The Black-Haired Tanning Delinquent (2)
Tachibana Kaede was a far more formidable opponent than I had anticipated.
“Senior! Senior!”
“...”
“Your adorable junior is calling you~ We promised you wouldn’t ignore me and would answer, didn’t we~?”
Even when I kept ignoring her, she didn’t seem to care at all. Her social-butterfly energy was off the charts.
More than that, the fact that she was still following me even after we left the salon was completely beyond common sense.
“Haa… Why do you keep following me?”
“Hehe… I was curious where you were going, Senior!”
“I’m going home.”
I had originally planned to stop by a nearby park to organize my thoughts, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen now.
Surely she wouldn’t try to follow me all the way inside my house, right?
“Eeeeh… You’re not heading to some abandoned building or your own secret hideout??”
Deciding not to entertain her pointless jokes, I started walking again, this time picking up the pace.
“Ahh!”
At this point, she really should have given up.
Honestly, I had no idea what she even wanted from me.
“Haa… Haa… Let’s go together-yoo~!!”
Tachibana Kaede, whose athletic ability seemed nonexistent, was already panting heavily, completely out of breath.
“Haa…”
She was barely covering her important parts with what looked like scraps of fabric, and yet here she was, gasping like that.
“Hiiik!!”
“We’re sorry!!!”
A group of male students who had been openly staring at Kaede with impure eyes flinched the moment I glared at them and immediately ran away.
It seemed this terrifying appearance of mine had at least one upside.
‘Wait, but I even dyed my hair…’
Apparently it still wasn’t enough.
“Hey, sit over there for a bit.”
Why the hell was I even doing this…
Still, leaving her behind in that state didn’t sit right with me.
It felt like abandoning a defenseless girl on the side of the road.
I hadn’t expected her to collapse after just ten minutes of brisk walking.
“Haa… Seniorrr… Waaater.”
“What?”
“Hehe… I’m thirstyyy.”
As she spoke, she pointed upward with her finger.
67 ELEVEN
Of all places, I had sat her down in an alley right next to a convenience store.
“Here’s some money…”
“Go buy it yourself.”
“Aah~ I’m too tired to stand up.”
“Haa…”
Fine. I’d just buy her water, close my eyes to the situation, and be on my way.
“Welco—Hiiik!”
See?
I hadn’t meant to, but I had scared the convenience store part-timer half to death.
This had to be heaven’s way of telling me to hurry home.
‘Fuck…’
“I-is everything okay with the total…?! Did I do something wrong?!”
“…No. Thank you.”
If being afraid of someone who hadn’t done anything was a crime, then I guess it was a crime.
Of course, I had zero intention of arguing about it.
That would only create even more misunderstandings.
Ding-ding!—
There was no point in feeling wronged forever. I decided to just accept it.
“Who is that? Someone you know?”
“Oppa! This guy is harassing me!”
“Huh?! Who the hell are y—Hiiik!!”
Since it could be used this way too, I tried to think positively and see it as another advantage.
“Why do weirdos like that keep swarming around you?”
Was this world’s setting the problem, or was she the problem?
“Hehe. As expected of the Academy’s strongest man!!”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s your nickname, Senior! People usually call you the worst, but I don’t think you’re that kind of person at all!”
In the end, it was just a nickname she had made up herself.
At the same time, it confirmed that the “worst man” title really existed… This was truly the worst possible situation.
“Anyway, here. I’m really leaving now.”
Pop!
I opened the bottle cap before handing it to her, cutting off any chance of further conversation.
“Whoa!”
She had probably been planning to use the “I can’t open it” tactic. Tachibana looked genuinely surprised.
Without looking back, I headed straight home.
...
To be honest, I was incredibly curious what kind of face she was making.
But if I turned around to check, she would definitely follow me again, so I held myself back.
Even after walking for a while and turning in a different direction to shake her off, I couldn’t shake the prickling feeling on the back of my head.
——
“Whoa. Holy shit. This is it?”
I had followed the address saved in my map app’s favorites and arrived at my house.
Surprisingly, it was a two-story detached home with its own yard.
It wasn’t ridiculously huge, but it looked plenty big enough for a family of four. Come to think of it, did I even have a family?
On the way here after finally shaking off Tachibana, I had checked a bunch of things on my phone. Among them, my contacts list was shockingly empty—not a single number saved.
There were call logs, but I had no idea who any of them were.
Ding-dong!—
More importantly, I didn’t know the passcode for my own front door.
Ding-dong!—
...
In the quiet space, only the sound of the doorbell echoed.
...
Was no one home?
I wondered if I should just wait, but then I worried that passersby might report me.
It was a ridiculous concern, but after everything that had happened in the mere two or three hours since I’d been possessed, it didn’t seem so far-fetched.
“Haa…”
I was about to head back out to find somewhere to kill time when—
“...”
Something instantly caught my eye.
A lone flowerpot sitting by the front door.
It wasn’t a special plant, nor did it look particularly expensive. Just an utterly ordinary flowerpot.
Yet I felt a strong conviction and rising expectation that I needed to check underneath it.
“Oh.”
There was a key.
I’d had my doubts, but it was really there.
Every time I saw this kind of scene in manga, I used to think the characters had terrible security awareness. Looks like I was wrong.
This was the wisdom of life, a master of daily living, a wise homemaker, a housewife at the highest level.
Click—
‘Got it!’
Worried someone might mistake me for a delinquent breaking in, I quickly slipped inside the house.
“Hmm.”
It was exactly the atmosphere I had expected from the outside.
It was strange that there wasn’t a single pair of shoes in such a large entryway, but since the lights were off and everyone seemed to be out, maybe this was a household where each person only owned one pair.
‘Does that even make sense?’
No matter what, it was normal to at least have slippers.
More than anything, the chilling air carried no trace of warmth.
...
I quickly took off my shoes and looked around the entire house.
On the first floor there was a living room, kitchen, one large room, and one small room.
On the second floor were two more rooms of the same size.
Aside from the large room on the first floor, every single room was empty.
“Holy shit…”
This was perfect.
There was no family.
I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure yet, but it was clear that I lived here alone.
Well, it was probably tragic for the original owner of this body, Amuro Taiyo, but from my perspective, this was the best possible outcome.
I had zero confidence in getting along with complete strangers as family, and the risk of getting caught was way too high.
Especially since this character had so little screen time that I knew almost nothing about him.
“Whew… Still, I should make sure.”
I needed to confirm whether I really lived alone, and beyond that, I had to learn as much as possible.
I decided to go through the house one more time, focusing especially on the large first-floor room that showed the only signs of actual living.
What I found were two envelopes.
They were dated four years ago and three years ago respectively.
“...”
I wondered if it was okay to open them, but since they were in my house and my room, I figured it didn’t matter and opened them immediately.
First, the one from four years ago.
Just as I had expected, it was a letter from my parents.
“…This is depressing.”
It basically said that since I was now a high school student, I should try living alone.
They were going to keep living in America, so I should use the money they sent to take care of myself… It sounded somewhat irresponsible, but when I saw the actual amount of money, I could feel their sense of responsibility and educational philosophy as parents.
‘Hmm. Early independence isn’t so bad.’
At the end of the letter was information about an emergency key.
Now that I thought about it, that key must have been sitting in that flowerpot for over four years.
Slide—
The second letter was also from my parents. This one didn’t contain anything special; it felt like a formal check-in letter.
The fact that only these two letters had been kept suggested that nothing had come for the three years after that.
It was possible they had been contacting me by phone, but as far as I could check right now, there was nothing.
In other words, I was completely free.
I even had plenty of money and a house. All that was left was to get married.
Of course, that seemed like it would be the hardest part.
...
But why was there literally nothing in the house?
No manga, no games.
There wasn’t a single hobby I could enjoy at home.
Creak—
Since there was nothing to do, I figured I might as well sleep for tomorrow and headed to the bathroom.
Thinking about how I was alone in this huge house gave me an oddly creepy feeling.
Swish!
Swish!
Every time I washed my hair, I whipped my head around to check behind me, but thankfully there were no ghosts.
Plop—
“Haaaa…”
It had been an incredibly long day.
I had only been possessed around evening time, so barely five hours had passed. Why was I this exhausted?
I hadn’t done anything physically demanding, so it must have been mentally draining.
‘Miss Eri…’
I knew that even a normal student-teacher relationship was still too much for me right now, let alone romance.
But this was just the beginning.
They say a good start is half the battle, right?
Plus, I had taken the drastic step of dyeing my blonde hair black. Maybe there would be significant progress.
“Hehe…”
With happy fantasies filling my head, I hurried off to sleep for the sake of tomorrow’s happiness.
Starting tomorrow, I would be an ordinary student with black hair—even if I looked a little scary.