"Sorry to keep you waiting."
After parting with the renovation company's technicians, Hanadasaki Ame went to find Shinjou Akane in the villa's reception room.
Shinjou Akane was sitting in a broad chair with a rather unusual design, playing on her phone.
Both the backrest and armrests of the chair were made from the horns of African Ankole-Watusi cattle. It was an exquisite piece with a touch of ruggedness to it, and also one of the more valuable pieces of furniture in the villa.
"It's fine. Vacation's boring anyway."
Shinjou Akane replied with a smile.
Her smile looked a lot like Nagasaki Soyo's usual one—polite, but with the faint sense of keeping others at arm's length.
Hanadasaki Ame could feel the natural wariness in her. Even his cute and harmless appearance did not reduce it in the slightest.
He knew that her heart was always separated from others by a thick wall, and that she would not share herself easily with anyone.
Don't tell me she actually has an AT Field or something!?
"So, Shinjou-san, what do you usually do during vacation? Do you study at all?"
Hanadasaki Ame asked casually.
"Ehh~ who brings up something that depressing in a conversation? Studying during vacation sounds way too exhausting."
Shinjou Akane spoke with a soft, trailing tone, airy and weightless, with just a faint trace of sweetness hidden in her words.
Girls were supposedly made of sugar, spice, and all things nice—
and hers had an absurdly high sugar content!
"I do study, though. I plan to finish the university science and engineering curriculum as early as my first year of high school, then move on to researching theoretical physics, electromagnetism, and neural engineering. Those are also the directions my institute will be exploring in the future."
Hanadasaki Ame said this calmly.
"Mm… just hearing that sounds like such a pain…"
Shinjou Akane rested her chin on one hand and sighed as if troubled.
Her inner voice was complaining too—there was no way she could keep up with a study pace like that!
"I know. For high school students, that sort of research is a bit outrageous. So I'll be handling the main parts myself. I'll only leave the relatively simpler work to the rest of you."
Hanadasaki Ame was a genius to begin with, and on top of that, his simulation ability had fed him countless pieces of information over time. His knowledge accumulation far surpassed everyone else's, and so did his learning pace.
He had no intention of demanding that anyone keep up with his speed.
After thinking for a moment, Shinjou Akane asked softly,
"Why do you want to do this kind of research in the first place, Hanada-kun? You don't actually look like someone obsessed with scientific research."
In her opinion, Hanadasaki Ame looked much more like the sort who ought to be drifting through groups of girls on the strength of his cute, soft appearance alone.
Spending all day surrounded by dry theories and equipment and the like would just be a waste of such a lovely body.
Ah, right—
hadn't he specifically recruited her, a beautiful girl!?
A bit dishonest of him, wasn't it?
She pressed her lips together slightly and revealed a smile with a rather suggestive edge to it.
"My ultimate goal in doing this research is to try to make the fragile human body command electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces, and thereby achieve an evolution of life itself. You can think of it as… obtaining superpowers."
Hanadasaki Ame said this with complete seriousness.
There was nothing to hide. That truly was the direction he was striving toward.
Also, before their video call, he had not known she was a beautiful girl at all, so she could stop slandering him in her head—he had heard all of it!
"So that's really your goal?"
Shinjou Akane's face showed a trace of surprise.
Superpowers were usually nothing more than childish fantasies adolescents clung to for a while before gradually coming to terms with the ordinary nature of the world—and of themselves.
But Hanadasaki Ame had not only failed to abandon those fantasies.
He meant to create them. To pursue them!
And judging by the amount of money he was already investing, he was absolutely serious.
That was…
really interesting!!!
Shinjou Akane narrowed her eyes and smiled.
She had always found the world a little boring. If superpowers that anyone could learn and master really appeared, that would definitely be fun.
In that case, she might as well take this a little more seriously and actually help.
"Speaking of which, Shinjou-san seems to have a rather niche hobby. I noticed your Line icon is Reicubas. Do you like kaiju?"
Hanadasaki Ame stopped talking about dry topics like studying and research, and shifted instead to asking about her personal interests.
Sure enough, the moment the subject turned to that, Shinjou Akane brightened visibly and said with clear delight,
"Mhm, mhm! You can recognize it, Hanada-kun? I feel like hardly anyone knows that one!"
"The people who do recognize it are mostly pretty nerdy types. They probably don't have the nerve to strike up a conversation with you."
Hanadasaki Ame had seen a great many tokusatsu works. He was the kind of person who had no interest whatsoever in the plot and only cared about the setting.
Mainly because the strange information captured by his simulation ability had also mentioned things like giants of light and Kamen Riders, so he had gone and watched every tokusatsu series he could find.
In the end, though, he had not discovered anything especially noteworthy.
At a time like this, however, it made for excellent conversation material.
Shinjou Akane tilted her head in thought, then raised her hands and pantomimed something in a very abstract way before looking at him expectantly.
"Then what about this? Can you recognize it?"
"Uh… Grand King?"
"This one!"
Shinjou Akane changed poses and acted out a different kaiju motion, even climbing up onto the chair in the process.
"Delos, right?"
Hanadasaki Ame answered as quickly as possible, trying to beat her inner voice to the answer.
He would never stoop to cheating!
Also, it had to be said—Shinjou Akane was even cuter moving around than she was sitting still. The softness and spring of that beautiful body became impossible to miss.
They played around quite harmoniously for a long while before Shinjou Akane finally started to show some fatigue.
She glanced at her phone and said, a little reluctantly,
"I should probably head home."
"Yeah. It's getting late anyway. I'll walk you there."
Hanadasaki Ame did not try to keep her. He was not planning to stay overnight at the villa either, and after seeing Shinjou Akane off, he needed to head home himself.
The villa was not far from the station. Chatting idly as they walked, they arrived in only a few minutes.
Just before tapping her transit card and entering the platform, Shinjou Akane suddenly stepped closer—so close she was almost pressed against him—and spoke near his ear in a voice light and hazy as a dream.
"I had a lot of fun playing together today, but… Hanada-kun, did you secretly peek at a little bit of a girl's secret?"
"…"
Hanadasaki Ame half-narrowed his eyes and did not answer.
He was not sure whether Shinjou Akane was simply that perceptive—or whether she herself possessed some sort of special ability.
"Mhm~ see you next time, Hanada-kun!"
Shinjou Akane beamed brightly, waved as she backed away while still facing him, then lightly tapped her card and entered the platform.
At that exact same moment, the inner voice that had been muttering and babbling nonstop inside his head vanished one line at a time, falling completely silent. Hanadasaki Ame could no longer hear even the slightest trace of it.
He stood there quietly, watching as she disappeared from view. Only after a long while did a strange smile appear on his face.
"Heh. Now that's interesting."
A clever and sly girl.
She must have noticed long ago that he could hear her inner voice, though she had not known by what means. So all along, she had been deliberately expressing only selected things, letting him hear nothing but the unimportant parts.
And now, by revealing that she could block him out completely, she was probably showing her hand because she realized he was close to noticing the inconsistencies.
With her around, it seemed life at the institute was not going to be boring at all.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 119)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter79)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter125)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 73
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 55
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 66
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 63
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 55
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 31
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 31
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 31
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