Uneasy daily life

"Yukino-chan, are you trying to get him drunk?"

"...Does Sister know about Bai Jun's past life?"

"Last life?"

Chapter Thirty-Five: A Question of the Heart with Regret

The crescent moon hangs in the night, the spring breeze brings tranquility, steam rises from the hot spring, and peace flows into the heart.

The spacious hot spring pool radiates heat, with a three-tiered bamboo raft separating the men's and women's pools. There are no other guests here, giving one a sense of satisfaction from having the view all to oneself.

Angelina, her long brown hair coiled on her head and wrapped in a towel to prevent it from falling into the water, leaned against the edge of the pool and let out a comfortable sigh. Her back rested against the rounded, uneven rocks on the poolside, which resembled a massage pillow. The warm water caressed her skin, initially causing a slight burning sensation, but quickly turning into a warm current coursing through her body, making her aching and tired from practicing martial arts with Chongyue feel exceptionally relaxed.

free……

Freedom!

I have a feeling that my superpowers definitely won't go out of control tonight.

Sure enough, escaping into the wild brings more fun and exciting things, whether it's freely using superpowers or experiencing new things in unfamiliar places...

My neck feels a bit cold.

Angelina shifted her position, sinking her body into the hot spring, pulling her neck in with her. Her head felt a little dizzy from the increased blood flow, and she unconsciously cleared her mind, enjoying the feeling of the hot spring.

It feels so good.

The door opened, and Angelina, not really wanting to move, didn't bother turning around to look: "Miss Xi, what snacks did you buy?"

"Dried fruit, soft-boiled eggs, and drinks include a little sake, fruit juice, and mineral water."

A cool, detached voice replied.

"Huh? Mineral water can be considered a beverage?"

Angelina mumbled sleepily, "I want to eat a soft-boiled egg. The soft-boiled egg I had on our last school trip to Jinde was really delicious..."

"Anxinyuan, although you can eat while soaking in a hot spring, it's more appropriate to eat during the break after you've finished soaking. You wouldn't want to be soaking in a hot spring that's been cooked with other people's food scraps and drinks, would you?"

"Oh, right, that makes sense. If I think about it that way, hot springs are like soup, and everyone else is like dumplings with different fillings... Hmm?"

Angelina suddenly felt something was wrong. She turned around in the water, grabbed the edge of the pool with both hands, and met the gazes of Yukino Yukinoshita and Haruno Yukinoshita.

What are you doing here... Oh, it's normal for you to be here.

"Oh, what a coincidence, you're here to soak in the hot springs too."

Angelina gave a curt greeting.

"It is quite a coincidence." Yukinoshita Haruno nodded with a smile, and asked casually, "What task did that rascal assign you?"

"Huh? White figure? No, there isn't." Angelina quickly shook her head in denial. "I came out on vacation with Miss Xi. This has nothing to do with the superior!"

"That's it."

Yukino gave an ambiguous reply, dipped her leg into the hot spring, tasted the temperature with her toes, and then plunged into it. The water level rose steadily, perhaps because of its large size, making it feel as if the water was flowing over her chest even faster. The water level rose until it reached her shoulders, accompanied by a comfortable murmur, and ripples spread outwards.

Angelina felt inexplicably pressured and embarrassed, so she moved to the side. When she turned her head, she saw Yukino Yukinoshita holding a towel to her chest with one hand and supporting herself on a rock by the pool with the other, sitting down and reaching into the water from the other side.

Ugh?

Angelina sensed a subtle atmosphere, but feeling a bit dizzy from soaking, she didn't think much of it and watched Yukino Yukinoshita enter the water. Her slender body slid into the water from the edge of the pool, the color of the water making her body appear hazy and indistinct. Perhaps feeling that she had sunk too much, Yukino Yukinoshita propped herself up a little, and the hot spring water that had covered her shoulders receded, leaving two small hot springs on her delicate and prominent collarbone.

What is Anxinyuan thinking?

"Oh, how calm and uneventful..."

Angelina replied instinctively.

The hot spring was rather quiet.

“Ah—I meant that Yukino's movement into the water was beautiful!” Angelina quickly explained, “Calm and composed means elegant!”

"puff."

Yukino's simple laughter caused great harm, leaving Angelina frozen in embarrassment.

"Is that so?" Yukino Yukinoshita replied calmly, casually changing the subject of her teasing. "Anshinin-kun, has Haku-kun ever said anything strange to you? Like things you only talk about with other espers?"

“Huh?” Angelina retorted, “Superpowered people aren’t all that different… Oh, at most they do all sorts of strange things. For example, Miss Yu, whom I know, likes to stay in her paintings and doesn’t want to come out. Her way of traveling is to have me take her sightseeing. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything that can only be talked about among superpowered people.”

The two sisters suddenly approached from both sides.

Angelina's head was filled with questions. Realizing something was wrong, she instinctively clutched the towel to her chest: "Uh... is something wrong?"

“Haku-kun said he had a past life,” Yukino Yukinoshita said.

Yukino Shino shrugged: "Although I don't know what happened, the reason behind his sometimes strange, sometimes accurate, and sometimes inexplicable words is probably his experience in his past life."

"?"

Angelina blurted out instinctively, "Reincarnated into another world?"

Yukino Yukinoshita suddenly brought her face close to hers, her expression calm yet tinged with curiosity: "So, Anshinin does know something, after all?"

What do I know? Isn't this a very common setting in light novels?

Before Angelina could retort, Yukino Yukinoshita interjected, "Secrets make people closer. I understand the feeling of wanting to keep things to yourself and not wanting others to know..."

"To put it simply," Yukino Yukinoshita said with a smile, already putting her arm around Angelina, "since everyone's relationships are already a mess, there's no need to hide these secrets. Let's just lay everything out clearly, and we'll surprise that rascal later~"

"?"

Angelina belatedly realized the misunderstanding surrounding Sakurajima Mai...

"No! I don't have such lewd relationships with you!"

Whether it was from soaking in the hot spring for too long or from being overwhelmed by her emotions, Angelina blushed and loudly defended herself.

Yukino Yukinoshita coldly retorted, "It's your way of thinking that's lewd!"

“Yes, yes, we’re very lewd.” Yukinoshita Haruno squeezed Angelina’s shoulder with her hand and smiled. “9527-senpai, just confess honestly. You don’t want to be interrogated in some weird way, do you?”

"Huh? I already said no!" Angelina said, quite exasperated. "I'm not dating the officer! I really am not! Why do you all think I am? Although the officer told me 'I like you,' even a dog can be liked by an officer, right? Although I did appear in the play that day, I was just a minor, insignificant supporting role that the officer drafted!"

"You're completely slandering me! You're adding weird and strange settings to my character! Besides—you don't actually want your commander to have another girlfriend, do you?"

The Yukino sisters exchanged glances, both somewhat uncertain... Perhaps, maybe, there really was some misunderstanding?

"That's all there is to it! My superior is acting crazy, but I have a clear conscience. We're just an unusual superior-subordinate relationship, nothing strange about it!"

Angelina, her face full of righteous indignation, even raised her right hand: "Yes, yes! I swear!"

Then, she met Yukino's complicated gaze.

"Well, that's what secrets are like," Yukino Haruno said with a grin. "Once you've revealed it to one person, revealing it a second time is very easy."

Yukino Yukinoshita had mixed feelings. She was happy because it seemed that only she knew the secret of Haku-kun's past life, but she was also annoyed because she had revealed the secret herself in order to confirm more things, only to find that only she knew it.

But none of that matters...

"Ah, if I really have to say what the secret is, isn't it the commander's double assassin, the Queen?"

Angelina hesitated, "Uh... this doesn't really seem like a secret, does it?"

Just as the three were about to continue talking, the door opened again, and Yukinoshita's mother and Yu, whom they happened to meet, stepped in together.

I'll think about it later, or discuss it with others, or it might be feasible to ask Bai Jun directly...

Yukino Yukinoshita temporarily put aside her thoughts and suddenly remembered a question from the past.

My older sister is better than me in some ways—no, not better! It's more like her values ​​are more in line with animal instincts. Is it possible that this is a genetic mutation inherited from our family?

Yukino's gaze inadvertently swept over her mother.

"..."

This is a good thing, it means there are no problems with my family's genetics, and I still have considerable potential!

Yukino stretched and noticed the three-tiered bamboo wall separating the hot spring pools. She simply waded through the hot spring water to get there.

If that jerk has some mysterious past life... Ah, I remember now, he seemed to have mentioned it casually before, or rather, mentioned it without any care. Of course, it wasn't the kind of "what happened in my past life" kind of thing; he just rambled on a bit as if it were a sudden thought, so no one would have thought of it from that angle.

Yukino is probably feeling awkward and bothered, especially when she can't understand her mother's thoughts. On the contrary, the rascal is able to describe some of the complex feelings that even her mother can't understand—is it because the rascal has experienced them that he can express them so empathetically?

Thinking about this kind of thing would probably make me feel distressed.

If you have loved, hated, felt melancholy, grieved, and suffered, and all those emotions have burned away into ashes in your heart...

what about me?

Are my pain, troubles, sorrows, and hardships just scenery you've already encountered? But for me, whether it's liking someone or being liked by someone, it's all a first time. It's clearly a first experience and feeling, yet it feels like I'm following in old footsteps step by step, something that feels custom-made... When I think about it, the waves of doubt can't help but shake the emotions in my heart.

Hmm? Why am I starting to think about this kind of thing?

Yukinoshita Haruno sorted out her thoughts, then suddenly frowned, looked at her younger sister wading through the water, and asked suspiciously, "Yukino-chan, did you spread the 'awkwardness virus' to me?"

"?"

Before Yukino Yukinoshita could speak, they could faintly hear conversations coming from the other end of the bamboo raft.

"Get out of here! You bastard who wouldn't take your pants off at any other urinal, but insisted on coming to my urinal to take them off!"

The white figure roared angrily.

Yukinoshita's father, who was approaching, looked embarrassed and coughed, putting on airs: "I'm your older brother!"

"That's even worse!" Bai Ying splashed a bunch of water at him, her voice panicked. "Big brother, you can't! We can't let Auntie down!"

"climb!"

Yukinoshita's father looked disgusted: "What kind of nonsense is going on in your head, you brat? Your aunt... no! I feel like you've messed up the family hierarchy. Identity is very important..."

Talking about this and that, and about everything under the sun, the father sat down next to the white figure in the snow.

So, Yukinoshita, sitting in the other hot spring, stared at both of them.

Half of the death stare was gone, and I instantly felt much lighter... No! If before it was 'you bastard,' now it's 'both of you!'

The killing intent was not evenly distributed; it was even doubled!

"Goodwill always diminishes with each passing year, while malice multiplies," Bai Ying reminded him. "Brother, you should sit further away."

"Isn't this all your doing?!" Yukinoshita's father immediately pointed and berated, "What strange ideas did you instill in your aunt? Look at the trouble she's caused!"

“How can this be called a strange idea? Auntie just wanted to understand her feelings. I just provided some inaccurate information so that she could take action and face the issue.” Bai Ying spread her hands and said, “If we have to trace the source, it’s that Auntie realized that she had unknowingly hurt her daughter. She thinks it was wrong. When she looks back, she realizes that she was also treated wrongly, but she didn’t feel that way at the time.”

Yukinoshita's father frowned and asked, "So what's going on now?"

"I wasn't there, how would I know?" Bai Ying asked curiously. "Brother, tell me about it?"

Repeat after me, are you trying to stab my father-in-law a few more times? Do you want me to get my head chopped off?!

"To put it simply, your aunt summarized her various feelings for Dad and the reasons behind those feelings. There are many things I don't know," Yukinoshita's father summarized. "At the end, she said something you told her, but not much else, which is quite confusing..."

"Oh."

Bai Ying suddenly realized: "Because she was determined to be with her older brother, she lost her admiration for her adoptive father, and that's how the grown-up aunt launched a patricide campaign? No wonder the adoptive father looked at the older brother like a man with a wooden stick in his hand and a field of rapeseed flowers in front of him."

Thus, the murderous intent was concentrated on one person.

"..."

Yukinoshita's father was speechless for a moment, then abandoned all politeness and gave the order with a stern face: "Quick! Make your godfather happy!"

"Shouldn't you, elder brother, be empathetic?" Bai Ying asked curiously. "If you want to comfort your godfather, wouldn't your lukewarm relationship with the hero and 9528 be the best option?"

The father stared at the white figure with a deathly gaze beneath the snow.

Great, I can relate now!

A moment later, three figures sat cross-legged against the bamboo raft, arranged from left to right, the old, the middle-aged and the young.

Under the snow, the father looked to the right and saw that although Lian Po was old, he was still strong. He looked to the left and saw that although Fengxian was young, he was already as fierce as a tiger or leopard.

As she reaches middle age, her pregnancy begins to show.

"What stupid thing did he do?" Yukinoshita said calmly. "Tell me, so I can have a laugh."

Bai Ying said, "Big Brother is pulling in his stomach."

Yukinoshita's father: "Ahem... After all, I'm in management..."

“You little brat, remember to exercise tomorrow… From now on, if you have nothing to do, you can go to the company’s construction site and do some manual labor. You’ve been sitting in the office for too long, have you forgotten everything I taught you back then?” Grandpa Yukinoshita sneered. “If you die before me, leaving behind an orphan and a widow, I will definitely advise my daughter to remarry.”

hiss--!