8. My Sort of Cousin

My Sort of Cousin

Hiro

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It’s probably the first time in my life I don’t complain about chores or prolong doing them. Simply buckle down and get what I need to done and over with, so I can join her in the Falls Village.

If nothing else, I know how to multi-task. To put things on the back burner until I can fully address them. How they pyre do they know she didn’t pass? Where she is? What she’s doing? Haru’s voice breaks through the chaos of the square I’m trying to find her in.

“I can get us some ice cream.” His offer is...... Well, it’s more strained, not to mention distant, and my eyes scan the crowds I’m walking to make sure I didn’t imagine it. It happens sometimes. Especially when I see Tien working on a gadget.

Landing on the pair of them about a hundred paces in the opposite direction, I breathe again. For the first time since assessment. “EWE!” Ayame’s face twists in horror. Accentuated by a few of her water color locks coming loose from her braid. If not for her hair, most would assume she’s a boy.

Aya’s always been a bit taller, at least she was when we met. Still, wearing boys clothes, and overall acting like every other guy in our stage, doesn’t win her any beauty contests. I mean I know she’s a girl, and I guess she is pretty……I just… I don’t know.

It’s Aya. The most non-girl, girl I’ve ever met.

“Come on. It’s a perfect day for it,” Haru bats those too large eyes of his and the resounding thwack she lands on the back of his head, is something I feel from a distance.

A habit she picked up from Dad when I’m being a ‘retarded genius’.

That look of utter remorse doesn’t last too long. Nothing really does with Haru, but I really don’t expect what comes next. Haru lifts and drops his shoulders before locking in on a trio of naming girls enjoying one of the cold treats he offered to buy her.

“First of all, if you actually want a girl to go out with you, don’t stare at another one’s ass when you’re asking. Second, no amount of cheap cologne is going to cover up that musky desperation.” It’s almost like the tousled layers of his hair are ears that flop down, but it doesn’t stop her stern disposition as she crosses her arms at him.

Aya and I have always gotten along well, and I don’t truly see her as a normal female. Still, whatever insight she shares regardless of the subject is always well-thought-out and on point. Broken down in ways that geniuses like me as well as simpletons like him get it.

Not to mention make you wonder how you could have missed the seemingly obvious. No matter how complex something is, Aya breaks it down point by point so it’s easy to digest.

As one of the only females not given to crying, hitting, screaming and otherwise caterwauling and making zero sense in the whirlwind of emotion. Ayame waits until she can say what she actually means rather than throwing a hissy fit or purposefully telling someone the opposite of what she actually expects.

I may never ask, especially with that sort of thing, but always pay attention when she pulls out the teacher voice she’s using on him.

My sort of cousin has never dated either, and says that falling in love takes a special kind of stupid. I know that we hit our stages at the same time and that she’s probably broaching Consent like I am. Haru and Tien are still in Growth, but I feel like the curiosity there is more rather than less.

Still, us talking about that stuff would be weird where most anything else isn’t given our sibling status. Technically, we’re adopted cousins, but living in the same house makes us siblings by practice.

Regardless, Aya is still candid, and will explain anything to anyone who asks, even if she’s fire red through it. With people who don’t know her, she seems standoffish, but is really just conservative. Tien, on the other hand, is shy, but all three of them are as opinionated as they are hyperactive, and only really show it around people they’re comfortable with.

While assumed Feyling, Ayame has the same increased appetite her partner in crime does, and is down right unsettled without ungodly amounts of activity. Difference is, her and I agree that there is a time and a place for everything.

Our own personal code tepee, t for time and p place, is always said when we’re behaving inappropriately to a situation, or she wants to wait to talk about something in private.

People suspect that Aya is one of the Blessed, but she’s never shown any other signs of it. Not that it matters in this region. Her eyes may be as exotic as the undecided water shades of her hair, but there’s no getting around her physical strength and senses. Mytha, casts, weaves…..

I swear the gods made her Fey because a demon with that kind of elementary mastery would offset the natural balance.

With whatever she’s said in mind, the wolf has decided to flex his overexaggerated muscles at Thara. Another noble who goes to the Hall rather than the Dojin. Just because the blonde has sprouted up, and her boobs are as big as her head, doesn’t mean she’s open or as understanding as Shin might be.

Even with girls in our class, it’s hit or miss on if girls want a relationship versus a friends with benefits versus a clandestine affair that no one knows about. “Um... no thanks.” The generally abrasive and outspoken blonde blushes at Haru skittering in mine and Tien’s direction as she side steps his offer.

I don’t know where Ayame went, but leaving the rascal on his own is never a good thing.

Half the reason I relented to Tien’s pestering was to spare whatever poor soul would be on the other end of the gadget he’d been working on all morning.

Thankfully or unfortunately, Thara disrupts me trying to recount every vegetable in the stands at the main access point of the entertainment part of the square. “Keep that up, and you’ll have a date to Harvest fest in no time,” Sara surprises me walking past in the opposite direction.

She’s always been a know-it-all, and far less accurate or explanatory about her comments than Ayame.

Still, the lift of her sandy brows and heat in her sky-blue eyes does make me question what I’m doing.

Whatever it is, is turning her on. Another Yon from the upper echelons of society, Toru, also lands a granite gray stare at me. Her eyes brightening to the lining of a silver cloud when I run my tongue down the back of the waffle edge and suck the now flat top of the dome in my mouth.

Feeling like there’s something else in my mouth, even if I can’t place what it is…….

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9: Hiro - Ice-Cream?