Chapter 5: Abundant Scarcity【Part 1】
【言語に関するご注意 / Language Notice】本作はすべて、英語と英語の表現で書かれています。翻訳作品ではなく、オリジナルの英語ライトノベルです。あらかじめご了承の上、作品をお楽しみください。
See chapter one for the main author's note.
Masaki
“Woohoo!” Sora spins on her heel, her hair flaring out around her. “If you told me this morning that I’d be eating lobster on our very first day of school, I would’ve said you’d spent a bit too long baking in the sun!”
Her energy radiates into the evening, as always.
“You really don’t have any restraint, do you?” I groan, rubbing my aching temples. “I knew it. We should have just ordered takeout.”
The Italian dinner feels like an anchor dragging me down, a solid stone sitting in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I had a bit too much... Ugh, I’m completely exhausted. I rub my belly, trying to soothe it.
Above us, the sun has fully dipped below the horizon. Ribbons of fairy lights ignite along the streets, casting long, faint shadows across the pavement.
We drift back into the main square, where clusters of students linger around the fountain rim. Strands of illuminated water erupt into the evening air—a brilliant, glowing centerpiece that commands the courtyard’s attention.
Eyeballing the display, I mutter to myself softly, “If only I had brought a tape measure, then I could—”
“I’m still not sure how we just walked out of there,” she announces happily, interrupting my thoughts as if she had just pulled off the greatest heist in history. “All we did was swipe our student IDs and we were let out like free men!”
“The guy at the town hall desk really wasn’t clear enough on how the payment system works... I can feel this is coming back to bite us before the week even ends,” I warn her. A creeping anxiety slowly catches up to me the more I think about it.
The top of my head is slapped down like a game-show button. “Bzzzt! Wrong answer! What you really should be saying is: ‘Sora, when are we going back? I want to do this all week!’”
“Hey!” I bark, swatting her hand away as I smooth my ruffled hair back into place. “We can’t just expect to keep spending like royalty without consequences. Did you even listen to a single word the clerk told us?”
“Um, no, not really,” she holds her hand up, waving it flatly and loosely through the air. “‘Payments in the system handle themselves out usually, don’t worry about it too much.’ After that, it was just white noise. Bureaucrats never know when to stop yapping.” Her imitation of the desk boy’s lazy tone is eerily accurate.
“Sora. Very, very sweet Sora…” I speak with forced calmness, trying to keep my voice level. But my hands betray me, flailing all around while I aggressively ruffle my own hair back into a mess. “We don’t even know how the system works yet! Let alone if we’re burning through a budget we’ll desperately need later!”
“Is that you, or the ‘homemade’ lasagna talking?” she shoots a grin to my stomach.
I cover it quickly in embarrassment. “Hey, there is no need to expand on my moment of weakness—“
“Relax, we have the entire free week to mope about it!” She jogs a few paces ahead, spinning around with a bright smile. “Just live in the moment now! Like the clerk said, things sort themselves out.”
“Usually! He said they ‘usually’ sort themselves out! And I am still wondering if he was even qualified to give us that information!”
She turns around and slows her pace to match mine again, tilting her head up. “Speaking of this moment, have you been able to reach Daiki or Shin? They missed out on a serious feast tonight.”
“Hmm, no. I haven’t tried again since we sat down for dinner. Knowing them, they probably went out in their own way...”
“Yeah, can’t blame them... but wow!” She looks up at the towering architecture surrounding the plaza, the streetlights mirroring the sparkle in her eyes. “This place is overflowing with things to do. I doubt any other high school in the country enjoys this kind of luxury. We definitely made the right choice by staying around to explore it.”
“You... aren’t implying that we’re staying out longer, are you?”
The excitement vanishes from her face, replaced instantly by theatrical horror. “Are you crazy? I’ve been running on the reserves of my battery since noon.”
I let out a relieved puff, my own exhausted reserves quietly thanking her for wanting to head back.
Dragging a finger across the digital campus map on my phone reveals nothing but a tangled mess of corridors and paths. Squinting at the screen gets me nowhere.
With a sigh, I kill the app and point ahead. “The directory board is right there. Let’s just look at the physical map to see where the dorms actually are.”
We stop at the illuminated glass display case at the edge of the square. She leans in, tracing a finger across the glass. “Hey, our dorm buildings aren’t actually that far apart. Do you think the school arranged that on purpose, or is it just pure luck?”
“Who knows. But Daiki and Shin’s buildings were more in the this direction, I think.” “Hmm... look, there’s that clock tower.” Sora points at the grid on the map.
“If we use that as an anchor point,” I chime in, tracing the path, “we should find our dorms right behind it after... a left? Or a right turn? Ugh, figuring this out is going to turn into a marathon, isn’t it?”
“Think of it as a healthy jog after dinner and before bed. Less whining, more walking! Let’s go!”
We turn down a quieter, tree-lined avenue, our footsteps echoing softly against the stone. The night air is refreshingly cool, carrying the sound of faint laughter from the dimly lit buildings nearby.
“Yeah,” I admit, looking back at the grand structures framing the path. “Honestly, I had my doubts at first. Moving this far away from home felt wrong. But now that we’re standing here... I think I’m going to like it.”
“Say, have you already thought about which club you’re going to join?”
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Discover what happens next in: Chapter 5: Abundant Scarcity【Part 2】
Written by Limited_Infinity. Extras, official publishing platforms and updates are publicly available only on the Patreon page “_Limited_Infinity_”
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