Soon, they followed.

—-

There is a small warehouse on the second floor of the bookstore, which was converted into a temporary residence.

There was only one bed, and the air was a bit stuffy because it hadn’t been ventilated for a long time.

The store manager led the two to the room and did not stay for long. He closed the store door and left in a hurry. Asakura Yu thought he was quite careless. What if a bad boy came in and took the opportunity to steal his things? After all, the door of this store can only be locked from the outside, and it can be opened from the inside at any time.

Light up the room.

They turned on the heater, and the orange light was very warm.

this moment.

Outside the window was a white street scene covered with snow, as if they were the only two people left on the entire street.

“So warm.”

Xiao Hanekawa stretched out her hands and placed them around the heater, the soft firelight reflected on her delicate and cute face.

Asakura Yuu withdrew his gaze from the window and sighed, “It’s so quiet at night, a little lonely.”

Xiao Hanekawa thought it was very good.

For her, all troubles can be forgotten on the street where only he and she exist.

Chapter 193 The Lonely Whale

“I’ll turn off the light.”

“Ah.”

Xiao Hanekawa pulled the quilt to cover half of her face. Because the heater was on, there was still dim light around even though the lights were turned off.

But even so, the winter night is very cold.

Because there was only one bed, Asakura Yu naturally crawled into Hanekawa Tsubasa’s quilt. There was nothing wrong with it. Even if he had bad intentions, the hardware would not support it.

“Are we going to have class tomorrow?” Xiao Hanekawa turned her head to look at him, with a gentle smile on her cute face.

She discovered that Asakura Yu liked her smile very much, so she would not be stingy.

“Of course, we can’t let the adults worry.”

Although your parents may be worried to the point of being extremely anxious now.

Asakura Yu turned his head and looked at her for a few seconds, then smiled and changed his position, lying flat on his back and looking at the ceiling.

“Asakura-kun, aren’t we running away from home?”

“…If someone is found within 24 hours, it’s called a runaway. If someone is found after that, the police will file a case, and it has another name – missing.”

The former can be seen as a child’s angry behavior, but the latter is a bit too much.

“But I don’t want to go to school, and I don’t want to go back.”

“…When I was little, I didn’t want to go to school because I thought it was troublesome.” If Asakura Yu hadn’t been afraid of worrying his mother, he would have run around every day in elementary school and left his childish peers behind.

“puff……”

Xiao Hanekawa said with a smile: “Asakura-kun is the same age as me, but he is still imitating the tone of an adult.”

“I am mentally mature, so I am an adult. You are mentally immature, so you are a child.” Asakura Yu said stubbornly.

He admitted that what he had just thought was indeed very naive.

“The adult who took me away from home, hehe~” Little Hanekawa covered her little mouth with the bed sheet and let out a childish and cute laugh.

Asakura Yuya couldn’t stand being laughed at by a 7-year-old girl.

He changed the subject: “It’s getting late, go to bed.”

“I want to hear a story.” Hanekawa Tsubasa has never heard her parents tell her bedtime stories. Every night before going to bed, she reads borrowed books by herself and then goes to sleep when she is tired.

It can be said that her world before she met Asakura Yuu was filled with darkness and books, and she had no other “friends” except books. She is more mature than her peers and has similar troubles as Asakura Yuu.

“Well, let me tell you a story about a whale.”

Asakura Yu has a very good memory and basically never forgets the texts he has read.

“whale?”

“Whales have unique ways of communicating, using sounds we can’t hear, both for singing and talking.”

Asakura Yuu slowly narrated: “The protagonist of the story, Alice, is a beautiful whale. She is different from her other companions. She has never understood her companions’ words since she was a child. Such a whale is destined to be lonely all her life. When she grows up, she has no friends or family and is all alone. One day, she embarked on a journey to find a companion.”

“She started swimming from the warm waters of central California. Along the way, she sang alone, speaking words that no one could understand. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, no fish responded to her. Alice was optimistic. She did not give up. She firmly believed that one day, she would meet an equally unique whale…”

Xiao Hanekawa listened attentively and asked worriedly: “Did she find a companion in the end?”

“Alice swam and swam…”

Asakura Yu did not answer, but continued: “She is like a unique horn, sending a song that has never been heard by anyone and will never be heard by anyone in the future to the depths of the ocean. She swam across the warm waters and migrated to the cold currents of the North Pacific, getting farther and farther away, until even human detectors could not detect her. Helplessly, our story can only end here.”

Ok, end of story.

It ended badly.

“…Where are our friends?” Xiao Hanekawa was stunned.

What a sloppy story.

No, this isn’t a story at all, is it?

More like a documentary.

“I’m sorry, but Alice can’t find a partner because her singing frequency is very special, 52 Hz, while other whales sing at 12-25 Hz. Her partners can’t receive her singing, or they can’t understand her singing.”

“so poor.”

Hanekawa Tsubasa felt the same way and felt that the whale was very similar to himself.

“It’s not her fault that she’s lonely. It’s just that she’s too outstanding and different, so she’s excluded by other whales.” Asakura Yu expressed his opinion: “She played with seagulls along the way and saw many miracles. She saw the wonderland of Eden, liked the sunny skies of the Mediterranean, and liked the snowy scenery of Siberia. She has her own happiness, but we humans don’t understand it.”

Apart from dying alone, Alice lived a very free life…

“But she has no friends or companion.”

“She’s very free.”

Xiao Hanekawa muttered, “She’s so lonely. Even if she’s free, will she really be happy?”

You may appear strong on the outside, but you are crying secretly.

‘A whale pretending to be strong.’

At this moment, Asakura Yuu suddenly thought of Yukinoshita Yukino, “Well… indeed. If Alice could make friends she likes, she might give up those beautiful views on her own initiative.”

“Right, right?”

Tsubasa Hanekawa felt that the whale was so pitiful.

If she also knew Alice, she would definitely want to be friends with her.

Oh, yes, there is a girl named Yukinoshita Yukino in our class who is very lonely! Let’s try to make friends with her when we get back!

“Okay, now that we’ve finished the story, can we go to sleep?”

“I want to hold you in my arms while we sleep.” Xiao Hanekawa came closer and hugged his arm.

Asakura Yu kept repeating to himself that he was not a lolita complex, then closed his eyes and prepared to sleep.

Half an hour later.

In the attic with only dim light, two small figures hugged each other in their sleep.

—-

Before school the next day.

Asakura Yu left a few strings of lottery numbers for the kind shop owner. They were all things he accidentally glimpsed in the future. His memory was completely useless, so it was probably only at this time that they could come in handy.

Riding his bicycle, he first took Hanekawa Tsubasa to school.

Then he told his mother that he was safe.

After finishing the boring classes during the day, Asakura Yu rode his bicycle to Hanekawa Tsubasa’s house again.

As a result, as soon as he reached the door, he heard the sound from inside. This shabby and cheap rental house had poor sound insulation.

“Where did you go last night?” The voice of Hanekawa Tsubasa’s father sounded a lot younger than he remembered.

The answer she got was a lie from Hanekawa Tsubasa: “I went to a classmate’s house.”

At this time, her mother asked again: “Did you go there on your own initiative, or were you taken there by your classmates? You said you wanted to go out and play, and you didn’t come home all night. You just left a note. Do you know how worried we were?”

“S-Sorry.” Hanekawa Tsubasa’s voice was filled with fear, and he said timidly: “I took the initiative to ask to go. Mom and Dad have been arguing recently, and I…”

It turned out that yesterday, Hanekawa Tsubasa did not leave a note saying she was running away from home, but instead said she was going out to play.

She didn’t even reveal that it was Asakura Yu who lured her away from home…

“It’s okay, mom and dad are not blaming you. Just, you have to tell us next time.” Hanekawa Tsubasa’s mother’s voice softened.

Hanekawa Tsubasa’s father also said, “Xiaoyi, we won’t quarrel anymore. Dad promises you.”

“Well, I know I was wrong.”

Asakura Yu listened to the conversation of the three people at the door, then turned around and went home silently.

This time, the two of them ran away from home alone, and the result seemed to be good? At least for the time being, the monitor didn’t have to worry about his parents quarreling.

—-

Chapter 194 A Christmas for Two of Us

The following week.

Asakura Yuu finished his last course at school safely and started his winter vacation.

On the third day after he ran away from home, he took time to visit Hanekawa Tsubasa’s home and apologized to both parents. Although Hanekawa Tsubasa took all the responsibility, Asakura Yuu could not accept it with peace of mind. The former is the gentleness of Hanekawa Tsubasa, and the latter is the responsibility of Asakura Yuu as a man.

This incident surprised Hanekawa Tsubasa’s parents. They originally thought that the friend Hanekawa Tsubasa was talking about was a girl in the same class, but they never thought that it would be a boy. Because they were worried that their daughter would fall in love too early, their marriage, which had cracks, became more harmonious.

At last.

After a long time of no response and no indication of favorability, the system, which was in a downtime state, finally gave him some response.

[Host, you have accepted a new task, please check it! ]

[You have obtained the task – Time and Space Retracing. ]

[Introduction: The host’s current time and space disorder is detected, and the system will help you return to the future. ]

[Task requirements: Wait for 3 days.]

[Task reward: none]

[Note: In order to avoid adverse effects in the future, the system will blur this memory for you in the past node. And after arriving in the future, the system will compensate you for the points reward you received in the past during the system downtime. ]

Asakura Yu could only sigh that this crappy system was still useful.

However, Asakura Yu had a hunch that it was just worried that Asakura Yu would take advantage of the loophole and re-rate the girls whose favorability had been increased… This task was released after Asakura Yu had the idea of ​​contacting Yukino and Yui, and it was full of coincidences.

After waiting and waiting, Asakura Yu waited until Christmas Eve.

Spending Christmas alone is like spending Valentine’s Day without a lover.

Asakura Yuu really wanted to have a Christmas party or something, but unfortunately… he had no friends at all in elementary school, even more lonely than Yukinoshita Yukino… Well, it seems a bit too much to use the term “Yukinoshita Minister” to describe loneliness.

Let me put it this way, even Hikigaya Hachiman is not as lonely as him.

‘Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Oh, it’s not happy at all.’

He complained slightly in his heart and looked at the beautifully decorated Christmas tree in the middle of the living room.

Asakura Yu’s mother and father will not be back until very late today, probably around 12 o’clock in the evening.

You see, there is no holiday for Christmas, and I don’t know why everyone likes it. Even Jesus himself doesn’t like it, because his birthday is not written in the Bible. December 12th is the birthday of the sun god stipulated by Rome, which is not Jesus’ birthday at all.

Of course, Asakura Yu is not Jesus, so he doesn’t know what Jesus thinks.

Zhuangzi once said, “You are not a fish, so how do you know the joy of a fish?”

He didn’t understand the happiness of fish. He only knew that his parents were busy at work tonight and couldn’t come back…