Chapter 38: The Parents of my Fiancée Suddenly…

TL: lime
ED: Spynine01

The train has returned to its original schedule.

If I didn’t live alone, I would have taken this train to school every day.

Touma rides this train to school every day, which is quite an impressive feat.

After a few minutes of walking from the small station, which was as empty as ever, we entered a quiet residential area.

In a corner of the residential area, there was an ordinary two-story house with a nameplate that read “Isshiki”.

“Hah~… We’re finally here.”

As I stood in front of my house, sighing and muttering to no one in particular, Shiori stared at my house.

“I’ve never been in someone else’s house before.”

How is that even possible?! You have relatives and friends, right? ――I was about to say something like that, but managed to stop myself in time.

I just remembered that this guy wasn’t good at socializing at all.

“It’s no different from the apartment.”

“It is.”

“It’s one difference is that it has a room upstairs and another room downstairs.”

A kid like me, who doesn’t know much about houses, can’t come up with anything more than just a simple difference like that.

“It’s not just that.”

Shiori insists. Maybe she has some difficult knowledge stored in her brain.

Maybe something like property taxes?――It’s a tax that you pay if you own a house, so it’s basically the same as apartments…

My junior high school teacher once told me that in a house, you have to take care of everything, but in an apartment, after a certain number of years, they’ll do the work on their own ――and that’s why they have to pay the common expenses for such things.

“A house can have a cat or a dog.”

――Apparently Shiori was on my side of the fence too.

“Let’s enter anyways.”

It would be very cold if we continued to stay in front of the door.

When I suggested this, she nodded her head and I opened the door with a familiar feeling.

It was a familiar entrance. There were two pairs of shoes there that I was very familiar with.

“I’m backー!”

The door to the living room to my left opened, and a familiar woman peeked out from there.

“Welcome back, Ko.”

Isshiki Mio――it’s been a while since my mom has last seen me, but she sounds like she’s greeting her son like a usual day whenever he comes home from school.

“――Ah!”

She shouted when she saw Shiori and rushed over to us.

“Shiori-chan. It’s been a long time.”

She greeted Shiori with a cheerful voice that made her look at least ten years younger and waved her hand.

“It’s been a while.”

When Shiori returned the greeting, Mom looked at Shiori as if she were licking her lips.

“――Ah, um….”

This is the first time I’ve ever seen such a thing coming from my mom…

“Mom. You sound like a pervert, so stop it.”

I warned her, “Oh my. I’m not a pervert.”, she said without remorse.

“I am a pervert, but a gentlewoman pervert.”

Oops. Maybe I inherited this kind of thing from my mother after all.

“Even so―― Shiori-chan, you’re starting to look more and more like Kotoha with age.”

Kotoha――Ah―…That was the name that was written down when I got the letter. I’m sure that it’s the name of Shiori’s mother.

“Is that so?”

“Yes. It’s not that the two of you look alike――actually you’re probably prettier than she was at the time. When she was in high school, she was also――”

“Mom!”

I called out to her as the conversation was getting too long for my taste.

“Can we move this conversation inside instead of talking at the front door?”

“Oh my. That’s right ――Come on in. It’s a dirty house.”

“Sorry to bother you.”

Mom invited us in, so we both took off our shoes and entered my house for the first time in a long time.

When we entered the living room, my father, Isshiki Hiroyuki――who was sitting on the sofa watching TV, noticed us and turned his face towards us.

“Welcome home.”

“I’m home.”

“Shiori’s here too. It’s been a long time.”

With a gentle smile, Shiori replied, “It’s been a while.”, just like in the previous greeting.

“Shiori-chan. Would you like to drink some tea over here?” Mom said, inviting Shiori to sit at the dining room table. “Itadakimasu,” said Shiori, as she sat down at the dining table with Mom.

“I love Japanese TV. I can’t understand what they’re saying overseas.”

Dad said with a wry smile.

“Well, you are overseas, so what can you do about it?――I’ve got a lot more to say than that.”

“Oro? Gekiko punpunmaru?” (TLN: man, I don’t understand this anymore), From around February 2013, the word “Gekiko Punpun Maru “, which was derived from the gal word “Oko”, which expresses feelings of anger, began to appear frequently on Twitter. It’s like his dad is saying ‘are you angry?’.)

“That’s right! Muka chakka faiyada wa¹ More info. about this in, https://www.j-cast.com/2013/03/20170306.html?p=all! It’s old!”

My father laughed in response to my complaint, but his laugh was too childish to be appropriate for his age.

“Fiancee, living together, deciding whatever you want while I was gone――”

“Wait, wait!”

He gestures at me as if to tell me to be still.

“We’ll talk more about that later――okay?”

“You got away with it when we were talking on the phone, and now you’re getting away with it again.”

“No, no. Wait just a little bit longer. Wait a minute. I’ll explain it to you by the end of the day.”

“You’re gonna tell me why right now, you fucking father of mine.”

“Ah, you’re calling me a fucking father. You’re making me want to go shit myself. I’m gonna go and take a dump.”

He walked out of the living room, deliberately touching his ass. [ED: what…]

I’m afraid to think that that’s my father. Will I end up like him someday? ――Well, that’s okay. As long as I’m in this house, I can’t escape anyways. Today is the day I’m going to give him a good beating.

My right hand makes a fist, and my left hand catches and punches it as if to get into the spirit. Afterwards, I cracked the knuckle of my right hand and thought about how to cook the shit out of my father later on.

Then, I suddenly heard a ping-pong and the intercom ringing from the living room.

Who is it? I’m guessing it’s not a delivery service――maybe some kind of solicitation?

“Ah, Ko. Will you answer it for us?”

“Eh―. Me?”

I was about to complain, when Shiori said, “You’re free right now, right?” .

“What about you then?”

“I’m chatting.”

“Then you can leave too!”

“This is not my house.”

“Ugh…”

It is――. It’s definitely my house. There’s no mistake in that.

I can’t help it, I can’t let Shiori go out.

“Fufu. He’s already laid on your hips.”

“Tedama²手玉(Tedama) to lead someone around by the nose, meaning to force someone to go somewhere.”

While the two women were talking to each other, I looked at the monitor.

What I saw on the monitor was――.

“Shiori…?”

“What?”

“Ah… no…  not you…”

I point at the monitor and give her a confused look, and she comes over to me.

When she looked at the monitor, a voice came out, “Ah, Mom.”

“Mom? Is that her?”

On the screen is a woman who looks exactly like Shiori. I don’t know if it’s because she’s looking through the monitor or something, but she doesn’t look much like a mother to me.

“She’s here at last. Ko. Please welcome her in.”

“Eh? Did you call her here?”

“Yes. She came home for vacation.”

“Is that so?”

I didn’t need to go through the intercom to greet her, so I went directly to the door and opened it.

The woman at the door rolled her eyes and looked surprised when she saw me, but then she smiled kindly and said,

“It’s been a long time, Ko-chan. You’ve grown up.”

Even through the monitor, I could see the resemblance, but seeing Shiori’s mother in the flesh, she looked exactly like a doppelganger.