Chapter 4-1
Next Page
VOLUME 1
Chapter 4 – Say It Before You Regret It
Chapter 4: Part 1
I couldn’t stand the chirping of the cicadas.
On the morning news, the short-sleeved weather lady announced that “My, oh my,” today was going to be yet another stinking hot summer day in the Japanese archipelago. “My, oh my.”
“Substitute y for x… right. Then, uh… with z you uh… ummmm… I don’t understand this at all. Lend me your advice, Hentai Prince.”
“Are we making paper planes with this handout? Awesome, let’s start a tournament. Making paper planes fly is my specialty.”
“I’m asking you seriously! How about I do the questions on the back of the sheet and you do the ones on the front, good sir? Then we’ll swap.”
“Nice try, Ponta. There are no questions on the back.”
Oh man, I thought. I wanted to race out of school and sit under the air conditioner at home.
You’d think that once the end-of-semester exams were over, the long holidays would start. It was practically D-Day for us. And yet here we were in the peak of summer, stuck in a classroom taking supplementary maths classes.
It all started when we received the notice.
“During your exam break, we are giving out free coupons for a family restaurant as compensation for studying so hard. Go finish your duty before you stuff yourselves, idiots.”
It was on the “Life is short, so we’ll forgive you even if you rebelled against the entire system” level of leniency.
I chanted “There are no rebels without reasons” as I went to school, but there was no one to hear me, only the printouts that were left for us on the teacher’s desk. There were no free coupons, just self-serve supplementary lessons.
“It might not be the North-South Divide,” said Ponta, “but isn’t this a little unfair? Hentai Prince, won’t you sing a song for spring?”
“Spring already ended. We’re in the depths of the rainy season now.”
“Tut tut tut, that doesn’t do it for me. Is that how far you’ll go pretending not to know? In the one-two-three years that I’ve known you, you haven’t once gone on a hot date like the other day. I have a witness testimony to prove it.”
“…I get the feeling you just made that up like in a game of Chinese Whispers.”
“Whaaaat? I would never do anything like cheating. Good sir, do you not understand the extent to which the other guys wish despair and poverty upon you?”
Whether it was because of the heat, Ponta was doing his best to get on my nerves today. He prodded me with his pencil relentlessly.
“I thought we were best buddies… since when did you start drifting away from me? First, the Tsutsukakushi sisters and now Azuki Azusa – it’s like a royal Arab harem. What kind of trick did you pull to get them to hang out with you? I’m about to cry with jealousy here, man.”
“Didn’t you lose your horniness, Ponta?”
“Tut tut tut, that’s another matter entirely. That doesn’t stop me being jealous of you. Whenever I see one of the masterpieces by Van Gogh, Millet or Monet, I want to pick it apart and appreciate how it’s crafted.”
“Uh, it’s nice to hear you put me on the same level as a picture… hey, did you mention the Tsutsukakushi sisters just now? Ponta, you knew that the Steel King had a sister?”
“But of course! I only needed to see them from a distance to know. The little sister looks exactly like the older one – or were you too stupid to realise?”
“…you’re right,” I sighed. “Anyone who’s been with someone all this time but never even looked at her properly is beyond stupid. If it happened once, it’ll just keep happening over and over again.”
Although the formulas were right there on the front of the sheet, I didn’t write a single number in the blanks. My hand stopped moving entirely.
It had been three days since our fight at the arcade. I hadn’t heard from Tsutsukakushi or Azuki Azusa since that day. The reason was simple: I still didn’t know what I should say to them.
Azuki Azusa wasn’t an angelic fairy from some painting – she was a normal girl. Tsutsukakushi was no different. She had feelings just like Azuki Azusa did, and more emotions stewed around inside her than she could ever show on the surface. I didn’t understand like the idiot I was.
By being so fixated on getting my façade back, I was only ever able to see their outward characteristics, as if they were characters from a game. I thought solely in terms of tactics like “how about I make her return to her peasant form?” or “how can I make her abandon her façade?” and in doing so, I had kind of overlooked the single most important thing.
That is, how would a girl feel, being deceived by the boy she was dating?
“I don’t mind at all,” Azuki Azusa had said. But that wasn’t the truth. Her lies didn’t help her. I was sure that look she had on her face back then was that of a dog abandoned by its owner. It wouldn’t stop haunting me.
And the cause of her withdrawn reaction – it was what those girls had said to her. About transferring, about her friends. Maybe it was that kind of problem.
I didn’t want to think so deeply about something like that. I wanted to think about girls in swimsuits instead. I wanted to think about things like the magic of leggings or the insides of skirts, to live life without ever facing the difficult things.
But the more I tried not to think about it, the more my head hurt. I couldn’t help but keep seeing Azuki Azusa in my mind’s eye.
In the end, I never got anything done on the supplementary homework.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES
(NanoDesu) A Translation of the Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko Light Novel 
finallyyyyyyy, he is repenting at least, there is hope for you yet.