The time arrived at six in the evening.
After all, they’d been running around for a whole day — needless to say of Saito Miyako, but Minami Yuji and Aqua Hoshino on the other side had also long since begun to feel a touch of hunger.
Because of that, Saito Miyako didn’t hesitate either — she picked up the phone and just went ahead and ordered three takeaway meals.
It wasn’t that she was bad at cooking; rather, by this hour, going out to buy ingredients, prepping them, and then actually cooking would simply have taken too long.
Far better to just settle the matter with takeaway and be done with it.
Even so, she had at least taken the children’s nutritional needs into consideration — the takeaway she ordered was the comparatively well-balanced ‘teishoku’ set-meal type.
And during this stretch, Minami Yuji also asked the question he had been rather curious about — where had Ruby Hoshino gone off to?
That’s right.
Ruby Hoshino was, at this point, nothing more than an ordinary eight-year-old child; generally speaking, Saito Miyako should have placed her at the agency and had the staff look after her in her stead.
Yet from earlier right up to the present moment, he hadn’t caught even the slightest glimpse of Ruby Hoshino.
The question he posed was very quickly answered.
As it turned out, Saito Miyako had been worried that with her own work being so demanding, and with Aqua Hoshino in the middle of filming recently, Ruby Hoshino — with no one around to watch over her — would end up feeling lonely.
So she had sent her off ahead of time to the countryside, where her own parents would look after the girl in her place.
“I see.”
Minami Yuji nodded.
A reliable adult, by rights, wouldn’t have much in the way of particular thoughts about a small child like Ruby Hoshino — but the other party was, after all, also a reincarnator, so he still wanted to take the time to explain his own situation to her along with Aqua Hoshino.
But since the other party wasn’t here for the time being…
then there was nothing in particular for him to dwell on.
And so things went, eating on one side, chatting idly on the other.
It wasn’t until they were halfway through the meal that Minami Yuji suddenly set down his chopsticks.
“Auntie Kyoko.”
“Hm?” Saito Miyako paused her own chopsticks and looked over curiously.
“This takeaway — could you order one more portion?” He pointed at the half-eaten teishoku in front of him.
“I can, sure…
but is one portion really not enough for you?”
Saito Miyako opened her mouth, a touch genuinely taken aback.
To accommodate the appetites of both Aqua Hoshino and Minami Yuji, she had specifically ordered adult-sized portions.
His appetite was that large?
This much food wasn’t enough?
Could it be that the perfect koyaku also had a perfect appetite?
“No, it’s just that there’s someone else at home who might not have eaten dinner — I was thinking of bringing something back for her.”
Probably having picked up on the curious expression on Saito Miyako’s face, Minami Yuji went ahead and offered a line of explanation.
But what he clearly hadn’t expected was that this remark only stoked Saito Miyako’s curiosity even further — even Aqua Hoshino over on the other side had stopped his chopsticks, silently pricking up his ears.
After all, although Minami Yuji had signed with [Ichigo Pro], right up to this very day, his legal guardian had not once set foot in [Ichigo Pro] — not even a single time.
On this point, Saito Miyako had in fact already grumbled to herself several times over, thinking that the other party’s guardian was being just a bit too cavalier about it all.
One had to keep in mind that the other party was, after all, only an eight-year-old child!
Even if this eight-year-old child happened to be Minami Yuji, the guardian still couldn’t just be a complete hands-off shareholder…
uh…
actually…
maybe they really could?
Casting her mind back over the past three short days and Minami Yuji’s distinctly un-childlike performance throughout…
Saito Miyako quietly swallowed her bellyful of muttering back down — but she still couldn’t help opening her mouth: “The takeaway is no problem at all, but I’d also like to meet Yuji-kun’s guardian once.
Would it be all right if I paid a visit a little later?”
Truth be told, she really did want to meet the other party.
Even, if it were possible, she wanted to ask the other party just how on earth they had managed to raise and educate an exceptional talent like Minami Yuji.
It was just that on the previous few occasions, Minami Yuji had seemed to deliberately wait at a bus stop a fair distance from home for her to drop him off and pick him up — so she had never quite found a suitable opportunity to call on them. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping dot com.
“Meet them, huh…?”
Minami Yuji, normally so crisp and decisive in his actions, fell into a rare moment of silence.
Lifting his head, he first glanced at Saito Miyako, then at Aqua Hoshino, and only then did he give a small nod.
“All right.
But the environment at my place isn’t really suited for receiving guests — you two will have to brace yourselves mentally.”
So he said.
…
Minami Yuji was the most gifted person at the Masayama Orphanage.
With those words from Director Minami Mao…
in other words, her own adoptive mother…
Minami Reiko was in deep agreement.
Because she had been there to watch Minami Yuji grow up the whole way — truly, watching him grow from a tiny child right up to now.
Beginning to walk upright in a way that defied normal human comprehension before he was even one year old, then at the mere age of two already able to run and jump, to speak with full eloquence and charm the grown-ups around him, and even — through the sheer ease with which he solved high school exam problems — making it all the way onto Mameshima’s local news, leaping in a single bound to become a genuine local celebrity.
‘Prodigy!’
‘Miracle!’
‘A rare talent!’
The adults who knew Minami Yuji almost without exception spoke of him in these terms; there were even some who tossed around the idea of whether they ought to send Minami Yuji off to Tokyo — after all, if they could only stir up enough hype around him, they were guaranteed to ride a fair wave of attention and rake in no small amount of money.
But in the end, it was Director Minami Mao who, single-handedly, pressed down all those outside voices.
“Do you people even count as adults, behaving like this?”
“Don’t you feel that this kind of behavior is shameful?”
“Yuji is only two years old!”
The normally gentle Minami Mao had, at that moment, lost her temper for the very first time.
But even so, there were still no shortage of news reporters who came flocking to the orphanage out of curiosity, hoping to catch a glimpse of this ‘Prodigy of Mameshima.’
And time…
in the midst of all this, arrived at the point when Minami Yuji turned five.
At that point in time, Minami Reiko felt that she had perhaps, in fact, harbored a touch of fear toward Minami Yuji.
Because she could always catch sight of certain children — kids who only the day before had worn faces full of contempt, who had even hurled venomous words at the Director, kids deep in their rebellious phase — being called away by Minami Yuji.
As they went, they even wore vicious expressions, loudly proclaiming that they were going to smash up Minami Yuji’s pretty little face and leave it disfigured.
But by the time they came back…
Setting aside the question of whether Minami Yuji’s face had been disfigured or not — those children who had been in their rebellious phase had genuinely become unbelievably docile and well-behaved.
Whatever the adults asked them to do, they would do it on the spot; when they saw people, they would properly greet them — so polite it was practically as though they had been swapped out for entirely different people!
If it had only been one child like that, fine.
But it was practically every single child Minami Yuji called over to him who turned out this way.
This downright eerie sight had directly planted seeds of dread within the heart of the then-fourteen-year-old Minami Reiko.
Still at middle-school age and having read her fair share of manga, she had even seriously wondered whether Minami Yuji might not be some kind of alien who had come down to Earth from another star system, mastering some evil brainwashing technology.
Otherwise, why on earth would those rebellious-phase children — who at a single glance were clearly quite a bit stronger than Minami Yuji — listen to him so obediently?
Those weren’t the sort of kids who would sit down and listen to Minami Yuji reason things out with them, after all.
And this kind of fear lingered with her all the way until she was eighteen, graduating from high school.
Because the number of orphans the Masayama Orphanage was responsible for taking in kept growing larger and larger, the beds and rooms — which had originally seemed like there was even some to spare — gradually became cramped; on top of that, with the sea wind eating away at the buildings, certain places needed further repair, and Director Minami Mao’s own health had also taken a turn for the worse, so the funds that had once been just barely enough started to come up tight.
As for this state of affairs, Minami Reiko had, in truth, been considerably torn over it.
Because going by her own academic record, she had the opportunity to go on to university.
She wanted to break out of Mameshima!
She wanted to live a brand-new life of her own!
But—
“I, I’ll do my best!
I’ll definitely go to Tokyo and find a good job!
Director Mao!
And everyone else!
You all have to wait — I’ll send money back to you!”
As reluctant as she felt, in the end Minami Reiko gave up the chance to attend university.
“Will you really be all right, Reiko?
Going to Tokyo all by yourself.”
By the dockside, seabirds were crying out.
Minami Mao — already with a layer of white frost dyeing the hair at her temples — looked at the Minami Reiko standing before her; behind Reiko stood a whole crowd of children, all gazing over with eyes full of curiosity and worry.
As the Director, Minami Mao knew it well: Minami Reiko’s temperament was delicate — she absolutely wasn’t any kind of strong child.
“I’ll be all right!”
Minami Reiko remembered that this was how she had answered.
But…
in truth, that had been a lie.
Unease, fear, anxiety.
Even her fingers, hidden away in her pocket, had been faintly trembling.
She had only just graduated from school, and was about to start living on her own — having to look after herself while also seeking out work in Tokyo just to make a living.
Forget about being an eighteen-year-old girl.
Even many a grown man’s heart, faced with that, would probably feel a little uneasy too, wouldn’t it?
Honestly speaking, if it hadn’t been for Minami Mao and the other children still standing right in front of her, she really would have burst out crying.
And it was precisely at that moment that someone spoke up.
“I’ll go along with Reiko.”
Dragging a suitcase that was just a touch taller than he was, a small little figure stepped forward.
Minami Reiko felt that at that moment, she had probably been saved by Minami Yuji.
“I’ll earn money together with her and bring it back.”
The sea breeze swept on past.
Sunlight broke through the overcast clouds and spilled down.
The strands of the black-haired boy’s hair drifted along with that briny sea breeze.
So he said.
And so—
“Haven’t the Director and Yuji-kun both already turned you down clearly, again and again?
Why do you keep coming around to our door?
You people—”
The ingredients by her hand scattered all across the floor.
But Minami Reiko paid them not the slightest mind.
She merely glared, teeth gritted, at the several figures standing before her.
“People from the Toyokawa Family!”
____
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