A.N. (9/16/21) - Wow, it's been a while since an update. Enjoy!
Chapter 4 - The Investigation Bell
The morning after proclaiming her new goal, Isuzu found herself in the hallway outside the classroom of her target.
Kyouko Hori.
From where she stood, Isuzu found the other girl amongst a group of several other female classmates chatting happily with them. The other girl seemed to have a knack for befriending others with her natural charm, and Isuzu could easily see her becoming one of the more popular girls in their year in the future. It was to the extent that Isuzu unconsciously began to refer to the other girl as 'Hori-san' in her mind.
"She's really pretty," Isuzu muttered. "Heck, if I wasn't trying to set her up with my brother I'd probably take a chance at asking her out myself."
...as a friend, of course. Definitely not in a romantic way, no impure intentions here.
But since her goal was to have her interact with her brother, it was in Isuzu's best interest if the two of them didn't meet directly until after her brother had already befriended Hori-san. It was best to nurture their relationship as naturally as possible, even despite her intentions of intervening between the two.
So for now, she planned to investigate the other girl's behavior and habits and compile all the information to make a plan for later. After all, she was a firm believer in the teachings of the great god Kouhei Nagasaka*.
But let's go over all the current data she has managed to gather thus far.
Kyouko Hori, the main female protagonist and one half of the Horimiya name. Within her class, she has two friends by the names of Tooru Ishikawa and Yuki Yoshikawa, also characters in the main story. From her memories, Isuzu also knew that Hori-san also had a younger brother she took care of every day after school, which is the main reason behind how the original relationship between her and Izumi began in the first place.
Following the memories of her past life, the two would meet sometime during either or after the middle of Izumi's second school year in high school. The trigger being the meeting between Izumi and Hori-san's younger brother Souta.
However, Isuzu couldn't rely on that event to start their relationship anymore. Excluding any possible butterfly effects caused by her existence, she wanted her brother Izumi to befriend Hori-san earlier than they would normally so that he wouldn't suffer throughout his first year in school.
And recreating the events behind how Souta met her brother would be difficult for several reasons. The main one being that she didn't know where in the city she could find him, plus the implied notion that she would technically be harming a child.
But the catalyst that was Souta was not necessarily integral to their relationship beginning. No, the core reason the two found solace with each other was that both of their 'hidden selves' were revealed to the other by accident.
If Isuzu made it so that the two of them somehow met outside of their school personas, that might also be a way for their relationship to start.
Thinking to herself, Isuzu left and began to make her way back to her classroom.
}-{
Unnoticed to her, two people watched her as she ran away.
Ishikawa spoke first. "She was definitely staring at Hori-san, right?"
Yoshikawa nodded. "No doubt about it. Wonder what that was about."
The two classmates had noticed Isuzu taking an unusual amount of interest in their mutual friend almost the moment they spotted her. Seeing that Hori was busy talking with others at the moment, they began to entertain themselves by discussing what they just witnessed concerning the strange black-haired girl stalking their friend.
"Could it be love at first sight?" Ishikawa proposed.
"Really? Somehow, I didn't get that impression…"
"Wait, wasn't she that same girl that came here the first day of school?"
"Yup," Yoshikawa confirmed. "Isuzu Miyamura or something like that. I remembered her name because she mentioned that she had a twin brother."
"Ah," Ishikawa blinked. "That's right. I think I saw the two of them come to school this morning. They really do look similar to each other."
"Really?"
"Yeah, but their personalities are like night and day." He shrugged his shoulders. "The brother seems to be the gloomy type while the sister is the energetic one. Adding the fact that they somehow got put into the same class, it seems that they're getting a bit of a reputation."
"How do you even know this?" She gave him a questioning look. "School just started only a few days ago."
"I have friends in other classes." He quickly changed the conversation. "Should we tell Hori-san about her stalker?"
Yoshikawa grinned. "Nah, let's see how this plays out first. Maybe she's just looking to make a friend."
"A friend, or a friend?"
"Ugh, get your mind out of the gutter."
}-{
Now, what was the best way to have two strangers meet up and become friends?
For Isuzu Miyamura, the criteria for her ideal scenario would be that her brother and Hori-san would discover the hidden sides of the other person. Meaning that a simple meeting at school wouldn't work and that the two would have to have a chance encounter with each other outside campus grounds.
Already, Isuzu thought up several hundred methods that she knew of from several works of fiction, until reality kicked most of those ideas to the curb and left her with nothing but whimsical thoughts. Then again, it was probably for the best that she didn't rely on her knowledge of light novels and manga as reference.
No, despite the fictional aspect of Horimiya, the story itself was quite grounded in reality. There weren't any crazy tropes like girls falling out of the sky or a foreign transfer student sitting next to the main character. Mostly, it was luck and opportunity that allowed characters to meet and grow closer together.
So realistically, what was the best way for two strangers to meet up and befriend each other outside of school?
Well in her case, the random encounter with Sakura was somewhat relatable to this issue. Both of them had met up at a location they frequented due to their hobbies matching up with the other, leading to them bonding over a common topic during a random discussion.
The two main points out of her example mainly dealt with location and interests. Location being the place the two of them frequented, and interests being their shared likening for their hobbies.
The main issue was that while Isuzu knew a lot about how her brother thought, she didn't know too much about Hori-san herself. The only thing Isuzu could predict about where Hori-san might frequent after school would be the supermarkets or picking up her brother due to her housewife qualities. And as for hobbies, that was something that Isuzu couldn't find out easily without befriending the girl herself.
So it was simple, all she needed to do was manipulate a scenario where the two met up.
That said, she wasn't exactly a master tactician with experience in manipulating the scenes from the shadows or anything. Rather, she was usually direct in how she tackled most problems in life. It wasn't a problem with her intelligence, but how she was as a person.
A voice interrupted her thoughts.
"And that's it for your orientation." Her mom turned to face her with a smile. "Any questions?"
Oh, right. It was time for her to officially start her new job.
The two of them were currently in the backside of the family store, where Isuzu had entered with her mother after dropping by once school ended. For the past half hour, her mother has been going over what Isuzu's new duties were as a new hire. Even though she only caught maybe half of what her mother said, Isuzu got the gist of what she was going to be doing easily since it wasn't anything complicated.
"Not really," Isuzu replied. "I already memorized most of the products being sold, and I know how to work the cash register. And you know I won't have any trouble dealing with customers."
Truthfully, this wasn't the first time Isuzu has helped out in the store. But since back then, she was too young to officially work here, it was mostly small things like helping her mother grab some stuff whenever there were a lot of customers.
Ah, those were the days. Back when she was still a bit of a social recluse and didn't want to hang out at her elementary classmate's places. Her go-to excuse of always being busy helping out of the store was a common tactic she used in the past.
"Great," her mother said. "Then you can help me get started by helping me finish up filling the display cases. It's nice that you rushed over here so fast. Customers are going to come in soon since school just ended, so we need to prepare."
Isuzu nodded, and the two began working together to set up for the afternoon.
}-{
The cake shop Iori was a popular business that got a lot of traffic from students and adults alike. Even though Isuzu had rushed here right as school ended, there were already a dozen or so customers browsing through their products and looking for something to purchase. And as time passed, that number only grew as more and more students began to come in.
As for Isuzu…
"Welcome! Thank you for coming to cake shop Iori."
"Your purchase will be a total of 1440 yen."
"Ah! That cake is one of my favorites, its design is so cute~"
"Are you aware of our special deal for strawberry cake? If you buy two slices, you can get a third one for free."
"Here's your change. Enjoy your cake~"
A cheerful smile on her face and a cute appearance, the customers were charmed by the new worker's customer service skills. Her mother watched nearby with a look of horror on her face as she unleashed the fake extrovert that was her daughter onto her customers.
It's a lie, she wanted to shout. This girl is just tricking you all to get more cash out of your wallets! Her true personality is nothing like this.
But the customers were eating it up. Nobody could see that behind that innocuous face was a devil smirking as she swindled the poor fools out of their money.
"Thank you for your patronage," her daughter gave a blinding smile to the customers. "Have a nice day!"
Truly, she raised a monster of a daughter.
}-{
Later at home…
Isuzu continued to stare at her brother, who was making himself useful at the moment by preparing a meal for the two of them in the kitchen. Feeling her gaze on him, Izumi felt unnerved when she kept staring at him for the next dozen minutes.
"Hey, Bro. Be honest with me," she called out from where she sat. "If I said that I was interested in getting a tattoo like y-"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!"
"Aw, come one." Isuzu pouted. "Just a tiny one, maybe a cute little heart."
"Isuzu." He stared at her with a serious look on his face. "I am willing to get on my knees and beg you to never even bring up the subject again if I have to. Hell, I'll prostrate with my head on the ground if it comes to it."
"That's really creepy to hear, you know." She gave him a disgusted look. "What kind of brother begs like that over something like this."
"I think our mom would have the same reaction as me if she heard you now."
"Well, luckily it was just a joke." She smirked at him. "Guess you're going to be the only delinquent in this house."
"I'm not a delinquent."
"Oh, really?" She quirked an eyebrow. "Hmm… body tattoos, piercings, and that gloomy aura you have. Either you're a delinquent, or you're really into that punk rock look."
Izumi just gave out an exasperated sigh.
Shrugging her shoulders, Isuzu went back to working on the homework she had spread on the table in front of her.
A few minutes later, she snickered. "Who knew homework could be this funny."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Check out our English textbooks when you have the time. One of them is an exercise on figuring out why certain translations are incorrect. Here's an example: The mayor decided to hold an election this week."
"What's funny about that?"
"Japanese common mispronunciations of the 'r' and 'l' sounds means that spelling can change during translation. In English, that means that somebody could say something like 'The mayor decided to have an erection this week'."
"Sorry, my English isn't quite up to par. What does that mean?"
"The mayor had an erection."
After she said that, Isuzu started cackling like mad while her brother just stared at her with an incredulous look on his face. He was at a loss for words at what she just said.
Sometimes, I don't understand what goes through my sister's mind. He sighed at that thought. Then again, she always did have a weird fascination with English. I still have no idea how she picked up the language so fast.
With how she was breezing through her entire English textbook when it was still barely the first week of school, that was obvious enough to a casual observer. Izumi figured that if she ever wanted to, she could probably pass the TOEIC* exams with a perfect score on her first try. That was just another aspect about his sister that made her so amazing.
Then again, she wasn't exactly as skilled as he was in the kitchen. It seems that both of them were talented in different aspects, with Isuzu focusing more on the academic side of life.
His sister spoke up. "Hey, if you wanted to make friends with someone you didn't know, how would you go about that?"
"You realize who you're talking to, right?"
"I know," she rolled her eyes. "But humor me anyway."
He mulled it over. "Well, I guess the first thing that anyone needs to do to get close to someone would be to talk to them. If they both say something to each other and happen to get along during the process, that would probably lead to them being friends."
"Hmm… is that so."
Seeing the look on his sister's face brought down a chill down his spine. That look was one that he recognized, a calculative and mischievous look that was often a warning whenever his sister planned to do something crazy. Shuddering to himself, he hurried back towards the kitchen to finish prepping the rest of the meal.
Whatever she was planning, Izumi hoped that he wasn't going to get involved in it.
Finally, an update after so long.
Since this isn't really a priority compared to some of my other stories, I'm just having fun portraying Isuzu as a multifaceted high school girl who goes by her own pace and deals with things in life depending on how best it benefits her. I'm trying to play up the school life genre as well as that slice-of-life feel that you often see in light novels and manga.
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Notes:
* (TOEIC) The Test of English for International Communication is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native speakers.