Leave a comment

I’ve never heard a “don’t worry” that makes me worry as much as I do right now. I can feel Hajime’s eyes saying, “Supervise her properly.” Why are you leaving that to me? It’s really easy to lose the initiative when you’re with Isami, you know?

“Don’t expect too much.”
“It’s alright, I don’t have any expectations to begin with. Our pace has always been pretty much dictated by Isami, after all.”

So you do get it. Even if I’m with her, everything always revolves around Isami. I simply watch over her as a guardian. The others would probably deny it, though. “A guardian doesn’t join in to cause chaos,” they’d say.

“Still, just please don’t randomly go outside. It’s already so late.”
“Don’t worry, my wallet isn’t deep enough for a random after-party. Besides, I’ll likely be forced back home if I do anything more.”

The continuation of my field trip highly depends on the patience of certain people not running out. Moreover, it’s multiple people, so abusing the principal’s authority might not work. Me being forced to go home isn’t exactly the best memory to have for a field trip.

“Well, Hajime. Take care of these guys. And goodnight.”
“Goodnight~.”
“At least leave him inside the room.”

We let go of Toshizou’s ankle in front of the room. Still, the two don’t show any signs of waking up after being dragged along the floor for a pretty long distance. Are they okay? We’re not demons, so we didn’t drag them face down first. However, we claim no responsibility for whatever happens to the back of their head.

“You’re not sleeping today, Kotochan!”
“The date has already changed. Also, where did your professionalism go?”

Immediately, the moment we entered her room, I ignored her, took her charger without permission, and plugged it into my smartphone. I used it so much yesterday morning, so the battery’s pretty low. I might get left behind if I don’t contact someone this morning.

“I’m free to do what I want in my private time!”
“You’re really living by the I’ll think of it when it happens policy, huh.”

Frankly, I’m really struggling not to fall asleep. It’s already 2 o’clock in the morning. Moreover, I ran all around the place during yesterday’s tag. And then I exhausted a lot of energy with the concert. It’d be weird if I wasn’t feeling tired.

“Aren’t you exhausted too, Isami?”
“We did have two concerts in a row, so yeah. I’m actually pretty worn out. But my needlessly boundless hype will push me through!”
“Yeah, it’s needlessly boundless alright.”

Isami should know it well, the consequence of forcefully hyping herself. Adding to that, staying awake tonight. All this when there’s a live appearance waiting tomorrow, I’d never do that. I’m sleeping.

“Welp, I’ll be sleeping now.”
“Already told you you’re not sleeping!”

When I was about to lie down, Isami hugged me. Moreover, the idiot’s tickling me to stop me from sleeping. She’s absolutely intent on not letting me fall asleep. Still, what are we going to do all night? There’s not much two people can do.

“What do you even want to do?”
“Talk! Well, mostly you’ll do the talking.”
“Me? I don’t really have much to talk about.”
“Like, I don’t really know anything about you, Kotochan. So I was thinking it’d be better to get filled in.”

You should know me best. What are you talking about? My personality, my likes, even my dislikes, Isami should already know all about it. There’s no point talking about it between us.

“Let me reframe that. I want to know about what happened to you after becoming Kotochan. You’ve never really talked much about that.”
“Now that you mentioned it, I never did.”

My conversation with step-mom was the last time I talked about what happened since I became Kotone. Still, I don’t think I can talk about everything in just one night. Moreover, there’s only roughly four hours left until morning. That’s too short to discuss the events in my life.

“Just what chaos have you been causing that I wasn’t there to see?”
“Why is that a given? Maybe I was just living a normal everyday life, you don’t know.”
“Not possible.”

How can you be so sure? At least consider the possibilities. It’s not like I chose the life I’ve had. It’s just that problems come to me whether I like it or not, so there’s no point trying to prevent them.

“Give up, spill it out. All of your interesting-embarrassing past! I’ll make sure to interject.”
“Aren’t you normally not supposed to interject?”
“I’m going to fall asleep if I do that.”

That’s true. If Isami falls asleep, I’m confident that I would too. And the reason this isn’t happening is because she doesn’t want to sleep at all. Why do I have to resist my urge to sleep to tell her about my life? It feels like punishment.

“It’s going to be an all-nighter, huh.”
“The people you meet are important in this life, no?”
“I don’t have any obligation to play along.”
“You’re keeping me company even if it has to be by force. Isn’t that how we’ve always been?”

I can’t deny that. We start a ruckus, proactively drag others in, and later as revenge, we’d get dragged into other people’s chaos. It’s because this negative cycle doesn’t stop that we continue spiraling into endless chaos. We’ve definitely got some screws loose.

“Now here, feel free. There are drinks in the fridge and there’s food, as you can see.”
“You’re too prepared for this.”

Wait, did she know I was going to stay here and prepare all of this after the concert ended? She has too much initiative. To begin with, what was her plan if I had slept with my classmates instead? I can easily imagine her dragging me away.

“Well, where do I start? You don’t really care about stuff you already know, right?”
“I’ve been with you for those times, so yeah. I really want to start from when you became Kotochan.”

I guess I have no choice but to talk. I don’t expect her to quietly listen from the start. Particularly concerning how no one visited me when I was hospitalized and the bullying incident. I also anticipate that she’ll be mad that I didn’t involve her in what happened afterwards. It seems the night is still long.