I (30), Who Works for a Black Company and Died While Regretting My Gloomy Life, Started Over From High School! - Chapter 69

69. Welcome back! The trap is ready!

My name is Niihama Shinchirou.

I’m a high school sophomore, an ex-industrial worker who is going back in time and redoing his youth.

Oh my god, it’s raining like a bitch…!

I closed my umbrella at the entrance of my house and complained about the sudden heavy rain.

I had heard from the weather forecast that the weather would suddenly change from sunny to rainy, but the rainfall was much heavier than expected. I was just reading a book at the library today. …… I should have left a little earlier.

“Phew… I had an umbrella, but I got pretty wet…”

My pants, which had become heavy from splashing, and the sleeves of my shirt, which were wet and cool, were quite uncomfortable.

I crossed the threshold of the entrance hallway thinking I would have to change my clothes.

We are a family of three, but most of the nearly ten shoes lined up in the entryway belong to Kanako and her mother.

And I had no way of knowing what kind of shoes they had – I didn’t even realize at the time that there were shoes not from my family mixed in among them.

(Nn… hearing sounds from the kitchen means that Kanako is back.)

I thought there was something going on and I heard, “Gah! Oh, there are too many tea leaves in the teacup!” Unusually, she seemed to be struggling to brew her own tea. She is still the same girl with low domestic girl power.

(Speaking of girls, was Shijouin’s girls’ party yesterday? I wish I could meet with Shijouin-san too, but I need an excuse for that…)

Although we have been communicating via email, we have not met in person recently because of summer vacation. Frankly, I miss her very much.

In this day and age, video phone calls aren’t that easy to make …… [TLN: Man, the 2020 era is just full of that because of that shitty virus.]

“I’d love to see you…”

Muttering, I turned my feet to the washroom in a very natural way.

It was raining and my body was wet all over, my clothes needed to be put in the washing machine, and I needed a towel. It’s a natural thing to do.

I had noticed that the light was on in the bathroom.

But Kanako was in the kitchen, and it was obvious that Mom had not yet returned, since her car was not back in the garage. So what was my fault for thinking it was just a light I forgot to turn off?

Then I opened the sliding door to the bathroom without hesitation, making a loud rattling sound.

And then-

“Hya…!?”

“…”

I saw a presence that shouldn’t have been there, and a voice that shouldn’t have been heard echoed in my eardrums.

It blew a fuse in my head, temporarily shutting down my thinking.

What came to my brain, which restarted two seconds later, were the words hallucination, delusion, and daydreaming, words that are linked to false perceptions of reality. I tried to find a peaceful conclusion that she could not be here and that this was a false image presented by my shallow desire.

…That’s as far as I could get away from reality.

Mercilessly, my brain comes to its senses and tells me this is real.

The girl of my dreams, Shijouin Haruka, is standing in the bathroom of my house with her bare skin exposed.

(Is, eh, na, fuh…! Hey, what!? I don’t even know what’s going on…! What’s going on, and… where’s the glitch… making this happen?!)

No, this has to be a glitch just because it is so strange.

I came home as usual and found Shijouin-san standing in our bathroom, wearing my shirt with the front buttons fully open over her underwear.

If such an unorthodox super development is possible in reality, it would be possible that one day the Terminator would suddenly be sipping tea in the living room.

“N-N-N-Niihama-kun…! Ah, ah, ah! No, no, no! I borrowed this shirt out of necessity, not because I have some smell fetish…”

Shijouin-san dropped her arm, which was close to her mouth, and although she should have screamed, her face turned bright red and she was upset for reasons that were not clear to me.

“Shh, trust me…! I can’t live like this if people think I’m a girl with special tastes!”

“Hey, Shijouin-san! Front! …Hey!”

With tears in her eyes, Shijoin-san came closer and closer to me.

But she is wearing only an unbuttoned shirt, and her body, in her underwear, is coming closer and closer to my view.

Two huge fruits wrapped in a pink bra, shorts in a skirt that is usually kept secret, a tight white waist and a sensational navel- the boy instinct in me is glued to the parts that I cannot normally see.

“OI! Remember what you look like! You’re almost naked!”

“Eh… ah, hyaaaaaaaaa! Sorry, I’m sorry…!”

Finally realizing how exposed she is, Shijouin-san’s face turns an embarrassed shade of vermilion, and she closes her shirt with her hand and crouches down as she is.

At least I just barely avoided a situation that would have punctured my mental capacity.

No, but what’s really going on here?!

Why is Shijoin-san in my house and half-naked in the first place!

“Brother…”

“Kanako! No, this is not what you think…!”

My sister, who seemed to have heard the commotion and rushed to the scene, was looking at me with a stern look.

“No wait…! Sure, I admit I’m guilty of seeing Shijouin-san in her underwear, but it’s a bit harsh to scorn me for this?!”

“No, well, I know that…”

Kanako mutters this with a huff and a sigh.

“Huh?”

“I think it’s a little tough to ask you to notice Shijouin-san’s shoes, which are about the same size as Mom’s, because Mom gets new shoes every once in a while. And it’s my own fault that I was so focused on making tea in the first place that I didn’t notice that my own brother had come home.”

“Oh, oh…!”

I was impressed by my sister’s calm consideration of the scene, which in a romantic comedy is without exception a bust. I’m impressed that you can think so rationally, Kanako…!　

“But–”

“Huh?”

What, why are you going behind my back?

“I still have to make up for the fact that my brother saw Shijouin in his underwear, and the only way to settle this very complicated situation is to play the romcom manga card! So I’m being a little unreasonable, but oryaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!”

“Gabaaaah!”

Kanako’s auxiliary leap kick explodes into my back, and I am blown away and plopped down in the hallway with a shudder.

“N-Niihama-kun?!”

And the half-naked Shijoin-san gives me a concerned voice, but it is hard not to look in that direction.

I mean, isn’t it time for someone to explain the situation…?