Chapter 31: 31

Mistaken Identity and Pancakes

Translated by LyraDhani

Edited by LyraDhani

–It had already been a week since he left the hospital. Winter break was over in the blink of an eye, and Tsugumi was going to school as usual. The test after the break was over, and he was lying on his desk, exhausted, when a voice called out to him from above.

“How was the test, Tsugumi-chan?”

“It’s neither good nor bad. I don’t need to ask about yours…”

Tsugumi answered sluggishly, stretching his limbs. In response, the man who spoke to him – Yukitaka – narrowed his eyes and smiled like a cat.

“Well, I don’t have to study to get a good score. Is everyone else’s head different?”

“So damn annoying. I wish the answer column was off and you get a zero…”

Yukitaka smiled, unmindful of the fact that Tsugumi was looking at him with a stern look. The fact that he was really smart as he said, made it all the more annoying.

“By the way, is your body okay? You were in the hospital all through the holiday season, weren’t you?”

“Well, somehow. …Hey, don’t laugh.”

“Kuh, I mean, isn’t it just too dumb?”

Biting back a giggle, Yukitaka grinned at Tsugumi.

Yukitaka knew that Tsugumi had been in the hospital, and ostensibly he knew why he ended up there. Tsugumi understood the temptation to laugh, but whether he could tolerate it or not was another story.

“I am sorry, don’t stare at me like that. –But, it was a disaster. I didn’t expect something like that would happen either.”

Yukitaka lowered his eyebrows and apologized. Perhaps he felt some responsibility for the gift of the travel ticket to Hakone.

“…That’s right. I don’t want to go through that ever again.”

He thought so both as Nanase Tsugumi and as the Magical Girl Hagakure Sakura.

“Right, this for Tsugumi-chan!”

“What’s this? …Pre-opening of an amusement park?”

Yukitaka held out a flyer for a new amusement park about three stops from here. The flyer stated that a lottery would be held for a pair of tickets to the pre-opening event next week.

“For compensation, why don’t you take this? It’s so close, a day trip should be a piece of cake.”

“That’s right, but this is a lottery, isn’t it? I think the probability of not winning is higher…”

To begin with, he had never won a lottery of this kind. When he said that, Yukitaka grinned.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a contact with the people involved, so I’m sure I can get a couple. As long as you want the tickets, I’ll get them for you.”

“You have connections I don’t understand. …Well, I’ll ask Chidori later if it’s convenient for her. –But are you not going? You love this kind of event.”

“I think I’ll pass this time. The crowds seem too much, so I’ll go with someone else sometime during the week when I am free.”

–How rare, you usually take the initiative to come with me. Tsugumi thought so, but he supposed Yukitaka felt that way sometimes, too.

“Is that so? –Well, what am I supposed to do for you in exchange for getting you a ticket?”

Tsugumi shrugged his shoulders and said so. Things always came at a price. Whenever Yukitaka came up with a good offer like this, it usually came with a “favor”.

“As expected of Tsugumi-chan! You catch on fast!”

Yukitaka clapped his hands happily and laughed. In response, Tsugumi responded with a wry smile. In this situation, he might be asked to do something troublesome again.

Yukitaka put his hand on the Tsugumi’s desk, brought his face close to his ears, and whispered to him.

“–On your way home today, go out with me for a while.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

White walls and a lovely flower-patterned carpet. Stuffed animal toys were placed everywhere, and the table cloths were made of delicate lace. The sweet aroma of the restaurant was filled with a group of high school girls.

In the middle of the crowd, Tsugumi and Yukitaka were seated at a table facing each other.

With a slight blush on his cheeks, Tsugumi spoke to Yukitaka in a quiet voice.

“Ah, aren’t we out of place? The stares really hurt…”

Since a few moments ago, he felt piercingly curious stares from all directions. Most of them were directed toward Yukitaka, but some of them were looking at Tsugumi with interest.

“Eh, but I really wanted to try the pancakes here.”

“Are you a kid?”

With his cheeks puffed out, Yukitaka said this like a child. Tsugumi elbowed his shoulder in disgust and exhaled a sigh. He was used to Yukitaka’s spontaneous behavior, but he did not expect to be brought to such a fancy restaurant.

And this was just Tsugumi’s personal feelings, but he felt a little uncomfortable with the little yellow voice that rose every time Yukitaka said something. He wanted to say out loud that this guy had a nice face but his personality was truly bad.

“I am not going to complain, but I wonder why you decided to come with me. You should have come with a girl like you usually do.”

“Fufu, I just wanted to see the look of embarrassment on Tsugumi-chan’s face–Ah, it’s a lie, don’t look so angry.”

“I see, I was worried you’d woken up to a weird taste.”

He felt like the temperature had dropped ten degrees in an instant. If they weren’t careful with their words, Tsugumi might die socially.

Yukitaka said as he sipped his coffee, which was full of sugar.

“Lately, I haven’t been hanging out with Tsugumi-chan, right? You go home right after school. So I wanted to annoy you a little. Oh, but it’s true that I want pancakes.”

“I don’t think it was anything like that… Well, if you feel that way, I guess it was. My bad.”

Tsugumi said as he cut the three layers of pancakes with a knife. He brought the cut-up pieces to his mouth. That it really tasted delicious was kind of frustrating

“This pancake is really delicious. I would have come back if the customers weren’t like that.”

Tsugumi didn’t have the courage to come to this restaurant often. It might not be a bother if he transformed into Hagakure Sakura, but the publicity from the year-end incident had made it unlikely that he would be able to eat outside for a while. In this regard, Bell was more disappointed than Tsugumi.

“Hmm, I don’t really care.”

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Yukitaka gracefully brought the fork to his mouth, paying no attention to the gazes of those around him. Perhaps hairs grew in his heart. Tsugumi envied him. He would like to learn from his boldness.

As he was thinking about this, he was discreetly tapped on the shoulder from behind.

“What is it?”

He hastily swallowed what was in his mouth and turned around. Standing there were a group of high school girls, about the same age as him. They looked at Tsugumi’s face and screamed, “I knew it!”

“Um, what can I do for you?”

When Tsugumi asked suspiciously, the other girls urged the girl in the middle with the pigtails to open her mouth, and she tinted her cheeks red.

“Excuse me, are you the brother of ‘Hagakure Sakura’?”

–Oh, here we go again.

Tsugumi let out a big sigh in his mind and made a heckling smile.

“…Ah, sorry. We might look alike, but we are completely unrelated.”

“Oh, really?”

When Tsugumi told them this, the girls left, looking terribly disappointed. It was heartbreaking in many ways. They were interested in Hagakure Sakura, not in Tsugumi.

“Tsugumi-chan is also having a hard time. Why don’t you buy some glasses for a disguise?”

“I should probably do that, after all.”

He had been asked the same question three times a day since the beginning of the year. The kids earlier backed off immediately, but some of them persisted in their insistence. It was getting to be a real pain.

“I only look like her, but since it’s so hard for me, it must be even harder for all the Magical Girls in the world. It really makes my head spin.”

“It’s fine. Those kids are doing it because they like it.”

“Maybe, but still, you know.”

Tsugumi used to feel the same way, but as he learned more about the Magical Girls’ side of things, he couldn’t speak so strongly. Because he knew that they also had their own hardships.

–After that, they finished the pancakes, albeit in a messy way, and left the restaurant. The bill was on Tsugumi. That should have been enough to cover the cost of asking for a ticket.

“By the way, who are you going to vote for next week, Tsugumi-chan? Is it the Big Tits, after all?”

“Don’t call Rikka’s number one like that… No, I guess that’s no good for me either.”

Sumire Tono, first place in the Rikka’s ranking. She was a Magical Girl who had been ranked first for the last five years in a row.

In addition to her ability, her outstanding style and beautiful appearance attracted a lot of attention, and she was fanatically popular. As for Tsugumi, he thought Chidori and Mebuki-senpai were prettier, but he supposed it was just a matter of taste.

Up until now, he hadn’t been particularly interested in voting, so he just voted for the name at the top of the list, but starting this year, he would give a little more thought to who he would vote for.

“I don’t know. I’m thinking of voting for Suzushiro Ran or Hitsugi Airi this year. See, they came to Hakone for support.”

Well, that had ended up being a wasted trip. After all that, he wanted to thank Inaba-san, the government official who first responded to his request, but he couldn’t do anything because Bell didn’t lend him the terminal. He didn’t really intend to do anything weird anymore.

“Hey, that’s not Hagakure Sakura.”

“…It’s complicated for me too.”

He didn’t even want to enter, but now that the list was announced before he could withdraw, they said he couldn’t withdraw during the process. Because of the mess at the end of the year, he was late in taking action.

Although it was unlikely that Hagakure Sakura would be selected as one of the six, the classmates were all saying that they would vote for Hagakure Sakura, and he was a little fed up with it. They didn’t have to go that far to make fun of Tsugumi.

“I like Hitsugi better, though. She’s got a human side to her.”

“She’s serious and has common sense in what she says and does. The other five are sometimes a little bit weird.”

In a nutshell, the other five were, in order from top to bottom: “Flame Lover,” “Sword Fanatic,” “Loose Gal,” “Absolute Zero,” and “Sideline Idol”. Tsugumi didn’t really understand it either.

Did they become strange while fighting as a Magical Girl, or were they strong because they were originally strange? The truth remained a mystery.

“Well, I don’t really care. –Hey, do you hear a strange noise from that alley?”

Saying so, Yukitaka pointed to an alley on his right.

“Noise? …No, it’s a human voice.”

Tsugumi listened carefully and focused his nerves. Then, from the alley to which Yukitaka pointed, he heard the voices of several children – and girls. Some of them even sounded like screams.

…It looked pretty bad.

This road was a shortcut to the station, but it was basically deserted. He probably shouldn’t say this, but it was more likely that if something were to happen there, no one would notice it. You could say that this place secretly had a high crime rate.

“…Let’s see what’s going on. Worst case scenario, we’ll have to call the police.”

Tsugumi rushed stealthily and quietly peeked into the alley so that the people there wouldn’t notice him.

–There they were: five girls. Five elementary-school girls in uniforms from a well-known school for young ladies were standing around a girl.

At the time, he thought that they were just playing, but upon closer inspection, he realized that something was wrong. The clothes of the girl sitting on the floor were unnaturally wet. Next to her, a girl holding an empty plastic bottle was laughing in a high-pitched voice. It was a scene of bullying, no matter how you look at it…

After all, it was a children’s quarrel. Tsugumi wondered if he should interfere, but then he realized something.

“–Is that girl from before?”

That girl sitting there was the same girl who bumped into Tsugumi at the hospital just the other day. It was hard to tell because she was sitting down, but there was no doubt about it.

“…Maybe this is a coincidence.”

Tsugumi said so and looked back to Yukitaka.

“Hey, Yukitaka, help me a little.”

“I don’t mind, but what are we doing?”

When Yukitaka said this with a suspicious look, Tsugumi narrowed his eyes and laughed.

“Something bad, I guess.”

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