kscans

Chapter 222 - A Certain After-School for the Kids

"The old man is going to be late today, right?"

"Yeah. He said he’s going to karaoke with the president. Knowing the president, he said they’ll probably be out all night."

The day after the coming out. The group of kids had met up after school and were heading to Satou’s family home. During their chat last night, the existence of a tactical notebook that Satou had compiled during his student days had come to light. They figured that his immature perspective from back then would be a valuable reference, so they pleaded with him and were given permission to get it.

"It’s been a while since we were here in the summer, hasn't it."

"That was fun."

"Have you all been here before?"

"Yeah. I came to visit with my mom and the others around Obon."

"Oh, cool."

As they talked, they arrived. They let themselves in with the key they’d been given and went straight to Satou’s room.

"He said he hid it in the attic space, right?"

"I’ll look for it then. It’s probably dusty, and there might be mice or something."

"You’re pretty cool for saying that so casually, Hikaru-kun."

"I bet you’re secretly popular at school, too."

"I can totally see you getting anonymous chocolates on Valentine’s Day."

Hikaru gave a wry smile at the three girls’ conversation and climbed into the closet. As for the three left behind, it wasn't as if they were going to sit there quietly.

"Since we’re here, let’s search the house! Let’s dig up all sorts of stuff from the old man’s younger days!!"

Said Rika.

"...If you say so, Rika-san."

Said Sarna, her face clearly showing she was into the idea.

"Well, he gave us the key, so I think it’s probably fine."

Sakuya didn't try to stop them. The house search was approved.

"...So this is the kind of room Hero Uncle spent his school days in."

"Have you never been to Hero-san’s family home, Sakuya-san?"

"No. It was always Hero Uncle who came to my hometown."

Even when she went to Tokyo on a family trip, he showed her around, but they stayed in a hotel, so she had never been to his house.

While chatting and searching around, Sakuya found something under the bed.

"A rice cracker tin… it’s pretty heavy."

"Is this… what they call a flip phone?"

Inside the tin can, the kind you get as a gift filled with an assortment of senbei, were multiple flip phones. Each had a sticky note with a date on it. It was probably the period they were used.

"So he’s the type to keep this kind of thing."

"For all his talk, Hero Uncle is surprisingly the type to properly store his mementos."

The flip phones were probably packed with memories of his youth. "Let’s see," Sakuya said, picking up one of the flip phones that seemed to be from his middle school days.

"There’s some kind of spell cast on this."

"I believe it’s a protective one to prevent deterioration. It seems to be quite advanced. And I suspect…"

Sarna pressed the power button on the flip phone, and it responded.

"There was no charger, so I thought that might be the case. So it is."

"So he can look back on his memories anytime, huh. How thoughtful."

"Wow, his address book is packed… but then again, that’s just like him."

"His social circle is ridiculously wide, after all."

"Oh, I want to see too!"

As they were talking, Rika came over and joined the flip phone investigation.

"Back when they used flip phones, email was the main thing, right? Whoa, he’s the type to organize things into folders."

"Four of them. Dudes, girls, family, and other."

"Why don’t we start by peeking at the girls’ folder?"

"I agree."

They peeked into the girls' folder and out came a flood of emails. Not just from one person, but a long list of many names.

"""Whoa…"""

Feeling sorry for the senders, they examined the contents, and it was clear from the text that several of them had feelings for him.

"His sent emails aren’t saved, so we can’t be sure, but."

"Yes. Judging from the subsequent emails, it seems Hero-san consistently gave vague replies, like a dense protagonist."

"He’s so good with people, why is he so bad when it comes to romance…"

They checked another flip phone, and it was a similar story.

"Oh, this Chika-chan in the phone book is… Mom? I wonder what kind of messages they sent."

Rika searched for her mother's name in the folders, but,

"...The messages are so, um, unromantic."

"Is this for work?"

Perhaps wary of someone seeing them, he didn’t touch on matters of the Supernatural World. These were likely from the process of deepening their friendship. The conversations were mostly about daily life, but they were somehow stiff.

"Oh, but look. As the dates progress, Mom starts to become a little more normal… no, she’s still kind of stiff. Is this really Mom?"

"I have a strong image of her as a gentle, elegant, and friendly person, so this is surprising."

"I wonder what he was like with Takahashi-san and Suzuki-san."

They peeked into the dudes' folder and found a considerable number of saved messages, as expected of his best friends. However, the contents were,

"Amazing. I’ve never seen emails where the word ‘die’ is used so rampantly. It’s used about three times per message."

"Even I, a Death God, am surprised."

"...I can sort of guess that Hero Uncle was just being an annoying pest."

It must be true what they say, the more you fight, the closer you get. To think that those three had once fallen out and tried to kill each other, you just never know.

"We could probably kill a lot more time with just the flip phones, but it’d be a waste to end it here, so let’s put them aside for now."

"I agree. Next, let’s check around the desk."

After that, the three of them continued to giggle and squeal over various items like sticker albums, accessories, a bundle of point cards, and photo albums, but…

"...Um, where’s Hikaru-kun?"

She suddenly realized. A considerable amount of time had passed, and Hikaru hadn't come back. It was unlikely he had left the room or anything like that.

"...Perhaps we underestimated the fact that this is Satou Hideo’s room."

"Yeah, but if it were dangerous, I think the old man would have said something."

"W, well, for now, let’s go to the attic space too."

Taking up battle stances, they entered the attic space through the closet. However, the moment they entered, the dim space they had seen until now transformed completely.

"""Huh?"""

The three of them stood there, dumbfounded. Rika was the first to snap back to reality.

"............An adult section?"

She had once gone into the adult section attached to a regular bookstore with friends as a joke. What Rika was seeing now was a sight very similar to that.

"It, it seems the space has been manipulated."

"...Look at that sign over there. It says ‘Satou’s Secret Room’."

"Ehhh…?"

As the three of them stood there, dumbfounded at what the middle-aged man (then a boy) had built in his family home,

"Stop… stop it! Let go!!"

It was Hikaru’s voice. He sounded very panicked. The three of them hurried towards the voice.

【I may not be pretty, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. If there’s a smarter hat than me, I’ll take my leave.】
【A bowler hat is pitch black, a top hat is tall and sleek. I’m the wank-recommending ero hat.】
【I am above them all. The ero hat sees through what’s hidden in your head.】
【Put me on and I’ll tell you. The genre of wank material you should use.】

"I told you I don’t need it, didn’t I!? What I’m looking for is the tactical… hey, stop that!!"

There was Hikaru, wrestling with an old, shabby hat that looked like something a witch would wear. The three of them looked at each other and nodded.

"""Let’s leave him be."""

"Help me!?"

The tactical notebook was found about two hours later.