Going back home he chose the same way to return home. The wind was the same as before and the salty smell refreshed his mind after those long school hours.

Pondering useless thoughts, he quickly reached home.

Of course he didn’t see Sakura again, he did leave earlier than her and he didn’t know whether she’d take the same route anyway.

Before he went home, he did a quick detour to the convenience store to buy some lunch.

Even though he did have lunch at school, the break was quite early compared to other places. Thus, he had to have a second lunch at home.

He has been living alone with his father ever since he was 6. Asahi usually had to be at work and was home late at night only, meaning Sato had to get his own food.

He had tried cooking, but his talent did NOT lie in that. Needless to say, he bought it at the convenience store instead.

 

As for dinner, his father usually got it on his way home. They’d always try new things everyday so it never got boring.

But that didn’t always go well. Not all foods are necessarily delicious to a single person.

Reaching at his house’s door, he fumbled for the keys and entered inside.

The house was surprisingly bigger than 1 might have expected. The house was so beautifully renovated that one might not even suspect that only a father and son live here.

Sato took his lunch out from the bag and heated it up.

Sitting down on the table, he started to eat his food while pondering what to do the rest of the day.

After deciding, he calmly finished his lunch and went to take a bath.

Bath, study, relax and some exercise. A simple routine, after all, he didn’t have anything better to do anyway.

After taking a long bath, but not too long as he’d get dizzy otherwise, he opened his books to study.

Even though he wasn’t really good with people at his age and didn’t have many friends. The teachers were quite impressed with him.

They had thought that he was a delinquent at first. But after seeing his scores and realizing that he wasn't cheating in any way, they realized that he wasn’t as simple as he looked.

That got him a good impression from the teachers.

The reason he studied wasn't so that he could impress the teachers, but because he didn’t have anything better to do and it’s always good to get better grades.

Neat notes, clean annotations and pointers, it really did seem he knew what he was doing, even Yuta asked him for his notes sometime… or maybe everytime.

After finishing revising his notes and studying for a few further topics, he washed his face and got ready to exercise.

He didn't wear socks or shoes or go out of the house, rather went to a room at the corner of the house and opened it.

There was a boxing bag, a few gloves in a rack, a few muscle equipment and dumbbells.

This was his “exercise” room, or so his father called it. It was built because his father wanted to exercise at his leisure, but in the end it was mostly used by Sato instead. 

 

Also, with his eyes and hair, it was undeniable that he wouldn’t get into fights. Though he hadn’t gotten into any for the past year, he still continued learning a bit of martial arts as it could just be considered staying healthy.

So he did a bit of cardio, before taking a short break and repeating.

After a while, he did some muscle workout to cool down and took a quick shower.

Going back to the living room, he switched on the TV to pass time and wait for his father to return and then they would have dinner,

No long after he had sat down in the living room, the sound of the door opening came.

“I’m home”

“Welcome back, dad”

Sato got up to help out his father. He took his bag and placed it on the table nearby and went to run the water for the bath.

“Here, a new restaurant opened up. I’ve heard it has some good tempura. Bought quite a bit”

He handed Sato a package in a small bag with the tempura in it.

“Un, smells good, I’ll it warm it up while you go take a bath”

“Alright”

Asahi smiled and headed for the bath while Arat went forward to heat up the food and lay down at the table.

Not long after they were both seated down on the table, ready to start the food.

“Mmm...it really is good!”

“True, I still remember when you got a the dish called “Escargot” from a french restaurant because you wanted to try out something new”

“I really didn’t know that they were actually snails…”

“You could’ve at least checked them beforehand.”

“But I ordered it packed and I didn’t have time to see it.”

…

The seemingly meaningless conversations about one thing or another went going throughout dinner till-

“How was your first day of school?”

“...the usual.”

“Haha, still famous as ever?”

“...pretty much so.”

“Anyone in your class you know?”

“Yuta is with me”

“Hmm...That’s nice.”

“...Maybe”

Asahi just grinned at that response. He actually knew how much Sato cherished Yuta, but chose not to say it.

“Well, that was a good dinner, I’ll sort out a few things. You can go to sleep, there’s stills school tomorrow”

“Alright, Good night”

“Night.”

 

Sato went back to his room, packed his bag and brushed his teeth before going to bed.

 

Laying down, he went through what happened today. It went a bit different from what he had presumed would happen but it didn’t end up too bad.

 

He had already packed his bag for tomorrow and studied a bit for some subjects which were about to be taught.

Staring into the empty space he finally decided to try to sleep even though he wasn’t sleepy.

 

But not long after, he was asleep