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After spending practically the whole day with Mika, our first date on Earth had come to an end. It was obvious that, compared to her 13-year-old version, a date with the more adult 16-year-old Mika would feel different. The biggest differences were those caused by growth.

And during said first date, we also had our first time… In such a well-equipped establishment.

To be honest, it would be accurate to say that I yielded to my desires. I went about it with as much caution as possible, but Mika seemed to be satisfied.
That might be obvious, but differences in figure and age changed the experience. The main difference between her 13- and 16-year-old versions was… well, I won’t tell.

In any case, in that establishment, about one hour before the end of our date, I heard her say the words “I am yours, and you are mine” for the first time in quite some time. Just a short while ago, I’d have said that these words were exaggerated, but now I completely agreed with her. There was no longer any way to deny it.

“Sorry ’bout that, but could you all hear me out?”

When I opened my eyes, the six of us were gathered in the usual room of the mansion. And in the middle of this, Shuu drew our attention.

“Is something wrong?” I asked him with my head inclined.

He looked more serious than usual.

“Yep… when Rir got close to that Jizou statue on Earth, she started actin’ strange.”

Huh… she seems normal enough now. Is there anything off about her?

“Woof, that said, Shuu fixed it already,” she hurriedly added.

Well, that tracked. If something to that account happened, Shuu would likely have us return to Anazumu in a rush.

“You said she acted weird…?”
“Yep, in fact, I brought her to the statue as part of our date, and then-”

According to him, the moment Rir offered a prayer in the manner you would for gods of Anazumu, she tried to take off the statue’s head, as if something was possessing her. On top of that, she apparently couldn’t remember anything from that time.

“So, another weird thing happened,” I mused.
“Yup. There might be somethin’ ’bout that statue, after all. Related to this world.”

I had previously told Shuu to some extent that Lord Jizou might be connected to Anazumu. It was about six minutes from his house to the statue, plus the only thing nearby were Mika’s and my homes, so I thought he only went there rarely, but he ended up visiting it to offer thanks for meeting Rir, anyway.

On that note, Mika and I visited the place every day without fail, either on our way to school or back. Lord Jizou was the reason we were so happy now… so it was really important to stop there. To thank him from the bottom of our hearts.

“I dunno why she was tryin’ to take off its head, though.”
“Oh, now that you mention it, we did touch that statue’s head before, haven’t we?” Mika commented nostalgically.

She was right, when we were in third year of elementary school or so, on our way back from school after the three of us decided to play at my house, we discovered that the statue’s head had been removed. This might sound obvious, but we put it back in its original place.

How nostalgic… I remember it being fairly heavy.

Come to think of it, in his explanation when I came to Anazumu, Lord Jizou wrote that I was kind to him, so he sent me here. Something about cleaning up bird feces, but the head affair might’ve been included in that, too. Or rather, it was weird that he had bigger issued with bird poop than his head being removed.

“With what happened, wouldn’t it be better to keep Rir away from the Jizou statue on Earth for a while?” Mika asked.
“Yep, that’s true,” Shuu replied.

In the end, these kinds of things made me curious. They appealed to my adventurous spirit. But what we needed for the rest of our lives was stability, so we could spend our time happily with our loved ones. If we went and messed around with it, an evil god or something similar might appear, and I absolutely didn’t want to go through grief like when I lost Mika… or Shuu lost Rir, again¹.

You could argue that Amritas solved these issues, but back with Surtr, it only worked out since Shuu was coincidentally carrying around Rir’s body parts, like someone with a weird fetish. There might be another close call like that.

Mika and I were tied together by a divine grade item that made it so we wouldn’t get separated, no matter what, but the other two couples didn’t have that.

“Well, that’s all I wanted to tell you. Let’s go with what Ayumu said and keep Rir away from the statue.”
“Yep, that should work. Then, let’s split up, everyone!”

When I said that, Kanata and Sakura left while somehow acting cold towards each other. Shuu and Rir were whispering, apparently discussing something, before both blushing and leaving the room while acting somewhat suspiciously.

“Now, there are things for us to do,” Mika announced.
“Yep. From today on, the preparations start in earnest. There’s only little time left until the planned day.”

Mika and I decided to advance the plans for Uruto and Parasuna’s wedding.

1. Someone is starting to get genre savvy.

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