As if nothing had happened, we went into the classroom and apologized for being late and sat in our seats. A few more classes passed before Mori-san told me to come over and talk to her. This conversation wasn't anything special, for the sake of decorum she scolded me and told me I shouldn't be so late, but you could tell she was speaking without fervor. Then, of course, she went on to say that what I had done was good and tried to tell me a little bit about the situation at ------. In a childish way, of course. When she started telling me about how she had no friends and that her family wasn't in very good shape, I just raised my hand in a sign to shut her up and told her I didn't need to know or rather I didn't care about it.
I, of course, got a serious look in my eyes which said that those were words not for my age and that I had most likely already figured it out myself. So, they only held back me for a dozen minutes and immediately let me go. As I was leaving the office I almost accidentally knocked down ------, who was listening to what was going on behind the door, trying to put her ear to it.
There was so much guilt in her gaze because she thought I was going to be scolded because of her and she certainly didn't want to let me go alone and quietly trying to sneak in, followed me to my office and most likely wanted to burst in at the most opportune moment yelling something like "This is my fault" or "It's not his fault," but no such opportunity presented itself for her.
"See. I told you it would be okay." - My voice was as calm as ever.
Having said that, I walked toward the exit while hearing the children's footsteps behind me. I said goodbye to ------ when I stepped outside the school grounds, saying something like "See you tomorrow", to which she muttered something to herself, and we both went our separate ways. At this I tried to quietly look behind my back, hoping that she would not follow me. But I didn't seem to notice anyone.
The first place I wanted to visit was the library. After all, I hadn't missed a day in a whole year when I didn't show up, and I almost always stayed up late. Of course, I didn't always study and didn't sleep, I needed to sleep sometimes because I felt morally tired, it certainly didn't have any effect on my body, but it felt personally harder to absorb new knowledge, in simple terms, you could say that I was burning out.
It was of course unexpected when Arata-san pounced on me to check if I was alright while asking a couple hundred questions about my condition. It was nice to know that someone cared about you, so a gentle smile appeared on my face because of that. Because of that, Arata-san face showed even more horror and ran off somewhere, he came back with a first aid kit in his hands, and in his eyes, there was a look of fear.
I spent almost an hour in the library saying that there was nothing wrong with me and that I just met a new friend and was just spending time with her because I couldn't come. It wasn't true, of course, but you could tell it was half true. He, of course, didn't believe what I said and looked at me suspiciously, which made my eye twitch. Did I seem so apathetic that I couldn't even make friends? In order to somehow calm him down I decided to tell him a little bit about ------ and he seemed to calm down a bit, he couldn't think I was making it up, could he?
So, I left the library with a calm heart and a blush on my cheeks because I heard Arata-san say the words too loudly before I left.
"I'm happy for you Yasuke-kun!" - At that moment, you could hear the happiness in his voice.
What could that mean? Am I too limited-minded for this world? I seem to be a grown man in a child's body, but I still don't understand the meaning of these words. I certainly understand that he's glad that I have my first friend, but I can't have such a bad reputation, and it's hard to be friends with someone like ------, knowing what she will do and who she will become. But something tells me that Arata-san is also an "Ultimate" since he's so smart, I'm not sure what he's doing here though.
But anyway, my next destination was my mother, who isn't getting any better by the day and probably will last about two more years or less. I'm certainly resigned to the fact that I can't save her, but that doesn't mean I won't try to do something. Not anymore. I may have the strength now to help others and myself. But as it was, she was fine now, and she was just sitting nu the kitchen and drinking tea, so I could go quietly to my room and finally look at what had been renewed in the relationship.
[------ -------] [Alive]
[Status: happy because she has her first friend/Exhausted and hungry]
[Attitude: 216%]
[Description: You have become a very important person to her, who was willing to protect her for the first time]
What...?
Why 216%? My relationship with my own mother was never higher, and the fact that the system says that 200% is the maximum confuses me even more. She can't treat me any higher than the system can count, can she? Maybe it's just a system glitch, though! Yes, of course that's the problem! Such a cool thing can't be wrong in its own conclusions!
So, having completely calmed myself down, I opened the rest window and set it to wake up at 7:45 a.m. And pressed the confirm button. My mind began to sink into a pleasant darkness and my last thoughts were that the system couldn't be wrong and these were true numbers and that it wasn't all just going to end like that.
(Missing Time).
It's been 7 months since I met ------ --------- and the relationship has increased to 514%! I don't know how it works, but it works. But anyway, I spent quite a lot of time with her and went out with her quite often after school and even took her to the library a couple times which almost gave Arata-san a heart attack on the spot, but good thing I was there and was able to help him, well it was influenced by the fact that it was a joke heart attack so he was fine.
There were also a few interesting things to look out for in this whole not-so-long time. The first point, oddly enough, was that when I came to class the next day, I wasn't the first one in the class, and there was ------ sitting next to my seat and clearly waiting for me to arrive. And this repeated itself throughout these months, so it definitely wasn't a coincidence, and she came to school earlier than I did to meet me and talk to me a little bit. I hope it doesn't escalate into something more serious and she doesn't want to cut out my spine and take care of me for the rest of my life.
But I think if it does, at least it will be much later and I'll have a chance to avoid it, but whatever it is now we were just hanging out and spending time together and that has resulted in us having some stories in common, but one of the weirdest stories for me was the sand castle that ------ we started building. More specifically, she started building ------ and I would just be somewhere near her and talk to her or look at her.
I, of course, could not always be near her, because of my mother's condition, I had to keep an eye on her too, so I had to leave ------ alone with the construction of the castle. Actually, to put it more correctly, it was not a castle, but the redemptive temple of the Holy Family, a picture she had seen in one of the magazines.
And God knows that she built it incredibly believable and even matched the original, which could not be expected from an ordinary seven-year-old girl, although she saw it only once, which made the temple seem incredible and this was confirmed by other people, who often crowded around and watched as she slowly and accurately made every corner every day for a month.
And watching this little girl in her ragged clothes sitting on her knees while picking at the sand with her broken fingernails, and there was an incredible concentration on her face, and sometimes she was even so into it that she even stuck out her tongue from the exertion. And... it looked incredibly cute, which made a smile appear on my face. What could possibly have happened to make her what she was? But that didn't matter now, and I guess I'd have to see how things would change with me coming in.
But anyway, now it was time to go back to the temple, which after a month was almost ready and only a few small touches remained to be added, but when we arrived the next day, the temple was ruined. Because of that ------ for the first time in my memory started crying, she didn't even cry when she came in with new bruises on her body and she never left her face smiling and rubbing her little fists over her eyes and the people who saw this and gathered here every day just separated disappointed and didn't say anything in support.
It made me incredibly angry and I wanted to yell at them for their indifference, but anyway I managed to hold it together and not say anything. I don't even think the Gamer's Mind did a very good job in that situation. The only thing I had to do at that moment was to go up to ------ and tell her that I would find out who did it and that I would sew his tongue on his ass, which made her calm down a bit and stop crying, although you could still see the traces of tears on her pretty face.
Because of this I spent practically the whole day looking for the person who dared to do this and despite all my super coolness and intelligence I couldn't find any direction or even a clue to anyone and not even a single person saw it. I even hung around at night, asking all the people who passed and hoping for the "criminal always returns to the scene of the crime" rule from the books, but I couldn't find anyone. So, the only thing left for me was to spend more time with ------.
Eventually after a few days I realized that the culprit in this story was ------ herself and she broke that lock herself. And as I understand it was because I started spending more time with my mother because of her illness and needed to keep an eye on her, which caused me to stop paying attention to ------ a bit and she just wanted me to spend more time with her.
Even though I was a little offended that I didn't realize it right away, but even so...it was incredibly planned and if it weren't for my knowledge of her, it couldn't have been understood. This plan of hers was unbelievable. I didn't tell her anything, of course, but I think she could see that I knew something, with her level of intelligence. But I think that moment was pretty quickly forgotten by me as well as her. But I think she still got what she wanted.
There were also a few unpleasant moments, namely with the fact that ------ was bullied, it certainly was not strong and the teachers were watching it too, but that does not negate the fact. My formidable looks at most of the kids were enough and they didn't even dare think about it. Well, ------- didn't go far from me anyway, so it was easy to stop it.
There was also an unpleasant moment at lunchtime. Usually, I successfully skipped this time and just buried myself in books and did not pay attention to anything, but lately I cannot find anything that could raise my skills and raised only a couple of points, which upset me greatly, but as if that was not the case at lunch time I sat and did not do anything.
Usually at this time all the kids in class get their lunch, or as they say in this country bento and strangely enough start eating it. But because I didn't have time to make food, and I didn't need the food itself, I didn't have anything so I just sat back and watched the other kids fill their cheeks, but as nice as that sounds, I wasn't the only one just watching the others go. One of those people was Mukuro, and the other person was ------ which made sense since they were sisters.
I certainly wouldn't have been paying attention if I hadn't seen the hungry look ------ she was giving me at the way the others were eating. So, for decency's sake, I had to distract her with idle talk. It won't take away the hunger of course, but I think it will take her mind off of it somehow. I guess I wouldn't have done anything about it if ------'s belly hadn't made dying whale noises, which caused the other kids to take notice of us. It caused ------ to lower her gaze into her desk and not raise it for the rest of lunch. Yes, even though she didn't show it, she was hungry as hell and something had to be done about it.
With these thoughts in mind, I headed out toward the house to try to at least cook something. There had to be food in the refrigerator, which I hadn't looked in for almost a year and a half, and I think I saw a bento box somewhere the first years of my life when I went to preschool. So, after finding this box I pretty much sat in the kitchen all night trying to cook something normal. There was no food that I was used to, so I had to experiment and by morning I was able to cook something decent. It was just rice and a couple of pieces of fish and maybe from the outside it was not beautiful, but I think it was possible to eat and it should be enough.
So mentally exhausted, but eerily happy and with a grim smile on his face, I got to school. And already this lunchtime I was able to give her this box of bento with incredible pride. You should have seen the shocked look that ------ was giving me and I was looking at her. She didn't say anything or even pounce on me, she just reached out with her shaking hands for the box and took it for herself.
Putting it on her desk, her ----------- bangs covered her eyes so I couldn't see her eyes, then she opened the box and just stared at it. For the sake of decorum, of course, I kept quiet and did not say anything. After about a minute she finally decided to take the chopsticks in her hands, it was obvious that she did not take them often and it was obvious that she was not very experienced in handling them, but despite this she began to eat the food slowly and in small pieces.
I saw a few drops fall on the desk next to the box. I heard the notification in the system. Again, I fought the urge to say something like, "Is it really that bad?" I just turned silently toward the window while feeling the look of rage on my back. What is this girl's problem? She obviously has some strange feelings for her sister.
But anyway, after that moment I spent almost every day cooking dinner for her, which raised my cooking level to "32," and the skill description said: [I was also able to increase the skill and the appearance of the food was also improving so that despite its simplicity the food I cooked tasted really good. So, there were a few pluses for me as well.
There was also one funny moment or more accurately, a conversation that I heard between the children. They were talking about wanting to become "Ultimate" and get to Hope Peak. I remember Sakura being an "Ultimate Hero" and looking like a mountain of muscle and working very hard for it, though I remember her getting the title from her boyfriend because of his illness.
And after that I decided to pay attention to other kids' conversations, because of which I realized that it was pretty common talk among kids and almost every one of them wanted to get into this academy, but it wasn't just kids talking about it, but among adults you could often hear talk about how some kid became an Ultimate and was accepted into "Hope Peak". So, you can understand why I had special treatment.
So, I think there were some monetary and social rewards for discovering Ultimates, both for the school and for the teaching staff, and finding someone like that was quite an honor for the school. I think it was drummed into kids from infancy by their parents how honorable it would be, and the academy has been around for several hundred years so almost everyone in Japan sees this academy as something of a dream and a hope for everyone. Because of that, there were tests in all the schools trying to identify special students.
And right now, there was one of those tests where they were trying to identify our talents among the others, and all the kids were diligently writing something in their sheets trying to stand out among the rest. Because of this test some people in expensive suits came to our school and made it look too formal. They came in and handed us all sheets of paper and pencils and started watching all of our activities.
I also think I misspoke and these were not tests, but just blank sheets of paper with only a few lines for a name with a number and address, and the rest of the sheet was blank. So, it was hard for the kids to figure out what to write in them, but as far as I understood now you had to write all your knowledge of our talents. I don't really know what they want from 6 or 7 year old kids, but I guess it's all normal in this world. And there were a few people who stood out among our whole class.
The first person, oddly enough, was a guy whose name I didn't know, and he wrote into the sheet, pretty confidently, practically never taking his eyes off it. The second person was Mukuro, who hadn't taken her hand off her sheet yet, which made sense, and as I recall she wrote some kind of essay that got her drafted. But I think there was something else I could not remember, but I could not say anything more, because I did not talk to her once, so I do not know what she stood out to the military. But it seems she disappeared somewhere before high school, so now I think there is something like a test going on, maybe just for her, well, and others for the set to find.
Another person was oddly enough ------ who took an example from me and also did not write. Although it seems that she should have wanted to go higher, more than others and the skills she had to do this, but maybe she did not want to leave me. I wouldn't have given it up, though. Well, I didn't write because the whole situation was too suspicious and I didn't want to stand out to people who didn't even introduce themselves. Or maybe it would, on the contrary, draw more attention to me. So the only thing left for me was to sit in silence and try to appear as inconspicuous as possible and not to stand out, although those people in suits were throwing strange looks at me, but let them think that I just can't do anything.
After sitting quietly until the end of all the classes, without writing a single word on the sheet and at the same time turning it in, saying goodbye to ------ and finally waiting until all the suspicious cars and people who were near the school drove away, I went home, trying to get some rest. Today, and the last few months in general, had been pretty difficult. It's good that at least they don't give me homework.