Editing Ultimate Antihero:Volume 2 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 5===

“You guys-! You guys really are some quick brats ain’t you!”

“Surround him, surround him! Grab at him and stop him from moving―!”

“This shitty brats! Don’t enter at your opponent’s area! Hey, holding is foul already!”

“Kyaaa! He is not stopping at all even with ten people clinging!”

“Ahahaha-, big brother is amazi-ing♪”

“Mumumu―. As expected from Master. Yosh everyone, get ten more balls!”

“I told you dodge ball is not that kind of game-!”

A beach overflowing with energetic commotion.

Homura who was surrounded and attacked by children filled with greed, was stared at by Sumika who was in a slightly separate distance with a face that looked as if the soul was falling out from it and blank eyes.

The backlash from her action that was born from wringing out all the courage that she had yet ending up completely in vain, made her fall into an absentminded condition.

On the lap of Sumika who was like that, *plop*, Shiori put her head on it.

That weight pulled Sumika back to reality.

She looked down at the girl who was putting the back of her head on top of her thighs and asked.

“……What are you doing?”

“No, it’s inexcusable to leave alone the vacancy from something that resulted from my request.”

“Please stop reading too much strangely. It makes me feel hurt unnecessarily.”

“My bad.”

Saying that while removing her head, Shiori chuckled like a mischievous kid.

Seeing that smile, Sumika stared at Shiori with a slightly surprised feeling.

“Shiori-san is unexpectedly playful.”

“My? Why is it unexpected I wonder?”

“Because before Homura-san came you always looked bored, you always made a face as if there is nothing of interest in this world.”

“…fufu. As expected of [Leader]. You really look at your platoon members properly. Certainly, I am elated since he returned. To the degree that I can’t control myself.”

“…That’s because, you love Homura-san, don’t you?”

“Correct. Though I hate him to the same degree. ―I had talked about that before I wonder?”

Sumika nodded.

“You love him but, you hated him to the same degree. …It sounded contradictive the first time I heard that and I didn’t understand the meaning of your words, but right now I too understand that feeling.”

At the occasion of the battle with <Demon King Jambure> the other day, Sumika too came to be able to understand Shiori’s feeling.

The fate of the world. The lives of the whole of mankind. A heavy responsibility that was originally too heavy to be held by an individual.

Homura’s strength and isolation that took such responsibility by himself, she couldn’t approve of it because she loved him.

That way of life where there was only loss.

“Because right now my feeling is the same…”

The feeling that she harbored towards Homura was already exposed to Shiori.

That was why Sumika didn’t try to deceive her and honestly recognized that.

Shiori narrowed her eyes to those words of Sumika,

“Fufu. I’m glad for that.”

Shiori murmured that, looking really happy.

“Glad…?”

Sumika suddenly felt uncomfortable from Shiori’s reaction… rather she felt a doubt.

She said glad, what was she glad about?

About Sumika feeling the same like Shiori towards Homura.

For Shiori it was the birth of a rival in love, by no means was it something that she should give her blessings.

No, if she thought about that then her previous conduct was also like that.

“Er, Shiori-san. Now that you mentioned it, why did just now you try to hand over the lap pillow position to me?”

It was a strange story because Shiori loved Homura.

Even though for Sumika, just seeing Homura getting a lap pillow from Shiori made her jealous already.

Why was she able to do something like that?

Sumika asked that doubt to Shiori honestly.

Thereupon, sorrow immediately mixed into Shiori’s smile.

“―Because, I’m no good for this.”

“Shiori-san is, no good?”

“Yes. I cannot make him happy. People’s happiness can only be born between person and person. But after <Walpurgis Night>, I couldn’t release my tie to the human world to accompany him when he headed towards a loneliness bearing all the losses.”

She didn’t have any value to make Homura stop going.

Shiori watched Homura who was playing with the children with a distant look while murmuring that, then she returned her gaze to Sumika.

“…That’s why, I’m thinking to root for Hoshikawa-san.”

“Ro, rooting, for me-!?”

Sumika was very much surprised from those words.

That was obvious. Because Sumika didn’t understand how Shiori could reach that kind of conclusion.

“Isn’t that strange? Shiori-san, even though you also said that you love Homura-san…-“

On the other hand Shiori,

“Yes. …Certainly I love him, but more than that feeling I want him to be happy. I want him to obtain the normal happiness, not as a lonely hero that was forced out from the world, but as a really normal person. And then such thing, is not something that I can do. But, perhaps you can do that. …That’s why, if you can make that come true, then it’s enough for me.”

Without any hesitation, without any wavering, Shiori answered like that with a tone that made one feel a core of steel in it.

“……-“

Looking at the face of Shiori who conveyed the determination inside her from the side made Sumika lose her breath.

She was pressured by the strength of Shiori’s feelings of great devotion.

“Why are you going until that far for Homura-san…”

Her mouth spontaneously asked that question.

But there was no answer returned for that question.


{Get away from the children right away!!!!}


“ “-――!?” ”

A loud disparaging voice pierced their ears, it came from the direction of Homura and the others.