Unlike her appearance, which looked like a young lady from a prestigious family who had never dipped her fingers into spring water, Shiina Mahiru's housework—specifically referring to cleaning the room here—was quite nimble.
Before Asakura could even think about where to start tidying up the living room, the girl had already cleared a corner out of the messy space.
"I'm starting to believe what Asakura-san said a little."
"What?" The girl's words, which had no beginning or end, left Asakura completely confused.
"The claim that the living room was made into this messy state by another person."
"Are you saying that until just now, you thought I was the one who made it like this?"
"Because boys all seem to value face quite a bit, I thought Asakura-san would surely be like that too..."
"I do value face quite a bit, but I believe face isn't something that appears out of thin air; it has to be earned by oneself. Compared to that, what made you change your mind..." As Asakura spoke to this point, he noticed the girl was holding one of Hiroi Kikuri's dresses (original scent) in her hand, and he immediately interrupted his question while clutching his faintly aching forehead: "Forget it, pretend I didn't ask."
Before long, the living room was mostly tidied up.
"It's much faster than expected. Even though Asakura-san looks like he's not very good at cleaning, the results are quite impressive."
"I already said I have work experience."
In fact, thanks to his meager living expenses that were almost non-existent, Asakura's work experience was quite rich; as long as it was a part-time job allowed for students, he had more or less done it for a period of time.
After everything was finished, the girl did not accept Asakura's invitation of "would you like some tea..." but instead left quickly with the packed box.
It seems that at least on the point of vigilance, her defensive awareness is still quite strong.
After the girl left, Asakura sat alone at the dining table.
He opened the food container, took out the sliced Yokan inside, and used a toothpick to pick up two pieces to eat.
As for the taste, to be honest, it wasn't particularly stunning. In fact, if compared with the house-elves in the Spirit Kitchen, her skill in desserts could probably only be on par with the worst few among them.
However, the palatability was quite good. Just as the girl herself had said, she had properly adjusted the granulated sugar content in the Yokan. Compared to the authentic version that is so sweet it feels cloying and requires a sip of tea for every bite, this not-so-sweet Yokan actually suited Asakura's taste better.
As for the house-elves... before Asakura corrected their bad habits, those little fellows who seemed to come from Europe added a lethal amount of sugar to desserts, which could almost be described as sweet enough to make one's hair stand on end...
In short, she is just an ordinary high school student after all, and one cannot demand her based on particularly high standards.
And compared to this sort of thing, what Asakura cared more about was why Shiina Mahiru would appear here, or rather, why she would suddenly become his neighbor?
After eating the Yokan for a while, snakes began to swim out one after another from the sewer in the washroom, coming to Asakura's side in an orderly fashion and flicking their tongues.
"So that's how it is... there is no one monitoring the surroundings, and it seems there are no surveillance or listening devices in her home. Could it be that appearing here really is just a coincidence?"
After learning part of the information from his snakes' mouths, Asakura rubbed his throbbing temples.
From the girl's performance just now, she obviously didn't remember Asakura—in fact, just as Asakura had said, as long as it was a memory burned by the [Candle], it was truly gone in the real sense, and there was no crisis of "remembering" it.
"Regardless, for now, let's keep a bit of distance from her..."
☆
After leaving Asakura's house, Shiina Mahiru finally breathed a sigh of relief and gently caressed her chest, calming her heart which was racing.
For some reason, at the moment she saw Asakura, she clearly didn't recognize the other party, yet her body inexplicably fell into a state of stiffness, her heart raced, her body temperature seemed to rise a bit, and sweat broke out on her forehead, while the muscles all over her body were slightly out of control.
"...Could this be the legendary love at first sight?"
She didn't realize that she was merely instinctively feeling awe toward the existence of Asakura because of the events at the Ginza Hotel, which had left a kind of muscle memory. The girl, who had never been in a relationship, seemed to have severely misunderstood something because of this first-ever tremor (which was actually palpitation) in her life.
In the Ginza Hotel incident, because the girl's parents had joined the Happiness and Peace of Mind Cult, many threadworms had also been hosted in their bodies, and thus they were caught in the crossfire of Asakura's act of burning all the insects in one go...
No, it couldn't exactly be called being caught in the crossfire; Asakura's actions were intended to give a lesson to those who believed in the evil cult: the deeper the faith, the more threadworms there would be in the body, and when the insects were finally burned, the pain, like red-hot iron wires piercing the body, would be more intense.
And when the number of insects in the body reached a certain level, meaning those fellows who were almost unable to recover to normal from the cult's brainwashing, they would be burned to death by the flames that were theoretically harmless to humans.
Shiina Mahiru's parents, after all, had not been in the cult for long. Although they were muddled enough to even offer up their own daughter, it was mainly because they hadn't considered the girl too important to begin with. Therefore, they hadn't been poisoned to that extent yet and could only be considered to have suffered moderate burns.
But even so, in a short period of time, this couple, whose hearts had long since drifted apart, lost the ability to work and earn money, and the living expenses that should have been sent to her on time naturally stopped.
This directly led to the girl being unable to afford the rent of the apartment she originally rented—it wasn't that she truly couldn't pay, as the girl's view on money was quite healthy and she had her own small insights into financial management.
But considering that her parents had both become like that, and perhaps even the tuition for the next semester would become a problem, the girl thought it over and over, and finally gave up the original apartment to choose the house she is currently renting: except for being slightly further from school and being two cycles older in age, there were no other major drawbacks. The most important advantage, naturally, was that the rent was quite cheap; as long as she did some part-time jobs, she wouldn't have to worry about the tuition for the next semester.
The girl, whose fate was full of twists and turns, lightly patted her fair and smooth cheeks and tried to cheer herself up: "No, I can't let my mind wander like this! There are still many things to do, I must work a little harder!"