I wasn't really planning to, as such, but a few months ago I found myself wanting to revisit this collection and write some more stories for it. In a way it's not that surprising that I would do that, because I don't think I ever stopped being interested in anything Kawaakari related. On top of that, with this year's Kawaakari CB getting closer and my excitement increasing over that it's only natural I'd find myself thinking of all the story ideas I imagined back then. Anyway, over the past few months I've been writing some new stories in-between doing other things and now they're finished I thought I would share them.

Some of these stories do take details from Luciform, sometimes even sort of expanding on them. But you don't need to have read Luciform before to understand what's going on in these four stories, and vice versa, just as was the case before. The details that I've taken are small things rather than major Luciform plot points, things that I had been thinking would have been nice to explore more. With that being said, you might benefit from reading the previous stories from this collection if you haven't before to make a certain sense of these newer ones. But whether you go back to read those before or after reading these is up to you as this collection isn't arranged in any chronological order.

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy these new stories as much as I enjoyed writing them!

Mshrupo was noticing bicycles a lot lately, possibly because the students were starting to use them a lot. Even now, as she stood by the front gates waiting for Hiromi, Yanovi, Bin, Ceiraii, Lucifel and Kenta to come back with the bicycle stands they were going to put around the school grounds, she noticed a fair few people passing by on the streets on bicycles. None of them were students, since most of them were gone for the summer break, but a fair few were young, possibly even her age. It was a realisation that made her feel wistful. She hadn't been that much older than the students when Kawaakari had first opened and even though a good decade or so had passed since that day, was easy to imagine herself as one of them. To picture herself pedalling along the road or around the school, maybe even racing her friends. The bicycles looked like a lot of fun, and certainly the equally sized wheels and the diamond shaped frames of the ones she saw now seemed safer than the high-wheels that she remembered her guardians using. Yet, that wasn't such a long time ago really, was it?

"Yo, Mshrupo, we're here!"

Mshrupo blinked and smiled as she saw Hiromi along with Yanovi and Bin climbing out of their carriage and taking out a number of folded metal contraptions with….hold on a moment.

"Um…Hiromi, those aren't bicycle racks." Mshrupo said, staring at what were most definitely actual bicycles.

Hiromi giggled.

"Don't worry, we have those too. Look, see, Kenta's coming with them."

Sure enough, Kenta was coming along, looking mildly disgruntled as he dragged along a large package. Lucifel followed behind, not looking much happier.

"So this is why you needed five of us to come along just to collect what's really just a bunch of curved metal poles?" he complained. "Because you wanted to get your own bicycles?"

"Not just for us, though," Yanovi corrected. "For all of us."

Kenta just huffed, and Lucifel slunk away, saying something about going to park the carriage back in its garage by the dragon stables. Mshrupo knew they should probably get on with the racks but she found herself distracted by the bicycles, which were all folded, though she couldn't figure out how.

"Let's get the racks put in, Ru," Reoni said. "Then we can get everyone out in the gardens to try them out."

"Ah…yeah, sure. There's really one for me?"

Reoni smiled.

"Course there is. Now come on, let's go."

…

When the racks had been put in-most in different sections at the front of the school but a few along the side of the building as well, Mshrupo helped Reoni and Hiromi to drag the folded bicycles out into the garden, while Yanovi and Kenta went to get the others. Fiachra and Shippa arrived first, others following on soon after. Mshrupo thought that Cher and Hades were the last, but then Nyamai appeared in the middle of the grass, having used a transportation spell instead of walking down like everyone else-something that Bin immediately commented on.

"What, you don't want to enjoy the weather?" they asked teasingly.

Nyamai stuck her tongue out:

"I enjoy it every day, sometimes you gotta have a break."

"What is that meant to mean, exactly, you can't have a break from the weather-"

"Alrighty," Yanovi clapped her hands together, interrupting Keno's confused rant. "Everyone, please have a look at your bicycles! There should be one for everyone, plus a couple spares."

Despite most of the others seeming a little baffled by the bicycles, they were happy enough to go for it. The five who had gone to buy the bicycles (well, with the exception of Lucifel), helped to unfold them out and showing everyone how to do it themselves. Mshrupo hung back at first, watching the others until she felt like she had a reasonable grasp of the process. Then, she selected a bicycle which had purple spokes in the wheels and tried to unfold it.

"Waaait, all of these are so long! How am I going to fit on them? Have you all looked at my legs lately?!"

Nyamai's outburst coincided with the precise moment Mshrupo managed to completely unfold her bicycle, so she looked up and asked:

"What do you mean, Mai?"

"It's too tall; I won't be able to reach the pushy things!"

A few of the others looked over at this.

"You mean the pedals?" Ceiraii said drily.

Nyamai stuck her tongue out and then folded her arms crossly. Hiromi just grinned at her.

"Don't you worry, we thought of that…let me just get your one…"

Going to the few bicycles that hadn't been unfolded yet, she picked up one that did seem to have a smaller frame and then set it on the ground before unfolding it with the same expertise that she'd unfolded some of the others so far. Nyamai bounded over and immediately said:

"That's not a bicycle, that's a banana on wheels!"

Mshrupo raised an eyebrow, but she supposed that Nyamai did have a point, for it was bright yellow. Nonetheless she watched in perplexed silence as Nyamai frowned at it, poked the frame, then walked around it and poked it again.

"Nyamai, if you don't like it, we can always take it back and get another one-"

Unusually for her, Hiromi looked rather concerned as she said this, but Nyamai whirled around and fixed her with a ferocious glare.

"What do you mean? Who said anything about not liking it? It's great!"

As if to prove this, Nyamai hopped onto the bicycle and attempted to pedal off….only to fall off. She scowled, but Lucifel was there, holding out what looked like two wheels on a short pole.

"You forgot the support wheels." He said simply.

He bent down and after righting the bicycle, attempted to fix them on.

"Wait, how'd you know how to put those on?" Hiromi asked. "I thought you weren't interested."

Lucifel simply pointed to Snow, who was already pedalling her bicycle. Very slowly, and up and down the same short stretch of path, but nonetheless pedalling. Noticing them all look. Snow managed to stop her bicycle and she waved at them, beaming.

"Are you all going to try? This is fun!"

Mshrupo smiled:

"Yeah, we are!"

She got onto her bicycle, and started to ride over the grass to follow Snow. The others followed suit, including Nyamai, who managed to stay on now that she had the support wheels. Many of the others also fell of the bicycles on first attempt, with the exception of Arianna, Yanovi and Shippa. However, the real surprise was noticing Hades' being one of those who chose to use support wheels. Not that anybody dared to make a joke about that. Nonetheless, the next couple of hours passed very agreeably as they all got used to their bicycles, riding them up and down the school grounds, some of them even racing each other.

Eventually though, they tired out. Mshrupo went with Rynacel and Hiromi to get some drinks from the office, and as they came back she heard the threads of a conversation.

"C'mon, Fiachra, you were flailing all over the place."

"Ah, please, you may as well call me Cinnabuns too, or Cinn."

"Why? Little One left what, three years ago? I'm surprised anyone's still calling you that-but anyway, no, don't think you can side-step out of the debate that smoothly!"

"Ah, it was worth a try. Besides, you can't talk, Kenta-"

Mshrupo chuckled at them, and sat down back next to her own bicycle. She stopped paying attention to the conversations around her and just sipped at her juice. After a few moments, however, she sensed someone come to sit beside her and she turned, smiling when she saw it was Keno.

"You're good on the bicycles." Keno said to her.

"So are you." Mshrupo replied loyally.

"No, I'm not," Keno smiled. "But I will be. The others are right, after all. They will be useful for us in the coming years…how long for though, I don't know."

"Well, do you remember high-wheels?"

Keno frowned, then shook his head.

"Vaguely."

"I do," Mshrupo laughed. "They were kind of terrifying when I was a child, and then of course by the time I grew up enough to try them…"

"You were with us. A child, still." Keno finished.

"Well, not really."

"In some ways, sure. But in other ways, you still were. Don't you ever look at the students here, the ones who were the age you were then and realise that?"

Mshrupo thought again of how she had imagined herself doing the things she had seen those very students do, including riding around on their bicycles. She thought about how they always went around in pairs or groups, always had someone to lean on and laugh with and she realised that even if she had lost that last bit of her childhood she'd still managed to gain that companionship. She still had it, too, and she'd have it for the rest of her life.

And with them, she didn't have to just imagine anymore.

So, instead of directly answering Keno's question, Mshrupo drained the last of her juice. She clicked her fingers and applied a transportation spell to the glass so it returned to the kitchen, then got up. Looking down at Keno, she grinned and asked:

"Race you again?"

Some notes about the timeline of bicycles as it relates to this little story: The bicycles that are tried out here are essentially the safety bicycles that were around in the 1880s and 1890s, but perhaps a little closer to the modern bicycle than the actual safety bicycles. The high wheels that Mshrupo remembers from her childhood are what some of you might recognise as penny farthings. Also called ordinary bicycles, they were technically in usage at the same time as 'safety bicycles'. However, considering this is a different universe and all, I've had it such that the high wheels/penny farthings were dominant pre-Great War, and that they started to die out during that time (you'd imagine such a high bicycle would be particularly impractical in wartimes) and were replaced by designs like the safety bicycle which gradually became what we recognise today as a modern bicycle. Folding versions also came into being around this time (from what I understand it's somewhat disputed when exactly, though), but at the time of this story being able to fold your bicycle is a relatively new invention, hence the fascination that everyone here has for it.

(Yes, I spent a ridiculous amount of time looking up the history of bicycles for this. Likewise with tea ceremonies, for the story titled 'Tea Ceremony')