#another another

An excerpt from chapter 12:

Sawa sluggishly took stock of her body. She was parched, and aching all over, and exhausted, like she had just run a mile.

“Can I have some water?” She asked.

“Uh, probably!” Sora whispered. “Let me go find some and tell everyone that you’re awake. Um… do you mind if some people come see you? Or do you want quiet?”

Sawa wondered who “people” meant.

“S-sure, they can come in. Ah wait, Sora,” Sawa grabbed Sora’s fingers as the latter was standing up to leave.

“What is it?” Sora asked, crouching back down quickly. “Everything okay?”

“...My hair… and my face?” Sawa stammered. My tongue feels heavy, too, like I can only talk in slow motion. “I mean… do I look… presentable? If I’m going to be seeing… people, I—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Sora said. “They’ve all seen you already, you just weren’t awake for it.” She leaned in closer and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “Shiki didn’t leave all weekend, except when his parents made him go home to sleep.”

An excerpt from Chapter 7:

Suddenly Akito appeared at their table, rubbing her temples..

“Yuki,” Akito pleaded. “Control your brother. Please.”

Yuki raised an eyebrow. “What on earth makes you think I could do that?”

Akito groaned and put her head down on the table. Her voice was muffled but Sawa could still hear her say, “I can’t find Hatori.”

Yuki sighed and stood up. He walked over to where Ayame and Shigure were loudly stumbling around, singing an incoherent song with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Yuki grabbed Ayame by the ear. Ayame immediately started complaining, but Yuki just dragged him away.

Sawa heard Yuki scolding him before they were out of sight. “Can’t you muster a single ounce of social awareness? Honestly, there are children here. Where’s your wife? She should be the one to do this, not me…”

An excerpt from Chapter 8:

“Seriously? I can’t believe you’ve never even heard of My Hero Academia,” Rio said, scanning through shelves of books.

“I told you I don’t really read fiction,” Sawa said, picking up a copy of Fairy Tail and flipping through it.

“Still,” Chizuru said, “You have eyes, don’t you? It’s everywhere. I didn’t think someone could be so oblivious.”

It was true, Sawa had spent most of her life being oblivious to her surroundings. When the topic of manga had come up at dinner that day, everyone looked at her like she was an alien when she said she’d never read any. Even Sora, who usually avoided all books like they might infect her, couldn’t believe Sawa didn’t know Cardcaptor Sakura or Bleach. It was quickly decided that everyone—with the exception of Mutsuki, who would stay home and study—needed to go to the bookstore and give Sawa a crash course on popular books and manga. Although Mutsuki protested weakly, even he couldn’t justify taking a whole night off studying at this point, so Sora, Riku, Kento, Chizuru, Rio, Shiki, and Sawa had headed out.

“Um…” Sawa said, “I’ve heard of the one… with the guy with spiky blonde hair…”

Chizuru rolled his eyes while Kento laughed.

“That’s like, all of them,” Riku said.

“Are you ready for it?” Hajime asked. 

“I think so,” Sawa said, mentally running through her list of things to remember.

“You’ll be great, Sawac—DADDYYY!” Sora suddenly sprinted ahead to the curb, where a man was standing, hands in his pockets, in front of a parked car. Sora jumped onto his back. 

“Uff! Sora-chan, you’re getting too big for this,” the man said, half-smiling half-grimacing.

“I’ll never get too big!”

“Maybe not, but Daddy will definitely get too weak,” said a woman who was getting out of the car. “He’s been slacking lately.”