While Yuichi reminisced about his big sister, Shota hurried out of the classroom, and “Love Interest” Aiko Noro approached him in his place.
Her label had originally been “Vampire,” but at some point it had changed to “Love Interest” and remained that way ever since.
She was pale and petite, with an attractive face framed by a short bob haircut. Her grandfather was from France, so she was only three-quarters Japanese, which gave her a slightly exotic air.
“Sakaki! Let’s get going!” she said to him, cheerfully, as Natsuki Takeuchi — “Love Interest II” — came up behind her. Apparently they all wanted to go together. Like Yuichi, Aiko and Natsuki were in the survival club.
Natsuki had short-cropped hair and cool, almond eyes, and was often described as one of the most beautiful girls in the first-year class.
Like Aiko’s, her label had not always been “Love Interest”; it had originally been the terrifying “Serial Killer.”
Yuichi felt a little self-conscious about this, but he couldn’t figure out what had caused the change, and if it referred to the girls being his own love interest, or someone else’s. The labels weren’t terribly forthcoming.
“That guy... he asked you out, right?” Aiko asked nervously to Natsuki as they made their way out of the school building, referring to something that had happened a week ago. That had been just before finals started, and she had probably been so busy with studying that she was only remembering it now.
One might expect them to talk a little more easily with each other, being classmates and all, but things were probably still a little awkward after the whole kidnapping incident.
“Did he? I don’t remember anymore. He wasn’t all that interesting.” To Natsuki, whether someone was interesting or not referred to whether or not they were worth killing.
“Would you kill him if he was?” Yuichi asked, dubiously. She said she had reformed, but he still didn’t fully trust her.
The three of them were heading for the school’s rear gate, on the side with the athletic fields.
“Of course not. I would never do something like that on school grounds.”
“But you would do it if you weren’t on school grounds?”
“Not anymore. Not as long as you’re keeping me satisfied. Right, Sakaki?” she asked with a lascivious grin.
“I keep telling you to stop referring to it that way...” Aiko muttered.
As a serial killer, Natsuki Takeuchi felt the urge to kill the way most people felt hunger. But unlike most others of her kind, it seemed, she had a desire to go to school like normal people did. She said she was working hard to fit in with society as a whole.
Even so, she couldn’t fully fight her serial killer urges, so she was currently using Yuichi to keep them at bay by joining in with his training every now and then.
“Can’t you do something about that hobby of yours?”
“Hobby? What an awful way to put it. I think of myself as a girl of deep passions. Trying to kill each other is the richest form of communication there is.”
“Um... that makes no sense, you know,” Aiko said.
Yuichi didn’t really understand it, either.
“When you’re trying to kill someone, you’re watching them, analyzing them, striving to understand them on the deepest levels. Just by facing them, you have to sample what they’re throwing out, grasp it, and infer. If that’s not communication, what is it?”
“I’m not trying to kill you, though. But I guess it is important to analyze your opponent in combat...”
“Which is very upsetting. It means you don’t love me, Sakaki. If you did, you’d get serious with me.”
“L-Love...” Aiko was speechless.
“She’s joking, obviously,” Yuichi said, refusing to play along. Even if it wasn’t a joke, she was probably still planning something.
“It didn’t sound like a joke to me...” Aiko murmured, unconvinced.
“By the way, how’s he doing? The subordinate of yours... doesn’t he follow you out of love?” Yuichi asked, remembering the big man who had appeared after the fight, only to fall to Mutsuko’s bomb and stun gun.
“Sakiyama, you mean?”
“I guess, if that’s his name.”
“Sakiyama is so weak, it’s out of the question. I just let him in my house because he’s useful.”
“Your house... You mean, he lives with you?” Aiko asked, looking surprised.
Yuichi was a little surprised, too. He didn’t think they had that kind of relationship.
“It’s convenient to have an adult around.”
“Just what is he? Is he human?”
“I suppose? He started out as a stalker. Look, over there,” Natsuki said as their walk brought them closer to the gate.
She was pointing to the top half of a man’s head peeking out from behind the gate. He couldn’t fully hide himself, but he was trying hard to be inconspicuous. Even Yuichi hadn’t noticed him until he was pointed out.
Yuichi glanced at his label, which was now “Stalker.” Previously it had been “Serial Killer’s Lackey.”
“Ugh... I didn’t even notice,” Aiko muttered in fear.
“Yeah, since it’s not something you’d be expecting to see...” He hadn’t noticed the man during his fight with Natsuki, either. Perhaps “Stalker” also referred to a special ability of his.
“Stalkers you can’t even detect are the worst,” Yuichi murmured, but Natsuki didn’t seem to feel like explaining any more. They moved past Sakiyama and continued on their way.
After they got out of the back gate, Yuichi looked around. He had never been on this side of the school before, and he found it felt a bit lonely compared to the front.
Their destination was a restaurant just outside the gate.
Its name: Nihao the China.
Yuichi looked around the narrow shop as they opened the poorly fitted doors and walked in.
As the name would suggest, it was a Chinese restaurant. The distinct aroma of spice filling the air suggested a specialization in Szechuan food — the kind of place that sold lunch sets at reasonable prices.
Two girls in Seishin High School uniforms were seated at the restaurant’s one round table.
“Yu! Over here!” Mutsuko Sakaki waved to them exaggeratedly as they arrived.
“You don’t have to shout. We can see you,” Yuichi said tiredly.
Above her head was the label “Big Sister,” which, fortunately, needed no elaboration. She was a second-year student and the president of the survival club that Yuichi and the girls were part of.
Most people agreed that she was beautiful, but the knife-like barrettes she wore in her long hair gave her a rather menacing air.
Unlike the girl sitting beside her, she wore the short-sleeved summer uniform over a long-sleeved shirt. She did that to prevent exposing her skin.
It was an unsuitable mode of dress for the hot season, but Yuichi had no place to talk, as (albeit at her urging) he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
Even one layer of cloth was better than bare skin, and, she had insisted, it could mean the difference between life and death.
“What’s with this restaurant? If it served Japanese food, would it be Konnichiwa Nihon?” As he spoke, Yuichi took a seat across from Mutsuko and her friend. Aiko and Natsuki sat down on either side of him.
“Speaking of which, I know of an Indian food shop called Namaste!” Mutsuko offered, to the interest of no one.
“I chose it because I liked the name!” she continued. “It sounds like one of the Magnificent Ten! ‘Just leave this to Nihao the China!’”
“That’s ridiculous...” Yuichi said, collapsing over the table.
“Noro, did you read the latest chapter?” the girl beside Mutsuko asked, turning to Aiko. She was the club’s vice president, Kanako Orihara. Above her head was the label “Isekai Fanatic.”
She had a docile air about her, wavy chestnut hair, and a chest that was considerably larger
than Mutsuko’s.
She longed to visit an isekai — an alternate world or time period — and had spent a lot of time thinking about what she’d do if she ever traveled to one, which may have been the origin of her friendship with Mutsuko.
All of her ideas about isekai had even led her to write a novel set in one, called My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World Is in Danger!, which she had put up on a fiction sharing site on the internet to get feedback, though Yuichi hadn’t read it yet.
“The Colossus died... What’s the demon king going to do now?” Aiko asked, mournfully.
The last time they’d discussed it, Yuichi recalled, the Colossus had been kicking around the hero’s army. The third-hand scraps of knowledge he was acquiring about it made it difficult for him to piece together exactly what the story was about.
“Oh, but there’s foreshadowing that the Colossus could be revived!” Mutsuko interrupted, forcefully.
“Sakaki! Even if you guessed it, don’t tell!” Kanako glared at Mutsuko.
“Oh, sorry! I just can’t stop myself from talking about stuff like this!”
Indeed, Mutsuko had always been that way. She was the type to immediately start talking the minute she noticed some foreshadowing, or figured out the twist in a movie.
“Noro, I started another novel called Dark Swordsman Alice in the Labyrinth of the Dead! Won’t you read it? I’m trying out a different atmosphere from Demon King!”
“Ah, I can’t wait,” Aiko answered with a grin. At first she’d seemed annoyed by the pressure to read the novel, because she wasn’t used to reading. But now that she’d started it, she said, she found it very interesting. She had become quite a fan of Kanako’s writing.
Aiko poured out three cups of water and set one in front of each of them. The water pitcher, left out in the middle of the table, appeared to be self-service.
“Does this restaurant have anything good?” Yuichi asked as he took a drink of his water and sighed.
“I put in a random order! Is there anything you didn’t want?” Mutsuko spread out her hands and gestured as though a three-day feast were spread out before them. She really did make a big production out of everything.
“You should have asked that before you ordered!”
“Um... I’m not great with garlic...” Aiko held up a hand timidly.
“Really? Well, I ordered a lot, so just eat whatever doesn’t have it! But wow, you don’t like garlic? You must be a vampire!”
“Lots of people don’t like garlic,” Yuichi said, feeling a chill run up his spine. Aiko Noro was still hiding her vampiric nature from her fellow club members.
“Hey, does eating garlic hurt you at all?” Yuichi whispered to her.
“Oh? No, I just don’t like the smell,” Aiko responded, a little stunned.
“That was really misleading!”
“What’s wrong, Yuichi?” Kanako asked, her usually quiet voice seeming louder than usual.
“Oh, nothing,” Yuichi dissembled as a waitress in a cheongsam came by with the food.
“Hey, it’s not that big a restaurant. Why is she wearing a cheongsam?” Aiko asked in confusion.
“I don’t know. Probably because she likes it.”
Or because the owner likes it, Yuichi thought, casting a glance at the kitchen, where a man who appeared to be the head chef stood over a wok.
He had a shaved head with a lone pigtail, above which was the label “Nihao the China.” In terms of being ostentatiously pseudo-Chinese, he far outstripped the waitress.
Yuichi was starting to realize why this restaurant wasn’t popular. You didn’t need Soul Reader to find it all very suspicious.
“Yes, yes! I like it, yes!”
“‘Yes’?” Aiko’s eyes widened at the waitress’s odd phrasing.
“Wow! I can’t believe we met a real Chinese person with a quaint speech quirk here!” Mutsuko cried out happily.
“I’m not Chinese, yes! I’m full-blooded Japanese, yes!” Indeed, she had none of the usual Chinese accent. She was just appending “yes” to the end of every sentence.
“Hey, why do you do that? Oh! Are you a Sexy Peking fan?” Mutsuko burst out.
Sexy Peking was a comedy magician, and one of Mutsuko’s many idols, who used the same speech tic.
“It’s got nothing to do with Sexy Peking. It just seems appropriate to a Chinese restaurant... yes?” The waitress seemed slightly embarrassed about having her speech tic pointed out. The label “Fake” hung above her head.
“Hamasaki?” Yuichi asked, remembering the label. He had previously seen it above the head of his classmate, Tomomi Hamasaki.
She wasn’t wearing her usual glasses, and with her hair done up in buns and dressed in a cheongsam, she almost seemed like a different person. He wouldn’t have recognized her if not for Soul Reader.
“Tomo? This is the Chinese restaurant where you work?” Aiko spoke up in surprise as she realized the connection.
“Oh, er... well... I didn’t think you’d catch on that quickly... yes.” It was true that her current getup basically served as a disguise.
Yuichi was regretting calling her out. Since the label above her head read “Fake,” it probably wasn’t something he should poke his nose into.
“Look, no one cares about the event cutscene where you run into your classmate working at the Chinese restaurant we just happen to have chosen. Let’s set that aside and get right to the subject at hand: what to do over summer vacation!” Mutsuko said. Upon learning that Tomomi was both full-blooded Japanese and not a Sexy Peking fan, she had swiftly switched the subject back to club activities.
“Um, I know I was disguised so you wouldn’t recognize me, but saying no one cares is a little harsh... yes?” Tomomi murmured as she retreated to a corner of the store.
They were the only customers present, so she didn’t have much to do until the next round of food was ready.
“It’s summer vacation, so we need to hold a training camp, right?” Mutsuko said gleefully. Yuichi was a little surprised. He hadn’t thought their club was that serious. Usually they just sat around the club room talking about whatever came to mind.
“A training camp? That sounds great! It’s gotta be at the beach, right?” Aiko said, excited.
Yuichi scowled as he flashed back to a memory of being stuffed into armor and thrown into the ocean. Thanks to that, he had learned the utterly useless skill of how to swim in a full suit of armor. “Can we not do the beach?”
“The mountains, then?”
Aiko’s innocent suggestion forced Yuichi into another flashback. The mountains were dangerous.
Mutsuko would throw him off of cliffs to increase his toughness, force him to fight monkeys and cows and bears, shave off one of his eyebrows so he couldn’t just run home, and train him in taking attacks from behind.
Mutsuko was the practical type, so her training wasn’t without purpose. But sometimes she’d force a ridiculous regimen on him based purely on something she’d read about in manga.
“I think it would be nicer to just stay at home and take it easy. If we have to do something, couldn’t we do it at school? Wouldn’t it be hard to get permission to take a trip somewhere?”
“Permission?” Mutsuko asked in confusion.
“Did you not realize you needed permission?”
“What’s the big deal? Maybe they’d raise a stink if we did it as an official club activity, but the school can’t object if we’re just going out to have fun as friends!”
“Now we’re just having fun? So what about the training camp?” The official line on club trips was that they weren’t supposed to be about having fun.
“Aw, what’s wrong with that? Anyway, anywhere we go together will be fun!” She sounded a little dejected at first, but then pepped up as she found a new way to phrase it.
Yuichi finally gave up. Nothing he said was going to stop this. “I don’t want to go... but what’s up with you guys anyway? Don’t you have lots of plan
s for summer vacation?”
“I don’t have any real plans, myself,” Aiko responded.
“Neither do I,” Natsuki followed up.
“It would be boring to stay home alone all summer,” Kanako agreed.
“I assumed girls in high school would have a little more planned for summer vacation...” he murmured.
It was about this point in the conversation that the rest of the food came out.
“Think about where you want to go and what you want to do for training camp by the beginning of the next club meeting, okay? For now, let’s eat!” Mutsuko began taking a bit from each plate.
Yuichi set his eye on the spicy-looking mapo tofu and gave it a try. It was as spicy as it looked, but definitely tasty. The restaurant’s lack of popularity was definitely not because of the food.
After eating his fill, Yuichi stood up.
“What’s wrong?” Aiko asked.
“Gotta hit the john. Hey, Hamasaki, where’s the bathroom?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s in the back.”
Yuichi headed for the back, wondering idly where her speech tic had gone.
But just as he was passing by Mutsuko, he was suddenly forced to jump straight into the air.
Shing! Something came flying out of Mutsuko’s elbow.
“Oh, sorry! It’s just a prototype. I think the stopper came loose again!” Mutsuko said, as casually as could be.
Yuichi’s face went pale. “You could have killed me! If I’d been anyone else, I would definitely be dead right now!”
“No way. You’d easily survive a hit from that!”
A sharp blade had ripped through Mutsuko’s sleeve. Its cold glint, extending from her wrist to just before her shoulder, definitely looked lethal. If Yuichi hadn’t jumped away, it would have sliced him right through the side.
“Wh-What is that...?” Aiko asked, gazing at the blade in shock.
“I fashioned it after the Harden Saber!” She was referring to a move used by a certain henshin hero whose arms had been hardened and turned into blades. Naturally, Mutsuko couldn’t go quite that far, so she must have rigged something up to imitate it.
The Half-Baked Vampire vs. The Strongest Little Sister?! Page 2