Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko:Volume7 Chapter6
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Chapter 6 - Ending No. 5: Together with Meme-tan[edit]
During summer vacation, with her daughter too busy stargazing and her nephew treating her coldly and no one paying her any kind of attention, she suddenly charged towards the mirror on her dressing table while shouting, “Meme-taaaaan”. I have a mountain of things I want to say about this forty-year-old woman who slammed her forehead into it and writhed in agony, but I’ll stick to just one carefully selected remark.
No way.
“Just kidding~!”
“Gah!”
She forcibly prevented the forced shutdown. Before I knew it, Meme-san, who had appeared out of nowhere by my side (purely in my imagination, mind you) threw herself at me and latched onto me. She grabbed my head, digging her fingers into my waist.
“My husband is a high schooler!”
“I refuse to have a wife who’s a forty-year-old youkai!”
I pressed my hands against my cheeks, trying to peel Meme-san off me. In my imagination, the way the flesh of her cheeks stretched and deformed felt incredibly soft, which left me feeling somewhat flustered. But regardless of that, she refused to let go. Since she was merely a figment of my imagination, things should be going exactly as I wish. Perhaps my aversion to her has seeped in so deeply that I couldn’t even win against her in my own head. It was like trying to train a dog.
“You really had the nerve to turn Meme-chin into an old hag and then kill her just now, didn’t you?!”
“I paid my respects to her throughout the whole thing!”
“Mama, Papa”,
“Argh, stay away, you hallucination!”
I waved away Erio, who came running toward us with her small hands outstretched, looking like a child. For some reason, Erio began to orbit us like a moon. Pale blue particles sparkled like stars, falling upon us like snow. It felt as if she were blessing us. I’m going to burn that glittery dust, you bitch. I feel like she got shorter every time she circled us, too. What are you, a stick of butter?
“U fu fu. Look at Eri-tan, so totally attached to Papa now. Jealousy!”
“What kind of pronunciation is that?! And hey, don’t get lost in your own delusions inside someone else’s delusions! How brazen!”
“I’m already a completely new bride, right?”
“Please don’t brag about your mastery at defying the flow of time!”
As expected of a delusion, where even time leaps were at will! Come up with something better.
Since it seemed Meme-san had no intention of letting go no matter what, I give up on trying to push her back. At that, Meme-san also stopped her unusual clinging. “Erio, welcome home!” she said, beckoning. “Papa!” Erio, who has shrunk to about half her usual height, leapt at me. Does she want to get punched or something? Just like that, Erio and I were together, embraced by Meme-san. Ugh, it was incredibly stifling. It’s not that I was embarrassed.
“What is this composition?”
“It’s just our usual happy little family.”
“…Wait, family? You two should take that somewhere else.”
It was slightly better than being described as a newlywed plus her ex-husband’s daughter, at least.
“Seriously, what kind of lifestyle leads to an end like this?”
“This is what happens when you just act like yourself. Happy-py!”
Meme-san raised both her arms. She finally released me from her hug. Ah, the air tasted sweet. It was worth holding my breath. I mean, sniffing the body odour of my forty-year-old aunt, I’d just be a lost cause, right?
“Happy-py!”
“Don’t repeat after me, you little one.”
Little Erio wiggled around and settled herself on my lap. Even she was acting like a pampered daughter! However, unlike the forty-year-old, she was much harder to brush off. Perhaps it was because her eyes were so light blue that they always gave the illusion of being watery. Erio turned around and stared intently at me. Staaaaaare. What?
“Papa, buy me a gold bar!”
She made her request with a deadpan expression. It was obvious she just asked without really knowing what she was talking about.
“Do you want me to shove it up your nose?”
“Papa, I’m getting married.”
“Wait, to whom?”
Was there even a male character that fitted that description?
“Hmm…” Erio said, crossing her arms. Could someone who barely remembers names actually remember faces?
“Then, with Cousin.”
“…Given the setting, you should probably stick to calling him Papa to be consistent.”
Suddenly reminded of reality, I felt a wave of shame. I scratched my nose with a hint of embarrassment.
“Kyaa! Every time I look at this photo, I get so excited!”
Meme-san placed the photo frame on the desk, swaying side to side with such high-speed glee that I half-expected her to start splitting into clones. Glancing at the photo framed within, I found myself thinking, “Is the Earth coming to an end?”
“Let’s display the wedding reception photo right here!”
“Image manipulation technology these days is truly something else, isn’t it?”
It was impressive. The fabricated bride and groom were captured with beautiful smiles. They even had tears in their eyes. Right now, I was the one who wanted to cry. As if seeing right through my feelings, Meme-san looked at me with a grin.
“Fu fu fu, it seems you aren’t too pleased.”
“It’s not the photo arrangement that I’m dissatisfied with.”
I pre-emptively shut down her attempt at a joke. Meme-san let out a small “Tch” and straightened her posture.
“You’re saying you don’t want to face a future like this, dear husband.”
“Please find me a husband who says he does want to face it.”
I rested my hand on Erio’s head as she sat quietly in my lap, letting out an exasperated laugh.
“But Mako, was there any other ending you could have imagined that would have satisfied you?”
“Huh? Ah, well…”
If I had to say, staying in this town and playing with great-grandchildren might seem like an ideal life at first glance… but perhaps that’s because it was a path that lead all the way into old age. I couldn’t help but feel that the sense of satisfaction came from forgetting all the bad parts and focusing only on the good. It’s as if, without a future, one found himself clinging to the past.
…Even if I said all that, as of right now, I was just an ordinary second-year high schooler. I didn’t truly know how an elderly person felt. I felt like if I tried to shrug it off by saying, “Ask Meme-tan about that,” she would punch me without a second thought.
“If you’re looking for something ephemeral, how about this?”
“Yes?”
“Eri-tan, grow uuuuuup!”
With Meme’s spell-like declaration, the shrunken Erio began to grow. While I was struck by the question, “Why is she acting so freely even though this is all a figment of my imagination?” things happened, and before I knew it, “Mogu”, my face was pressed against Erio’s chest, which seemed about twenty percent more developed than usual. I was thrown into confusion, wondering why I was being controlled and where the logic was, but even the sensation of her pressing against me felt terribly vague. “Be smaaaaall!” With a single word from Meme-san, she shrank again.
“So, isn’t this what you wanted?”
“It’s not a matter of wanting or not! This is way too sudden!”
“What are you even saying? I don’t get how you can deny Meme-chin when you’re such a good-for-nothing who can’t even figure out what he wants.”
Once again, she lunged at me. “Gah!” It felt like being hit by a tsunami. With Erio at the centre, Meme-san and I were effectively surrounding her. It was not quite as striking as Erio’s, but her calm indigo hair brushed against my face. And her chest too. A full-on collision straight to my face…………………………………….. I tried to stay blank-minded, resolving not to say a single word, but I reached my limit. For a seventeen-year-old, I had reached my limit in every sense of the word.
“Mofuu.”
Erio, caught quite comfortably between Meme-san and me, let out a voice that sounded like a protest. However, Meme-san’s arms were latched onto my back like a parasite and wouldn’t let go, and given the state of her chest, her breasts were swaying away as she wriggled her body happily. My entire world was, for the most part, filled with breasts.
Combined with the fact that she was my aunt, my grasp on global common sense began to blur, and I felt lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.
Then, with a smile that bordered on conviction and a mischievous glint in her eyes, Meme-san peered into my face, her gaze shining intensely. For some reason, even within my blurring vision, I felt as though her hair had emitted a brilliant radiance.
I refused to admit, even at the cost of my life, that this was the “newlywed effect”.
“Fu fu, this ending isn’t bad either, is it?”
“…………”
I was foolish, ephemeral, and only seventeen, unable to say, “Yes, it is!”
However, well, there was that one thing. The thing I feared most, or rather, the real problem.
It was the fact that “this” was not much different from the reality surrounding me.
In the fact that reality was even encroaching upon my nightmares, I caught a glimpse of the end of my delusions.
“Nwaaaaaaaah!”
“Mako-kun-kun, shut up.”
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