This is the Original Hifumi's Memories mind you and not our MC Hifumi's memories.
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As I looked at the old man who appeared to be somewhere in his 50's to 60's 'my' memories began to flicker into my mind.
Me, not me but the me of before, the original Hifumi's Memories, what I had left were just shards of the whole thing now.
Only his parents and sister and the history with them I have the full picture but far in the past was almost but faded by now, but this old man stuck out to me.
Him, his son, three girls one with blonde hair, another with dark brown hair and the last one with orange hair.
My hometown, me as a chubby little kid playing around with the four, I was the guide for those kids that summer, dad was close with the parents of the others.
We had fun and played around, we all became close friends, Orange haired girl was sickly a lot, I helped her move around to have fun most of the time.
A promise was made by the end between the other boy and the brown haired girl, lockets and keys, I got one too?
Something happened….. I was really sad…. Threw my locket into the lake in sadness and anger…. Never saw them ever again….
******
I slowly open my eyes as I refocused on the situation where Fuyuhiko was about to punch his dad in the face.
Actually he already did while I was thinking about the past but he was being held back by Peko so he didn't punch his dad again.
"You Bastard?! Where do you get off with conditioning her like this Huh?! What? To make her the perfect wife for me when I'm ready to marry?!" He shouted out while Peko held him back harder.
"Oh? Is this what this is all about? I was wondering when you'd figure it out, you know it's actually a family tradition for the bodyguard of the next head to be made into the wife of the future one, it's what I did, my father, his father and all the way back to the founding of the Kuzuryu clan kid, besides aren't you happy? Because your feelings for her were so painfully obvious that I thought you'd be ecstatic about it you know?" He said as he wiped the small bit of blood off his lips.
"But she only views herself as a weapon because of that Old Man!"
"…. Really? Huh, I guess it's worse than I thought, Peko while it might be late to say this but I consider you to be worthy of my son if that helps at all." He just goes onto say.
And return the ever stoic Peko who doesn't show her emotions as much, slowly became as bright as a tomato.
Same for Fuyuhiko who stopped struggling which made the other old man start to laugh, "Hahaha! Oh Saburo she reminds me a lot of how your wife was like when we were growing up back in Highschool! Seeing this warms my heart." The old man said with a nostalgic look on his face.
"And if his mother wasn't on a business trip in America she'd vouch for me that she was in fact my bodyguard when we grew up together." He said with a sigh before taking a drink of his sake.
"But enough about that, the main thing was I wanted to meet your friends and thank them for their help with what happened on your summer trip." Saburo said as he turned to look at us.
"Now wait a minute Saburo, I have something I want to ask of this young man here." The older man said as he turned to look at me as he stroked his chin as he looked at me closely.
"Aren't you Keiji's kid Hifumi? If I didn't hear from Saburo himself of your name I wouldn't believe it was you, I almost thought you were someone else entirely with just the same name but when he mentioned your parents names it all but confirmed it, you really grew up to be a handsome man from the chubby little kid from back then." He said with a nostalgic look as he thought about what happened 9 years back.
"…. Have we met before old man? I mean you seem familiar but I can't remember why?" I say before I start to look at my personal memories of my old life to see where the old man is from.
"Oh well that's not surprising you were only around 4 or 5 years old so no surprise you can't remember me all that well, just that me and my kid spent time in your hometown is all, although it was only for a summer you guys were close but then somethings came up and well…. You never got to see each other again, then again if my memory serves me right you and him and those girls that were with you got into some spat or something….. Was it about trading cards? I can't really remember…." He said thinking about it but couldn't really remember all the details as he wasn't paying attention to us when we were kids.
"So who are you exactly then old man?" I said though my Eidetic memory finally figured out where he came from after I asked that.
"Then let me reintroduce myself, I am Issei Ichijou, and the current head of the Shūei Clan in the Chiba Prefecture of the country, when you were little me and my son went out to your hometown in Nigata to get away from the city for a summer, we also brought one of his childhood friends along as well as the daughters of several of my other friends over there too, actually Saburo you were supposed to come with but you had business and couldn't bring your son along at that time could you?" He says laying out a bit of my past, well I guess it is my past now since the orginal is gone but I have some of his memories.
I guess in Hifumi's past he met the protagonist along with all the other main girls of Nisekoi, but from the fragments I could see it didn't end well like he said, but he didn't mention me having a locket, the main driving force of the nisekoi plot after all as I clearly remember a little version of me holding the locket with tears and snot running down my face before I tossed it with all my might and threw it in the nearby lake to my hometown.
Well those were good times, but besides talking about the past I'm more intrigued to hear how that little kid I knew back then became so good with guns that you and the rest of you here could take on a bunch of armed Russians without so much as a scratch." Issei said as he scratched his chin as he looked at me attentively.
"..."
'Man how am I going to answer this without sounding like a crock of shit?'
'And now I'm curious about that summer all those years ago.'