Returning, Kagetsu softly stepped into the entrance hall. There were no lights, only those from the street reached inside. With his phone's dimmed light, he sneaked around.
No walls crashed him, and nothing squeezed his neck. He could finally breathe without a worry. Changing into pajamas with little pigs' heads, he entered the living room.
"You waited for me?" he whispered as Rigaku was up reading a book under a small light.
The rest was tucked inside of their sleeping bags, having adventures in the dreamland.
"No, I only dived into reading, forgetting time," he answered in a hushed voice.
Kagetsu squatted as he stopped by his sleeping back next to Rigaku's one. "Then why it's upside down?"
His oldest brother frowned, turning the book. "It's not—" He stopped as the letters turned into a secret code. His book was never upside-down. His cheeks reddened as Kagetsu caught him off guard and red-handed.
"Thank you... and sorry for worrying about me." He crawled into his backpack. Playing with his phone's display settings, he forbid it to blackout and placed it down. Sometimes, even for a teenager, a night could seem scary.
Just a few inches from that place laid Rigaku's opened hand as if it was inviting. Kagetsu's eyes raced across the room before he closed his phone, and his fingers rested on Rigaku's palm.
As their eyes closed, their finger intervened, and no nightmare bother either of them.
\\_(''>_<'')_//
Freya yawned a bit. 'I'm so tired.' The day on the farm exhausted her, but it was her mind that needed extra hours of beauty sleep. She kept returning to Kagetsu's reaction. Pangs of guilty stabbed her as he expressed fear the first time, but she pushed him into visiting again.
'It was my fault.' A deep sigh left her lips. 'I shouldn't be such an idiot.' She closed the locker, resting her head against it. Whether the pear was inside or not escaped her attention. Its presence was like white noise.
She stayed like this for a few moments before registering a girl standing a few steps from her. Freya straightened, surprised that brown-haired girl seemed nervous than malicious. Her hazelnut eyes dashed from one corner to another as she struggled with speaking her mind.
Freya sent her way an encouraging smile.
"F-F-Freya... sama?" the girl spoke in a hushed voice.
'Sama?' The ginger-haired girl's lip twitched. 'Seriously?'
"Can I have... a question?" The girl played with her fingers, she could break them any second, so Freya quickly nodded. "Are you close with the Greek Gods?"
The question surprised Freya more than she expected. Their presence had turned into a natural part of her life now. 'Is it really possible to become so close in a few weeks?' Freya fished out her trusted notebook, realizing she might need one soon.
"We do hang out together," she wrote.
"Do you live together?" the girl spurted, almost leaping before realizing she might have crossed the line, shrinking.
Freya calmed her with a wave of her hand, writing. "We live close by. Pure luck."
"Really?"
Freya jerked her head, noticing three more girls peeked out from behind the brown-haired girl.
"Like in LN!" one said.
'LN?'
"I so wanna live with three gorgeous boys!" another exclaimed, holding her cheeks as she blushed lost in her fantasies.
The rest joined her.
'How strange... I'm not irritated.'
A shade of memories slid down her spine. When she started here the last year, many girls tried to approach her. Quite a number acted friendly, but Freya refused to talk with them or make any bond. In a matter of a few weeks, nobody talked with her.
Her green eyes landed on a leaning figure by the door. 'Ueno!' Her eyebrows knitted a bit, expecting a death-stare.
However, Ueno didn't move either expressed any emotion besides blandness. Without flicking her hair, she walked away.
'What?' Freya expected everything but definitely not this.
\\_(''>_<'')_//
Ueno strolled through the school, ditching her classes. Nobody stopped her. Not a single person asked her how she was doing.
She existed for no one.
Since the day her mother slapped her, nothing went as expected. Just a few days ago, she had heard her followers talking about her.
"What a witch!" one said. And in all honestly, Ueno had no idea what her name was.
"Tell me about it!"
Ueno found them behind the gym during lunch break, smoking. Forbidden in the school unless you knew the right people.
"She thinks she's all high and mighty!"
Here Ueno recognized one black-haired girl from her inner circle named Hime. It was a fitting name.
"Good grief this is her last year," Hime added.
"If it wasn't for an easy time during tests, I would never get close to that cow!"
"Cow!" a familiar male voice laughed. "That's a good one!"
They laughed as if it was a great joke. Ueno, on the other hand, tightened her fists, and veins popped up behind her eyes.
'How dare they! They would be nothing without me!'
She almost jumped at them, when Hime said, "Maybe we could get close to Freya-san. She seems to be naive and easy to handle."
"Sure, but won't she be on high alert towards us?"
"Nah! We can just blame Ueno-san. Everybody would trust us!"
All of them agreed as blood boiled inside of Ueno, she almost turned into a volcano.
"Hey, Nobu-kun, give me a light!" Hime shouted, demanding a lighter, and she mumbled something as she got it.
'Nobu Mori? The Council Head?' No wonder that voice rang a bell.
"Hey, did Ueno-san did it with anybody?" a less familiar voice asked. Must have been somebody from the outer circle.
"Dunno," Nobu answered. "I would pay a million to get her naked photograph!"
"Cows like that are good only for milking and porn anyway!"
They laughed, not noticing Ueno sprinted away, unable to hear anything else. Tears spurted from her eyes.
'Where?' She winked, waking up from the nasty memory. She had left the school and ventured into the park.
As she looked around, the world spun as if the forest darkened. An ear-piercing noise startled her. Her body tensed, and any second she expected hands around her, silencing her screams or pleadings.