazy emotions were always swirling within his own mind.
Taiyou was writing the names of the girls one after another. It was the kind of conduct that you did in cla.s.s, sort of like drawing scribbles in a notebook to pa.s.s the time. Writing the names of the girls he liked was a normal conduct for a boy in his p.u.b.erty.
Inside of this room, you could only hear the sound of Taiyou’s soft breathing and the scribbling of his pen.
The way he wrote the names side by side, almost made it seem like someone practicing to write kanji, but as he continued to write, none of the letters ever became messy nor written incorrectly.
Taiyou put his feelings at every stroke and dot, in order to write the names of the girls he so adored.
It was like he was given a treasure from the G.o.ds, no it was more like he was treating this as dealing with G.o.d. He wrote with reverence and respect.
Above all, he wrote their names with overflowing love.
He kept writing their names on the paper putting all his feelings into them.
One character at a name, he wrote the girls names, it felt like something was beginning to build up within his own mind.
Aoba.
Suzune.
Kazane.
Kotone.
Kohaku.
Shirokiyami.
There was no longer any misunderstandings. Each time her wrote their names down, he felt something acc.u.mulating within his heart.
Taiyou felt satisfied. He wanted to collect his feelings within his own mind and each time he wrote their names down like this, he reaffirmed the feelings he had for them.
It was like he was pouring liquid in a water jug. Or like the feeling of enriching a dry earth with water.
Therefore, Taiyou continued to write. Pouring more of his feelings into it and wanting to feel even more satisfied, he wanted to fill his heart with all their love and beauty. While thinking in this way.
Gradually, he started to mutter out their names as well.
――Aoba. Suzune, Kazane, Kotone. Kohaku. Shirokiyami.
――Aoba. Suzune, Kazane, Kotone. Kohaku. Shirokiyami.
Thinking about them dearly, he kept writing their names.
Suddenly another names floats within his mind. After filling out many pages of the memo-pad he didn’t write it down, but now that it came up in his mind, it was a name that didn’t seem to disappear.
Taiyou’s hand stopped writing. For a moment, he was about to write that name on paper.
Taiyou hesitated, did he have a right to write this name? Would it be alright to arrange her name amongst the women he so dearly loved?
He did not understand his own feelings, to begin with, he didn’t even know why her name came out in the first place.
Therefore, Taiyou turned over the page on the memo pad. At the very least it would be separated from his list of names, just a trial he tried to write the name once on a brand new page.
「Yuri—」
Murmuring out at the same time, he wrote the first letter of her name and then ended with a horizontal line.
「Tereretetete~♪ Taiyou-chan has levelled up!」
In front of him, a fairy about thirty centimeters in length appeared out of nowhere.