The next two days passed by in a flash. Under Instructor Kurogane’s guidance, my  skill in using a spear has improved tremendously. I’m still no match for him or Ichika, but I’m more confident in my future fights now.

   I still have hard time to blend in with the other full-time disciples. In the end, I couldn’t become friends with any of them. However, they did make me feel that I could come back here and train with them anytime.

   When it’s time for Ichika and I to go back to the Academy, only Ichika’s parents see us off, as the full-time disciples are busy with their morning practise.

   ‘Well, take care on the trip to go back, the both of you. And send our regards to Sakuya-chan and her father.’ Mrs Kurogane says to us.

   ‘We will.’

   ‘Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me during these three days.’

   ‘Think nothing of it. Just remember that you’re always welcome here.’ Instructor Kurogane says.

   ‘Yes sir. Thank you very much.’

   ‘Hopefully, your relationship with Ichika will change the next time you visit us.’ Mrs Kurogane adds with a smile.

   ‘Mother, what nonsense are you sprouting?’ Ichika asks while blushing.

   ‘That’s right Harumi, there’s no way they would become anything more than friends. RIGHT?’ Instructor Kurogane asks us with the veins of his face pulsing insanely.

   ‘...’

   Neither of us could say anything.

   Mrs Kurogane chuckles when she sees us like this. ‘Oh my. It sure is nice to be young.’

   Instructor Kurogane, however, does not share his wife’s sentiment. He’s frothing at his mouth, and his eyes are full of murderous intent.

   ‘Well, the two of you better get going.’ Mrs Kurogane tells us while she’s busy hugging her husband’s waist from behind to prevent him from moving.

   ‘Yes. Thank you once again!’

   ‘Good bye, mother! Good bye, father!’

   After we got back to the Academy, the girls in my harem (plus Madoka) somehow knew the exact timing of our arrival and greet us at the entrance of the dorm.

   ‘Welcome back, Akira-kun, Ichika-chan.’ Sakuya tells us with a warm smile.

   ‘It is good to be back.’ Ichika says.

   ‘Tell me about it. My body’s aching all over.’ I groan.

   ‘Should your big sister give you a body massage?’ Sakuya asks me while making groping motions with her hands.

   ‘Senpai, you know how to do massage?’

   ‘Oh yes. In fact, I was always told that I’m quite good at it.’

   ‘Well, in that case, please give me one.’

   ‘All right~’

   And so, we’re back to my room once more. While Sakuya is giving me a massage on my bed, the other girls are helping themselves with my video games and snacks. Not that I mind.

   ‘How’s my technique, Akira-kun?’ Sakuya asks while rubbing my back gently.

   ‘It’s…very good…’ I mumble.

   In fact, it’s so good that I’m getting sleepy.

   ‘Where did you learn to massage like this?’ I ask curiously.

   ‘From my mother. I figured that a good big sister should learn how to give her tired younger siblings a massage whenever they come back with a sore body.’

   ‘Wow, you really are a good big sister. If only your cooking skill is-YEOW!’

   I shriek at the end since Sakuya pinched one of my bruises.

   ‘Akira-kun, do you really think it’s a good idea to make fun of me when I can cause you lots of pain?’

   ‘Um, no ma’am. And I’m sorry for what I said.’

   ‘Good boy~’

   When she’s finally done, my body feels refreshed. My bruises still hurt, but at least my muscle pains are gone.

   ‘You’re next, Ichika-chan.’ Sakuya tells Ichika.

   ‘No, there is no need for-’

   ‘Come on, there’s no need to be shy~’

   Ichika relents at the end, since she’s not really good at refusing Sakuya.

   ‘I will be borrowing your bed for a while, Akira.’ she says to me bit shyly.

   ‘Yeah, go ahead.’

   While it’s Ichika’s turn to get massaged, I join the others in playing video games. They were playing a fighting game where up to four players can join at the same time. I sit down at one of the bean bags I bought and take up an unused controller.

   Ichika was in 4th place before she had to abandon post, but I manage to fight my way towards 1st place in no time.

   But then…

   ‘Aah~!’

   That moan almost made me drop my controller.

   I look over where Ichika is. She’s just getting her body massaged. Nothing more.

   ‘President…mnh~! Please be more gentle…aah!’

   ‘You know, Ichika-chan, if you’re begging me to be more gentle while making naughty sounds like that, I’ll just want to bully you even more~’ Sakuya’s emerald eyes are sparkling evilly.

   Oh crap, something has awakened inside Sakuya.

   ‘A-Akira, do not…aah…aah… do not look at me! Not when I am in such a state! Aah! President, have mercy~!’

   ‘It’s fine, isn’t it~? It’s fine, isn’t it~?’

   Now Sakuya sounds like a perverted geezer.

   Sensing that I’m distracted, the other three try to team up and take me down. Not on my watch.

   ‘Take…THIS!’

   I defeat all three of them in a single strike, making me the champion of the round.

   ‘Wow, you’re really good at this, Kagenashi-kun.’ Yui says to me.

   ‘Eh, being good at video games won’t amount to much in real life. Unless you’re a professional gamer.’

   ‘Nnh! Nnh! Nnnh~!’

   Ichika is now gritting her teeth so that her moans won’t come out. She made things even worse. Yui is trying her best to act normal, but she’s starting to look embarrassed. As for Mashiro and Madoka, they are as emotionless as ever.

   ‘You guys want to have another go?’

   ‘Yes please.’

   ‘Works for me.’

   ‘Revenge is mine.’

   And so, we continue with our games with Ichika’s moans as the BGM. I hope my room is soundproof, or people might misunderstand things.

   When the massage is finally over, the student council duo left my bed and come over to sit near us. Ichika is flushed and looks quite erotic after her massage session, while Sakuya’s face looks smooth for some reason. She’s also smiling brightly.

   ‘Ah, that was so fun. Maybe we should do this again, Ichika-chan.’

   ‘No thank you.’ Ichika says firmly.

   ‘Aww, you’re no fun. Any of you girls interested?’ Sakuya asks the other three instead.

   They shake their heads vigorously.

   Sakuya sighs sadly. ‘What does it take for a girl to have fun around here?’

   ‘Video games?’ I offer my controller to her.

   She takes it. ‘I guess this will have to do for now.’

   Soon, it’s lunchtime. Mashiro says she wants to eat shaved ice, and I didn’t have the foresight to buy a shaved ice machine.

   ‘Maybe Yamamoto’s Kitchen serves shaved ice.’ Mashiro says.

   ‘Maybe. You girls okay with going there?’

   They nod, so it’s decided that we’ll be having our lunch there.

   After the vampire’s arc is over, I’ve tried to convince Miyako-san to move her eatery opposite the Academy, since the eatery isn’t doing so well. If she moves an eatery with student-friendly prices right opposite a school, her chance of earning profits might increase.

   At first, Miyako-san refused. She said her husband chose this location to open the eatery because all his regulars live nearby, and they had been supporting him ever since he was operating the business with just a small mobile stall.

   I told her that it’s nice of her to follow her late husband’s wish, but a food and beverage outlet can’t survive with the supports of regulars alone. Besides, the current location and the location opposite the Academy isn’t that far. If the regulars are serious about supporting the eatery, they would frequent the place regardless of its location.

   My argument manage to change her mind, so she did as I suggested. Thanks to her wise decision, Yamamoto’s Kitchen now enjoys a lot of patrons, new and old, young and elderly. We’ve frequented there a few times, and we’ve kind of become the eatery’s regulars as well.

   When we reached the eatery, it’s crowded with customers. Nowadays, the place got so busy Miyako-san had to employ three more workers. We see some customers eating shave ice, so we at least got to confirm that they serve them here.

   ‘Oh, welcome, all of you!’ Miyako-san says when she saw us. ‘I’m sorry but you’ll need to wait for a while until you get seated.’

   I look at Mashiro. ‘You want to wait?’

   Mashiro nods.

   I look at the others. They have no issue in waiting as well. And so, we wait until a table that’s big enough to seat us to be emptied out. After waiting for close to 30 minutes, we finally get to sit down.

   ‘Sorry for the wait! May I take your order?’ Miyako-san comes over to take our order at once.

   All of us place our orders, and Miyako-san rushes to the kitchen so that her staffs can start working on them. After that, she comes back with six glasses of water put on top of a tray.

   ‘Please wait for a little bit longer.’ she says apologetically.

   ‘No worries. Please tell your staffs to take their time.’ I tell her.

   ‘Mashiro is glad that the business here is so much better now.’ Mashiro says to Miyako-san.

   ‘Thank you. It’s all thanks to Kagenashi-kun and his advice.’ Miyako-san looks at me gratefully.

   I just shrug off the gratitude. ‘Shopkeeper-san was the one who made the decision. You didn’t have to listen to me.’

   ‘Even so, thank you for the suggestion.’

   Miyako-san has to serve other customers, so she didn’t stay for long. While looking at her being busy, I feel happy for her. Initially, I wanted to help her because it might score me brownie points in an attempt to make her join my harem, but I no longer think that. Hopefully, she can forget the pain of losing her husband with her work.

   The food we ordered soon arrived, and we begin to eat them.

   ‘Mashiro, eat your yakisoba first.’ I tell her that since she’s gulping down her strawberry-flavored shaved ice and not touching her yakisoba at all.

   ‘No worries, Mashiro always finishes her food.’

   ‘That’s not the problem here. It’s your eating etiquette.’

   ‘Now now, it’s fine isn’t it?’ Sakuya dissuades me from being harsh on Mashiro.

   ‘Akira, stop acting like Mashiro’s mother. She does not want you to be Mashiro’s mother.’

   ‘Fine fine.’

   ‘I’ve always wanted to ask you, Kagenashi-kun. How did you ever find this eatery?’ Yui asks me.

   ‘Ah, that. I…saw an online review.’

   Thankfully, the eatery got so famous that people really wrote reviews about it, so I don’t have to tell the truth. That I knoew of its existence from an anime.

   ‘You and Fuyukaze broke curfew just to eat here, correct?’ Madoka adds all of a sudden.

   I flinch at that. ‘...Kojima, could you not bring that up?’

   ‘So this is where the two of you went that time?’ Sakuya asks.

   ‘Uuh, yes.’

   ‘This place may be worth breaking curfew for, but take care not to do it again.’ Ichika warns us.

   ‘Yes, ma’am.’

   ‘Got it.’

   After we finish our food and paid for them, Sakuya suggests we rent movies and watch them all night. None of us have any objections to that, so we go to the nearest video stores in the hope of finding something good.

   We split up after we enter the store, since Sakuya says it’s better that we keep our choices a secret until we actually watch them.

   I wander around aimlessly, unsure of what to pick. Not to brag, but I have pretty good instinct when it comes to picking light novels, animes and video games. So far, they have never betrayed me when I’m out shopping for those things. However, the same can’t be said for movies. For those of you who are wondering, no. I never watch trailers or look at reviews. They’re nothing but spoilers.

   In the end, I’ve chosen a kaiju movie. I would have prefer a slasher film where annoying people get mutilated by a murderer, but Yui might freak out if I rent one for real. Therefore, I have to settle for a giant monster directly or indirectly killing thousands of people. Yeah, I know. I’m disgusting.

   After everyone had picked a movie, we paid for them and left the store. I don’t have any DVD player in my room, so we had to rent one at an electronic store. Finally, we shop for some snacks: potato chips, soft drinks, etc. When we have everything we wanted to get, then we go back home. Or to be more precise, back to my room.

   As soon as we’re back, we play more video games until it’s dinnertime. I cook simple meals for us to eat, and once we’re done with eating and cleaning up, it’s finally time for some movie-watching.

   It only took me a moment to connect the DVD player to the television. After that, I reach my hand into the paper bag where all the boxes containing the DVDs are stored.

   The first one I pull out is an spy-thriller film.

   After the movie played for around 10 minutes and showed its first action scene, everyone coincidentally look at the person with the highest possibility of renting it.

   ‘Yes, I’m the one who rented this.’ Madoka confirms.

   I couldn’t believe her. ‘Seriously? When your whole life is basically a movie of the same genre?’

   ‘I wanted to know how much does the movie industry knows about our profession.’

   After the movie is over, Madoka tells us about all the faults she found in the movie. We listen to her rant patiently, and then I tell her that she doesn’t have to take it seriously, as it’s just a work of fiction.

   I pull out the next movie. The cover has some Japanese men who wear heavy Japanese armors printed on it. No prize for guessing who rented this one either.

   Right after the movie start to play, Ichika raises up her hand.

   ‘I was the one who chose this movie. I hope it will not bore you all.’ she says guiltily.

   Surprisingly, the movie was quite interesting. There were more war and one-on-one duel scenes than ones where the characters just talk, and the main and support characters are pretty likable.

   ‘It was good.’ I tell Ichika.

   The others nod in agreement.

   Ichika lets out a sigh of relief. ‘That is good to hear. I have watched this movie when I was small, and I wanted as much people to know about its greatness as possible.’

   ‘You love historical stuff, huh?’

   ‘Yes, is that weird?’

   ‘Nope, not at all.’

   Ichika seems happy to hear that.

   The next movie we’re watching is the one I rented. After the movie starts to play, I open up a packet of potato chips and start to munch on them, since I got hungry. Some of the girls do the same.

   ‘By the way, this one’s mine.’ I inform them.

   And then the kaiju appears.

   ‘...Boys.’ Sakuya says to no one in particular.

   After the movie is finished, I give it a 5 out of 10. There was only one kaiju, and it got killed by a nuclear bomb. I might have give this movie a better score if there was another kaiju, and they had a showdown at the final act. Also, the main characters survived. Boring.

   The movie was three hours long, so it’s already past midnight when it finished playing. It’s getting kind of cold, so I go the my bed and grab my blanket to wrap myself up with. The others took theirs by using teleportation magic.

   I paused for a few seconds after I pulled out the next movie we’ll be watching and looked at its cover. This is not going to end well.

   Yui literally froze up when she saw the title of the movie. Yup. This is a horror film, one with evil spirits.

   When things start to get scary, Sakuya hugs me without any hint of warning.

   ‘Kyaaaa~! How scary~!’ she says without looking scared at all.

   …I take it that she’s the one who rented this, and this was her aim.

   Meanwhile, Yui is shrieking at the top of her lungs while looking very pale. Here I thought her fear of ghosts have slightly cured after the Kamiya incident. Looks like I was wrong.

   ‘Kyaa! This movie is too scary! Kyaa~! KYAAAAA~!’ Yui’s shrieking is not stopping anytime soon.

   ‘Calm down, Kiryuu. It’s just a movie. Everything’s fake.’ I try to calm her down.

   ‘Yui-chan, try hugging Akira-kun. You might feel less scared.’ Sakuya suddenly suggests.

   Yui did it without thinking. She’s still shrieking, but not as loud as before.

   Mashiro who was sitting in front of me saw what’s going on behind her and decides to join in by hugging me from the front.

   ‘...Mashiro, what are you doing?’

   ‘Mashiro is scared. Kyaa~’ Mashiro shrieks without a single shred of fear in her voice.

   Just as I was about to tell her that she doesn’t look scared at all, I feel two people hugging me from behind. Ichika and Madoka.

   I look at Madoka in surprise. ‘Kojima, you too?’

   ‘Are you suggesting that an assassin should not have fear?’

   ‘That’s not what I mea-’

   I could not continue my sentence as the girls are hugging me tighter and tighter. They’re also shrieking constantly, although Yui is the only one who’s shrieking for real. Mashiro and Madoka are shrieking with their monotone voices, while Sakuya and Ichika are shrieking halfheartedly.

   ‘Girls, could you not hug me so tightly? It’s getting harder for me to breath…’ I wheeze.

   Thankfully, they oblige and slightly release their grips.

   After two hours or more, the movie is finally over. It was one of those movies where everyone in the movie dies. Don’t you just love those?

   ‘Can you girls let go of me now?’ I plead.

   They oblige once again and let go, even though they look kind of reluctant.

   Don’t get me wrong. I do love getting group hugs from them, but there’s no way I can stand being hugged for hours.

   The next movie is a comedy one. After the horror movie from just now, this one is a breath of fresh air.

   ‘Oh, I rented this one.’ Yui tells us after the title is shown.

   The movie was quite funny, and we had a good laugh. After the movie is over, all of us commend Yui of her good choice.

   Lastly, the movie rented by Mashiro. It’s an anime movie. About mahou shoujos.

   ‘Mashiro always wanted to watch this. She couldn’t watch it when it got aired at cinemas.’

   ‘Why not?’

   Mashiro shows us a rare sight of her blushing. ‘...These kind of movies are generally for younger girls.’

   Yeah, I guess the only ones who are brave enough to watch a mahou shoujo movie at cinemas are little girls and creepy men.

   Some scenes of the movie doesn’t make any sense, so I’m guessing that it’s based on an anime. Even if I don’t know the main story, I still got hooked since the fight scenes are surprisingly nice, and the animations are good as well.

   ‘Sorry for making you all to watch this.’ Mashiro apologizes after the movie is over.

   ‘No worries. It’s not like the movie was bad.’ I say to her.

   ‘Even if it was, it does not matter. We are friends, and there is nothing wrong with making us accompany you to do something that you enjoy.’ Ichika adds.

   ‘...Thank you.’ Mashiro whispers.

   I look at the time. It’s forty-five minutes to four in the morning.

   ‘Wow, we really stayed up late this time.’

   ‘Well, I guess it’s time for us to go back to our room. Yui-chan, it’s too late for you to go back to your house, so you should sleep at my room.’

   ‘Yes. Thank you, president.’

   ‘Akira-kun, would you prefer it if we sleep here instead?’ Sakuya ask me with a mischievous smile.

   ‘Um, sorry. I’m not mentally prepared for that yet.’

   ‘That’s okay, just take your time.’

   The girls left after we clean up the spot we used for movie-viewing. After I send them off, I immediately go brush my teeth and go to sleep, as I got very sleepy.