Shinyuu Mob Volume 2 Chapter 5 Having a Hottie Come Visit You When You’re Sick Isn’t Always as Good as It Sounds
Having a Hottie Come Visit You When You’re Sick Isn’t Always as Good as It Sounds
“Rei...”
I woke up with a start as her name spilled from my lips. The setting sun shone through the window, bathing the hot and stuffy room in its orange glow. Surprisingly, it was a room I knew well—apparently I’d made it back to my apartment in the end, in spite of everything. I’d also neglected to turn on the air conditioner, which would explain the “hot and stuffy” part. I was drenched with sweat, and the cries of the cicadas outside didn’t help at all. They might be a classic poetic symbol for summertime, but they also make it even harder to ignore the heat.
I hadn’t bothered to change clothes, or even take my shoes off. By all appearances, I’d collapsed in my entryway and fallen asleep then and there. But on the bright side, at least I hadn’t passed out in a pile of garbage like a drunkard. Besides, my apartment was one of those absurdly tiny studios, so the boundary between the entryway and the actual room wasn’t well defined to begin with.
I tried to push myself upright, but it didn’t work. My arms had the structural integrity of a pair of overcooked noodles and collapsed under me after only a couple painful seconds of ineffectual effort.
“That was a dream...right?” It’d been ages since the last time I’d dreamed, and it was beyond clear, beyond vivid. It was about people beloved to me and places I missed dearly... Part of me wished it really had all just been a dream, even though the rest of me knew I didn’t have the right to think like that.
Even if it was just a dream, and even if I knew it would inevitably reach the same nightmarish ending as ever, I was just so happy to see them again...and so disgusted with myself for thinking that way, I wanted to just kill myself and get it over with.
Ding-dong!
Suddenly, my doorbell rang. I had a visitor, which was certainly a rarity. My apartment building was so old and dingy that even the newspaper salesmen walked right on past it, and I didn’t have any deliveries scheduled either. Myourenji and her family were providing me the funding I needed to live there, and they sent some of their staff over to check up on me every once in a while, but those people never bothered with the doorbell—they just walked right in. Wish they’d be a bit more considerate about that, actually.
“Kunugi-kun? Are you in?” somebody called out from the other side of the door. I knew I’d heard her voice before, but I couldn’t quite tell who it was. I was in a daze. Hard to say whether it was because I was in a bad enough physical state that I couldn’t even sit up or because I’d just woken up from an incredibly lifelike dream, but in any case, her voice sounded fuzzy and distant—like I was underwater.
“I’m coming in, okay?” I heard the door crack open. It would have been more surprising if I’d had the presence of mind to lock it, considering the state I was in. “Kunugi-kun?!”
“Kiryu...?” Shockingly enough, my classmate Kiryu Kyouka stepped inside. Kiryu was an absolutely by-the-book honor student-type heroine with long, black hair and a bad case of resting bitch face (she’s also a loner, surprise surprise). She’s got huge boobs and a black belt in Aikido too, but I have yet to conclusively determine if those traits count as part of the archetype or not.
Why would someone like her come over to the place of an extra like me? I dimly pondered the situation as she freaked out and started trying to help me sit up. Letting a girl literally pick me up was just a step too far for my manly pride, though, so I mustered up what very little strength I had left and stood up on my own. My spaghetti arms actually somehow managed to push me off the ground this time. I guess you can push yourself to some pretty incredible extremes when your pride’s on the line.
“Thanks... I’m fine, though, really.”
“You are obviously not fine,” she retorted.
“I was, umm, just practicing. Making sure I’d be ready if anyone ever set a bear trap in my entryway while I was out and about, yeah.”
“I’m even less convinced that you’re fine than I was before! Literally no one would be reassured by that story.” Oooof! Her merciless retort scored a critical hit directly to my heart. She had a real talent for those—it’s not easy to pack the “are you completely insane” nuance in on the fly like that. Incidentally, the optimal response would’ve been, “Of course they wouldn’t! Nobody likes to think about the ever-present bear trap threat,” but I wasn’t in an optimal state of mind, to say the least.
“Anyway, why’re you here, Kiryu? You’re number one on my list of people I never expected to show up in this sort of situation.”
“Why would you even have a list like that...? And don’t get the wrong idea. I only came here because our teacher asked me to.” She pulled a bundle of handouts and worksheets from her bag. Upon closer inspection, she was still wearing her uniform. I was starting to put the pieces together: it seemed I’d staggered my way home the night before, passed out on the spot, and slept all the way until school was out the next day.
“You really don’t look well, Kunugi-kun... You can’t possibly be all right. Here, let me help you. You should be lying down. In bed.”
“Mom...?”
“Wrong. I can only imagine how hard your mother had it raising you, really...” She mumbled to herself as she helped me stay upright. Come to think of it, she did claim that we were childhood friends back in the day. My immediate reaction, of course, was why me? Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to be childhood friends with my favorite protagonist, Kaito-kun? That would go down as one of humanity’s greatest unsolved mysteries, surely. Were you even paying attention when you wrote that part of the backstory, God?
“There you go...” she muttered, helping me into bed.
“Ugh... Thanks, I really needed that.”
“I-I wasn’t doing it for you, for the record! I did it for the workout.”
“What am I, a dumbbell?”
“You’d be better off if you were. Dumbbells are useful.”
“Can’t argue with that.” My “bed” was just a futon laid out on the floor, but as I flopped onto it, I came to the immediate realization that even that most modest form of bedding was worlds apart from sleeping on the ground. Kiryu sat down nearby to watch over me, her knees folded up to her chest. She was wearing a skirt, of course, so I could just baaarely catch a glimpse of...nothing, actually. Dang, she’s good at this!
“I’m a bit surprised by how sparsely you’ve decorated this place,” she commented. “I’ve always thought that boys who live on their own tend to be more cluttered.”
“I’m not exactly materialistic.”
“Hmmm,” she replied with a perfunctory grunt, ogling my room. I wasn’t sure why she was looking that closely, actually. You could tell at a glance that I didn’t have much stuff, and she wasn’t going to uncover any deep, dark secrets by nosing around.
“Sorry, I’m not exactly being a great host. Should’ve brought out some tea or something.”
“I don’t mind. You’re sick, and I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort in the first place. I should get something for you, come to think of it—where do you keep your drinks?”
“Kitchen’s right over there, and the tap water’s all-you-can-drink.”
“In other words, tap water’s all you have...?” She sighed, and I could appreciate why she’d be exasperated, but I wasn’t exactly anticipating guests. The only people who ever came over were the aforementioned folks from the Myourenji household, and they always brought some sort of drink or whatever with them as a matter of courtesy. Why would I bother stocking up when I could get everything I needed from a convenience store that was less than five minutes away on foot?
“What have you been eating?”
“Y’know, convenience store lunches. That sorta stuff.”
“Don’t you think you should cook for yourself? Those boxed meals aren’t even remotely balanced, nutritionally speaking.” She seemed to be implying that my poor diet had something to do with my current sorry state. “Are you bad at cooking?”
“I can put stuff in the microwave.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“What, you some kind of master home-cook?”
“I’d like to think I’m competent, at least.” She didn’t seem prideful about it—she was just stating it as a matter of course. Oddly enough, that made it easier to believe she knew what she was doing than if she’d bragged about her skills. Frankly, I thought that was a missed opportunity. Being surprisingly klutzy in the kitchen is a selling point for characters like her!
While I was busy analyzing the odds of her knowing what she was doing, Kiryu opened up my refrigerator and looked aghast to find that it was totally empty. Really wish you’d stop rummaging around in my room without permission, thanks.
“I’ll bring something with me the next time I come over.”
“‘The next time’?”
“I-If there is a next time, I mean!” She spun around and quickly amended her statement. No surprise there—this is definitely an exceptional case. My apartment’s only redeeming quality was the fact that it had a roof to sleep under, so I’d be more than a little surprised if she ever found a reason to visit again.
“By the way, why did you come here?”
“To give you your handouts. Didn’t I already say that?”
“I mean, you did, but isn’t sending someone to my house for that after just one day a bit much? And aren’t you a weird pick for the job?”
“You’re a bit much. You know you’re supposed to turn in your career planning sheet at some point this week, right?”
“Oooh, yeah...” I recalled. “At some point this week” would, of course, mean “no later than tomorrow.” I’d completely forgotten. I figured that since Oumei High was a college prep school I could just write “college” and be done with it, but I never actually bothered to do that in the first place.
“Will you even be able to go to school tomorrow? You look awful...”
“It’s not as bad as it looks; I’ll be there. I’ve run through all my sick leave anyway.”
“High school doesn’t give you sick leave.”
“What, seriously?! How exploitative is that?!”
“Considering we don’t get paid, very.” Kiryu smiled, and I couldn’t help but be fascinated by her for a moment. It was really rare for her to play along with my nonsense.
“Okay, but you still haven’t explained why they sent you.” I was slightly embarrassed about getting caught off guard like that, so I changed the subject. Thankfully, Kiryu didn’t seem to pick up on my motive.
“Would you have preferred if Ayase-kun came instead?”
“I mean, everyone knows we’re friends. He seems like the natural choice.”
She paused, then muttered sulkily, “I’m your childhood friend too.”
“Huh?” I mean, yeah, I guess? Not that I could remember it, unfortunately. I only had Kiryu’s account of our history together to go by. In any case, that history was very specifically between Kiryu and me, and nobody else. I’d only learned about it myself very recently, and since nobody else at Oumei High had known us back then, there wasn’t any other way for the info to leak out. How could that have led to her being singled out for this job? “Did you tell somebody about us?”
“No, not exactly. But, well, I ended up talking with Kotou-san, and...”
“Kotou? So she figured it out after all?”
“You knew?”
“I had a feeling, considering what happened Monday morning.” Kotou Tsumugi was Kaito’s cheerful, beautiful childhood friend. She’d spent quite a long time harboring a (totally one-sided) animosity towards Kiryu (on account of an inferiority complex regarding her bust size), but on the aforementioned Monday morning she’d dragged Kiryu off for a conversation, only to return with her hostility completely cleared away and replaced by an excess of camaraderie.
I assumed that she’d already caught on to our relationship at that point, and judging by Kiryu’s reaction to my speculation, I’d hit the bull’s-eye. Seriously, though, how is that even possible? I’d only learned about it myself on Saturday, and she’d already blown our cover wide open two days later? Just how good is her nose for this sort of stuff?
I sighed. “I swear that girl has a childhood friend fetish.”
“She has a what?”
“She loves childhood friends as a general concept. It’s a whole thing.” Skipping over any speculation about how Kaito might play into that little trait of hers, Kotou always got super hyped up when childhood friends turned up in movies, song lyrics, and pretty much everywhere else, to the point that one might assume she was, y’know, into it. Her love for childhood friends was completely self-professed, so she might’ve been deliberately playing the whole thing up. Whether or not it was genuine, there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d stay quiet about Kiryu and me being childhood friends if she found out.
“But Kotou’s not even in our class! She wouldn’t bust into another class’s homeroom just to make you deliver a bunch of worksheets.”
“W-Well, the thing is...”
“Kiryu?” For some reason, she was acting really bashful. It was weirdly sexy, ahem. It was weirdly, uhh, weird.
“I volunteered.”
“Huh?”
“Kotou-san came to see me at lunchtime. She told me that you’d never skip school without telling somebody about it in advance, that something had definitely happened to you, and that, as your childhood friend, it was my responsibility to go check up on you. So, well, here I am.”
“Sounds like she swindled you.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?! I had no idea what was going on!”
I didn’t know whether she’d volunteered in front of the whole class or talked with our teacher about it in private, but considering how aloof she usually acted, I figured our teacher probably saw her being proactive about getting involved with another student as a great opportunity. No wonder she had given out my address without my consent. Feels like a huge violation of privacy standards, but whatever.
“So, do you, like, want the two of us to be the sort of childhood friends that Kotou always goes on about?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she replied after a moment of hesitation. She seemed to genuinely consider the idea, so I was pretty sure she was being honest. She really didn’t know what she wanted. “It couldn’t be worse than the one-sided grudge I had against you up until recently. It wasn’t exactly pleasant feeling resentful all the time. Being childhood friends like that might almost be refreshing in comparison. It would be a bit embarrassing, but it’s better than treating you coldly again... And I certainly can’t treat you coldly right now. You’re already sick.”
“Weird time to start worrying about me, but thanks.”
I was about to crack up, but suddenly, the dream I’d just had flashed through my mind. Kiryu bore no resemblance to her whatsoever, but I was starting to feel comfortable around her, and that set off a warning bell in the back of my mind. My instincts were telling me not to let my guard down. That if I let her in any further, it would all happen all over again.
A combination of the dream’s lingering aftereffects and my state of physical weakness caused me to be overwhelmed by pessimism. It brought back all the trauma that I’d forgotten—or rather, that I’d been desperately trying to ignore.
“Kunugi-kun?”
I must’ve been grimacing in pain. Kiryu realized that something was wrong and looked concerned as she bent over to take a closer look at me. “I’m fine, I’m fine! Anyway, shouldn’t you be going home soon? The sun’s still out for now, but you definitely don’t wanna end up walking home in the dark.”
“I can’t just leave you alone when you’re this sick.”
“It’s really not a big deal.”
“Even if it isn’t, you live alone, don’t you? There’s no guarantee your condition won’t get worse, and you don’t want to be on your own if it does.”
“What, are you gonna stay here overnight?”
She paused. “I can’t say I haven’t considered the possibility.” I didn’t get the sense she’d actually made her mind up about that. It sounded more like she was just being contrary, though I had no clue where her obstinacy was coming from. Maybe she was feeling sensitive about how I’d been trying to drive her out, or maybe Kotou’s influence had her thinking she should act more like a proper childhood friend? Who knows.
“You really don’t have to go that far.”
“I don’t care whether I have to or not! I’m here because I want to be. You might not understand, but I can’t leave you alone when you’re in this state, so I’m going to keep an eye on you.”
“What, you think I’m gonna make a break for it if you take your eyes off me? I don’t even have the energy to get out of bed right now!”
“See?! You really are seriously ill!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
We were butting heads out of pure stubbornness at that point. The atmosphere was getting progressively more and more combative. Maybe if I’d been a bit more polite about hinting that I wanted her to leave, she would’ve gone home without a fuss? Too late to apologize about being blunt now, though.
“Fine, then! I’ll contact my parents, and tell them I’m staying at a friend’s house tonight!”
“What?! Hey!” Kiryu pulled out her phone, pointedly ignoring me like a petulant child. I was grateful that she was worried about me, and she hadn’t done anything wrong at all, but the fact was that things just weren’t working out the way I’d hoped they would. And that was starting to get on my nerves. But just when the tension in the room was reaching critical mass, an unexpected element arrived to complicate things even further.
“No need to worry, Kiryu-san. I’ll stay here tonight to nurse Kou back to health.” An eloquent voice rang out from my front door. Standing there was a beautiful girl with long, wavy blonde hair. She looked just as out of place in my run-down wreck of an apartment as Kiryu.
“President Myourenji...?” Kiryu sounded like she couldn’t believe her own eyes. Why would she be here, of all places?
Myourenji Renge was the president of Oumei High’s student council. This might make her sound like a big fish in a small pond, but there wasn’t a single student at our school who didn’t know her name. She was a real celebrity, consistently placing in the top ranks of the national mock exams, and constantly relied upon by the teachers—in spite of the fact that her attendance numbers were, to say the least, lackluster.
She showed up to class the absolute bare minimum number of times required, spending the rest of her time stationed in the student council’s office. She was a real eccentric in that respect, but very few people acknowledged those strange qualities of hers. Geniuses can get away with an awful lot without raising any eyebrows.
“What’s the president of the student council doing here?” Kiryu unsurprisingly and immediately voiced her doubts. Whether Kiryu knew about her fame, her eccentric traits, both, or neither, it wouldn’t change the fact that it was unthinkable for her to show up at my home.
“Isn’t it natural for one of my status to visit a student when he’s sick? I consider it a part of my duties,” she said as she locked the door behind her and then pulled off her shoes. Her excuse was dubious in all sorts of ways, and though Kiryu obviously instantly realized it was a lie, she didn’t let her elegant heiress act drop for a second. “I’m surprised, though. You seem even more ill than I’d imagined.”
“I’m fine. The door’s right behind you whenever you’re ready to leave, by the way.”
“How very considerate of you to let me know,” Renge replied as she sat down next to Kiryu. She proceeded to open up the convenience store bag she was carrying. She clearly had no intention of leaving whatsoever. “I bought some pudding on my way over. You like pudding, don’t you, Kunugi-kun?”
“Ugh...” Kiryu groaned. It felt more like Renge was trying to prove a point to Kiryu than to me, and judging by that little noise she just made, it was working. That line came across as pretty snide, considering that Kiryu hadn’t brought any sort of “get well” gift. Let’s just try not to think about how she knew that Kiryu hadn’t brought anything. And for the record, I don’t even like pudding that much. It’s fine, I guess.
“Oh, I know,” the president said with a smile, “why don’t I feed you? It’s an incredible honor to be fed pudding by someone like me.”
“Wow, you really just said that about yourself? Yikes,” I replied.
“Oh, my word! What a rude manner of speaking.” She kept the company-president’s-daughter act up to the bitter end as she opened the (cheap, commoner-grade convenience store) pudding, but her smile made it clear that she was enjoying this. Kiryu, in contrast, was frowning as she watched our exchange.
“Do you two know each other?” Kiryu asked all of a sudden.
“Err, ah, I mean...”
“We have a mutual acquaintance in Ayase-kun.” The question was aimed at me, but the president intercepted it. Meanwhile, she scooped up a spoonful of pudding, holding it out to me with a “Say ‘aaaah’!” Kiryu gaped in astonishment. Why not feed it to her instead? Look, she’s ready for it already!
“Okay, seriously, how far are you planning on taking thimphgh?!” She mercilessly shoved the pudding into my mouth mid-sentence. The plastic spoon was chilly, and the pudding itself was incredibly sweet. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t had a bite to eat since the day before.
“How is it? Tasty?”
“Y-Yeah, it is.”
“Hee hee! I’m glad to hear it.” She beamed with delight, which predictably only deepened Kiryu’s skeptical glare.
“So, how do you two know each other?” she repeated.
“Didn’t I already tell you? Through Ayase-kun.”
“And that’s all?” Her relentless questioning made it clear that she didn’t believe that was all in the least. In other circumstances, having a mutual friend might be a reasonable explanation, but again, this is a small pond of a high school we’re talking about. In a community of that size, it’s practically a given that you’d have friends-of-friends all over the place. If the student council president had truly made a habit of visiting students and force-feeding them pudding, that information would’ve entered the rumor mill ages ago.
“We’re family,” the president bluntly stated.
Kiryu paused, flabbergasted. “You’re what?”
“You might also say our relationship is especially intimate.”
“Excuse me?!”
“Okay, seriously, stop lying to her.” I had to cut in at that point—she was carrying her joke way too far. My entire body was already in pain, and her antics just made the sinking ache in the pit of my stomach all the worse.
“Oh, you could’ve let me have my fun for a little while longer,” she grumbled, then thrust her hand into one of my pockets. Before Kiryu or I could react she pulled it back out, now holding a ring.
“D-Did you slip that in there while you were feeding me the pudding?”
“That’s right! I thought it would be funny.” She pulled another ring of the same design out of her skirt’s pocket. “The same design” meaning that she’d been going for an engagement ring joke. It...was just a joke, right? “I was planning on following through with it if you let me play it out to the end, of course.”
“If you carry a joke like that all the way to the end, it’s not a joke!”
“Really, though—what’s going on between you two?” Kiryu mumbled. She definitely wasn’t keeping up with the conversation (though considering the nature of said conversation, I’d be sorta scared if she was).
“I was telling the truth when I said we’re family,” the president answered. “He’s my relative. My second cousin, specifically.”
“Your ‘second cousin’?”
“We’re as related as cod and salmon roe.”
Kiryu paused. “Salmon roe, as in, salmon eggs?” She was even more confused than ever. Don’t look at me—Renge tried to explain it to me way back whenever, and I didn’t get it either. If you wanna complain, go bother her.
“I think that’s enough discussion of our relation to one another, for the moment. Just keep in mind that our marriage is legitimate.”
“I thought you were finished with that joke.”
“‘Joke’?” Renge cocked her head and played dumb. Seriously, that’s not funny! Stop it! “We’re also family in the sense that my father is currently acting as his guardian.”
“His guardian...? But, what about his parents?”
“Kou hasn’t told you?”
That one sentence was enough for Kiryu to put the pieces together, or at least make an educated guess. She fell silent, and her gaze drifted to the floor. She’d known my parents. I could only imagine what emotions were going through her head at that moment, but I knew without a doubt that they were nothing pleasant. An incredibly awkward atmosphere dominated the room.
“In any case, as you can surmise, Kou and I are more or less husband and—”
“Renge.”
“More or less brother and sister!” she concluded proudly, head high and chest out. Ample chest out. Even more so than Kiryu’s. “I’m perfectly capable and willing to nurse Kou back to health, so you’re welcome to scurry home any time you wish, Kiryu-san.”
“Grr...” Kiryu gritted her teeth. Renge’s provocation was flagrant, not to mention perfectly engineered to provoke Kiryu, considering how stubborn she could be about this sort of thing. I wanted to ask why they couldn’t just talk this through peacefully, but considering I’d provoked Kiryu just as effectively mere moments before while discussing the exact same topic, I didn’t really have the right to judge.
“I was here first,” Kiryu countered, “and I have no intention of foisting the responsibility of taking care of him on someone else.”
“Perhaps, but that’s no reason for you to watch over him throughout the entirety of his illness. Don’t you think that would be too heavy of a burden to ask of one person? Why not let somebody else carry part of the load?”
Kiryu hesitated but didn’t give in. “That won’t be necessary.”
“What’s most important is giving him the opportunity to rest, isn’t it? Two caretakers would be excessive in a room this small.”
“Are you really that dead set on sending me home?”
“I suppose that asking a girl to walk home in the dark would be a touch dangerous. If necessary, I can call someone over to escort you on your way.”
Kiryu was at an obvious disadvantage. Her opponent was a very, very distant relative, but the surrogate sister factor made up for said distance. Kiryu, meanwhile, was a childhood friend and not much else. With that as her only weapon, she stood little chance of sticking it out until the sun set.
And I, for one, was perfectly fine with that! Not to say that I wanted to end up alone with Renge, but you have to set your goals realistically. If I tried to get rid of both of them at once, it could backfire spectacularly—gotta take what I can get! Once Kiryu was out of the picture, I could focus on Renge, and dealing with one person would be a whole lot easier. I felt a bit bad for Kiryu, but it had to be done.
“All right, I understand... In that case, I’ll be leaving now, Kunugi-kun.”
“Very good! Thank you for your understanding, Kiryu-san. Now then, Kou, I’ll be in the kitchen. I have the perfect medicinal recipe in mind to perk you right back up!”
“Huh?” Wait. A medicinal recipe? Like, as in, making one? “R-Renge-san? You don’t mean—you can’t mean you’re making it yourself, right?”
“Hee hee! Do you really even need to ask?”
“Phew! Yeah, stupid question. Can’t believe I thought a girl like you would even consider—”
“Of course I’ll be cooking it! I mean, really!”
“KIRYUUUUU! HEEELP! YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE!” She’d just given in to Renge’s pressure and was on her way out the door, but I desperately called her back in. Thankfully she was literally on her way out the door at the time, meaning it was still open, and she could hear me just fine. She stopped and turned around.
“K-Kunugi-kun?”
“You’ve gotta stop Renge! She’s saying she’s gonna cook something medicinal!”
Kiryu frowned. “Well, good for you. Are you trying to brag?”
“Hell no! You don’t understand—she’s a cheftastrophe!”
Indeed, Myourenji Renge was a cheftastrophe: a particular sort of human who absolutely ruins the hard work of all the wonderful farmers and fishermen who supply us with our daily provisions. It was her most definite, inescapably terrible character flaw.
My mind immediately flashed back to the period just after I arrived in this world, when I was still living in the Myourenji household. Whoosh, screen fades to white, commence flashback!
