BTOG 233 – Reunion and Change

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June 9, 2022

 

This will be a suffocating Chapter.
Rinne’s past arc will be finished in three more episodes.

===*

One day in midsummer, after losing the WGCS qualifier, I started to make a plan for the future and gather all the information I could about the esports players I would be competing against in the future.

I decided to meet Nana in person for the first time in a while.

Thanks to the fact that my headaches are not as severe as usual, I feel that a weight has been lifted from my body today.

How embarassing… Just imagining our meeting had lifted my spirits so much.

Nana had started living by herself soon after Manaka took her in.
I knew about this because I had asked Manaka about it.

She did this possibly because he was afraid of being around small children and accidentally hurting them or because she felt like a stranger in a new home.

When I asked her if she wanted to live with me again right before she started living alone, she turned me down, which made me a little sad.

Even so, we kept in touch with each other often.

Although she had rejected me once, it was not as if we disliked each other.

However, Nana was basically living off the grid.

I have given her a smartphone, but she has never used it at all.
This makes me wonder if she is so uninterested on the Internet?

She seems to have mistaken the phone for a watch or something.

It is not unusual for the phone to be turned off, and although she does carry it around, she never looks at the notifications on it.

It had always been difficult for me to contact her, but since she started living alone, she has been even more difficult to get in touch with.

I contacted her every now and then for six months, and only just now did I get in touch with her.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just a characteristic that I can’t do anything about because no matter how many times I tell her, she still won’t improve.
She’s like a late demon.
{late demon: that one friend that is always late}

☆

I was so excited thinking about my first date, but my excitement died down when I saw the clothes she was wearing in front of the station where we were meeting were the ones I had picked out for her just before we parted.

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I had somehow expected this, but geez, look how stood out you are just by standing there.

Obviously, everything was wrong with her attire.

She was dressed as if it was the middle of winter even though the sun was scorching the road in the middle of summer, and yet she was relaxed, without even breaking a sweat.

Not to mention that she is now standing in front of a train station.
Of course, if she was dressed like that, she would stand out.

Even in the heat of the desert, she doesn’t sweat, and even in the cold of Antarctica, she doesn’t shiver.
With such an invincible resistance to temperature, Nana is completely unaware of the meaning of seasonal clothing.

And for some reason, though she doesn’t realize it, she has a habit of continuing to rotate through the season’s clothing without me pointing it out to her.

She’s probably wearing winter clothes today because the last time we discussed what to wear was before the accident.

In Nana’s mind, the season clothing is still stuck in winter, so she has been wearing winter clothes all this time.

Nothing has changed in that respect.

It was this trivial matter that made me realize that her roots of the problem still persist.

“Nana, here!”

“Rin-chan!”

“……?”

Poof.

I was at a loss for words when she smiled at me as if a flower had bloomed.

(Eh? This is Nana? You’re kidding, right?)

My brain, which had been working at full power to the point of exhaustion and having headaches for more than three years since I was 13 years old, completely froze for the first time today.

No, indeed, her gesture while looking back at me happily when called upon is consistent with the Nana I know.

But it was usually more awkward, and she would only show one kind of smile only I could understand because we’ve known each other for so long.

That was the first time I had ever seen such a natural and cute dazzling smile, so I stopped to think.

“Wha….
what’s with you, Rin-chan? Why are you suddenly hugging me? “

“Isn’t this fine? … It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”

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I hugged her tightly, and she looked surprised.
But she looks a little happy, just like she used to.

“ahaha, yeah.
I’ve been away for a long time.
You’ve lost a lot of weight.
Have you been eating properly?”

“I’ve been very busy lately.
And you, you gained weight? I feel like you’ve put on some meat.”

“Eh, did I? ─ I think I’ve gained a bit, but this is about the right amount for working at construction sites.”

I held Nana arms as we engaged in a conversation about trivial matters.

It’s surprising that I can have a smooth normal conversation with this girl, and it’s frustrating that only people close to me can understand how shocking this is.

If Touka were here, she might have burst into tears already.

“So, what are you going to do today?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’m fine with anything as long as it’s with Rin-chan.”

“Now that doesn’t answer anything.
That part of you has never changed.”

She was as selfless as ever.
But it was also clear that Nana really wanted to be with me.

This kind of unselfishness is both her greatest flaw and her charm.

“Let’s buy some clothes for the time being.
You’re wearing winter clothes in the middle of summer, and you have been standing out like a sore thumb.”

“Ah, so that’s why? I was thinking that’s why people are looking at me so much.
Come to think of it.
It’s already summer.”

The change in temperature is something she can sense but doesn’t pay any attention to.
I can’t say enough how much Nana is a misfit as a creature, but still, I am amazed at her indifference to not comparing her outfit with those around her.

In the past, if Nana was an absent-minded person, she was blatantly uninterested in her surroundings, and her indifference would have been understandable back then.
It’s like [Ah, she is the kind of spaced-out child].

But the current Nana is more expressive and able to show her emotions, to the point that I was surprised to see her do so.

But that’s exactly why the gap is more obvious than ever.

“Doesn’t anyone at work say anything about your lack of season awareness?”

“I go to work in uniform, so it’s been a while since I’ve worn plain clothes.
People are nice to me because I’m young, but they don’t socialize with me.”

“So that’s how it is?”

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I see some things that have changed, but I feel that most of things that haven’t.

I think that fundamentally, she is still the same as she was before.
It seems she picked up some social skills in the past six months, but how she values them is pretty much the same as before the accident.

Somehow, this makes me relieved.

After all, I love Nana, and I want her to love me.

I don’t care about her talents or abilities.

Indeed, a part of me is satisfied with such a vulgar desire for monopoly.

“Let’s go.
At least five outfits are needed for now.”

“I Don’t need that many?”

“Of course you are! I’m going to buy enough to fill up your room.” {that 1×3 meter room?}

“Why are you so worked up?”

Nana was confused since she had never been in a similar situation ever.

That’s how she’s always been.
Clothing is pointless for Nana, who is unaffected by temperature differences.
She has no desire to improve her appearance.
She has almost no sense of shame, enough that walking around naked in the street would not embarrass her in the least.

In a game, she would willingly wear clothes that increased her status, but such a convenient item does not exist even in the modern age.

In the end, clothing is nothing more than an unwanted piece of cloth for this child.

This is the one thing she has disliked since she was a child.
She was a child who did not want to go shopping for clothes.

But she doesn’t really hate it, that’s why she didn’t resist.
Nana was always willing to go along with me for whatever reason, which was one of the best things about her.

But I might have overdone it a bit by playing with her clothes for almost two hours.

I felt a little sorry for her when I saw Nana slumped over in her long-sleeved red cat-ear parka, which didn’t fit for summer either.

☆

‘Well, I’ll see you later.
Though I don’t know when the next time will be…”

“Hahaha.”

“Don’t laugh and [Hahaha] me! You should try to keep in touch a little more.”

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“Ha-ha-ha.
Of course, I’ll try.”

“I wonder?”

We spent the whole day enjoying our date, which was filled with nothing more than a casual conversation.

I was about to leave when Nana suddenly cuddled me and said,

“I’ll be rooting for you.”

And without waiting for my reaction, she slipped away from me by running through the crowd.

I had not mentioned WGCS even once during our date today.
I didn’t even mention my headache, of course.

Part of me didn’t want to worry her, and part of me didn’t want to rely on Nana.

So I told Nana that I’d been living alone with ease, but apparently, I couldn’t hide it from her.

“Really now? … that kind of cheating.”

No good.

My face must be turning red now.

It’s not often that Nana hugs me, And since this was the first time I had seen her in six months, it was unbearable.

It is so easy for me to hug her, but why do I get so nervous when she does it to me?

“I feel like I could fight for the next year.”

When was the last time I felt my heart beat so fast?

After more than half a year of WGCS, I had fully replenished my [Nana Energy], and that day I had a good night’s sleep, the best I had ever had.

===*

This is how Rinne replenished her energy.
Rinne is 100 times more thrilled with Nana than she thinks she is.

One of the reasons Nana has become so sociable is because she found a mentor in socializing.

TL note:

Damn lucky construction manager.
He got she-hulk to work for him.