Hidan no Aria:Volume11 Chapter2

2nd Ammo - Sports Festival -La Lissa-

Kaname had experienced two failures recently. Arcanum Duo, and the Lumberjack. It seemed that these experiences had 'cured' her, so to speak. She realised that she was worthless as a weapon, and losing in the duel broke her self-confidence. She seemed to living a normal middle-school life. The middle-school she's going to is far from normal, though. I started to see less and less of the scientific swords she was so proud of. Well, it's a good thing though. Aria, who starts firing over who gets to use the remote, or Riko, who sets up landmines for fun, are the ones in the wrong. Kaname should live like a normal person. I really thought that way. She's at an age where she can still turn her life around.

I also felt like Kaname's attitude towards me had changed dramatically. I kind of felt like she had started keeping a little bit of distance from me, appropriate to the brother-sister relationship she insisted we were in. She stopped clinging to me the way Riko did, which was a huge relief. But still, she was a total kid, and very attached to me. From time to time I would catch her doing some incomprehensible things, like staring at me from hiding. It was the kind of action that I would see in Jeanne's shoujo manga, plotlines like: "I've fallen in love but my crush is my brother so I can't show it." There were a lot of things like this that made it hard for me to stay home, but it was better than when she used to threaten to stab me thirty times because I was hanging out with other girls. I suppose I could bear it.

...I was careless.

When Kaname wasn't around, I decided to make reverse teru teru bouzu (normal ones, except heads pointing down,) to pray for rain. While I was busy with this, I received a strange call.

"Hello, master."

"I told you stop calling me that." That was how my conversation with Fuuma started.

"Your little sister has been getting a lot of attention from the other freshmen girls." She reported.

"That's a good thing. That' what normal girls are supposed to do." She always was popular, unlike me. Kaname, the wolf in sheep's clothing.

"And recently, there is a group of girls that she is very close to."

"And what's wrong with that? Who are they?" I had lost interest in the stupid topic, so I reached out to grab my magic marker so I could continue drawing the faces of my reverse teru teru bouzu.

"It is Mamiya Akari." I froze.

"...Aria's amica?"

"Indeed." I had a bad feeling about this. I started investigating into Mamiya, and found that she was a sort of rising star among the freshmen. The details were classified, which spoke of the level of operations she had taken part in. Mamiya had been E-rank before becoming Aria's amica, despite being rejected by another S-rank.

"There's no way that I'd be connected with any E-rank Butei, let alone you." She had pressed on despite such shocking words. I asked Fuuma what Kaname was doing hanging around with Mamiya.

"The details are unclear. However, they seem to be colluding to prevent you from approaching Kanzaki-senpai."

Preventing me from approaching Aria? How considerate of them.

If we never saw each other, I wouldn't have to be chased around by her M1911s. Jeez, it's like I'm dragged into a bullfight when I'm with her. If you just imagine her hair clips as horns...seems pretty accurate to me.

"Keep an eye on them just in case. Report anything out of the ordinary to me."

"As you wish." I shook my head, sinking back into the sofa. Maybe I was leaving too much of this freshmen business in Fuuma's hands, but...ah, fuck it. I'm busy...well, not really, but it's about time I learned to delegate.

Not like I can split my attention to so many things.

I already had a massive task on my hands. Tomorrow, La Lissathe sports festival would be held at Butei High. It would be a day straight from hell.

Please...let it rain tomorrow.

Finishing up my teru teru bouzus, I hung them on the curtain rail.