Editing If Her Flag Breaks Volume 1 Intermission (section)

==Side Quest Flag: The Mysterion Mystery 1==

Intermission: The Mysterion Mystery 1

Crisp and golden sunlight.

The sweet sound of the waves, easy on the ears.

It was clearly installed with the most advanced stabilizer, so he shouldn’t have felt any swaying; yet when he closed his eyes and laid down on the deck’s sunlounger, he was under the impression that his body was rocking.

He woke up from his cozy nap, discovering a girl closely scrutinizing his face.

“?!”

Seeing Souta flabbergasted, the girl shook with terror and jumped backwards.

“S-s-s-s-s-s-sorry to scare you! I apologize for interrupting your rest!”

And then the girl swiftly ran inside the cabin and disappeared.

At the same time, a different girl walked out.

She brought her hand up to shield her eyes and watched the girl who was running away.

“Oooh, Souta! Your standards are really high, li’l bro.”

This was on the luxury cruise ship the ''Premium Ambriel''.

The one who just made a dig at Souta was his older sister.

“That was the heiress of the Mahougasawa Consortium, though. I saw everybody try to talk to her at the launching ceremony. Want to ask her out for tea?”

“She’d just ignore me.”

“Would she? I just saw her in pretty high spirits, though?”

“Sis, you’re saying that kind of stuff again…”

This scene of back-and-forth banter was nostalgic.

However—

Nostalgia… his sister’s face should’ve been nostalgic, yet he couldn’t see it clearly.

At this point, Souta realized that this was a dream.

It’s like his sister’s face was covered by a layer of hazy fog.

More importantly, at the next moment…

When he came back to his senses, Souta was sitting on a couch in the main hall of the cabin.

The inscrutable little girl in front of his eyes had hair the color of cherry blossoms.

She probably looked around ten?

Souta asked this unfamiliar little girl:

“…You are?”

“Me? I’m Sacra…”<ref> ‘Sacrament’ in Greek is ‘mysterion.’ Hence the title</ref>

The girl stopped and hesitated halfway through.

“Sakura?”

“…Yeah, I’m Sakura. Just call me that, big brother.”<ref> You probably know this already, but it’s pretty common in Eastern cultures to call older males of the same generation ‘big brother’</ref>

At the next moment, a 9x9 shogi board was set up on the table.

On the shogi board, unfamiliar pieces were stacked in the center like a small mountain.

“This is a knight, this is a magician… samurai, dragon rider, priest, ninja, thief, summoner.

Sakura pulled out pieces with especially obvious characteristics, lining them up while introducing their names.

The pieces seemed to hold some unfathomable special abilities.

“In theory…”

Sakura moved the piece with a pointy hat.

“The magician is very tricky. Try to deal with them first.”

Next she held the piece wearing a Western suit of armor.

“The knight is a necessary guard. They always follow the king.”

The piece sheathing Japanese steel and the piece draped with long robes and wearing a square hat moved forward together.

“The samurai’s charge pairs well with the priest’s support.”

In this way, Sakura explained each piece’s movement and use in detail.

“How about it? Do you understand?”

“Yep, very interesting.”

“…Big brother? Do you want to bet a round?”

“Bet a round…”

“Correct. The loser must listen to the winner’s request.”

“Okay.”

The rules themselves weren’t complicated. Just like an altered version of chess.

Although his opponent was more practiced, Souta didn’t think he would lose to a child.

''Hmph, she’s still a child. I won’t have to take this kid seriously.''

The corner of Souta’s lips lifted into a smirk… Sakura also smiled slightly at him.

Just looking at the results—

Souta lost.

In Souta’s hands, the magician and the knight were all defeated easily.

It wasn’t that Souta was too weak.

Rather, Sakura had toyed with Souta using seasoned, slippery tactics unbefitting of a little girl, resulting in Souta’s crushing defeat.

“You really have a lot of skill…”
Souta said this, but he in fact thought that Sakura’s stratagems were like magic, even leaving him in awe at her deftness.

“Big brother, you didn’t forget our bet, right?”

“Ahahaha, I wonder what I’ll be ordered to do…”

Souta laughed weakly, and Sakura suppressed her smirk.

“I’m not ordering you to do anything. It’s a request. It’s fine even if you don’t listen. But I think big brother will definitely listen.”

“……”

“I won not because I was strong. But because on my head a victory flag had been raised… while on big brother’s head a defeat flag had been raised.”

“…Flag?”

Just then, Sakura’s aura very clearly changed.

“I give my power to big brother. In return, big brother must seek the truth of this world.”

To Souta, Sakura’s tender tone seemed to rush out from below the ground, highly unusual and shrouded in mystery.”

“The truth…?”

“Correct — the truth. Does big brother want to learn the secrets of the world?”

Thinking back on it, a destruction flag might’ve been raised on Souta’s head at this time.

Did the little girl know about that point?

Thinking back on it… that sentence ''“Hmph, she’s just a child. I won’t have to take this kid seriously.”'' was definitely a defeat flag.

This was his thought as he gradually regained consciousness.

“……”

Only, the Souta in the dream seemed to be controlled by some mystical power — such that he didn’t even realize it wasn’t his own will — and he nodded.

Did Sakura see a flag and predict that the situation would become like this?

“Then… If you solve the secret of this world, let’s have another match, big brother. Next time we’ll have a fair fight… okay?”

Sakura gently—

—patted Souta’s forehead, then stood up from her seat.

That innocent smile gradually disappeared into the light enveloping the world.

Then, Souta woke up from the dream.

He was in the bed of his room, in Hatagaya Academy’s Quest House, which he had finally begun to get used to.

Souta wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand and hoarsely said to himself:

“…That dream just then… What was that?”

Meeting Akane on the ship, and the competition with Sakura, as well as his sister’s face…

Now a layer of heavy, hazy fog seemed to fall over his mind, and he couldn’t discern whether the events of the dream were events of the past or just a normal dream.

He just felt very uneasy…

And then, in his hands, was the power that the little girl who might’ve been named Sakura left him.