verdantgrove

Season: Winter

Location: Funeral Venue

Souma: I am freeee!

(Well, what should I do?! Think, Souma! Half an hour remains of the free time I have been given! That means, um, basically, thirty minutes!)

(I have to use this time right and do… do something! I cannot waste it!)

…But I’m hungry right now, huh.

I feel like Father forgot to feed me.

(What should I do? You cannot fight on an empty stomach.)

(Usually, it is Mother who makes the meals, but… She is going to give birth to my adorable little brother soon.)

(She is pregnant or something like that, so she cannot move. So I have no choice. She cannot drag her heavy body such a great distance to this place.)

(No matter that it is the…funeral. Of a great person that our clan cannot ignore.)

(Right, it seems that someone has passed away.)

(And it seems like that person was a really special person, and someone who was really important to us.)

(No, they got mad at me for calling her a “person,” huh?)

(That person was supposedly “God,” so…)

(...A god’s funeral? Gods can die too? Huh?)

(Well, when you die, you die! Mother and Father would never say something that isn’t true!)

Wah, thinking makes me hungry. I am starving. Not even the great Taikō1 would think it possible to have the bitter experience of starving to death in this affluent modern-day Japan.

(I wonder if I should ask Father to make food for meee…. But he seems busy, and he always says that men must not ever enter the kitchen…)

(Mm. If that is the case, then I suppose I have no choice but to look for food by myself after all.)

(If I look, surely there must be some kind of insect or animal that can serve as nourishment here.)

(Nay, now that I have looked, I see that there is food lined up all around me.)

(Could I be hallucinating?)

(I do not really get it, but this must be a divine favor! So this means, umm, God has saved me!)

(I shall graciously accept.)

(...But is it alright for me to just eat this without asking? Will I get scolded? But no one else is here, so I would not be able to get permission anyway, so…?)

(And waaah, I’m so hungry!)

Well, thank you for the food!

Munch, munch… Ugh, it’s so strong. Mother’s food is much more bland than this.

(Ah! Someone’s coming! Nooo, it will be so embarrassing if someone catches me stealing food! This is abhorrent conduct, unbefitting for the child of a family of warriors!)

(I—I have to hide… There’s a tablecloth on this table, so if I go under it, it should hide me.)

(Hurry, Souma! Gooo!)