The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall

Episode 5

That night, in order to deal with the huge problem that was Shiina Mashiro, Sorata called the residents of Sakurasou together for a meeting.

In short, it was a place where the residents would lay down some ground rules on how they would live together.

Up until today, many of the Sakurasou rules were decided at these meetings, from normal duties like assigning who would prepare the meals, who would do the shopping, who would clean the bathroom, to stranger tasks like assigning who would fix leaky roofs and who would deal with beehives.

Today, the goal of the meeting was to establish the new task of taking care of Mashiro, and to decide who would be responsible for this "Mashiro duty."

For the first time in around a month, all the residents of Sakurasou gathered around the round table in the living room. In clockwise order, Chihiro, Misaki, Jin, Sorata, and Mashiro were sitting around the table.

Akasaka Ryuunosuke, who refused to come out of his room, was participating in the meeting via web chat. Misaki was talking with him, clacking on the keyboard of her laptop with a piece of fried shrimp in her mouth.

"Um, well, we all know why we're here today. I want everyone in Sakurasou's participation for us to overcome this very difficult problem."

Completely unlike Sorata, who was giving it his all, everyone else was engrossed in their meal and wasn't really listening.

Trying to breathe life into the otherwise disinterested meeting participants, Sorata banged both his hands onto the table.

In the end, he had gotten to school late this morning.

After washing Mashiro's face, he got her to put on a camisole that was the same color as her panties, got her to change out of her wet blouse, forced her to wear socks, and fixed her frazzled head of bed hair... and by the time all of that was done, they were already pretty late.

If they were going to be late anyways, Sorata figured that they might as well eat breakfast properly, after which they leisurely strolled to school.

They couldn't make the boring opening ceremony, but Sorata made an appearance in homeroom.

When Sorata brought Mashiro to the staff room, he was surprised that Chihiro didn't yell at him, but it seemed that she had been expecting them to be even later than they were.

Well, in that case, she really should have given me a warning in the first place.

Completely exhausted by this morning, Sorata couldn't pay any attention in his new second-year classes.

And after school, Chihiro forced him to show Mashiro around the school all by himself.

No matter where Sorata brought her, Mashiro reacted in an ambiguous way that made it difficult to judge whether she was interested or not, and the whole ordeal made Sorata feel quite powerless.

Sorata was also the one who brought Mashiro home. It was because Mashiro could not even remember how to get home, even though it was only a ten minute walk.

After Sorata got home from school, he waited one hour... then two... but no matter how long he waited, Mashiro didn't come back.

Getting worried, Sorata went back to look for her, and found that she wasn't even on the road home, but was rather wandering around the school like a lost puppy.

And what's more, the person herself didn't seem to be conscious of the situation, and claimed that she wasn't planning on going home until then in the first place.