Chapter 6: My Teacher’s Grandfather Is... Uh...

[AI CENSORSHIP BLOCKED THIS CHUNK - RAW ENGLISH RETAINED]

There was a large, old inn clinging to the bare rock of the mountain side. It stood out among the bungalows that made up the rest of the village. With the sun setting on the other side of the mountains, dark shadows seeped from the inn walls, giving it a creepy vibe. It looked like something out of a horror film. The walls looked like you could tear them down with your bare hands. A horrible draft seeped through the cracks in those walls, and weed ran amok all over the property. This was the only form of accommodation in the village, so we’d brought Iroha and Ozu here to check in. Sumire’s family were expecting to meet her fiancé—dragging those two along with us would just have been weird. We wanted to make sure they had somewhere to rest before doing anything else.

The Koei Inn. Iroha looked up at the sign of the three-story building and let out an impressed whistle.

“This place is messed up!”

“Don’t let the owner hear you.” I couldn’t help but scold her, even though I agreed with her assessment.

“This place gets zero sunlight, and looks more like a holding pen for animals than an inn,” Ozu said. “All you need is a great detective staying here and it’s bound to result in a locked-room murder mystery.”

“Sure, if this was a manga or something.”

And since Ozu was constantly having encounters that I only expected to see in a fictional setting, I hoped he would shut up in case his words came true. We should be fine though, right? His specialty was romantic comedy clichés, not mysteries. Right?

“This is the newest building in the village. It’s only nine years old! A total loli!”

“That just makes it a million times worse! What could’ve happened in those nine years that it ended up like this?!”

Either its owner hadn’t looked after this place at all, or some supernatural force had acted on it to make it fit in with its surroundings. That might’ve been the real mystery here.

Anyway, enough of my complaining. Ozu and Iroha just had to complete check-in and they’d be all set.

“Ohoho! What’s a bunch of youngsters like you doing out here?”

We stepped through the entrance under the tiled gate, where an elderly innkeeper in traditional dress greeted us at the reception. She was horrendously short, what with the extreme angle of her back. In fact, she only came up to my stomach. Her wrinkled face was deathly pale, as though she had crawled out of her grave just the day before to come and run this place.

I shivered. The more I looked at her, the more gruesome the images in my mind became.

“How many rooms would you like? The rooms can fit four, but if you’d rather split up boy-girl, you can have two.”

“That sounds good, tha—”

“Wait, Aki,” Sumire interrupted me. “My family might have prepared a room for me in case I wanted to stay the night. Why not get just the one room? It’ll be cheaper.”

“You think so? And you’re okay with us having a mixed room?”

“Idon’t mind!” Iroha said innocently, poking her head forward between us. “Sure, they’re boys, but it’s just this loser and my brother. They wouldn’t do anything to me. I actually think it’d be more dangerous for them if theydidn’thave me!”

“Ooh, wait, that’s a great point! There are bound to be sparks if we put these two in a room together! All right! We’ll go boy-girl! I’ll cover the cost!”

“Stay away from me, Pervert-sensei.” I put my hand on Sumire’s panting face to keep her back. Then I gave Iroha a sharp glare. “Splitting up girls and boys is just common sense. Besides, I wouldn’t get any sleep if I had to share a room with you.”

“Why’s that then? It’s ’cause you wouldn’t stop thinking about how I’mright there, isn’t it? Well, I guess that’s normal for guys in puberty. Sharing a room with a cute girl like me is bound to wake up the little man downstairs!” Iroha grinned.

“Wrong. It’s because you’re gonna stay up all night bothering me.”

“I wouldnever! You always assume the worst! Besides, how can I go all out when Ozuma’s there? Just a little something called manners.”

“As if I’m gonna believe that. Ozu’s presence has never stopped you before.”

“You won’t give up, huh? If you’re that sure, why don’t we make a bet?”

“What kind of bet?”

“If I pull some kinda prank that interrupts your sleep, I lose. I’ll take the L, and then you can have a prize for winning!”

“What kind of prize?”

Iroha grinned before grabbing the two voluptuous mounds of flesh on her chest through her clothes. She then tilted her head at the most alluring angle possible (around forty-five degrees).

“You can cop a feel.”

A goddess of fertility. A personification of Mother Nature celebrating the melon harvest in Turkey. A gravure model with a large, perfectly-molded chest. Image after erotic image flashed through my mind, each getting more and more erotic. Paintings, photos, erotic drawings, and erotic, erotic, erotic, DAMN YOU, IROHA, stop messing with my head! Why d’you have to grab yourself like that?!

I forced myself to look away from her to put a stop to the incessant (and indecent) mental images. My discomfort didn’t escape Iroha’s notice.

“Iknewthat was on your mind!” she laughed. “You’re too cute, Senpai!”

“Y-You know shit! Why would I be interested in two globs of fat?”

“Ooh, I wonder? Dunno if I believe you, Senpai!”

“Doesn’t matter! I don’t care, and that’s the truth!”

Of course, that wasn’t the truth. Not in the least. I mean, I was a guy just like any other. Of course I was interested in that sort of thing. If a girl said I could touch her boobs as much as I wanted, no strings attached, I’d have a very hard time refusing—unless that girl was Iroha.

When Iroha said “no strings attached,” you could bet there were strings attached. She might have been outright lying. The moment I reached out for them, she’d be like, “Just kidding! You’re such a gross virgin!” and then I’d never hear the end of it forat leastanother two weeks.

“Why don’t you give it up already, Aki? The real problem here is that we can’t afford two rooms,” Ozu said, his eyes flitting between me and Iroha as we glared at each other. “Our carefully budgeted travel plans were already out the window the moment we had to stay here. We’ll have to change our hotel booking too. I don’t think it’s a great idea to cut into our budget even more.”

“Ugh. I can’t argue with that.”

We’d had a hotel booked by the beach, but now we’d have to change our arrival date. I could see a cancellation fee in our future, as well as the expense of having to book new rooms. The Alliance’s budget was really going to take a hit.

“So, how many rooms would you like?” the old woman asked impatiently.

We had no choice.

“Just one...please,” I croaked, like a villain who had finally accepted his loss in a battle of psychological wits. I looked at Iroha, despair overwhelming me as phantom bloody tears rolled down my cheeks.

She smiled sweetly and gave me a few reassuring pats on the shoulder. “Let’s make it a good one okay, Senpai?”

Dammit. Did she have to grin at me like that?

We finished up our disaster of a check-in.

“Uh, could I leave bringing in the luggage to you, Iroha-chan and Ozuma-kun?” Sumire suddenly asked nervously. “Aki and I need to get going.”

“Ah, right.”

Check-in was the least of our problems. Sumire and I had to face the music. The next few hours could determine the rest of Murasaki Shikibu-sensei’s creative career, and her life. We couldn’t screw this up.

“Let’s go see the head of the Kageishi family. Let’s go see my grandfather!”