Lock retreated to the living room, walked straight into the kitchen, and made three cups of tea again.
"The more this happens, the calmer I have to be. This isn't a Shuraba."
Lock took a deep breath. Apart from the pressure of being stared at the whole time, everything was fine.
By now he had seen it: one was coming, then two were coming, although he hadn't expected three people to arrive at once.
But a straight back doesn't fear a crooked shadow, and a bare foot doesn't fear a shoe. He hadn't done anything shameful, so he had nothing to worry about.
Mt. Lady, Sirius, and Mei Hatsume changed their shoes and walked into the living room. The first two, both Pro Heroes, saw Ryukyu on the sofa and immediately bowed respectfully and said: "Ryukyu!"
Ryukyu nodded casually and smiled softly, like a big sister from next door.
On the current Hero Billboard Chart, she was one of the few women ranked in the top ten.
Heroes, Quirks, fighting: these fields were actually dominated by men.
So Ryukyu's influence in the Hero world, among other things, made her an object of worship in the eyes of Mt. Lady and Sirius.
At this point, Lock also brought the tea over, scanning the large group of people.
He introduced them one by one, first looking at Mt. Lady and the big bag in her hand.
"What's in this bag?"
"Virgo said you didn't have enough ingredients at home, Director, and with guests coming, and since the two of us happened not to have any Hero requests, she asked us to buy the ingredients and bring them over." Sirius lightly lifted the bag and replied.
Virgo...
Lock twitched the corners of his mouth, feeling that this thoughtfulness was actually deliberate, and that she had single-handedly caused the current situation.
When Virgo came back, he would definitely "discipline" her properly and give her a good memory to take away.
"Who is Virgo?"
Ryukyu frowned, keenly picking up the key point in that sentence. It was another new name.
"What about you, Mei Hatsume?" Lock broke into a cold sweat and, instead of answering Ryukyu's question, hurriedly changed the subject.
Seeing this, although Ryukyu sensed some clues, it wasn't polite to interrupt other people's conversation.
"I met Mt. Lady and Sirius on the street, and they asked me to come hang out together~." Mei Hatsume tilted her head innocently, paying no attention to the relationships in the room.
She also felt the subtlety of the current atmosphere. At the very least, she didn't want to get involved, since inventing and building things was easier and more fun.
By the way, the products Mei Hatsume invented were also tested by the Pro Heroes under Lock's agency.
So they all knew each other and were good friends.
"Mt. Lady, you..." Mt. Lady, called out by Lock, turned her head away and whistled as if she were just passing by. "I'll put the ingredients in the kitchen first."
Lock was also a little helpless. After introducing those two, he continued, pointing to Mei Hatsume: "She's a first-year in the Support Course at U.A. We met by chance, and she's also my business partner with the agency on Hero support items."
After Lock finished speaking, he introduced Aunt Ryukyu, Sister Nejire, and Kyoka one by one.
After the introductions, all the women in the living room went quiet, and the situation was harmonious.
After all, they were just friends, agency colleagues, a classmate, an aunt, a senior, and a business partner. These were all relationships that could be stated openly and honestly. Lock wasn't panicking at all.
"Fortunately, the living room is big enough. Otherwise it really wouldn't be able to seat so many people."
Lock complained silently, feeling a little headache because of the awkward atmosphere.
It would have been fine if they were all friends, but many of them were meeting for the first time. Although they were polite on the surface, many of them probably weren't comfortable.
For example, his childhood friend Kyoka Jiro puffed out her cheeks and didn't speak for a while.
Or rather, she had been staring at him with super fierce eyes.
It seemed to say: this childhood friend who goes to and from school with me every day, when did he meet so many beautiful women?
And of course there was Nejire, who had turned into her maximum-curiosity state again, looking at Sirius's earrings and Mei Hatsume's strange pupils, asking this and that.
That harmless appearance made Ryukyu shake her head in disappointment.
"Speaking of which, Director, your room is very clean." After putting the ingredients away in the kitchen, Mt. Lady took a sneak peek at Lock's room, looking around curiously. "It's completely different from the boy's room in my imagination."
"..."
Mt. Lady's behavior was a bit disrespectful. Of course, he knew this was a habit that came with her carefree personality, but he took out a small notebook and wrote it down anyway.
When year-end bonuses were calculated, he would definitely deduct some of hers!
Lock asked casually: "Then what does a boy's room look like in Mt. Lady's imagination?"
Mt. Lady raised a slender finger, put it to her lips, and said: "For example, shoes and socks thrown around, clothes everywhere, strange sticky tissues in the wastebasket, and the smell of squid in the air..."
What the hell, what sticky tissues, and what smell of squid in the air!
Lock hadn't expected that he, a young man with a sunny and cheerful appearance, would be thought of so badly.
No, he had already deducted Mt. Lady's year-end bonus!
"Indeed, I also feel that Little Lock has changed a lot. Simply put, he's become more mature." Suddenly, Ryukyu spoke up, and everyone listened to her in silence. After all, she was the one with the most seniority and age among everyone present.
Ryukyu looked at Lock with a scrutinizing gaze: "I also read recently in a book that a man's maturity can happen in a moment, and it's often related to a woman."
Lock frowned. He hadn't expected his dearest aunt to throw him a deadly question instead.
At the same time, Kyoka's heart skipped a beat.
She sneaked a guilty glance at Lock. She had also seen the changes in her childhood friend with her own eyes.
He used to sleep in class often, wasn't willing to communicate with other people, and, even worse, gave off an air of giving up on himself all day long. A complete 180-degree change had taken place, and he had even gained magic and passed the Hero license exam to become a Pro Hero.
Of course, Kyoka Jiro couldn't think of something like time travel, a possibility that far-fetched, but she thought of that day at the outdoor mall... Could it have been because of her?
On that day, Lock had tried his best to save her, and she had kept that figure vividly in her heart.
"Hey, Little Lock, Auntie wants to ask you something." Ryukyu narrowed her eyes and smiled, her look even more terrifying as an interrogator, and asked: "Which girl did you make such a change for?"
Lock swallowed his saliva. He could also feel that Ryukyu's question had made some people, even those who had nothing to do with him, look at him with curiosity and a taste for gossip.
Everyone's eyes in the room were focused on him. It was really stressful!
"I changed for..."
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A/N: 40+ Advance Chapter Has Been Uploaded.
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