Illya felt that something was a little strange around her house lately.
First, more than a month ago, two houses across the street moved out one after another, and then in less than a day, they were transformed into two super luxurious villas. Coincidentally, Miyu, who had recently transferred to her class, also lived there.
At school, they sat next to each other; outside of school, they became neighbors facing each other.
It was truly an incredible coincidence.
However, because of the same way home, Illya and Miyu had become good friends during this month. Although Miyu always somehow forgot her name, that small matter didn't bother her.
And compared to Miyu, Illya wasn't very familiar with the "Natsukawa" house diagonally across. Although Gray, who lived in the Natsukawa house, also went to the same school as her, she was a year older, so they usually didn't interact. She had never met that Mr. Natsukawa at all.
However, her older brother and the housekeeper seemed to meet him often at the supermarket.
According to them, that Mr. Natsukawa didn't seem to like going out much. The reason he went to the supermarket was because his younger sister might not be strong enough to carry things and needed his help.
Although she didn't quite understand, Illya occasionally heard her classmates say that such a person seemed to be called an otaku/hikikomori?
After looking at the Natsukawa house diagonally across from her own, Illya pushed open her house door.
"I'm home."
"Ah, Illya, welcome back."
On the living room sofa, her older brother—Emiya Shirou—was preparing vegetables, a scene Illya often saw when she came home. Different from usual, this time Shirou wasn't alone; beside him also sat an unfamiliar blond-haired man.
'Is he a foreigner?'
"You must be Illya, the one Emiya always talks about day and night? This should be our first time meeting. I'm Natsukawa Naoki who lives diagonally across, please take care of me, little princess."
Seeing Naoki bowing politely to her like a prince in an anime, Illya, who was still an elementary school student, couldn't withstand such a visual attack. Her cheeks instantly flushed red: "N-nice to meet you, Natsukawa-san."
"Natsukawa, don't tease my sister, and I don't talk about Illya day and night."
"As far as I remember, every time we met at the supermarket, you were always thinking about what Illya wanted to eat."
"Eh? Really?"
"You didn't even realize it yourself?" Naoki laughed, then placed the prepared vegetables in front of Shirou, "By the way, Emiya, do you think this is right? I've already broken off the root parts as you said."
The reason Naoki came to the Emiya house was simply to learn cooking from Shirou. Although he himself could also cook, his level was definitely not comparable to Shirou's. And if asked why he wanted to learn cooking...
'It's impossible to have Gray cook for me every day, and after this I also have to go back to cooking for Merlin, and Touko and Shiki. If the food isn't good, Shiki will definitely stab me with a knife again.'
This wasn't an exaggeration; Shiki could really do it. Although she was no match for him at all, Naoki also didn't want to be secretly attacked every time he had dinner. It was really bad for the heart.
And in return for his request to learn from Shirou, Naoki would help prepare ingredients like now.
"Natsukawa, would you like to stay for dinner today? Your sister can also be called over, so she can meet Illya too."
"No need, I'll eat at home. It feels impolite to ask for lessons and then join for dinner. Next time for sure." Saying this, Naoki stood up, "Then I'll go back first. After this, I'll probably ask you for lessons often."
"Anytime is fine for me. Actually, you don't need to be so reserved. We're neighbors after all."
Even so, Shirou also knew that Naoki basically wouldn't listen to him. Their teacher-student relationship had lasted for about a month, and he had never seen Naoki keep his promise of "next time for sure."
"Ah? Onii-chan, Natsukawa-san already left?"
Not long after, Illya, who took advantage of the time Naoki and Shirou were talking to go to her room to change clothes, came downstairs and only saw her brother alone.
"Hmm, why?"
"Umm... it's nothing, just a strange feeling, maybe it's just my imagination. Instead of that, Onii-chan, what's for dinner tonight?"
◆━⊰✧⊱━◆
Natsukawa's house, seeing a pair of shoes placed near the entrance, as if already used to it, Naoki sighed helplessly.
'She came again today?'
Turning towards the living room, as expected, a beautiful white-haired woman wearing a lab coat was lying on the sofa.
"You're back?"
After glancing at Naoki, Karen returned her attention to the television.
"Dinner, hurry up."
"You treat this place like your own home. If you count, you've been freeloading at my house for almost half a month. At least go home and cook for yourself once in a while!"
As he said this, Naoki regretted it a little, regretting the words he had said to Karen before.
Different from Rin's indifferent monitoring attitude, who only called a few times a day, and lately only called once before going to bed, Karen was very dedicated. Whenever she had free time, she would carry out her monitoring duties, for example, installing cameras in the trees in the yard, or peeking at him from the third-floor room of the neighbor's house—fortunately, that house was empty.
This behavior didn't change even when she had to work.
And about half a month ago, Naoki, who woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, caught Karen coming to retrieve a camera.
"No need to monitor secretly, you can just come to my house to monitor—didn't you say so yourself?" Karen asked back, "In that case, I'm your guest, isn't it natural for the host to cook for the guest?"
"A guest for half a month?"
"My dad can only cook mapo tofu, and my own cooking isn't as good as yours. So why should I bother cooking bad food? It's better to just come here and eat your cooking, right? Besides, I pay."
"You treat this place like a restaurant? And you said you pay, but I haven't even seen a single yen."
"Didn't you ask me a lot of things about the church? Those are all church secrets, the information I gave you is equal to money, right?"
Karen said with a face full of certainty.
"By the way, this is the meal money for today—the church spy placed in the Mage Association said that the Clock Tower is starting another power struggle."
"When are they not fighting for power?"
"This is related to here." Karen added, "Specifically, it's related to the Class Cards. It seems some Magus are dissatisfied with the Marshal Magician taking all the Class Cards himself and plan to send people to seize them, although the candidates are not yet known. Really, you Magus fight inside Fuyuki City like this, and I'm the one who has to clean up."
"How is it? This information can be exchanged for dinner, right?"
Looking at Karen lying on the sofa with a smile, Naoki scratched his head, then walked towards the kitchen: "Wait here for a moment, dinner in another hour. Remember to call Gray down, she's doing her homework upstairs."
"Okay~~~"