PuiPui:Volume1 Chapter1

The spring breeze blew refreshingly over the wide river's surface. The wonderful month of April was ending, and warm sunlight was breaking the glass surface of the water, glittering and shining across it.

Along the bank, the soft green grass was swaying. On the road above, a high-class convertible was sparkling in the light as it continued to drive on.

Sitting in the back seat of the convertible and wearing the elite Harusha's Private Academy Uniform was class 1-2's Zadou Sierra. Her long hair was blowing in the spring breeze as she sat upright, looking like a glass statue with her hands placed softly above her lap. She was the daughter of a prominent family.

The driver was wearing a black jacket and had a hat pulled low over the eyes. Next to Sierra, a middle school girl sat with a tensed facial expression.

"Si...Sierra-sama's car, it really does feel nice to ride in doesn't it?"

"Of course. Is your leg injury okay yet?"

Sierra smiled sweetly. With a smiling face like a blooming flower, her inner friendliness, elegance and grace came forth.

"Yeah.....or rather, it's just a scrape...."

The school girl who had an adhesive bandage stuck to her knee lowered her gaze apologetically.

"Negligence is forbidden. I think if you overdo a little injury, it'll get worse and cause a bigger problem."

"B-but, because Sierra-sama took me, I feel sorry for everyone in class."

"Everyone in class?"

"Because, Sierra-sama is admired by everyone...."

"Okay, then please. Take it as this upperclassman's selfishness, would you let me take you?"

Sierra put both of her hands together, entreating the school girl to comply while staring fixedly at her. With a pop the girl's face turned red.

"Ah, Uhm, uhm, uhm, uhm...."

The clearly flustered school girl just shrugged her shoulders in embarrassment, finally answering in a small voice.

"Ye, Yes....please do."

"Good. Then, please just relax. Would you like a pastry?"

Sierra reached into a velvet box, pulling out a high-class chocolate truffle. The girl had the opposite reaction however, instead becoming more nervous as her face flushed deeper red, while her heart beat tightly against her chest.

Sierra's car continued along the road, while on the embankment below.....Araki Jin in his school uniform, was lying down amidst the tall swaying grass. His clearly determined eyes and taut well-tanned skin gave off a sort of hot and dry impression, like that of the desert wind.

As Jin was using his school bag for a pillow, he was reading an archaeology book held closely to his lips, which had pictures of a clay tablet with wedge-shaped characters engraved on it.

Utada Yuuya, Jin's classmate, was sitting nearby. His skin and hair were weak in color, while he had a thin, frail frame. He was wearing headphones over his ears, with his slender eyes narrowed as he absentmindedly listened to the music.

"Ah......it's the Zadou's car."

Sierra's car continued driving on, while Yuuya blinked in an unfocused manner, muttering in happiness.

"Aaah, such a secluded young woman......She lives on a completely different level in this world, and there are a great deal of people wanting to confess to her but she's like that flower on the top of a mountain, oh how bittersweet."

"Ehh. Beautiful flowers can grow from plants on high mountains."

Jin's gaze was directed at his book, so he had only simply responded. Yuuya lifted his eyebrow like the katakana character "ha", and took his headphones off from his ears, down to rest on his neck.

"Flower on a high cliff, you don't even get it! We're talking about Zadou Sierra here."

"The name of this flower sure sounds like a human."

"You're, slow and you're only making a shallow point. Zadou is a beauty, and a celebrity who's very kind, she's a flawless Ojou-sama. Every day, guys at the academy are talking about how they want to confess to her, but since they're too scared to confess, they can only admire her from afar. Isn't it unbelievable that you don't know her?"

"My shoulder's been hurting since yesterday. Wonder what I should do."

So, without caring, Jin rubbed his left shoulder. He hadn't listened at all to the speech, and Yuuya was stunned.

"Someone's talking! Besides it's because you read books all the time, that's why your shoulder's hurting. You're like an old man."

"It's near the collarbone, and it feels like there is a chestnut in there grinding heavily."

"That's an inflamed lymph node you know......hey, why are promising school guys like us talking about this depressing topic?"

"Yesterday, my shoulder finally reached an intolerable level. It felt like parasites underneath my skin were eating my flesh."

"How could you even say that with such a calm expression? Surely, it's because they come from inside the books stacked around our room. Just joking, I've actually been hearing some rustling sounds at night as well. Don't you think it would be better if you went to the hospital?"

"Hnn......This cuneiform, seems to be written in the Sumer writing style."

"You're not listenin' to me again!"

"If you do that, then these symbols make......S-L-M-N..........Solomon! Perhaps this clay tablet holds the key to 'Solomon's Treasure'?"

"What are you talking about Solomon's Treasure for?"

"I'm going back to my room, there's some stuff I want to check on."

Yuuya's words went unheeded as Jin stood up, held the book in his hands, and ran along the embankment path. Yuuya was also confused, as Jin had left his bag behind.

"Hey! Wait a minute! You forgot your bag!"

Jin never heard what had been said to him. Half wanting to give up, Yuuya nevertheless picked up the two's school bags, clutching them to his chest as he chased after Jin.

* * *

After returning, Jin had come one kilometer from the academy, to reach Harushiya Academy's male dormitory, "Tachibana". The two-story dormitory gave off an old and historic feel, as the roof was built with wooden roof tiles. The room was set up so that two people from the same year would board together. Jin and Yuuya were roommates.

Their room had two beds, an old-fashioned desk, and mountains of books burying cardboard boxes, so that there wasn't even any room to put one's feet. Digging into the mountain of boxes and books, Jin was searching for something.

"Well then......it must be buried somewhere around here."

"This is just like excavating."

Yuuya had just about given up, after going through and classifying a bunch of books underneath the two beds.

"Geez......this room should be a place to relax."

"Ah, found it. The reference book to the Sumer characters......"

Jin gave a big pull on one book in the center of the mountain of books. The mountain of books swayed and wobbled, before tumbling on top of Yuuya.

"Gaaaah! It's an avalanche of booooks!"

Underneath the two beds, books had piled up. Jin ignored the "Ah", and without doing anything special, expressionlessly pulled a book out from under one of the beds.

"Hey, are you alive?"

As he extracted the book, a cloud of dust was released. Crawling out from inside the dust cloud, Yuuya was coughing.

"Move it! By the way, where did all these boxes even come from! The only way they could have entered this dorm, is one by one."

Yuuya's body was still struggling with the dust. But as Yuuya was getting angrier, Jin, at his own pace, looked around the inside of the room without any emotion on his face.

"Even if you say that......all of these, are important reference books."

"Then you should at least organize them!"

"I don't know about that. You think after they're organized, they wouldn't fall around like this?"

"It wouldn't be this bad if you had organized them!"

In Yuuya's madness, he pushed Jin's face down into the bundle of books.

"I can't take it anymore! I can't live in a room like this!"

Yuuya picked up from the top of the desk, and held in his hand a small gadget......an MP3 Player, and after moving his headphones from around his neck, he stormed out into the corridor with heavy footsteps.

This normally calm and carefree guy, was seriously upset.

"I'm going to the lounge, so you have one hour to organize this room. If you don't, I'm going to take a bunch of your things that are against the dormitory rules to the dorm supervisor and have a nice chat with him."

"How can you even make that kind of horrible joke?"

"You think I care! Forget about that, and hurry up with the sorting!"

Slaam! Yuuya had forcefully closed the door behind him. A bit thickheaded, all Jin could do was tilt his head to the side.

"What a wierd guy. Why's he so mad?"

Jin lifted his gaze to the mountain of books. There was no way to clean all of this in an hour.

"Well......for now I'll just do what I can. If I'm kicked out of here, I don't have any place to go..."

Slowly, Jin began opening the cardboard boxes. Inside, there were things like Arabic newspapers, clay pots, and fragments of pottery. Looking at all of that, Jin began to feel very tired.

"Haah. So Dad and the others didn't even try to organize any of it......Anyway, I'll start by separating things I need and don't need, and then I'll throw out the junk......"

Jin took out the newspapers from inside the boxes, spreading them out in stacks and tying them with cord into bundles. However, even while steadily tying the newspapers into increasing bundles, the cardboard boxes did not seem to be diminishing. Even before he started with this tedious work, Jin had already been somewhat tired.

"......Geez, why do I have to keep doing this?"

Jin kicked a nearby box into the air. After the cardboard box collapsed on landing, the contents spilled out into the room. Amongst the fragments of broken earthenware and bricks, there lay a dull golden shining object. The strange metallic vessel looked like a water kettle with an attached leg.

* * *