43. The Dumbbells Became Sacrifices

By Lyfe April 26, 2022

The high-school girls’ summer is here! Summer vacation is a precious event for me as a high-school girl in the prime of my youth…. It was supposed to be, but my summer started with a bitter incident. 

My legs were getting numb, and it was becoming hard to sit on the floor. But unfortunately, the scolding would still continue.

“I thought it was weird that there were so many dumbbells in the training room, I wonder who bought it so many? Hey, Maria.”
“A-Ahaha.”
“Why do you need all this stuff? Hey, Maria.”
“Ohohoho.”

Mother is angry while smiling. She is usually a calm person, but she’s the scariest one among the family when she’s angry. —Yes, Mother has finally found out that I’m working out.

The reason why I got caught was that when I was walking down the hallway with a dumbbell in my hand, Mother, who should have already gone out, came in the front. I hadn’t heard that her work was canceled suddenly, so I was completely caught off guard.

And then, I was taken to the training room. The dumbbells that I bought were being lined up one by one, and she asked me, “I wonder who owns these?” Both Father and Mother seemed to think that Aoi was working out, but unfortunately, it was me. I was forced to sit on the floor without being able to settle it with a “Tee-hee!”

“Do you need dumbbells?”

Yes, I do. Because I want to have strength in case of an emergency, and I don’t want to be a weak young lady. I want to be a secret macho lady!… I could not say such things, and so I kept silent.

“Also Maria, it seems that your grades weren’t very good. I heard you have to take make-up classes.”
“Huh!”

Who said it!? Was it Aoi? It could only have been Aoi, right!?

I was forced to sit on the floor a little further away. I looked at Aoi, who was looking down while he stared at Mother, who was angry, albeit with a smile. Aoi awkwardly averted his gaze. He is the culprit!

Damn you, Aoi! I thought he was on my side. I will mess up his hair later. He seems to hate it very much when I do that.

“What a pity. Maria will be staying at home for this year’s trip”
“Eh!?”
“I heard from Aoi that the days of your make-up classes and the days of the planned trip overlapped.”

Oops! I completely forgot about it. I was so excited to be able to laze around during the summer vacation that I didn’t check the supplementary lessons schedule properly. If I’m not mistaken, there were only about four days in July, and it overlapped with the trip.

“Why don’t you and Father go on a trip together? You rarely have the chance to travel together, right?”

When Aoi said this in a soft tone, Mother’s eyes seemed to shine for a moment. She put her hand on her cheek, her mouth relaxed, and muttered, “I guess so.” It seemed Mother was okay with it, and she looked happy.

“I will look after, Sis.”

Hm?

“Well, that’s a relief then. If we leave her alone, we never know what she might do.”

Hmm? Wait a minute, what do you mean by looking after me? I’m the same age as Aoi, and I am a high-school student too. Please don’t treat me like a little kid. I wanted to say something like that, but considering my position, I could not say anything. I’m grateful that Mother’s scolding seemed to be over. I hoped that she would shift the time to think about fun travel plans with Father.

“Anyway, I’m confiscating these. You should work on your femininity instead of doing this.”

Sadly, the dumbbells I had collected were being put into a black plastic bag. That’s not a garbage bag, right? Don’t throw them away. Okay? Please cherish my things!

“Do you get along well with Kotaro? If he knows you’re working out with dumbbells, he would love you.”

Unfortunately, Kuze already knows. Moreover, we don’t get along well. Even when we meet regularly, the air is frozen.

“I wish I could give you a marriage of love too, but….”

The tone of Mother’s voice dropped, and her face darkened.
Come to think of it, Mother and Father were in love. My aunt decided to arrange me with Kuze’s family, but we couldn’t complain because there was a matter of taking in Aoi.

Immediately after we took in Aoi over her objections, my aunt brought up the talk about the marriage proposal with the Kuze family. Although she did not say it directly, it was as if she was saying to let her decide my future in exchange for allowing us to adopt Aoi. That’s why neither Father nor Mother can strongly oppose it.

That being said, Aoi has already been adopted, and it doesn’t necessarily mean I have to obey my aunt. I plan to be quiet while I’m in school because it’s troubling in many ways. However, after graduation, I want to do something to break off my engagement with Kuze.

When I returned to my room after Mother confiscated my dumbbells, I took something out from under my bed and chuckled.

Those children’s toys were decoys. Actually, there are dumbbells hiding in here! From then on, I was only going to use them while inside my room. I don’t know what will happen if I were to get found out next time.

There was a knock at the door, so I hurriedly put the dumbbell under the bed.

“Come in.”

Aoi came into the room, narrowed his eyes, and let out a sigh.

“…Sis, please hide that properly.”
“Eh!?”

Aoi pointed to a glimpse of a dumbbell, which I hadn’t put away properly. I pushed it further under the bed, hid it completely, and tried to fake a smile. Aoi had an indescribable look, like he was amazed on his face.

“What are you going to do with all that working out?”
“It’s to protect myself!”
“…Is there such a need?”

Aoi probably didn’t know, but I had a lot of danger waiting for me ahead. Ah, that’s right. I want to ask him about the Moonlight Girl in the First Love Conception, but how should I ask him?

“Aoi, what kinds of things do you have in mind when you write a novel?”
“…What kind of things, huh?”

Perhaps he didn’t expect me to ask about the novel. He frowned like he was troubled, then while lowering his tone more than usual, he continued to speak.

“I was invited by a friend to join the literary club a while ago, so I haven’t written that much work.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Do you know Ebihara from the literary club? I was invited by Ebihara when I entered high school.”

I felt sorry for Aoi. He didn’t seem to want me to talk about it. Perhaps writing a novel is embarrassing for him, but I really want to know why he wrote that story. I couldn’t help but be curious about the way of death that was similar to the manga.

“The Moonlight Girl, I have always had strange dreams. The ending of the main character is a reflection of that story.”
“Strange dreams…”
“It’s supposed to be just a dream, but I keep having them.”

Aoi lowers his eyes and speaks a little sadly.

It seems that he has always had dreams with a sense of reality, and when he wakes up, he remembers the events in the dream strangely and clearly. One day, he began to see a faceless girl falling down the stairs in his dreams, and he would reach out to help her, but he was always one step short of reaching her and could not save her. When he told this to a member of the literary club, he was asked to write a story about it, and so he did.

“But, if you couldn’t save her, why did you make it end like that?”
“At first, I wanted to help the girl in the dream, so I wrote a story to save her. But the club president said that this story would be better with a tragedy instead of a beautiful ending, so the club president said, ‘what about writing that one too.’ So I wrote both, and it seems they used the tragic one.”
“…Is that so?”

There is a possibility the dream that Aoi had was about Maria in the manga. I don’t know what the truth is, but just like Amamiya and I have memories of our previous life, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were others who did as well. And there may be individual differences in the amount of memories they possessed. Maybe they don’t remember it as clearly as Amamiya or me. Perhaps they only remember it vaguely, just like Aoi’s previous life was reading Koi Spa and remembered something that left an impression? Or maybe, the dream that he saw is something that would happen in the future?… No, no, I want it to be different.

“Speaking of which, who is the president of the literary club?”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh? But the president told you that the tragedy is better, right?”

Aoi’s expression dulled a little at my words, and he said, “No one has ever met.” When I frowned, not understanding what he meant, Aoi told me about the literary club from the beginning.

It seems that no one knows the name or face of the president of the literary club. The exchange is always done using the notebook in the literary club. The president writes down the impressions and advice on the club member’s work there.

“What a weird club.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s the only weird thing about it. I don’t mind that I don’t have to see the president of the club because it’s not troubling.”
“The president writes too, right?”
“It seems the president’s work has many fans. The most popular one is—”

I don’t know who the mysterious president of the literary club is. This is a development that was not in the original story, and Aoi being in the literary club was also not in the original story. The reason why the story was different from the original story was because of someone named Ebihara, who brought Aoi into the literary club. It’s a bit of a puzzle somehow.

“More importantly, are you sure you want to marry Kuze like this?”
“What’s wrong so suddenly?”

As I was thinking, I looked up as if I had been flipped and turned my gaze to Aoi, wrinkling my nose. Aoi seemed to have a serious and somewhat thoughtful expression on his face.

Of course, I don’t want to get married to Kuze, but there is nothing I can do about it now. Besides, there is something that I need to solve. First, the marriage problem will have to be postponed.

“Sis, you don’t want to marry Kuze, right?”

Is it because of the conversation with Mother earlier? It’s rare for Aoi to say something like this about my engagement with Kuze.

“And yet…because of me.”
“Aoi, please don’t say such a thing. I don’t think it’s your fault.”

Aoi also knows why Kuze and I got engaged.
Even so, I don’t want Aoi to blame himself. Neither I, Mother, nor Father regrets taking Aoi in. In fact, we are glad that we took him in. I’m really happy to be a family.

“I just have to be quiet for now. Our aunt is too annoying.”
“But…the only people other than Kuze that our aunt would approve of are those people, though.”

I can guess who Aoi is referring to, but it’s unlikely to be them. I can’t imagine myself getting engaged to any of them, and if I did, it would probably end badly, just like the original story.

But well, the best way to break off the engagement would be for me to fall in love with someone that my aunt would approve of, but that’s not going to happen.

Ah, if it’s going to be exactly like the manga world, can’t I just dream that a super-cool-highly-successful hotty would suddenly appear and propose to me? The world of this manga is designed to make Asami happy, so it would be difficult for Maria to be happy.

＊＊＊

After Aoi left the room, I laid down on the bed with my arms and legs outstretched and muttered in a voice that seemed to disappear.

“…Lechenaultia”

That was the title I had heard from Kinoa at that time. It may not have anything to do with anything, but for some reason, I can’t stop thinking about it.

Thinking back to what Aoi had said earlier, I typed the word into the search screen of my phone.

“It seems that the club president’s works have many fans. The most popular one is—Lechenaultia, a story about the first love between different classes.

I clicked on the top of the search results that came up.

Lechenaultia. Alias: First Love Conception.
The flower language is “secret.”