Sunday midday, Ikebukuro.
The noontime sun poured generously down over the streets, and on this rare weekend, Uchiha Ayato had chosen to go strolling into the recently opened LIVE HOUSE RiNG.
Although the “real” world had terrifying things like cursed spirits running rampant through it, at this stage the prevailing theme of the surface world was, at the very least, still one of harmony, friendship, and vitality.
If you asked what was most in vogue in the current surface world, then without a doubt it was girl bands.
It’s the Great Age of Girl Bands—if you don’t go to lives, you’re not a real Neon native!
Carried along by the urge to follow the crowd, Uchiha Ayato had long since begun using his free time to wander through the various live houses, and had witnessed the curtain falling on SPACE with his own eyes.
But Uncle Ayato really wasn’t a wooden-cabinet fanatic—he was just following the trend, that’s all.
“Welcome!
Ah, it’s Uchiha-kun.” Standing behind the bar counter, Matsugi Ririko—her shoulder-length hair dyed yellow—lifted her head, a flicker of pleasant surprise surfacing on her face: “I haven’t seen you come to watch any lives lately—has your schoolwork gotten heavier?” “Of course not.
I’m just a little afraid that if I don’t sway along to the beat, someone’ll snap a photo and post it online for a public denouncement, that’s all.
So unsettling, desu.” “Eh?” “Haha, just kidding.” Ayato stepped forward, leaning casually against the edge of the counter: “Good afternoon, Matsugi-nee.” “The new place has a really nice atmosphere—and by the looks of it, Matsugi-nee, you’ve gotten a promotion?
Congratulations, congratulations~” Ririko smiled bashfully, raising a hand to smooth down the short hair by her ear: “That may be so, but there’s a whole pile more for me to keep busy with now.” “Please make yourself at home, Uchiha-kun.
If anything’s not up to par, be sure to let me know—feedback from our regulars is very important to us.” Uchiha Ayato nodded with a smile and ambled off into the café.
He picked a seat by the window and sat down, his gaze sweeping one by one over the staff bustling about behind the counter.
What a shame.
RiNG had only just opened not long ago; it would be a while yet before the Kamikaze Drummer came here to work part-time.
Losing a bit of the fun of being a flesh-and-blood chef was, all things considered, rather a pity.
The café’s tables and chairs gave off the smell of being freshly out of the factory (colloquially known as the formaldehyde smell).
Ayato had just flipped open the dessert menu set on the tabletop when a shadow abruptly blocked the sunlight by his hand.
“Weirdo, matcha parfait.” A petite, slender girl stood at the edge of the table, her silver jellyfish-cut hair shimmering faintly in the sunlight.
She was draped in an oversized black short-sleeved shirt, her heterochromatic eyes—blue on the left, yellow on the right—staring down at Ayato from on high.
Kaname Raana, a second-year middle school student at Hanasakigawa Girls’ Academy, was a little cat.
At this moment there was no little cart with a guitar mounted on it trailing behind Kaname Raana, because she was still in the painful aftermath of SPACE’s closure, in the phase of having sealed away her heart and locked up her guitar.
This little-animal friend would need to receive Matsugi Ririko’s encouragement before she’d pick the guitar back up again.
As mentioned before, Uchiha Ayato was a live-house wanderer, so it was hardly surprising that he’d come to know Kaname Raana.
“Good afternoon, kitty-cat little sis.” Ayato paid no mind whatsoever to what Kaname Raana called him, merely raising a hand to snap his fingers and catch a server’s attention: “Excuse me—one Earl Grey black tea, and one large matcha parfait, thank you.” Hearing Uchiha Ayato’s words, Kaname Raana’s eyes instantly lit up with tiny, glittering sparks.
She naturally sat down across from Uchiha Ayato, getting ready to enjoy this tribute with a perfectly clear conscience.
Before long, the server miss brought the drinks Ayato had ordered to the table.
Set before Kaname Raana was a glass nearly as big as her head, the cup stacked with emerald-green matcha ice cream, soft and chewy dango, and cocoa crisp flakes—the very sight of it made one’s fingers itch.
The girl snatched up the spoon, and without a word of nonsense, dug straight into that biggest scoop of matcha ice cream.
A big, cold mouthful of sweetness slid in, and that perpetually expressionless face of the little cat eased a few degrees in an instant, her cheeks bulging full, as if two cat ears had sprouted atop her head and were swaying contentedly.
After swallowing the first bite of ice cream, Kaname Raana paused her digging.
She licked a dab of green cream from the corner of her mouth, her heterochromatic eyes fixed unwaveringly on Uchiha Ayato as she studied him.
After looking for a good while, she finally spoke in a tone of utter certainty: “It’s gotten thinner again.” Raana didn’t understand any of those abstruse cursed techniques, nor could she see the terrifying things lingering in the world, but she had a pair of eyes that could see straight through people’s hearts.
These eyes had reached their conclusion for her the very first time they’d met.
This youth sitting before her—though he was always smiling, always able to casually strike up a conversation with anyone—had a thick barrier congealed all around him, holding him far apart from everyone in this world.
And so, she called him Weirdo.
As time passed, this barrier had been slowly growing thinner.
And today, Kaname Raana found that this barrier had grown a good deal thinner still since the last time she’d seen Uchiha Ayato.
The guilty, ambiguous near-overstepping in the student council room, the pact sealed amid the ruins of the villa, and then Misumi Uika’s merciless seeing-through at the autograph event…
Each and every one of the things he’d been through over this stretch of time was like a heavy anchor, forcibly dragging him down a few inches into this clamorous surface world.
Of course Uchiha Ayato knew what this little girl was talking about.
The two of them could be called kindred spirits meeting like high mountains and flowing water—a lynx running into another in the thimble hills—otherwise, kitty-cat little sis wouldn’t have chosen him as one of her “feeders.” “Hah?” Ayato set the black tea back on its coaster, as if he’d just heard some hilarious joke: “Kitty-cat little sis, so a matcha parfait isn’t enough to plug up that mouth of yours, huh?” “What does a kid understand?
The grown-up world is awfully complicated.
Don’t go meddling in grown-up affairs—watch out, or you won’t grow taller.” Kaname Raana, having been called a kid, didn’t get angry.
She paid no mind at all to that bluffing defense mechanism of Uchiha Ayato’s—she couldn’t even be bothered to retort.
Her intuition handing her the answer was enough; as for the reasons, those were far too much of a hassle.
Just as Kaname Raana was about to lower her head and resume her sweep through the parfait, a burst of light, faintly noisy voices broke the hush of the café.
At the entrance, three girls in casual everyday clothes were walking in, chatting and laughing.
The girl leading them had a smile brimming with energy, her long, straight pink hair refracting dazzling light in the sun.
The instant he heard those laughing voices, Uchiha Ayato inwardly cried oh no.
Careless of me—how did I forget that the stinky pink-mop was coming out this weekend for band rehearsal?
If you’re going to practice, then practice properly!
What are you doing coming to the café?
Slacking off like this, are you ever going to play a C chord right?
Thinking this, Uchiha Ayato angled his body slightly toward the window, trying to lower his presence.
But his efforts were doomed to be in vain.
With the shop newly opened, the café’s foot traffic wasn’t all that heavy to begin with—and what’s more, Uchiha Ayato was exactly the sort of pretty-boy face who drew a great wave of attention no matter where you placed him.
It would be hard for him not to be noticed.
Sure enough, Chihaya Anon’s footsteps halted the moment she stepped into the café.
Her gaze swept past several empty tables and landed steadily on that corner by the window.
There, her vice-president Uchiha Ayato was propping his cheek with one hand, gazing out the window with a profound expression, and across from him sat a silver-haired girl who seemed to give off a strange, free-spirited air.
Chihaya Anon: “?” ……
Let us rewind time a little, and savor things from contestant Chihaya Anon’s point of view.
When Chihaya Anon passed through the glass door of the second-floor café in RiNG, the cold air rushing at her made her squint despite herself.
Weekend Ikebukuro was always as lively as if some festival were on.
Her hastily thrown-together band had just finished rehearsal, and the few girls were chattering away over where they’d go wander next, the topic veering all the way from a newly released crêpe flavor to the new hairstyle of a middle-aged female teacher.
Today was everyone’s first off-campus joint rehearsal, and even though the chords still weren’t played all that cleanly, with just a few more practices, they were sure to wow the entire culture festival!
Thinking this, Chihaya Anon’s mood was so good she could practically float.
——Until her gaze swept over that corner by the window.
Uchiha Ayato, her vice-president.
Sunlight fell through the glass window onto his slightly curly black hair, tracing out the perfect contour of his profile.
Though he was still just as good-looking as ever, his whole person was at this moment radiating a strong air of sneakiness.
And more importantly, sitting across from him was a silver-haired girl.
That girl looked very petite, an oversized black short-sleeved shirt draped over a white camisole, a spoon pinched in her hand as she dug into a glass of matcha parfait with single-minded focus.
The atmosphere between the two of them didn’t look all that intimate—you could say each was doing their own thing.
But Chihaya Anon had known Uchiha Ayato for nearly three years.
This guy was all gentle, spring-breeze warmth toward everyone—people coming to him to pour out their troubles could line up from the student council all the way to the school gate—yet he would never sit alone in a café with some girl whiling away the time.
He always kept a perfectly measured distance from everyone, one that made you feel bathed in a warm breeze yet unable to truly draw close.
And only she, Chihaya Anon, could get him to reveal his true side just a little amid the everyday teasing and bickering.
She’d always assumed she was the special one.
But now, here he was sitting together with another girl, his posture relaxed, his expression natural, as if interacting this way were exactly how it ought to be.
Who was that girl?
She’d never seen her before.
Anon’s brain whirred at top speed, sifting through every possible person.
A classmate?
Impossible.
She knew every single girl in Ayato-kun’s class; she had his social circle down cold, and there was absolutely no such silver-haired little squirt.
From the soccer club?
That was even more impossible.
How could a lazy, free-spirited, cat-like little girl who looked like this possibly enjoy a contact sport so full of sweat and hot-blooded fervor?
So where on earth had this person sprung from?
It felt like there was a little cat scratching away inside Anon’s heart, scratching until she was thoroughly ill at ease.
Ayato-kun hadn’t come to school the day before yesterday, saying he’d gone to Sendai to handle private matters.
At the time she hadn’t thought much of it, but now that she looked back on it…
Could it have something to do with this silver-haired little stray cat too?
So, were they on a date alone right now?
No, no—the two of them weren’t sitting together, there was still a table between them, it didn’t count as a date.
And besides, that girl looked like she had no interest in Ayato-kun, her eyes glued the whole time to the parfait.
But still!
Why would she be together with Ayato-kun?
Why was there a kind of unspoken rapport between these two that left no room for an outsider to butt in?
I really am so bothered by it after all!
My own sense of crisis is spiking↑↑ Chihaya Anon stopped in her tracks and began building up her momentum.
A companion beside her also noticed Uchiha Ayato, and gave a light tug on Anon’s sleeve: “Eh?
Anon, look—isn’t that the vice-president?
How come he’s here?” “Is he on a date?” “Absolutely not!” Anon reflexively shot it down, the sheer finality of her tone startling even herself.
After taking a deep breath, Anon pulled a stiff smile for her companions: “As for what exactly the situation is—wouldn’t it be simplest to just go and ask?” “So then, allow me to go satisfy everyone’s curiosity~” With that said, she set off with strides toward where Uchiha Ayato was.
Mustn’t panic.
Mustn’t act like I care too much.
Who is she?
Chihaya Anon!
Student council president, one of the most popular girls in the whole school, a superstar who’s about to go study abroad in England!
As if some little kid sister who’d sprung up from who-knows-where could possibly make her feel any sense of crisis.
Right?
Right, right, right?
By the time she walked up to the table, Anon had already adjusted her expression to its most perfect state.
She tilted her head slightly, revealing her ever-energetic smile: “Huh?
Didn’t expect to run into Ayato-kun here~” Her voice was already plenty cutesy to begin with, and now she deliberately layered on a few more degrees of cutesiness—enough to give the listener goosebumps.
Uchiha Ayato’s body gave a twitch; he could only sigh soundlessly, turning around to look at her helplessly.
Then, Anon’s gaze fell upon Kaname Raana across the table.
Kitty-cat little sis was just scooping up a spoonful of matcha parfait, showing not the slightest reaction to this sudden onslaught—she didn’t even lift her head.
The corners of Anon’s mouth tugged up a little higher: “And who might this cute little kid sister be?” Without a doubt, Uncle Ayato was not a man who buckled under pressure.
Faced with Chihaya Anon’s challenge, he decisively chose to sell out the little cat.
“Don’t go looking at me with those great-detective eyes, Madam President.” Ayato finished off the last drop of black tea in his cup and spoke with a smile: “It’s just a chance encounter, that’s all.” “You know I’m often loitering around this area.
Kitty-cat little sis is the granddaughter of this shop’s owner—running into her and feeding her a bit is a common thing, nothing the least bit strange.” He came across as utterly composed, his reasoning airtight.
Anon’s tightly pursed lips eased open a little, and the heart that had been hanging in mid-air finally settled back down.
That’s right—how could Ayato-kun possibly have anything going on with this kind of little kid sister?
Since it was a chance encounter, then there was nothing to worry about.
How could a mere free-spirited stray cat possibly compare to the weight she, Chihaya Anon, carried in Ayato-kun’s heart?
Anon was just about to open her mouth and tease him a few words, to smooth over that awkward probing from before, when the girl who’d been buried the whole time in her matcha parfait suddenly stopped moving.
Kaname Raana didn’t look toward Chihaya Anon; her gaze cut straight through the air and nailed itself onto Uchiha Ayato’s face: “Do you still play it?
The piano?” Watch enough lives, and it’s inevitable you’ll want to give it a try yourself—this is a necessary rite of passage for a wooden-cabinet fanatic.
For Uchiha Ayato, who possessed the Sharingan, stealing a master-level performing skill just by observing recordings was no difficult feat at all.
But Uchiha Ayato had always kept this skill very well hidden—only a select few knew of it—so the moment these words came out, the smile on Anon’s face simply couldn’t hold.
She whipped her head around to stare at Uchiha Ayato, the shock in her eyes practically overflowing.
Piano?
Ayarin can play the piano?
That Uchiha Ayato who ran across the soccer field, who processed documents in the student council room—he could actually play the piano too?
Why had he never once mentioned it?
Uchiha Ayato: …
Bad cat!
Kitty-cat little sis, I really am going to have to rein you in.
____ 👻🔥Here: Walnut-chan🔥👻 🔥 New history: Uchiha Reborn in Jujutsu Kaisen: The System Thinks I’m in Konoha, but I’m Not We have set new community milestones: