“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Yoriko said. “Then why don’t you join us, Noro? There is the custom of the host sharing her bath with her guests.”
“That’s even worse,” Aiko said. “I think we should just keep the men and women separate.”
“I didn’t really think it would work,” Yoriko sulked. “I just wanted to say it out loud.” It sounded like she had really wanted it, though.
Between this and that, though, they eventually finished their preparations for dinner.
✽✽✽✽✽
After finishing the curry, the survival club had a discussion.
This one was for members only, so the five who sat around the dinner table were Mutsuko, Kanako, Yuichi, Aiko, and Natsuki. The others had gone back to their rooms early.
“Doing beach-like things eventually made this more fun!” Mutsuko announced. “Maybe we should have played beach tennis, too!”
“Please, no... you’d take it too seriously, Sis,” Yuichi said.
When it came to competition, Mutsuko always gave 100%. But she also hated to lose, and she wouldn’t let you lose to her on purpose, which made her a very annoying person to play with.
“Anyway! Day one is moving day, so it’s okay to just play around,” Mutsuko said. “But starting tomorrow, we need to train in earnest! The power-up training camp!”
“You just wanted to say ‘power-up training camp,’ right? What exactly would we be powering up? What’s the point of our club having a training camp, anyway?” Yuichi demanded.
All Mutsuko had told them was that they had to go on a training camp. Normally, their club didn’t do much except for sit around and talk, so he couldn’t imagine what a training camp would entail.
“Anyway, we need our front man, Yu, to get stronger!” Mutsuko cried. “That will make our club stronger in general!”
“Are we a sports team now, or something?” Aiko muttered.
“You also need to do some serious soul searching after last time, Yu!” Mutsuko continued. “What was that? You started that fight half-cocked, and only got serious after you were up against the wall! You need to unleash all your power from the start!”
Yuichi braced a little under the criticism, wishing she could have said that at the time, instead. But he couldn’t actually argue with her, either.
“You were also too afraid!” Mutsuko pursued. “What’s a vampire? Nothing!”
“Um, hey...” Yuichi glanced over at Kanako, uncertain of whether they should be talking about vampires in her presence.
“Hm?” Their eyes met, and Kanako tilted her head. She didn’t seem to have the slightest idea of what they were talking about.
“So? What do we do?” Natsuki asked Mutsuko.
“Excellent question, Takeuchi!” she responded. “The truth is, there’s a great place right nearby!”
“Yeah, I’ve got a bad feeling about this already...” Yuichi muttered.
“Kurokami Island!” Mutsuko proclaimed. “It’s really close by! We’ll head there tomorrow!”
They would go there by boat, she explained. The Noro family apparently had a private boat, and Akiko could drive it.
Mutsuko looked excited. “There’s a legend that there’s a pirate treasure buried on Kurokami Island! And that they hold mysterious rituals there that outsiders aren’t allowed to witness! And that there are sightings of UFOs and cryptids! And that they worship an evil god that can kill you if you look at it! And that there’s a military facility where the army did research during the war! And that they have their own unique martial art that’s never spread past the island!”
“That’s too much stuff! Narrow it down a little!” Yuichi shouted. Naturally, these were all things Mutsuko liked, but it was far too much at once.
“Um... should we really be going to a place with all that weird stuff?” Aiko asked nervously.
Her trepidation was only natural. Even if it wasn’t all true, if even half of it was, it could be serious trouble. Yuichi couldn’t dismiss it all as nonsense, either.
He knew now that the world was full of vampires and anthromorphs and serial killers who just walked around in society, unnoticed.
“It’ll be fine!” Mutsuko insisted.
Yuichi paused, waiting to hear if she had some rationale for that statement.
Nothing came.
“You don’t have any basis for that!” he shouted.
“Anyway, who told you all that stuff about it?” Yuichi demanded. Knowing Mutsuko, she may have been researching it for some time, but it still seemed somewhat out of left field.
“Oh, that?” she asked. “Someone wrote a letter to the Traditional Martial Arts Preservation Society.”
The Traditional Martial Arts Preservation Society was one of the organizations that Mutsuko ran in her spare time.
A large spate of martial arts forms had begun dying out lately for lack of heirs. Mutsuko had started up her society to combat that. A rare case of Yuichi’s sister turning her energy to the benefit of the world at large.
“Wow, someone actually contacted you?” Yuichi asked.
Stranger things did happen, Yuichi supposed. Mutsuko’s usual MO was to burst into a dojo and collect their secrets by means of force.
“Yes!” Mutsuko said happily. “It seems the island is host to a form of Xiang Xing Quan that was brought over from China and developed in a unique direction there! But recent depopulation means there’s no one to inherit it, and it’s going to die out pretty soon! So, they wrote to me!”
Xiang Xing Quan referred to martial arts derived from animal movements.
“So I investigated the island to find out what kind of place it was, and I found out there’s tons of interesting stuff there!” Mutsuko added. “How could we not go?”
Yuichi had mixed feelings about the Martial Arts Preservation Society. It meant that Mutsuko had knowledge of real martial arts. He really wished that she would teach those to him, rather than the weird fighting style she had cooked up based on manga.
“We’ll go camping on the island!” Mutsuko announced. “It’ll be survival training! We can put up a tent on some random mountain or in a forest somewhere, and cook for ourselves for three days!”
“Um, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t actually go camping,” Kanako said, dampening Mutsuko’s enthusiasm.
“Huh? How come?” she asked.
“Well, I have a deadline for my book,” Kanako explained.
They all knew that Kanako wrote novels, but as far as they knew, she only published them online. What was the deadline for?
“Why can’t you just put it off for a few days? Ah, not to say that I take your work lightly, of course...” Aiko said.
Yuichi agreed. A summer training camp seemed like a reasonable excuse for not updating your web novel.
“Oh, actually! Orihara’s book was selected for publishing! The Demon Lord one!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
She was referring to Kanako’s seminal work, My Demon Lord Is Too Cute to Kill and Now the World is in Danger!” AKA Demon Lord or Can’t Kill the Demon Lord. Yuichi had heard that it was picking up a following, but he’d never dreamed that it would get published.
“That’s right. I was hoping I could finish it during our training camp, but camping outside would be...” Kanako trailed off apologetically.
“Got it! Orihara, you stay here and focus on your novel! We’ll go camping by ourselves! Okay?” Mutsuko stood up, pounding the table. “We head for the island in the morning!”
It wasn’t that Yuichi minded going. But he did wish she’d told him about this from the start.
“Let’s go peeping on the girls in the bath!”
Yuichi slammed the door in the visitor’s face. He wished it would hit him and send him flying, but alas, he wasn’t so lucky.
There was another knock. Yuichi had the feeling the knocking wouldn’t stop if he just ignored it, so he had no choice but to open the door. Naturally, it was Ibaraki again.
“Come on, man! Hear
me out!”
After the survival club meeting, they had split up and each returned to their own rooms.
“Fine. What do you want?” Yuichi asked shortly.
“To invite you along! Let’s go peeping! C’mon!”
They had decided that bath time would be after dinner. The girls would go in first, then the boys.
“Look, half of the girls in there are my sisters. I’m not interested,” Yuichi said as he went back into his room.
The room itself was only about ten by ten feet, but as a place to sleep, it did its job well enough. The furnishings it contained seemed appropriate to a historic, old Western mansion.
Ibaraki followed Yuichi into the room, while Yuichi ignored him and sat down on the bed.
“Yuichiiii! This is a thing healthy guys in high school gotta do, y’know?” Ibaraki complained.
“I thought you didn’t go to high school,” Yuichi retorted.
Ibaraki wore a collared high school uniform, which he apparently hung around town wearing. He had been wearing it the first time they’d met, too, but that didn’t mean he went to high school. It was just camouflage to fit in with people better.
“That’s not the pooooint!” Ibaraki whined.
“By the way, aren’t you an oni?” Yuichi asked. “Do you even like naked human girls?”
“Sure, I do!” Ibaraki said. “I mean, there aren’t actually that many of us, so sometimes we’ve gotta get with human girls to keep the line going.”
“I know I asked, but I didn’t actually want to hear about your sex life.”
“...Listen, you... you keep doing that, and it hurts, y’know?” Ibaraki complained. “Why am I the only one you treat this way, anyway? You’re nice to all the girls. You seem pretty respectful of the vampire guy, too.”
“Listen,” Yuichi said. “I know you’re trying to cozy up to me, but do you remember how we met? You tried to kill me, a high school student who had done nothing wrong.”
“Takeuchi did the same thing!” he protested. “She tried to kill you, too, remember?”
Actually, Yuichi thought “tried” wasn’t the right word. She was still trying. Natsuki sometimes still attacked him with the intent to kill.
“That’s different. I can handle her, so it’s not a big deal.” Yuichi looked out the window, a thought occurring to him. He didn’t want to let Natsuki kill people, but how long would he have to stick around with her? For now, he was a vent for Natsuki’s killing urges, but she wouldn’t have that option without him in the picture.
“Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk about,” Ibaraki said. “The bath! Let’s go to the bath!”
“You really shouldn’t—” Yuichi began.
There was a 50-50 chance. Would his sister have put up iron-clad defenses against men peeping into the bath, or would she permit it, as part of the natural trope of a hot springs episode? But just as Yuichi was thinking about that, he suddenly detected a strange presence nearby.
“—Actually, just go on your own. And stick with them, okay?” It was a presence he had felt vaguely on the beach, and several times since then.
“What’s wrong?” Ibaraki asked.
“Something’s here,” Yuichi said. “Anyway, I’ll go check it out. I don’t like asking you for help, but I need you to look after the girls. If you’re going to peep anyway, it’s perfect timing, right?”
“What is with you, man? You’ve got one confused set of morals. Don’t you care if I see your sisters naked?”
“It doesn’t hurt them, does it?” Yuichi asked.
“I’ve never met a guy who said that in real life...”
“I don’t need a lecture from a guy who barged in here talking about peeping...”
Yuichi decided to leave the rest to Ibaraki, and left his room to check on things outside.
✽✽✽✽✽
The spring water was said to improve skin complexion. It was known as “beauty water,” and it had been diverted here to the Noro family summer house.
“Wow, bigger than I expected!” Aiko cried.
It was an open-air bath. Nearly all of the parts of the mansion were Western-style. The bath was the one taste of pure Japan there.
“You mean Orihara’s breasts?” Natsuki asked, staring at Kanako’s bosom.
“No!” Aiko shouted.
Certainly, Kanako’s breasts were large, but Aiko had been talking about the size of the bath. It could fit ten people and still have space left over. There were also several places to wash up.
“Oh? Noro, you don’t have a bath this size at home?” Mutsuko asked. It was an understandable question.
“Nothing this big, no,” she said. “It’s just for one.”
“I see. I guess using something like this every day would be more trouble than it’s worth!” The naked Mutsuko made a running jump and dove into the bath.
“Sis! You have to wash off first!” Yoriko called after her.
They all entered the hot water.
Its effect was plain to see right away. Aiko rubbed her skin, feeling how smooth and pleasant it was to the touch.
“Ah, I see why they call it ‘beauty water.’ I really feel like it’s improving my skin.” Aiko had never been in a bath like this before. She hadn’t even known they had a summer house here.
“But it’s fishy somehow!” Mutsuko exclaimed. “To have beauty water and a bath this big... Noro, does your father plan to bring a mistress here or something?!”
“My father is not that kind of person!” Aiko stated, a little annoyed. She was certain that her father was devoted to her mother.
“Sis... that’s extremely rude,” Yoriko jibed.
It seemed that when the sisters were together, Yoriko worked hard to keep Mutsuko in line. Incidentally, Yuichi generally did whatever Mutsuko said, and thus was useless in this regard.
“I haven’t been to a hot spring in so long! When was it last?” Mutsuko chattered on, as if the exchange hadn’t even happened. Aiko was slowly coming to realize that Mutsuko just said whatever popped into her head, and never listened to anyone.
“...But, let’s see... what to do in a hot spring...” Mutsuko went on with a blissful expression, apparently enjoying the hot water.
“We don’t have to do anything, do we? I think we just sit and relax...” Aiko responded, wondering what else there could possibly be.
“No, I feel like there’s some special event that must happen in a hot spring!” Mutsuko announced.
“Really?” Aiko had no idea what Mutsuko was talking about.
“Yes! Peeping is the usual trope!” Mutsuko cried. “You can’t have a hot springs episode without peeping!”
“Peeping? Peeping from where?” Aiko looked all around. She hadn’t been particularly cautious up until now, but they were outside. It wouldn’t be impossible for someone to spy on them. Aiko suddenly felt self-conscious.
“Oh, don’t worry!” Mutsuko said. “They usually build these things so they can’t be seen easily from outside! My advance recon only caught three places we could be seen from, angle-wise!”
“How is that a ‘don’t worry’ situation? And when did you do, um, ‘recon,’ exactly?” Aiko asked.
“While you guys were making dinner!”
“So uh, what do we do if the peeping ‘event’ does happen?” Aiko wondered.
What if Yuichi peeped on them? Aiko’s face turned red at the thought, and she sank deep into the bath.
“Of course, there are obstacles to peeping!” Mutsuko exclaimed. “If they think they’ll get to peep that easily, they’ve got another thing coming! But hey, if they can conquer the traps I laid out for them, they deserve to see a little skin, in my opinion!”
“You can’t just decide that without asking us!” Aiko shouted, her voice cracking. It was wrong for Mutsuko to put them in that position without any warning. If Mutsuko had asked, of course, Aiko certainly would have been against it.
“Well, no need to worry about the peeping right
now,” Mutsuko said. “Let’s compare breast size!”
“That makes no sense! Why do we have to do that?” Though her breasts had been exposed the entire time prior, Aiko suddenly covered them self-consciously.
“We don’t have a choice!” Mutsuko said. “That’s what you do at a hot spring!”
“We do have a choice! That’s not what hot springs are about!” Aiko shouted.
But now that she had made up her mind, there was no stopping Mutsuko. She was side-by-side with Aiko in a flash.
The order turned out to be Kanako, Natsuki, Aiko, Yoriko, then Mutsuko, though the margin between Aiko and Yoriko was slim.
“Orihara, yours are amazing, though! They float!” Mutsuko didn’t seem to mind that she was the smallest in the group. “But what a waste, to have all these amazing treasures here and nothing to use them for!”
“That’s right!” Yoriko agreed. “We’d get much better use out of them if we’d had a mixed bath, so we could show them to my brother and make him squeeze them!”
“What is with these sisters?!” Somehow, Aiko felt like the bath was making her more exhausted than before.
“Speaking of which... we’ve never really talked, have we, Takeuchi?” Yoriko said, suddenly drawing closer to Natsuki.
“Is that so? I don’t believe we have anything to talk about,” Natsuki replied curtly.
“You’re cozying up to my brother, aren’t you?” Yoriko asked.
“‘Cozying up’ is not an accurate description for what I do. Though I’ve never tried to put the relationship into words.” Natsuki seemed perfectly composed. If Yoriko had pressed Aiko like this, she would surely have gotten flustered by now.
“Oh?” Yoriko asked, her eyes piercing. “How would you describe it, then? Pressing up against him with that body you’re so proud of?”
Natsuki’s curves were certainly worth being proud of; she had an impressive figure.
“H-Hey! Yoriko!” Worried that a fight might break out, Aiko tried to intervene.
“All that I will say is... the ‘better use’ you were talking about before? Sakaki has squeezed mine.” Natsuki hugged herself, hefting her chest up with her arms.
Humanity’s Extinction Happens During Summer Vacation?! Page 6
