1
The next day after the enjoyable trip with Shino. On the way to his part-time job, Sandai noticed the atmosphere of the city to be completely different.
It was only just about a week since Chrtistmas, but it was already in new year holiday decorations. The Christmas trees were replaced with kagami mochis or Daruma dolls, and wreaths with shimenawas or bamboo works, a complete New Year decor.
In this time period, had it been the average year, it would’ve been around the time where Sandai would have a 24-hour anime watching marathon or read his piled up light novels alone, but… this year it didn’t seem likely he could make the time for that, and somehow keeping track of new works was all he could do.
Rejoice about having fulfilling days in real life, or be sad about the decreased time to enjoy hobbies… Opinions might split in this regard.
Well anyhow, it being end-of-year too, it seemed families came to the aquarium in droves, making Sandai and Hajime also have their hands fairly full with their cleaning work that was originally wouldn’t get so busy.
Trash cans would immediately overflow, and the aquarium glass was full of fingerprints. They would often find lost properties too, and even looked for the parents of a lost child together.
As to be expected, they were slightly worn-out by the time it was their break time.
Not to mention Hajime with whom Sandai was working together, the other staff were also looking tired and hanging their heads down in the office.
This was the kind of time where it would make you want to eat sweet food, so having judged that it was the right time to bring the souvenirs out, Sandai decided to give out the souvenirs he had bought on the trip with Shino,
First off, he gave it to Hajime and Omaki.
“I bought this on a trip. Here you go.”
“You sure? Thanks.”
“You too, Saeki.”
“Yay! Ah, I saw people posting photos of this in SNS before! I forgot which inn it’s from, but it’s a limited stock sold only there, I think… Thanks!”
Next, he gave it to the other staff he knew enough he would greet when seeing them.
“Excuse me. I bought these on a trip, but if you like.”
“You went on a trip, Fujiwara-kun? With parents?”
“It’s with my girlfriend.”
“You look like a quiet one, but sure got it in you, huh. Actually, you’re a high schooler, right? How about like her parents… nah, I guess it doesn’t matter. I figured so. Guess you’re at an age where you’d wanna ignore your parents and have a love escape.”
“I’ve greeted her parents and got their permission, so calling it a love escape really is not…”
“High schoolers these days… sure are scary. Too mature. And being considerate and buying souvenirs like this too, I sure wouldn’t have thought about it when I was a student. All there was in my head was having fun. Ah, I’m not a fan of castella so I’ll take the mizu manju.”
“I’m not a fan of manjus, so I’ll take the castella. Thanks, Fujiwara-kun.”
“At any rate, going on a trip… If I were to go on one in winter, I personally would like to go to a country in the south. I toured Oceania on my college graduation trip, and I sure remember it being fun.”
For the time being, he was done giving it out to the people around he could see.
As for people who would get on their break later, or for people who still hadn’t come and would show up for work later, Sandai decided to ask Omaki to give it out to them as she would often be in the office.
After break time was over, he immediately went back to work. Having a busy time would also make it feel quickly passing by, and just like that it was now evening and the end of his working hours.
Sandai got some free time, so he thought of meeting up with Shino, but a message from Shino came before he could ask her. Just like Christmas, it seemed she would spend the time with her family for end-of-year, and in exchange, she invited him to go visit the shrine together at the beginning of new year. That was the message.
He felt just slightly disappointed to be alone for end-of-year, but being unreasonable just because he was feeling lonely would also lead to a bad relationship with and an opposition from the Yuizaki family.
Sandai had a good impression towards Shino’s parents. They felt like good people to him. Precisely why he wouldn’t want to do anything like causing disruption much, and so he decided to just give up sticking close with Shino for end-of-year.
After having some dinner and getting back to his apartment, Sandai took a bath and leisurely unwinded his tiredness. He did feel something slightly lacking when compared to the hot spring yesterday, but that was the so-called luxury.
After getting out of the bath, he did some home cleaning. Speaking of end-of-year, it would be major cleaning, but he didn’t feel like going full blown to that extent either, so just about more attentively than usual.
After that, he decided to catch up with new animes since he had nothing really to do either. Watching animes was taking quite the stamina, so he was also sorting out what was on his PC and such along with taking a break.
Well, sorting out, but it was just about separating the many porn by the situation, but… as Sandai was doing just that, he was suddenly beginning to feel weird.
He didn’t know as to why, but he somehow was losing interest in the porn on the screen.
Despite the thumping in his chest that seemed impossible to stop even now when remembering the real sex back at the trip, when remembering Shino’s body, the only feeling he held towards the sex on the computer screen was close to nothing.
What was… the meaning of this?
Sandai couldn’t understand.
In order to investigate the true nature of the change in his feelings, he decided to try to delete his most favorite video. As expected, if he were to delete his most favorite, he thought that he would get shaken up to some extent.
But nevertheless, it was nothing. He didn’t feel anything.
“Just what’s up with me?” Sandai unintentionally let out such a murmur, but he immediately understood.
That both his heart and body already couldn’t be satisfied without Shino.
He did feel that he was in a deep crisis on the inside somehow, but it wasn’t like there was any real harm happening, and besides, Shino who he could come into contact with in reality was more important in the first place than the girl on the screen.
There was no problem.
If anything, the decrease of the spending to collect porn was a good thing. He would be able to allocate the freed up money to make memories with Shino.
Strike while the iron is still hot—there was such a saying as well, so Sandai began to delete the lewdness out of his PC one after another. He left out only the video with a girl looking the most like Shino, but about that, how to put this, it was for future reference.
In the meantime, a chat message with a photo from Shino came in. It was a photo of Miki eating soba noodles.
>Miki’s kinda cute today.
Miki was an energetic mischievous girl, but if judged from a photo alone, she would easily look like an angel.
If she were to be more well-behaved in her personality as well, she could probably really become a lovable girl, though… no, there could be people who would like her mischievous part, so it probably would be a case-by-case situation.
>By the way, about the new year shrine visit… Miki’s saying she wants to come along too, and now I’m not sure what to do.
Without missing a beat, an additional chat message from Shino came in. It seemed Miki was throwing a tantrum, wanting to come along with Sandai and Shino for the new year shrine visit.
Sandai immediately replied:
>I don’t really mind, though.
He certainly did feel like being treated like a toy and such by Miki, but while that may be true, it didn’t mean that he hated it.
Besides, Miki knew various things about Sandai that Shino didn’t. So that he wouldn’t get tattled on, it would be necessary too to curry favor with Miki to some extent.
He didn’t think Shino would believe Miki’s tattle, but still, the plan was to avoid every trouble that could be avoided in advance as much as possible.
>Don’t you think Miki-chan also wants to have fun together with you too once in a while? Since you’re starting dating me, the time you spend with her decreases, doesn’t it?
>Ah… well that’s true.
>Miki-chan’s probably feeling lonely, too. It’s also possible she’d go, ‘Onee-chan got stolen from Miki!’ right?
>Miki doesn’t have a cute personality like that, though… Just probably, but if she goes with Mom and Dad, it’ll be to somewhere close and she doesn’t like it because it’s lame and stuff, something like that. Also, she probably wants to brag.
>Brag?
>It’s shooo obvious she wants to brag to her friends or something like, I went to the city, or like I got to hang out with my big sister’s boyfriend and stuff.
Although he wasn’t sure whether that would be something to be bragged about, at least Miki seemed to judge it would. And then probably, the reason wasn’t just because it would become something to be bragged about, but it was possible she was thinking something along this line as well: because it’s fun watching those two.
Anyhow, only the person herself would know of her own intention. As a matter of fact, Miki only knows.
2
TL notes:
1699 words
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