(Takashi’s POV)

 

Not much time after coming from our neighbor's house it was time for dinner.

 

I was happy to see that we would eat pizza today. It was among my favorite foods, together with burgers and fried chicken.

 

Anna-nee and Yuria used forks and knives while I and Rina ate with our own hands. Usually, Rina would also use tableware to eat it but she got unusually enthusiastic about the pizza today, and she just dig up her share without thinking. I liked to use my hands to eat pizza, with the exception when eating eat outside of the house, and my family had already given up on convincing me to do otherwise.

 

The dinner went as smoothly as someone might expect, with us talking mostly talking about the new neighbors. Things went pleasantly well. The ice between me, my sisters, and Yurika broke very quickly and Aika seemed to get along well with Yuria.

 

We even learned that Yurika would go to the same school as us.

 

All in all the visit was nice.

 

Things were almost as usual, with the exception of one thing. During dinner, I could see that Yuria was often directing intense gazes at me. There was something about them that I could not quite understand.

 

It looked like there was fear in her eyes like she was afraid of doing something that she might regret.

 

But there was something else as well.

 

It almost looked like hunger.

 

Is she already being affected by that?

 

I could only think that look had to do with what I had done before. I thought that she would be affected, but it looked like it shook her way more than I first anticipated.

 

Maybe I can try something with her already.

 

After finishing my dinner I stated that I would go to my room for the rest of the night and said good night to the rest of the family.

 

When it was Yuria’s time I also hugged her to which she hugged me back as usual. I could feel a certain stiffness in her body like she was trying to control herself.

 

I pushed my luck a bit and moved my hand down a little, squeezing her round butt.

 

“!”

 

She yelped a little due to my action, which made me move my hand back to its original position.

 

“Mom? Are you alright?”

 

“Y-yes Takashi. I’m okay. G-Good night and nice dreams” she said while smiling.

 

I felt like she was trying to move away from me a little, so I went to take a shower and back to my room.

 

Back into my room I put my thoughts on Yuria temporarily aside and started to think about one of my skills, [Network Connection].

 

I thought that right now was a good time to use it for the first time and figure out how exactly it worked.

 

Activate [Network Connection]

 

The moment I thought that a screen appeared in front of almost all of my field of view and a window similar to an internet browser was in front of me.

 

I was like I was using some kind of VR goggles.

 

I started to make a few texts to understand how it worked.

 

After a few minutes, I had already a good grasp of how it worked.

 

Different from what I originally imagined the skill didn’t need me to use my hands to move or change anything, I had only to think of the commands and what I wanted to search so that the skill would act accordingly.

 

I also tested how was the best way to use it. It was obvious that using it while sitting or lying was the easiest way, but I wanted to test if I could use it while walking. It was much more difficult than I thought. Trying to walk through my room and executing commands with the skill cost a lot of my concentration.

 

In the end, my head was pounding and I was a little hurt for bumping a lot around the room.

 

When the time limit of the skill came the screen simply disappeared from my sight, like it was a computer that had its plug suddenly disconnected.

 

I could feel my head pounding strongly as a result of the recent amount of stress it was put through, and I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon.

 

Using this skill is more taxing than I thought.

 

I decided that I had already done everything that I could and it was time to go to sleep. My headache would probably ha disappeared by the time I woke up.

 

I put on my pajamas covered myself and waited for the fatigue of the day to take me.

 

*

 

I felt myself being pulled away from my sleep.

 

My body was aching a little, as usually happened when I woke up.

 

After stretching myself a little I paid more attention to my surroundings. To my surprise, it was still night. Probably it was because I went to bed relatively earlier than usual.

 

I started to wonder if I should just go to bed or try to do something else since it was likely that I won’t be able to sleep for some time.

 

That’s when suddenly a sound caught my attention.

 

The sound of the doorknob turning.