Part 1 Story 1: Ringo1 and Secret
Translator: Ririi Rain
Sunlight shone through the gaps of the smooth, aloeswood2 colored
curtains.
A boy yawned sleepily, then he got up while rubbing the terrible
dark circles under his eyes with his fingertips.
When he swiftly opened the curtains, he was greeted with a clear
blue spring sky, white clouds, and a carpet of cherry blossoms below. He
couldn't help squinting at the dazzling sunlight.
It was another sunny day.
In the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and washed his face. After
he finished, he raised his face. What reflected in the mirror was a tacky delinquent
with faded blonde hair. The boy breathed out in resignation.
"It's already past noon, how long are you planning
to sleep? Please wake up."
He called out while entering the room next door. The owner of
the said room was lying on the queen-sized bed and was only giving a small
groan, perhaps as a reply.
"There's work at 13:30, you know!"
He knew that the individual won’t simply wake up, so he opened this
room’s curtains first. The room became bright at once as the white walls reflected
the sunlight, and it seemed to disturb the person’s sleep significantly. The
sleeping woman pulled up her duvet and covered her face with it.
In the simple room with only a large closet, a bed, and a side
table with a lamp on it, the delinquent-styled boy raised his voice in a
courteous manner.
"Secret, please get up!"
"Nuu... two more hours〜"
"Isn't two hours too long!?"
The sleeping hypotensive woman turned over to escape from the
boy. Her long and beautiful legs showed themselves in that instance, and the
boy turned his face away in a hurry. It was too much for the 15 years old boy.
After clearing his throat, he regained his composure and
continued his attempt to wake this woman up.
The plan was to disturb her hearing by turning on the TV in the living
room.
"Nu ouu, so noisy..."
It seemed to be effective because she was mumbling as the result.
However, he made a mistake in selecting the channel. The news
program that the boy doesn't want to watch the most was shown. And
unfortunately, the news that he didn't want to see the least of all was being reported.
"An interview with a person in charge revealed
that the boy, who is believed to be the suspect in the poisonous gas incident
at a luxurious hotel in the Minatomirai District of Yokohama City last week,
had stolen iron sulfide3 for experiments from the science lab at the school he
attended before the incident."
As soon as the announcer said that, the suspect's face was
displayed on the LCD screen.
Suspect: Eigo Hayashiki4 (Eigo Ringi5), 15 years old.
The most familiar characters in the world jumped into the boy's
eyes.
If he saw himself in the mirror with his hair black and glasses
on, he will look like two peas in a pod with the criminal boy on the screen.
"Ringo-kun6, you're totally a celebrity,
huh."
He was being called with a simple nickname7.
Her voice was still unclear, but when he looked back, Secret already
raised her upper body and was stretching.
Lush, long, and wavy chestnut-colored hair overflowed down to
her back. Her skin was white like porcelain, she had big almond-shaped blue eyes
with long eyelashes, and her lips which were like fresh and ripe pomegranate
fruit was showing a smile.
Looking from a human standard, she would be in the excellent
category.
"Three people died and more than 20 people were
taken to the hospital because of this incident. We're going to take a closer
look at the motive of the perpetrator, a boy who attended a prestigious school--"
The announcer talked dramatically, but, Eigo Hayashiki, the
criminal boy, looked fed-up and whispered.
"Becoming famous doesn’t make me happy, though.
What’s more, I'm supposed to be dead."
"Is that so? As a villain, it would become a good
foil, you know. Heh...my sense is correct
after all. Blonde hair suits Ringo-kun."
She mumbled while comparing the real thing with the one on TV.
The woman, who looked adorable and young like a doll, was
wearing a large men's T-shirt as her sleepwear. When she got off the bed, it
looked like her undergarment was going to be visible. Ringo looked away, having
trouble about where to place his gaze.
"Ugh, my head hurts! I think I drank too much
yesterday."
"At the last place, they were doing a shochu8
tower! By the way, I broke the rocks glasses at that time, so here’s the bill
from that shop."
"Geh, this much?!"
She may look like a middle school girl, but it seemed that she
was already an adult. Although, she was a good-for-nothing, useless adult.
"I'm taking a shower, so Ringo-kun, you make
breakfast."
She talked like the bill didn’t exist. After standing up and
stretching flexibly, she started walking towards the bathroom.
"There’s not much time before work, so there's
no breakfast."
Or rather, it's not morning, Ringo added in his mind.
"Eeeh! No way, no way, I'm hungry〜. I get
it, let's put off the work for an hour! Ringo-kun, contact the other party.
I’ll leave it to you."
With that, she walked away in a light step.
What an unreasonable woman, the boy sighed for the second time today.
April 10th. Around 8 p.m.
A large-scale poisonous gas incident occurred at a luxurious hotel
located in the Minatomirai District of Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture. It
was too late when a guest complained to the hotel about a strange odor. Many people
had inhaled a large quantity of hydrogen sulfide that had spread inside the hotel.
In this incident, three people were killed and more than 20
people were taken to the hospital. Naturally, the public's eyes were focused on
the boy who was believed to be the culprit.
However, a corpse with a tooth pattern that matched the boy was
found in the hotel. The police said that he committed suicide by
self-immolation, and there was a suicide note at the boy's home that hinted at
the crime. As the suspected boy was already deceased, the police didn't file
charges.
The fact that the said boy had just entered high school, that he
was a top student at one of the most prestigious all-boys schools in Japan, and
also that he had lost his parents early and had been taken in by his uncle’s
family, were sensationalized and attracted more attention.
While society was noisily scouring the background of the
incident, the boy, who was falsely accused and presumed dead, was secretly
picked up by a woman, and inconspicuously, lived.
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The author has something to say:
This is my first post, so it may be poorly written, but I hope you
will read it.
I'm aiming for about 100,000 characters (Japanese characters)
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***
1 Ringo: Japanese word for apple↩
2 Aloeswood color: A mixture of orange and brown color.↩
3 Iron (II) Sulfide: Slightly toxic by ingestion. Will react with acids to produce toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.↩
4 Eigo Hayashiki: (林木英悟) written in kanji↩
5 Eigo Ringi: (りんぎえいご) written in hiragana↩
6 Kun: A form of honorific title. The informal kun (君) is strictly reserved for young men or juniors although, in a business context, young women can be called “kun” by their superior.↩
7 Simple nickname: the nickname ‘Ringo’. I think it is based on his family name Hayashiki (林木) in kanji, which the author also wrote as Ringi (りんぎ) in hiragana.
Ringi turned into Ringo, simple.↩
8 Shochu: a Japanese traditional hard liquor, distilled spirits made from grains and vegetables.↩
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