After returning from the gym, Akito was relaxing in his living room.
'I got hit on... Again. Mother's genes are really troublesome, at least it was a woman this time. Guys always get way too touchy while hitting on me. I don't like it', his mother, sister and elder brother were all very good-looking, and he was not an exception.
Looking around the apartment for the millionth time since moving in he wondered how his mother even paid for this.
'I have never seen her leave to go to work. How come she has enough money to buy this place, it's near the university so it's extremely expensive for sure... Do I even want to know?'
'Probably better not to think about it.'
He got up, went to his study, and decided to review some things from his university. He had ditched all his notes after he had graduated and didn't touch them at all, since he was bored he decided that he may as well do so now.
'Let's see...'
After rummaging around for a while he found his old notes, or rather the many filled-out notepads which he had left at the back of one of the shelves.
'It's handy that I left them all together in one place.'
One of the notepads was a little different than the others, was far more messy and a little torn.
'Mana Engineering: Refilling water bottle project...'
'Ahhh I remember this, it took me quite a while to make this one. I think I ended up going with a gem enchantment method for this... I bound a spell to a sapphire, and when the sapphire gets filled with mana from the user it refills the bottle...'
'I think...'
He shook his head in disappointment at himself, 'My memory is absolutely rotten.'
Putting that notepad to the side he started looking through the others, and he found three notepads labelled, History of Mana and the Earth, 1, 2 and 3.
'Ohh I hated that course... Far too much information and not much of it was actually interesting, The only thing that Akito could remember from the course was that mana was introduced to the planet over 30 thousand years ago in 2016 AD by an immortal.
It caused wild animals all over the globe to rapidly evolve into mana beasts and it wiped out quite a lot of countries. It took humanity a few centuries to stabilise and far longer to actually recover. Even now Australia cant be entered, the whole place is a danger zone. There are far too many mana beasts and even a few dragons were sighted there.
He kept digging through his things for quite a while until he eventually got bored and left his study.
He noticed his phone had lit up and went to check what caused it.
'Oh, I have a message from mother. Seems my sister and her will come to visit me later... It would have been nice if they gave me more notice, they always drop in out of nowhere like this...'
'Oh well, it can't be helped.'
Looking around his apartment and himself he made a few quick decisions.
'It's a mess... I need to clean up here, take a shower and change.'
He was rushing since his mother and sister would arrive in less than an hour. As a result of his hastiness, when he finally got around to taking a shower he didn't allow enough time for the water to heat up, and when he felt the cold water on his back he proceeded to screech like a little girl.
'It's a little strange, to be honest. How come mother and sister always coordinate so well, mother lives in Finland and Chie lives in Canada, yet they always somehow manage to show up with precious little prior notice.'
As soon as he had finished getting dressed he heard the front door burst open.
"Akito! Come welcome this lovely sister of yours!"
'What is so lovely about slamming my door open, the door stopper takes a beating every time she comes over.'
Walking into the hallway he saw his sister, Chie, and as per usual she was wearing her long white coat, and next to her was his mother. His mother, unlike Chie, had entered quietly and was now placing her boots on the shoe rack.
"Chie did you have to make so much noise? The entire building probably heard you."
Off to the side, Reiko hid a smile, ever since Chie had been born she tended to be loud around her siblings. "You know how your sister is, she considers herself the most important sibling. Obviously she must make a grand entrance, all the living and the dead nearby must be made aware of her presence."
The comment earned her a glare from Chie while it made Akito grumble, both reactions just amused her more.
"Hmph, most important sibling my ass! She does it because her goal is to annoy me, and while that is fine by itself I would appreciate it if she didn't cause damage to the apartment in the process."
"I am standing right here you know. Besides, it's not like you would fix any damage yourself anyways, you go to the gym and play with those little magical toys you make", Chie had in the past slammed the door a little too hard and broken the handle, Akito hasn't quite forgiven her for that yet.
"They aren't toys, they are called magical devices, and they do many cool things! Besides, they are also super useful and sell well."
"So you aren't disputing that you play with them?", Chie smirked.
Just as Akito was about to get angry Reiko interrupted them, "Alright, come on, that's enough. Akito, please go make me some tea, two teaspoons of sugar and squeeze some lemon into it as well."
'Hmph. I don't play with them', considering his mother interfered, he wasn't going to continue arguing.
"Yes, of course mother, go sit down and I will bring it when it's ready."
After Akito had walked away Reiko turned to Chie, "Why do you have to mess with him so much? It's all the time, and we literally just walked in."
"No idea what you are on about", Chie went to the kitchen while looking away and whistling, insistent on playing innocent.
'Haaaah... This is going to be a long evening, I wish I had asked Yuto to come along as well, she would tease Akito less if he was here...', Reiko sighed and found a place to sit in the living room.