Prologue

Whether in fiction or reality, encounters always seem to happen suddenly, when you least expect them.

You might climb a long flight of stairs you found in your new neighborhood and run into a beautiful woman. Or maybe one day you come home to find your parents have vanished, leaving behind a massive debt, and a female classmate offers to pay it off on the condition that you live together… and so on.

You can’t help but want to retort that things like that would never actually happen, but that’s precisely why people hold a faint sense of hope and longing for such meetings and fateful encounters.

Mulling over such thoughts, I—Midou Tomoya—was on my way home, bathed in the light of the setting sun.

It was the end of June. Just when I was celebrating the end of the damp, humid rainy season, a string of sweltering summer days arrived to wear me down. Even after the sun went down, the heat accumulated during the day refused to cool, and sweat would start pouring out even if I just stood still.

“I just want to get home and rest… take a shower and sleep in an air-conditioned room. It’d be nice if I could say that, though…”

I let out a deep sigh, muttering to myself just as I arrived home. It was a two-story house, but since my family was away on long-term business, it was far too big for a high school boy to live in alone.

I opened the gate, took the key from my pocket, and was about to insert it into the keyhole when, a moment sooner, the front door clicked open—click.

“Welcome home, Senpai!”

A girl in a familiar uniform, layered with an apron—her name was Shirasu Yuika—greeted me.

Coming home to find the cutest first-year, who’d been the talk of the school since she enrolled, waiting for you. Normally, this would be a situation to celebrate with open arms, but strangely, now that I was actually facing it, I felt more of a slight dizziness than joy.

“…I’m home, Shirasu.”

“Ah! You called me Shirasu again! Didn’t I ask you to call me by my first name? Why won’t you?”

Shirasu puffed out her cheeks like a blowfish. I wished she wouldn’t look so dissatisfied over something as simple as me not using her first name.

“More importantly, this isn’t your house, you know? It’s a bit much to have you welcoming me home like it’s the most natural thing in the world.”

“What do you mean, ‘more importantly’!? This is very important to me!”

Ignoring my question, Shirasu pressed closer. In that instant, a sweet, refreshing citrus scent wafted through my nostrils and went straight to my brain, making my head spin. Long eyelashes and jade-green eyes. Plump lips, faintly tinged with cherry pink. They were so close that I felt I could touch them just by leaning in a little, and I had to devote all my mental resources to maintaining my composure.

“Hmph…! Why are you being so quiet, Senpai? Do you really hate calling me by my first name that much?”

“N-No… that’s not it…”

As I spoke, Shirasu took another step closer. Give me a break. Did she not understand that I was a perfectly healthy teenage boy in the prime of adolescence?

When a junior girl so cute she could be described as “super” cute gets this close—just half a step from being pressed against me—the sleeping wolf inside me is liable to awaken.

“Then call me by my name! If you don’t, you won’t be getting any dinner tonight!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Shirasu-san. Don’t you think withholding dinner just because I didn’t use your first name is a tad unreasonable?”

“No. It’s not unreasonable at all. Because I hold the power of life and death over your stomach!”

Hmph! Shirasu puffed out her chest, a smug look on her face as she declared something outrageous. But for me, more than the content of her words, my eyes were stolen by the twin hills that swayed with a soft bounce, visible even through her clothes.

She was incredibly well-developed for a first-year high school student. And yet, she had a distinctly cinched, willow-like waist—a figure that would make a gravure idol turn tail and run. God truly is unfair.

But what drew the eye most of all was her natural blonde hair, a gift from her mother. The way it shimmered and shone was like a meticulously polished jewel.

“By the way, today’s dinner is yakiniku, your favorite, Senpai! I splurged on some delicious-looking meat! Don’t you want to eat it?”

Utterly oblivious to my internal conflict, Shirasu continued her threats. Yakiniku, huh? How extravagant. Living alone, I rarely have the chance or the money to go out for it, so my resolve was wavering. You think I’m being too quick to flip-flop? Don’t be ridiculous. This is a matter of survival.

“Haaaah… Fine, I get it. If I call you by your name, you’ll feed me, right?”

“Of course! Oh, but not just this one time, okay? From now on, every day, always, please call me by my name! And with affection!”

“What is this, the Restaurant of Many Orders? At least limit it to when we’re at home. If I call you by your first name at school, what will people say…?”

“I don’t mind. Besides, Senpai, is there really anything for people to say just because you call me by my first name?”

I sighed internally as Shirasu tilted her head, looking puzzled. She was a true sheltered princess, raised to be cherished like a butterfly or a flower, who had even attended an all-girls boarding school until middle school.

Because of that, this girl had absolutely no idea how she was perceived by others—especially by guys. I wanted to defend her, saying it couldn’t be helped, but when that cluelessness is directed at me, it’s a different story.

“Sigh… This is why princesses are so…”

“What… Senpai, are you exasperated with me? What part of this conversation was exasperating? Please explain!”

When I gave a theatrical shrug, Shirasu immediately closed the distance again. Does she not know the concept of personal space?

“That right there is what I’m exasperated about. But…”

“But what?”

I cut myself off and peered into her face, and for some reason, Yuika’s eyes were glistening with moisture. She looked like a puppy pleading not to be abandoned. The sight was so adorable it stimulated my protective instincts, and I had to fight the urge to pull her into a tight hug. Doing something like that would spell my own doom. I wanted to praise myself for mustering the reason to hold back.

“I was just thinking that’s also what makes Shirasu… what makes Yuika cute.”

One wrong move and she could become a machine for creating serious crushes. That’s what’s scary, I thought, swallowing the words that had risen to my throat.

“C-Cute… Senpai, you shouldn’t say things like that so casually to a girl, okay?”

“Hahaha. I’d rather not hear that from Shirasu, of all people.”

“Ah, you called me Shirasu again! I’m really going to cut off your dinner! Are you sure about this!?”

“Don’t sulk over a name.”

I gently patted her on the head, then took off my shoes and stepped into the entryway. This was supposed to be my own home, a place I knew like the back of my hand, yet it felt like I had wandered into another world.

Shirasu looked like she wanted to take my bag, but I deliberately pretended not to notice and headed silently to my room.

How did things end up like this? As I collapsed onto my bed, face-up, I stretched out my right hand, the one that had ended up wrapped in bandages a little over two months ago, and recalled the day it all began.