Chapter 241: No One

Ishiki looked at the stone for a long moment.

The house had four walls and a triangle roof, worn into that form by either water or the shop that had made it.

He turned it over once… before Nina took and broke it into two equal halves. The first one had the word welcome and the second one had the part home in it.

There was a magnet that joined both the parts as if they were never separate to begin with.

Nina gave him the part which had the word “Home” on it and kept the welcome part to herself.

“Its really pretty.” Ishiki said with an almost solemn expression. “I like it.”

“It’s for when you go somewhere dangerous, like all players go.” she added. “Because you have to come back to give it to me again.”

“Noted,” Ishiki nodded and stood up to go into the kitchen.

She stood in the doorway for a moment longer, apparently satisfied that the terms had been properly conveyed, then padded back down the hallway toward her room and the waiting presence of Mr. Bear.

Ishiki looked at the stone.

’When you go somewhere dangerous, huh.’

He turned back to the stove and heard Shiro saying that he will take his leave. Just as he was about to step out of the door… he felt a hand over his shoulder and his whole body stiffened.

“Well, why don’t you have dinner here.” Ishiki’s voice called. “Mr. Assistant.”

Shiro turned around and bowed with a smile. “I am glad, but I am full right now. I will consider it sometime latter.”

“Oh, is that so?” Ishiki made a thinking face. “Nina had to do her homework too and I have to cook, aaah, I think I should hire an ’Assistant’… right?”

Shiro looked at him and the very bad acting and choice of words made him convinced that he should actually stay.

**

The kitchen was familiar territory. Rice in the pot, broth on the back burner, slow and low. He cut the vegetables with ease. Years of cooking had made him proficient enough.

He could hear, faintly, Nina explaining the homework situation to Shiro in the front room with the full strategic thoroughness.

“—the equations I don’t understand, the reading comprehension which is fine but boring, and the maths which Dad was supposed to check last week but he got confused and told me everything was right so the teacher marked three answers wrong.”

“…”

There was no need to mention the last part, was there?

He heard Shiro open the textbook and then he started explaining things to Nina. Well, Ishiki had never been good in studies to begin with… and the modern world study was just hard.

Well, he didn’t had a reason to learn all that as well. He was a player now after all.

At that thought his expression dulled down.

’The trial,’ He thought, and gritted his teeth. ’I need to accept the trial soon… If I don’t I will enter the Scenario as i am. And that’s fucking stupid.’

He adjusted the flame.

’Kenji completed his second trial and went from my level to fifty in the time I’ve been standing in this kitchen filing reports under a name that isn’t mine. Shit… but not like I can just disappear.’

’But there is not much choice. I accept the trial in a week, complete it within a month and come back. I will tell Nina that I am going on a business outside Japan.’

The decision had no drama left in it. It had been decided in the office this afternoon in the aftermath of the drainage channel, and the part that remained now was not the deciding but the weight that came after the deciding — the second problem, the one that was waiting behind the first.

’Who stays with Nina.’

He tasted the broth and added a small amount of salt.

The broth was good. The kitchen was warm. Through the doorway came the sounds of Shiro explaining mathematical balance.

’I need someone I can trust with her and she can live with too. There’s Yuki. But how will I explain to her, where I have been and what I was doing. Its a good thing she has not yet tried to find me. Filch is not an option and I can’t leave her with random neighbors.’

He could try to win over Shiro completely and use him.

’But trusting someone with your daughter’s secret was not something so easily done. He knows Kashima Ryou. He doesn’t know Ishiki. He has seen the white cap Nina was wearing all day and still asked nothing. He does not know what is under the cap or what it means or what Nina will eventually become. I don’t know how you tell someone that. I don’t know if there is a way to say it that doesn’t go wrong.’

’I also don’t know who else there is.’

He called through: “Food.”

Nina appeared in five seconds. Shiro behind her with his jacket in his hand.

They sat on the table and Ishiki served. The broth was warm, the rice was good, and for a while the table had the specific quality of a meal that nobody was in a hurry to end.

First time in three years the table with four chairs had more than two of them occupied.

“This is very good,” Shiro said.

“Thank you,” Ishiki said.

“You should open a restaurant,” Nina said, without looking up from her bowl.

“I have a job,” Ishiki said.

“You could do both,” she said.

“I can not.”

“Shiro-san.” She turned. “Don’t you think he should—”

“I think Kashima-san’s career decisions are entirely his own,” Shiro said, with a smooth smile.

“You know,” Shiro said, after a moment. “You’re quite sharp.”

“I know,” Nina said, and went back to her bowl.

Shiro looked at Ishiki briefly, then back at Nina.

“You ask good questions,” Shiro continued. “How old are you?”

Nina looked up at that. “I am thre-”

Ishiki almost spewed out the soup in his mouth. He quickly drank it and interrupted. “She will be 11 in 3 days.”

“Really,” Shiro said. “She is quite an intelligent lady.”

Nina stared at him and formed a smile. “Thank you.”

Then after a long pause… she asked. “Shiro-san, you are also a player?”

Ishiki coughed and interrupted. “Do you want another bowl?”

Both Nina and Shiro declined, as they haven’t yet finished their first bowls.

Then Shiro said, with what was almost a smile: “You have a very precise way of thinking.”

Nina shrugged one shoulder in the way she did when she was pleased but did not intend to show it. “I think about things,” she said.

“Where does it come from,” Shiro said, lightly.

Nina tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“The curiosity,” Shiro asked.

Nina was quiet for a moment, looking at her bowl. Then she said, in the slightly smaller voice. “Do you think it comes from your parents? The way you think?”

Shiro considered. “Yes…”

Nina nodded slowly. “I don’t know that.”

“Your mom must be very smart…” Shiro said, but he stopped mid way as he felt a very tingling expression that he was in danger. He stopped and focused on his food entirely.

Nina looked up at him in confusion. “I don’t have one,” she said… simply. As if clarifying a fact that had been slightly misunderstood.

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