"You guys found onions in the patch? Then didn't I buy onions over on my end for nothing?" Hiratsuka was greatly shocked.
"We should have sent you a text message, Sensei..." Hayama knitted his brows: "Did you not check your phone?"
"Because there was too much spam these past two days, I turned my phone off." Hiratsuka said.
Hayama knitted his brows, directing a gaze of distrust toward a teacher who would turn off their phone during this kind of activity.
On the other side, Hachiman quietly said to Asakura: "Actually, it seems like her family sent Hiratsuka-sensei a lot of messages telling her to go back for blind dates, which is why she turned her phone off."
"You actually peeked at her phone messages?" Asakura said.
"Is there perhaps something wrong with your point of focus?" Hachiman's dead-fish eyes gleamed with a bizarre light.
"I thought that it wasn't just toward Totsuka, but that you harbored untrustworthy thoughts toward Hiratsuka-sensei as well." Asakura threw up his hands and said with total candor.
"Hahaha," Hachiman let out three dry laughs, "An existence as violent as that, for the sake of my personal safety, I'll pass... ouch!?"
The moment he finished speaking, he was struck by a fist from Hiratsuka.
"If you keep whispering about this and that, I'll beat you up, you know." Hiratsuka said.
"Haven't you already beaten me up!" Hikigaya clutched his head and half-squatted on the ground, complaining.
"And Asakura! You—" Hiratsuka paid no heed to Hachiman's accusation, but instead unleashed a jab toward Asakura.
"Oh, cutting it close, cutting it close~" Asakura smiled radiantly and evaded it with ease.
"Damn it, why can't I hit you!" Hiratsuka was so angry her face turned completely red.
"Before this, I felt that I was merely an innocent bystander who got dragged into it." Asakura pleaded his case.
"Sorry, I am a supporter of the theory that accomplices are guilty. Oh, wait... I should say I am a supporter of the theory that all accomplices should be executed."
"It feels like if Hiratsuka-sensei were in power, there would be a great many cases of wrongful convictions."
"Without doing this, there is no way to change this world! I am the ultimate justice!"
Not far away, Yukihira Itsuka watched this scene with a helpless expression that practically screamed, 'Why are adults all so childish?'.
"Itsuka, come over here." Yukino waved her hand toward her.
"Okay, Yukinoshita-nee." The little girl ran over obediently.
During this period of working out in the patch, the little creature had already intelligently distinguished who among this crowd of people was relatively dependable.
"What are we going to do now?" Yukihira Itsuka asked curiously.
"Lunch." Yukino answered succinctly.
The time was already fast approaching noon; fortunately, a dish like curry was intrinsically quite simple and quick to prepare.
You just needed to toss in the side ingredients in sequence and stir-fry them until they lost their raw crunch, then add water to simmer, and finally add the curry blocks to stew for a period of time, and the great work would be done.
In fact, if one didn't care about the texture of the ingredients, even the stir-frying part could be omitted, and everything could simply be dumped directly into the pot to boil with water.
"Oh, oh! Is Yukinon going to make curry! Leave it to me, I'll help too!" Yui immediately huddled over upon seeing this.
"No need, Yui, you go do something else."
Yukino flatly refused.
"Why?!" Yui was dealt a heavy blow, her eyes welling with tears.
"Because just now when Yuigahama-nee was cutting the onions, she almost cut her own hand along with them, right?" Yukihira Itsuka said calmly.
"That was only because I'm not good at using knives... if it's just boiling the curry..."
The young girl muttered with a fraction of unwillingness.
"Forget it. Rather than that, Yui, it would be better if you went and brought out the beddings and such from the cabins to air them out in the sun." Yukino did not want the other party to cause a mess, since there was only one portion of ingredients after all, so she instructed decisively: "Miura, Totsuka, and Ebina too. Togawa over there, if your body is feeling a bit better, you can go give them a hand as well."
"Hold on," at this moment, the French pastry roll... Miura forcefully injected herself into the interaction between the two: "Why is Yukinoshita the one here issuing orders?"
"It doesn't matter if you don't want to air them out, as long as you don't mind sleeping tonight on beddings that have been piled up in a wooden cabin for who-knows-how-long, and don't care whether there might be strange bugs or something inside, then it's no problem." Yukino looked at her and said placidly.
"Guh... forget it, Yui, Hina, let's go." Miura was left utterly speechless by the retort—she truly did not want to sleep on that kind of thing.
Yukihira Itsuka looked at Yukino with a gaze full of admiration.
Sakiko's expression was a bit strange; in reality, she felt it was quite fine when she was asleep just now, and it was actually a fraction more comfortable to sleep on than the bedding in her own broken apartment, it was just that the bedboards were too hard, making it more uncomfortable than a tatami mat.
"Don't we need to call the others to help?" Yui asked Yukino, her gaze subconsciously drifting over toward Asakura's side, where he was currently saying something to Hachiman.
"A task like organizing and airing out beddings is better handled by girls who are deft, meticulous, and sensitive. As for the boys, tasks like chopping firewood and hauling miscellaneous items are waiting for them."
Yukino said.
"Um..." Totsuka Saika raised his hand with a bit of embarrassment: "I am a boy too, you know..."
Yukino's expression froze.
Miura looked at her state gleefully.
"Eh?!" Yukihira Itsuka shouted in disbelief: "Totsuka-nee is actually an older brother?"
"In this kind of situation," Ebina Hina guided the little creature with patience and skill: "We generally refer to Totsuka-kun as the uke..."
"Hey, don't go force-feeding strange things to a child that small!"
☆
Although there wasn't anyone particularly slacking off among the participants of the activity this time, they hadn't really synced with each other before after all. Consequently, it wasn't until around one o'clock in the afternoon that the curry cooked over a pure bonfire as lunch was more or less completed.
"The rice might be a fraction undercooked, since it was boiled over the fire suspended in aluminum mess tins after all. Everyone just make do with it." Hiratsuka said.
"Rather than a volunteer activity, it honestly feels much more like camping." Miura complained: "By the way, the rice being used here couldn't happen to be ancient, ancient, ancient, ancient rice, could it?"
"Because Hiratsuka-sensei is incredibly wealthy, what she bought is newly harvested rice." Tobe said: "Because Hiratsuka-sensei is incredibly wealthy."
"Why do you have to emphasize that part?" Hachiman couldn't help but complain.
Tobe fell silent.
"Come to think of it, why does Asakura-san chop firewood so effortlessly?" Hayama, who was off to the side, humbly sought instruction from Asakura.
Also being responsible for chopping firewood, he considered himself to have worked with a fairly serious attitude. Yet, even though blisters had been rubbed onto his hands, his final results were still less than thirty percent of Asakura's.
"It's magic," Asakura said with solemn gravity: "I utilized magic!"
Hayama: "..."
"Hayato, just don't take a chuunibyou seriously." Tobe patted Hayama on the shoulder.
"Plastering a label on someone else at random just to make your own incompetence feel comfortable with a clear conscience?" Hearing this, Hachiman couldn't resist speaking up on Asakura's behalf.
"Haah? Who are you calling incompetent?" Tobe directed an unfriendly gaze toward Hachiman.
"It's just a general statement, not specifically pointing to a certain someone who gave up after chopping two or three pieces of wood and ran off to pretend to carry items." Hachiman said meaningfully.
"Didn't you fellow not go chop firewood either!" Tobe said in shame and annoyance.
"Because I am garbage. Are you one too?"
"You... I..."
"Alright, Hachiman, let's stop right here." Asakura patted him on the shoulder.
"I didn't intend to blow things out of proportion either, it's simply an eyesore that I couldn't stand looking at, that's all." Hachiman said.
"No, my meaning is, if you keep going on like this..." Asakura raised his chin toward him, gesturing for him to look across.
Hachiman looked over there in bewilderment, and then he caught sight of Ebina Hina, whose eyes were glittering and flashing with light.
"...Husband-protecting? To protect the one you love, not caring in the slightest even if you debase yourself... Too wonderful, too radiant... Is this the BL... friendship between boys?!"
The thing this fellow wanted to say was definitively not friendship.
Hachiman shuddered, beating a retreat and falling silent instantly.
Conversely, Tobe still wore a look of being somewhat indignant, though Hayama quickly smoothed things over and calmed him down.
"Asakura-senpai, this is your portion." At this moment, Komachi arrived in front of Asakura holding a plate heaped with curry rice: "And Brother's is in preparation too, you know~"
"Thank you, Komachi." Asakura nodded toward the girl.
Hachiman didn't say a word, but his face was completely written over with a deep sense of pride that screamed, 'My Komachi is ultra-cute, isn't she?'.
Komachi brought her index and middle fingers together, performing a cute salute gesture right at her forehead, before skipping and bounding back toward the side of the bonfire, seemingly planning to continue delivering food to the others.
"Come to think of it, aren't we short one person?" Coming to his senses, Hachiman asked as he withdrew his gaze from his younger sister.
"It's that little creature named Tsurumi Rumi. Earlier she went into the cabin to rest for a spell after getting tired from harvesting vegetables. I remember Stock Market Goddess already went to call her out to eat." Asakura answered.
"So what on earth is that Stock Market Goddess thing anyway..." Hikigaya couldn't resist complaining.
While speaking, Asakura watched as Tsurumi Rumi, who had been mentioned by the two of them, walked out from the wooden cabin with meticulous care. After receiving a portion of curry rice over at Komachi's end, she didn't eat outside, but instead returned right back inside the small wooden cabin.
This caused Asakura to knit his brows subtly.
Previously, his impression of Tsurumi Rumi was a miniature version of Yukino. However, after interacting for a brief spell, he could feel that she was likely a fraction more reclusive than Yukino, or rather, lacked that much self-confidence.
Yet even so, the girl's actions could still be considered relatively independent, entirely without that kind of hand-tied, foot-bound feeling of introverted self-deprecation.
But right now, for some unknown reason, Asakura felt that her behavior and demeanor inexplicably carried a flavor that was utterly full of a sneaky vibe, as if she didn't want to be exposed under the gaze of anyone else...
Thinking up to this point, Asakura shifted over to Yukihira Itsuka's side.
At this time, the little creature was not too far away from Yukino's side, mindlessly eating the curry rice (which, in a certain sense, could also prove that this curry rice didn't taste as good as it looked due to its sub-par ingredients) while staring at Yukino, who was interacting with Yui, with a gaze carrying a hint of longing.
Asakura patted the girl's head with a series of thumps.
"What are you doing?" The little creature immediately glared at Asakura with a dissatisfied look.
"What's the situation with that classmate of yours right now?" Asakura asked.
"I don't know." Yukihira Itsuka shook her head.
"Aren't you going to go take a look?"
"I've already shown her goodwill plenty of times, but there's absolutely no response! You know, even the Buddha can only tolerate things three times!" The little creature said huffily.
"Oh oh, you actually even know a difficult idiom like that? Impressive, impressive~"
"Do you take me for a fool! Don't touch my head!"
"Actually, I wasn't massaging your head."
"Huh?"
"It's just that some rice smeared with curry sauce accidentally dropped onto your head, so I'm helping you flick it off."
"That's filthy?! Are you intentionally trying to make me mad!" The girl couldn't resist throwing two punches at Asakura.
Inflicting a massive amount of up to 0 points of damage.
"Just kidding." Asakura ignored the girl's squishy thug-excitement punches: "Though it feels a bit weird coming from me, are you interested in coming along with me to check on that classmate of yours?"
"You can just go see her by yourself, why do you have to drag me along?" Yukihira Itsuka asked in bewilderment.
"An adult of my size, staying all alone with a little girl—no matter how you spin it, it feels a fraction out of line, doesn't it?" Asakura placed the plate on top of the girl's head, throwing up his hands: "Just as a precaution, purely as a precaution~"
"Uwah! Take it away quickly! It's about to fall!"
"You're lacking, Itsuka," Asakura said while removing the plate from the top of the girl's head, "The noble young ladies of the past were capable of balancing a book on top of their heads with a cup of wine placed on top of the book, and wouldn't spill a single drop even after walking back and forth a full round, you know."
"I am truly sorry that I'm not some noble young lady." The little creature puffed out her cheeks and said with a proud, defiant huff.
Be that as it may, the kind-natured Itsuka still agreed to go visit Tsurumi Rumi along with Asakura—in reality, the girl herself was also somewhat worried about the other party, it was just that after being rejected so many times, she simply couldn't bring herself to lower her stance right now.
"Rumi-chan? We're coming in, okay."
Itsuka knocked on the door, and then stepped into the interior of the wooden cabin along with Asakura.
One could tell that Tsurumi Rumi was taken aback by their sudden arrival, but the girl very quickly pulled her expression together, shifting back into that previous slightly cold, unshakeable demeanor.
"How are you doing right now, Rumi-chan? Have you rested well?" Itsuka asked with concern.
"More or less." Tsurumi Rumi answered.
"Um, do you want to help out together with me around the campsite this afternoon?" Itsuka did her best to project goodwill.
"No need." Tsurumi Rumi flatly refused.
"But staying all by yourself here is going to feel thoroughly stuffy and boring, right?" Itsuka said.
"Even if little kids like us go to help, we will only get in the way, that's all. It's fine for me to stay here." Tsurumi Rumi said icily.
"Ugh..."
Itsuka's expression turned somber. Asakura lightly patted the girl's head, and this time the little creature didn't resist; one could tell her mood was indeed exceptionally low.
"Itsuka is only worried about you, that's all." He said to Tsurumi Rumi.
"I don't need it."
"Thoroughly stubborn, aren't you." Asakura said helplessly: "The Absolute Terror Field is a fraction too iron-clad, don't you think?"
"If you want to mock me as an adult, feel free." The little girl said without a shred of leniency: "I simply won't alter myself, that's all."
"Honestly, suit yourself. Itsuka, let's go."
Asakura shook his head.
He cast a glance at the plate beside the other party; the curry rice had already been eaten completely clean.