Bonus Time

Yūha Sanjō was furious.

The cause was a single postcard she had kept with her ever since morning.

It had been sent to Rokurō by some mysterious woman named Misuzu Kagari, complete with a photograph and a strangely familiar tone. Yūha couldn’t help but feel angry about it. At whom? At Rokurō.

‘Will you be able to come visit this year? I want to see Roku-kun.’

She had gone out of her way to send a postcard in this day and age and had written something like that on it. She obviously liked him. It would have been strange if she didn’t.

He had broken up with Nene and started looking for someone new. That much was fine. It couldn’t be helped.

But using a dating app while apparently neglecting someone like this was unforgivable. If there was some reason for it, Yūha intended to interrogate him.

She marched out of school looking as though angry sound effects should have been following her, stopped by the supermarket to buy three cartons of eggs on sale, then returned home.

The fact that she still remembered sale information even while angry showed just how accustomed she had become to housework. Recently, Rokurō had barely needed to help at all. Necessity had forced Yūha to improve dramatically.

“If you were using it to cheat, you’re not getting dinner.”

She muttered with a pout and flung open the front door. The living room light was on. As usual, it seemed he had already finished delivering the evening papers and returned home.

She strode down the hallway with heavier steps than usual and entered the living room.

“Prepare yourself!”

“Are you here to challenge my dojo?”

Rokurō reflexively shot back without looking away from the computer. Apparently, the comeback had required no mental effort at all, because the hand moving his mouse never slowed.

Beside him sat a glass drenched in condensation, leaving a puddle on the table. It was obvious that he had been working for quite a while.

“Oh, you’re not doing English today.”

As though some of the wind had been taken out of her sails, Yūha walked closer.

Rokurō yawned, rolled his shoulders widely, and nodded.

“I got a sudden request. Seriously, why the hell would they send it to me this close to the deadline…?”

Heavy exhaustion seeped into his voice. Even his usual complaining sounded far weaker than normal.

When Yūha glanced at the screen, he was scrolling through a huge number of image files.

“Is this work too?”

“Not exactly… Well, I’m getting paid for it, so I guess it counts as work.”

He answered in a strangely evasive way and opened something from the taskbar. Photos and text were arranged across the screen.

Yūha wasn’t familiar with it yet, but she knew the name PowerPoint. It was one of those impressive-looking things smart people seemed to use all the time.

He appeared to still be working on the first slide, with the words ‘Snake Husk Festival’ displayed in the center.

“Snake… Husk Festival?”

“No, all the characters use their native readings. It’s ‘Snake Husk Festival.’”

“What kind of festival is that?”

“One they hold in a small mountain village called Onahebi Village.”

That was when Yūha suddenly realized something.

Rokurō was answering every question unusually smoothly.

Judging by what he had said earlier, this request was different from his usual ones. It probably wasn’t from some faceless client, but from an acquaintance.

In that case, both the Snake Husk Festival and Onahebi Village were probably places connected to him personally.

Could it be… because he was so focused on his work, he didn’t have enough mental room to lie like he usually did?

Yūha’s guess was correct.

Rokurō had been with Nene until just a short while earlier, and when he returned home feeling emotionally fragile, an annoying request had been waiting for him. He had buried himself in the work to ignore his gloomy mood, but extreme mental fatigue had dulled his ability to think. Because he normally put so much effort into constructing lies, the backlash had left him in an unprecedented state where he could barely say anything except the truth.

To test her theory, Yūha decided to ask something completely unrelated.

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Omelet rice. Even if the shape falls apart, it tastes the same.”

“What have you been into lately?”

“Watching videos of people renovating old traditional houses to live in.”

“What do you want for dinner tonight?”

“Lightly pickled cucumbers.”

Amazing!

Yūha cheered inwardly. He was answering things he would normally find too bothersome to respond to, and he was doing it without hesitation. Precisely because he wasn’t thinking about his answers, she felt like she was hearing Rokurō’s true feelings.

Now that she had learned he wanted lightly pickled cucumbers, Yūha immediately took some cucumbers from the vegetable drawer. She looked up a recipe, quickly prepared them, then placed them in the refrigerator so the flavor could soak in.

Determined to make good use of this bonus time, she returned to his side.

“Did you used to work in that Onahebi Village?”

“A long time ago.”

“What kind of work?”

“Various things. Helping at a guesthouse, harvesting crops, attending meetings about revitalizing the town… Basically whatever people asked me to do.”

“Was Kagari-san there too?”

“Kagari…?”

The hand he had been moving abruptly stopped.

Slowly—almost ominously—Rokurō turned his head toward Yūha.

His expression had transformed into that of a wrathful demon, his eyes burning with anger, and Yūha instinctively took a step back. What on earth could have made his face turn that frightening?

“Why do you know that name?”

“Uh… um, this! I checked the mailbox earlier and it was inside!”

Overwhelmed by the pressure he radiated, she handed him the postcard. Apparently, Yūha was still too inexperienced to try bluffing him.

Rokurō took the postcard, his brow furrowing even deeper as he clenched his teeth and his hand began to tremble.

“That damn brat… What’s with this ‘I want to see Roku-kun’ crap? Acting all cute…”

“Huh? What? Isn’t she your girlfriend or something?”

“Like hell I’d date some bossy woman who always has to take charge!”

Smack!

He slapped the postcard down like a playing tile, then irritably picked it back up after it fell to the floor.

Yūha could do nothing but stare at him in bewilderment.

“But she’s really pretty, isn’t she?”

“Listen, Yūha. There are people in this world who can be unbelievably good-looking and still never become romantic prospects. The deal-breaker is being bossy. I will never fall for some woman who inexplicably volunteers to be class representative or something.”

Rokurō launched into an impassioned speech in a tone that made it obvious something unpleasant had happened to him in the past.

“But she went out of her way to send you a postcard… Isn’t that something you only do for someone special?”

“Knowing her, she probably just thought, ‘Postcards are kind of cute and charming.’ Replying by postcard is a pain, so I’m emailing her back.”

It was unusual to see Rokurō simply irritated like this. Rather than being scared, Yūha only found it strange.

In truth, there were only certain people Rokurō openly showed irritation toward.

People he didn’t care about being disliked by, or people he knew wouldn’t dislike him over something like that. Given that he had accepted this sudden request, Kagari was probably in the latter category.

“You’re pretty close with Kagari-san, aren’t you?”

“How the hell did you reach that conclusion? She probably thinks of me as nothing more than a useful robot.”

“But you’re helping her anyway, right? You’d only do that if you were close.”

“Ghk…”

He made an openly displeased face, but didn’t deny it any further. Apparently, he had no choice but to reluctantly admit she had a point.

Relieved that her anger had been completely misplaced, Yūha put on her apron.

“When do you want dinner?”

“I’m already hungry, so I’ll eat whenever it’s ready. Also, looks like I’ll be up all night, so go to sleep before me.”

“Okay.”

Rokurō unsteadily got to his feet and went to pour himself some coffee. For just an instant, his back looked strangely frail. It overlapped with an image of him from some distant time, looking as though he might wear himself down to nothing, and Yūha’s chest tightened.

She almost asked if he was okay, but swallowed the words.

Rokurō would never admit weakness to Yūha anyway.

That much probably wouldn’t change, no matter how exhausted his mind became.

What he needed was someone other than Yūha. Someone who could accept his weakness and support him.

Maybe that was what Rokurō had been searching for through the dating app. And for him, Nene had undoubtedly been that kind of person.

—I wish I could be that person instead.

Watching his back as he returned to his chair, the girl quietly placed a hand over her chest.