Living room

"Mitsuo, you know the girl who just moved in next door, right?" Sitting on the sofa with the TV on, I talked to Mitsuo about the call with Mimi this morning.

"Hmm? Nii-san, how do you know about Achika-chan?" Mitsuo looked at me and tilted his head; this also caught the attention of Dad, who was next to me drinking tea.

"Well, she happens to be Mimi-senpai's kouhai in work. Mimi-senpai called me this morning and told me to ask you to look after her to make sure she doesn't wander off alone again, can you do that?" I looked over, seeing his expression turn from puzzlement to understanding to a bright smile.

"Don't worry; I'll make sure she doesn't wander off anywhere strange. I'll walk with her to school and back, I'll even have lunch with her since she seems to space out a lot…" Mitsuo stared at me with sparkles in his eyes, telling me about all his plans to look after her.

"That's good, but don't overdo it, alright? You need to make sure she's comfortable with it first before you do any of that" I chuckled inwardly and patted his head while giving him advice.

Mitsuo tentatively listen and even asked questions on the part he doesn't understand, in the corner of my eyes, I can see Dad sporting a proud smile while silently listening to me teaching Mitsuo about interpersonal relationships and the pitfalls of the social world.

"Also, how you address each other is a major indicator on where your relationship stan-"

*Ding Dong* *Ding Dong* *Ding Dong*

"Hmm? Who might that be this early in the morning?" Dad turned to me but I just shrugged.

"I'll go get!" Mitsuo spiritedly jumped off the sofa and ran off the front door.

"Mitsuo, don't run in the house" Mom reprimanded from the kitchen, she's washing the dishes right now.

"Hai hai~"

I spread my senses and sensed a familiar presence at our doorstep, making me smile lightly. She came to visit faster than I expected, I thought she would wait for a few days but nope, she came the next day.

I stood up and went to the kitchen to get another teacup for our guest from the cabinet.

"Nii-sannn! There's a beautiful blonde onee-san asking for you" Mitsuo peaked his head through the door to the living room, looking at me.

"Oh, it must be her, bring her in, Mitsuo" I grabbed a teacup from the cabinet and walked back to the sofa, ignoring the startled expression of Mom and Dad, and the stare from Hana, who's sitting next to Dad.

"Hai~!"

"Ren, you know who this is?" Dad asked while putting down his laptop.

"Well, there's only one person I've met recently that fits that description" I put the teacup down and poured some tea for everybody.

"Is it the girl you said you like?" Mom leaned on the sofa and asked. This caught the interest of Dad and Hana, they leaned forward, waiting patiently for my answer.

"Well, it would be pretty weird if I had feelings for her" I slowly took a sip from my teacup.

"""Why?"""

"You'll see" I put on a mysterious smile and continued to sip my tea.

"Nii-san, I've brought her" Mitsuo came from the hallway and wave to get our attention.

Behind him, stood a beautiful foreigner girl with long golden blonde hair with white ribbons on both sides and blue eyes, dressed in a Kurimo Academy uniform and white stockings, holding a school bag in her hands.

"Alice, welcome, come and sit anywhere you'd like" I smiled at her.

"Thank you for having" Alice bowed gracefully before walking behind Mitsuo to the sofa.

"I'll go get some snacks for your friend" Mom went to the kitchen and pulled out a box of biscuits and cookies along with some cream-filled baby castellas she made yesterday.

Dad quietly stared at her, thinking deeply about something, and Hana is looking between me and Alice; Mitsuo took the remote from the coffee table and turned off the TV before sitting next to Hana.

Alice settled right next to me and we waited in silence until Mom came and set a plate of biscuits, cookies, and baby castellas on the coffee table.

"Please enjoy, the baby castellas were made just yesterday" Mom smiled friendlily toward Alice.

"Thank you, Auntie" Alice bowed slightly before staring at me, telling me to introduce her. The others were the same as well, patiently waiting for me to tell them who this girl was.

"Ahem, I guess I need to introduce her" I fake-coughed and straightened my posture before gesturing to Alice.

"This is my classmate, Alice Brusion; Dad's illegitimate daughter" I calmly smile while staring Dad down to emphasize my lie.

""What!!!"" Hana and Mitsuo were stunned speechless with mouths agape.

"Dear, is this true~?" Mom smiled calmly while looking at Dad, but her eyes said otherwise.

"Wait, wait, wait! I've never had any other women after I started dating you, Honey. Please believe me!" Dad started to panic and didn't even notice Alice's surname.

"Ren, what is the meaning of this?" Alice calmly glared at me while pinching my hand, though it didn't hurt at all.

"I just wanted to clear up the tension first; after all, this is a big secret Dad never mentioned to us, he's adamant on not getting us involved with the Brusion family" I put on a serious expression, I know what drove Dad to leave his place as the heir and run to Japan, and I was also adamant in steering clear of them until I met Alice.

"…" Alice didn't speak any further, she should know what kind of people were in her "family" and she could understand why he wouldn't want to involve his family members.

*Clap*

I clapped to get everyone's attention before telling the truth.

"Haha, yeah, that was a lie. I'll let Alice say it herself"

"Hehehe, I guess it is better to do it myself" Alice stood up and a hand on her chest.

"My name is Alice Brusion, I am the daughter of George Brusion, nice to meet you Uncle Senji" Alice bowed before sitting back down.

"Sigh, so that's why I thought you looked familiar, you're George's kid" Dad pinched the bridge of his nose before turning his eyes to me.

"So, you know about it, Son?"

"I was curious one day and did a little digging"

"…Well, it was gonna come out one of these days since the main family already knows my whereabouts" Dad leaned back and started thinking about something.

"If I may, Uncle, everyone in the family, besides Father, my brother, and a few close trusted subordinates, think you have already died years ago; I don't think you need to worry about them" Alice tried to reassure him, but…

"Hmm, you're still young so of course you wouldn't know the depths of the Brusion family, it's… Ugh, never mind, you don't need to know about it now. Ask George about it later" Dad started to ruffle his hair out of frustration before a hand rested on his shoulder.

"Calm down, Dear. Also, you need to explain to me and the kids about all this" Mom's hand gripped his shoulder, which made him stiffen up.

"Yeah, Dad, what's going on here? Also, Ren, who is she exactly?" Hana leaned forward and scrutinized Alice more closely.

"She's our cousin from Dad's side of the family" I casually answered and sipped my tea before grabbing a baby castella.

"What? But, I thought dad didn't have any other family members" Hana looked surprised.

"Onee-san is our cousin?" Mitsuo, on the other hand, looked excited about this news.

"Is this true, Dear?" Mom looked to Dad for confirmation.

"Yeah, she's my little brother's daughter, I've never seen her before but she greatly resembles my brother's, at the time, fiancée along with my brother's features; I guess they decided to marry sometime after I left" Dad showed a melancholic expression while reminiscing about the past.

We all sat in silence, waiting for Dad to finish whatever he was doing while eating the snacks and sipping tea. Alice, Hana, Mitsuo, and Mom got to know each other over tea and snacks.

Before long, Alice, Hana, and Mom started to talk about cooking and other related things, then they moved to the kitchen to teach her some more in-depth techniques and the science behind the food.

I continued my lesson with Mitsuo on interpersonal relationships, this time about being observant of others and how to read the room. I taught him about half of the things I know about the concept of relationship before noticing it was 7 am.

"Alright, let's end this for now. You need to get ready for school little man, it's already 7" I patted his head and shooed him off to get dressed.

"Dad, I'll be heading off to school now" I stood up and stretched a bit.

"Alright, I'll tell everyone everything over dinner" Dad finished his cup of tea before getting up to prep for his work.

"Mhm, after all, I only found out some surface information after some digging, I want to hear the lore straight from the source" I nodded and turned to him before adjusting my imaginary glasses.

"Haha, fret not, this bard shall sing you a tale birthed many years ago" Dad dramatically put on his suit with a swoosh before walking away with his laptop in hand.

"I'll look forward to it" Grabbing my bag, I also, stylishly slung it over my shoulder while ignoring the weird stares I was getting from the kitchen.

"Alice, wanna walk to school together?" I turned towards her in the kitchen with Mom and Hana. I got a message from Hina saying she'd walk to school alone today so we might as well walk to school together.

"Why not? I will be moving into the neighborhood pretty soon, it will be good to look around here" Alice came to the sofa and got her bag before the two of us headed out.

"We're off!" I opened the front gate and waited there for Alice.

"Have a safe trip, and come visit anytime Alice-chan; we'll welcome you with open arms" Mom came to see us off at the front door.

"Thank you, I'll definitely come by often, Mitsuko-obasan" Alice smiled lightly and gave a light bow before coming to the gate.

The two of us walked to school at a slow pace as I showed her around some of the more notable places on the way there like the Hanada Family Diner, the park, the book stores, the convenient stores, the shrine, etc.

----------------------

(Third person POV)

"So, yeah, I had this strange dream last night" Hiro, walking with Iniji to school in the morning, started to talk about the vague memories he retain from his experience in the Dream World.

"Strange how?" Iniji stretched his arms because he kinda slept in the weird position last night.

"I don't remember much of it, the clearest part I remember is that I was with other people and was being guided out of a forest by someone who looked like Ishia-san but older" Hiro rubbed his temple, trying to recall some more.

"Well, that is quite strange, though seems pretty tame to me"

"That's not the strange part, while on this trek every time we stop for a break, he'd give me a book which I can't remember the content of, and get this, he would do something I can't quite remember and summon this…black….rope-like thing that moves about like tentacles and grows a small seed into a plant really fast.

He made the plant wither away and some orb thing came out of the dead plant while floating. He also shot lasers from his finger, made the ground rise, turned water into realistic moving fishes, and shot those fishes with bullets from his palm"

Hiro then turned to Iniji to see his reaction to his retelling of everything he remembered of the dream.

"You're right, that is very bizarre. The first thing just made me think you've watched too much tentacle you-know-what, the second and third bit sounds a lot like the Life Force Manipulation of that one guy from Great Sage.

The laser thing is just a rip-off of Killing Machine, the making the ground is just earth bending, and the last two is just magic, I guess. The fact that it happened in one line of sequences is just-"

Iniji was giving his thoughts of this dream, when…

"Oh, there were also big black creatures attacking us from time to time!" Hiro shouted out when he recalled that they got attacked by monsters in the Forest of Nightmares.

"…This dream of yours keeps getting weirder and weirder; let's just forget about it, thinking with logic about a dream will just make us lose brain cells" Iniji massaged his head with both hands and decided to drop this topic.

"You're right, guess I'll just write it down and be done with it" Hiro pulled out his phone and went into notepad to jot down more details of his dream.

"You write dream journals?" Iniji curiously peeked at Hiro's phone.

"I only just started recently, I've been trying to lucid dream since I thought it'd be fun to try it" Hiro finished writing it before going on Deep-Sea and showing Iniji an article about lucid dreams.

"I have heard of it before, and the concept does seem pretty fun and exciting, but does it actually work? I've never tried to do it since my sleep schedule is an absolute mess" Iniji smile wryly while scratching his cheek.

"Not sure either, but it's worth a try. I'll get back to you on it if it works" Hiro closed the Deep-Sea app and went on Red-Bird to see an interesting post.

"Hey, Monoa-kun, looks like there's gonna be a special event in Chronicle Impact later today" Hiro showed Iniji the post from the CI(Chronicle Impact) official account.

"Oh! It's a co-op event about helping new players to the game" Iniji quickly took out his phone to read more about it.

"It says" 「The main purpose of this event is to give new players with low ranks a boost and encourage high ranking players to interact with the newbies along with making connections for the new upcoming Boss Raid feature in the next update」 Hiro read off the big black bold words on the official website.

"New players…I think I've heard Ishia-kun was interested in the game, let's ask him about it in class" Iniji showed a bright smile, excited about teaching a friend about the game he likes.

"Mhm" Hiro nodded at him before continuing to scroll through Red-Bird.

The pair walked to school wouldn't any incident until they spotted Ren, Alice, and a handsome blond guy harassing them near the school gate.

"Hey, isn't that Ishia-kun and Alicia-san?" Iniji pointed at this…comedy skit?

"What's that guy doing?"

"Let's check it out"

----------------------

「Hey! Don't ignore me!」

"So, Alice, how was elective class yesterday?" I asked, ignoring the weird buzzing sound of an insect.

「Listen to me, damnnit!」

"Well, everything was quite normal and fun, except for this one guy who was throwing around creepy remarks" Alice had a wide smile on her face and looked like she was trying to hold back laughter, but I'll just ignore it.

「Oi! Listen to me when I'm talking!」

"I'm sure you don't have to worry about him doing something weird since he'd be kicked out otherwise but make sure to stay by Namaii-san if you feel uncomfortable, she'll knock him right where it hurts" I reassured her while and am I hearing things? Because I just heard the screams of a monkey strangely close to my ears.

「Hey! I heard that, and that was uncalled for!」

Oops, might have said that last part out loud.

"Hehe, yes, he, I'll, hehe, make sure to, hehe, do that, Hehehe…" Alice, for some reason, started giggling in between her words.

「Alice, don't laugh at me!」

"Oh, I see Monoa-kun and Akirou-kun over there" I pointed to people with actual relevancy.

「Alright, that last part was just mean!」

「Oh…You're still here? 」 I looked back at Alex with clear disinterest in my eyes so if he didn't get the message before, now he hopefully does.

「Yeah! We haven't finished what we started yesterday」 Alex pointed his finger rudely close to my face.

「You mean the day before yesterday?」 I stared at him with the same amount of disinterest but this time with a trace of "are you a fucking idiot?" look trailing behind.

「…Don't look at me like that! And for your information, I was out sick yesterday so I decided to skip that day」 Alex turned away and waved at me dismissively, which ticked me off.

「Alright, first, that doesn't make any sense at all, are you mentally challenged? Second, you can't decide to just skip a day, the world doesn't revolve around you, get off your damn high horse. Lastly, your existent is an eyesore and a bother, take a page out of Alice's book and think before you speak for once in your life, maybe then you'll be more pleasant to be around with」 I glared coldly at him and put a bit pressure on him before taking it away.

"Ah, Akirou-kun, Monoa-kun, good morning. You guys feel any aches or pain from the training?" I switched back to my trademark gentle smile while turning to face their stunned expressions.

"Well?"

"…A-ah, no, I actually feel kinda refreshed when I woke up this morning" Monoa smiled wryly while taking a peek behind me.

"…I feel better than ever, I'm just rearing to do more training" Akirou only spared Alex a glance before turning to me with both his fists clenching in excitement like he's brimming with energy and fighting spirit. Maybe last night's dream had more effect on his mental than I thought, not that it's a bad thing, just a happy little accident.

"Well, be prepared since we're gonna do a little something different, but I do need to talk to some people first. Enough of that, let's not dilly dally because we have 11 minutes left before homeroom" I turned to Alice, who was supporting a trembling Alex; she made a gesture to go on ahead and that's what we did.

While changing our shoes, Monoa finally asked the question.

"By the way, why were you walking to school with Alicia-san? From what I've heard, don't you usually walk with Izuno-san?" Monoa asked while Akirou stayed silent but perked up his ears.

"Where to start….Uh, Alice came to my house this morning, I introduced her to my family, she spent some time there, and when it was 7 we decided to walk to school together; also, Hina told me to walk to school alone" I listed off the events in order while waiting for them to change shoes.

""She what!? And you did what!?"" They both exclaimed in surprise while looking at me in disbelief, then the two fell into deep thoughts as their thoughts started to run wildly out of control at the implication of this news.

"Oh, did I forget to mention that Alice is my cousin?" I put on a face of mock realization.

"Why didn't you start off there!?" They broke out of their thoughts before Monoa started to grab my shoulders and shook me around while shouting with an annoyed expression. Akirou just let out a sigh of relief and watched while finishing changing his shoes.

"Pfff!" A mischievous smile broke out on my face as I let out a few chuckles.

After he had calmed down we made our way to Class 1-A and slid open the door, just in time to witness this…

"…Would you like to go out after school?" A handsome second-year guy asked gently while standing next to a girl who was sitting at her desk.

Who is that girl?

My eyes turned sharp and gave off a cold glint as my smile turned into a frown after witnessing this. The room's temperature seemed to have dropped as everyone in the classroom, except the second-year guy, shuddered and turned to look at me.

I quickly put on my usual smile to cover up the frown as I briefly glanced at the second-year guy before turning Hina.

 

 

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