Burnout

October 14
Family Home, Sumida City, Tokyo

Finally, the day I had been waiting for arrived, the giant hamburger eating contest! In this tournament, you can eat as much as you want for an entire hour. There are several contestants, and the prize is a next generation console, this is my day, there are 20 other contestants, but that's beside the point, even if I lose, I'll have accomplished my goal of eating until I'm bored. I can't wait for the signal to start, they are slowly bringing in the plates of burgers, they are the special ones with cheese, my favorites, I can count this as a win, it's time to remove the limiters. The judges are watching, the host raises the whistle and gives the signal, I quickly grab the first burger to take the first bite, the crowd shouts my name.

"Cesar! Cesar!"
"Let's go, Cesar!"
"....."
"Damn it! Cesar!"
"...."
"Get up, damn it!"
"Look at the time! You're already late for school!"
"I said get up!"

With a pull, I feel my body spin around and the cold takes me by surprise, when I open my eyes I realize I'm in my bed and my mother is pulling on the blanket to force me to get up.

"Cesar, you're already late for school!"
"How much longer are you going to sleep?"
"......"
"Why are you crying and eating your pillow?

"......."
"Nothing, just forget it....."
""That wonderful dream has died.....""
"....."
"Now all I have left is to live in the cruel present......."

"?????"
"Did you have another bad dream?"

"No, no."
"It wasn't that, I just forgot about school."

"Well, if you're okay, then get up and get ready."
"The others are already waiting for you, it's quite late, so just get changed and try to grab some breakfast on the way."

After I checked the clock and saw that my mother was right, I went to the bathroom to wash my face and change into my uniform. I hurried back and could see that Tamamo and Maria were indeed sitting in the living room, already prepared and ready to leave. But they weren't alone, Xian was also with them, talking happily with them.

"!!!!"
"Look Xian, I'm sorry I didn't notice you yesterday."
"It's good to see that you're a human again."

"Oh yes, it's good to have two legs again instead of eight."
"Although I've been practicing being an Arachnea a bit, so I think I can return to my previous appearance if I try, in case you want to see how I was three days ago."

"Forget it, there's no time, we have to go now!"

"Well, I think I can get there earlier by car, so I can drop you off on the way."
"It just has to be the exception."
"You know, I don't want people to start weird rumors about why we arrived at the same time and stuff like that."

"Fine, whatever, but let's go already!"

"Hey, Cesar, aren't you forgetting something?" Maria asked.

"Wallet, keys, notebooks, calculator, pens, gun, clothes."
"No, I don't think I'm forgetting anything."

"You're still a slime girl."
"Aren't you supposed to be seen as a fox girl at school?"

"Oh, right."
"Well, thanks for pointing that out, otherwise I wouldn't have noticed."
"I was wondering why the clothes were tighter than usual."

"You damned pervert."
"But you never forget to permanently rub your breasts."
"Does it bother you to hold your breasts with your slimy hands?"

"Well, yeah, a little bit, they've been pretty heavy lately, so they're a little hard to hold."
"Maybe I should use my normal hands to hold them and write with my hair hands."
"Of course, you'll never know if the best you have is flat."

"You bloody idiot!"
"I spent 10 years in the hospital! It's clear that my body is small due to lack of health!"

"All right, everybody, enough! You're late!"
"Get out of my house!"

With one kick, my mother kicked us all out into the street, it's good to see she's still the same demon who would make you go to school even if a major earthquake shook the whole country, and that's without exaggeration, because she actually did it once in the past back in Costa Rica. Without any desire to earn more of her wrath, we all fell silent and made our way to school, miraculously arriving on time despite the teacher's reckless and senseless driving on the highway, even though we lost the police at one point. With no further problems, Tamamo and I entered the classroom right after the bell rang for the first class, which happened to be Xian's, so she appeared right after us.

"Alright class, I hope everyone brought their homework today."
"Remember, this assignment is worth several points depending on the quality of your research."
"I'm going to call you to present in alphabetical order."

What? There was homework today!? Damn traitor! You live in my own house! You could have warned me!

The psychological terror of every student became a reality for me when, out of the blue and without warning, a wild assignment appeared. The only card I had to play was an old ancestral technique that I had mastered since my first journey through school: shamelessly copying someone else's assignment while the teacher was checking it, with each name called subtracting a second from the timer. In a damned sprint to the finish line, I managed to hand in my assignment with everything and the book still hot from writing at lightning speed.

"Elise, why are your answers the same as Tamamo's?"

" Because they are the same questions perhaps?"

"......"
" Okay, I'll give you a seven, but don't do it again next time."

Oh my God, I narrowly escaped this one, if my mother finds out that I didn't hand in an assignment, she'll scold me with her slipper. I can't risk that in these times. But after such an exciting start to the day, the rest of the classes were more bearable and without any other surprises, except for a heavy rain in the afternoon, so much so that I began to feel sleepy again and longed to pick up my hamburger competition where I left off. At noon, I went to the cafeteria to buy more food besides my bento, thinking that at least I could fulfill my little fantasy of having a full stomach.

When the lesson was over, Tamamo and I were gathering our things when Haru came over to talk to us excitedly!

"Finally, I have time to talk to you again, Elise!"
"Tell me what happened? In the last few days, Tamamo had to swap her place with yours so that you wouldn't have any more absences."
"Oh, we've also redecorated our club room a bit, come see it!"

"?????"
"We had a club too?"
"Why would I accept such a thing?"

"Come on, don't you remember our club?"
"The Paranormal Things Club!"
"Well, it's called the Detective Club now, but the idea is still the same."
"Don't you remember? You've been skipping classes so much lately, it wouldn't surprise me."

"A lot of things happened, okay?"
"I had to destabilize a government in Africa and defeat a thousand-year-old witch in China in the space of two weeks."
"One of them made me feel like I was in a post-apocalyptic city for the second time in my life."
"......."
"Can't I take a break today?"

"But you don't have anything to do now, do you?"
"Come on, it's only for a while."
"Besides, I have some new ideas about what to do with our club once and for all!"

"So it's still about nothing, as usual."

Once again, Haru's insistence led me to a place I didn't want to go. Inside, Sakura was waiting for us; it seems she's taking tea lessons with Tamamo as her teacher, which was fine with me as long as they didn't bother me. The problem was that they were bothering me; Haru showed me every pencil and piece of paper that had moved since my last visit, while Sakura wanted to have a competition with me and Tamamo to see who was better at serving tea, a competition I didn't even know existed or cared about.

When everyone finally got bored, I mean, when the club activities finally ended, I was able to go home and catch up on what really mattered: getting the new weapons from the new expansion of my favorite game. Apparently, they were the highest-level weapons in the game, so they were in a high-level dungeon. I checked my clan's user list to see who was online and to form a group for the new challenge. But when I checked the clan tab in the game, I noticed that it was completely empty. Suspecting something was wrong, I went to the clan section, only to find that I had been kicked out of my clan due to the stupid rule that any member not logging into the game for more than two weeks would be kicked out.

"KICKED OUT! Just for not being online for two weeks!"
"You know how much I sacrificed!"
"How many sleepless nights just to get the Ashbringer back with a new account and leveling up after they stole the first one!"
"The time I wasted by helped them get their stupid PVP armor"
"Ingrates!"

*Ring**Ring**Ring*

My cell phone started ringing, so I answered to see what the reason was.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Cesar!"
"Get your damn fat ass down to the cafeteria right now!"
"Don't you remember it's your closing shift today!"
"Saeko's leaving soon and you still haven't come!"

Damn, I had also forgotten that I had to help in the cafeteria.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on my way."
"It's just that the zipper on the maid's outfit came loose a bit."
"It seems I absorbed too much water and my breasts grew from the extra load, and when I closed it, it burst."

"So that's what happened, huh?"
"And here I thought you had gone home to play video games all afternoon."
"All right, bring it over and I'll fix it myself."
"And stop absorbing water all the time!"
"I don't care if you like having the biggest boobs possible, but stop tearing up the clothes!"

"Yes, yes, I'm on my way."

Damn, now I truly have to absorb more water and break the zipper of my maid's outfit, or my mother will break my legs.

After making my lie a reality, I arrived at work in the cafeteria, which was undoubtedly busier than usual, so I had to work non-stop. I took orders from customers, brought them what they asked for, performed some acrobatics with my slime, prevented Lisa from impaling a customer for reciting a poem to her, and even had to deliver several orders to some neighboring houses. An exhausting day, until finally the night hours began, where everything returned to normal, so I took some time to rest on the table next to Levia's fish tank, or at least that was the idea, until my mother interrupted my tranquility again.

"Hey Elise, Inspector Yamamoto just called."
"He said that Haru is very excited about your return and wanted to see if she could come over this weekend to spend the night and have a sleepover."

"Oh no! That's absolutely not going to happen!"
"I'm fed up!"
"I can barely keep up! This can't go on!"
"I'm still tired of all the crap that has happened so far."
"The last thing I want is for that brat to go through my house and bother me!"
"Actually, forget it! I'm tired of this crap!"
"I haven't had a moment to stop and think about anything since I came back."
"I want my life back! I'm not everybody's employee here!"
"Everyone can go to hell! From now on, I'm on vacation."
"I don't care if the world goes to hell, I won't stop it."
"If Haru comes this weekend, I'll be the one leaving the house!"

"......"
"Oh, okay, I'm sorry."
"I'll tell him you're not available, no problem."
"......"
"Say, is something wrong? A lot of stress lately?"

"Lately?"
"I can't even remember the last time I really rested."
"There's always a problem here, an enemy there, an obligation here, unexpected events, fights everywhere."
"I can't keep up with everyone pulling me in their direction.
"So screw them all, I'm going to reclaim at least some of my life."

"Oh no."
"Looks like Cesar's battery died again," Levia said behind me.

"I don't care what you call it, but I don't want to be bothered for a while!"

A little annoyed, and taking advantage of the fact that my mother strangely seemed to understand at least some of what I was saying, she let me go back home before closing the store. So at least something good came out of all the chaos of requests today, although I couldn't rest until the next day, when the weekend began, because I accidentally slipped while putting my clothes away and hit the shelf where Tifa's dollhouse was, so I had to pick everything up and put it back in its place, although she forgave me for the mess at least.