But those faraway lips could be close so soon. Today. Today, they were going to be his.
Naota grabbed Mamimi's hand. He stood up and pulled her away from the river. "Come on!"
"Don't come near me!"
Finally having managed to stand in a shallow part of the river, Kitsurubami took a small hand pistol from her waterproof holster. The mouth of the gun was directed at none other than the robot Canti, who was standing on the riverbank.
Canti was motionless like a statue, looking straight at Kitsurubami.
I'm scared…
Kitsurubami hadn't been planning to do anything more than snipe at a distance. Now, when unexpectedly encountering the target at close range, she was overwhelmed by the threat, and having almost no real battlefield experience, she instinctively pulled on the pistol trigger. Although all her bullets hit dead on, they merely made dull metallic sounds. The robot's blue body was built with a resistant quality that bullets could not impact.
Kitsurubami had looked through the robot's data file, of course, considering it was her target. She knew that it couldn't be defeated by a pistol's bullets, so she had prepared her favorite anti-tank rifle. But after that lethal rifle had been lost somewhere on the riverbed, she'd had to try feebly attacking it with a powerless pistol to make it clear that she was an enemy.
It was a terrible situation to be in, but it wasn't entirely unsurprising. Although she regarded herself as a fully fledged soldier, Kitsurubami didn't have any formal training. She was simply playing make-believe at being a soldier.
And as she continued frantically pulling the trigger, she quickly ran out of bullets.
The expressionless monitor head of the robot faced her as Canti took a step toward Kitsurubami, who was still standing in the river.
"Argh!"
Fear pierced her entire body. She regretted getting ahead of herself. A strong enemy was closing in on her. Unarmed, she could do nothing but tremble. What kind of vengeance would it take?
Now is the retaliation. I'm done for!
With no hope of escape, she felt weak at the knees. It was hardly noticeable on her wet body, but something warm spread down between her legs. The pistol fell from her fingers and dropped into the river. And Kitsurubami, resigned to her fate, closed her eyes.
"Kitsurubami! Kitsurubami, hey! What happened?"
Amarao was still in the hair salon in town. As he was being shampooed, he was reclining, his body covered by a sheet and his face hidden by a gauze.
"Answer me. Hey, Kitsurubami!
"Hot, hot, HOT!" Suddenly, he screamed in pain. The water they were using to rinse his head was too hot.
Without apologizing, the hairdresser asked him, "What hair color would you like today? Your normal chestnut brown color? Or would you rather Fooly Cooly color?"
It couldn't be! Amarao recognized that stylist's voice. Panicked, he swiped the gauze from his face—and saw Haruko standing there.
"When did you…?!
"Thought the clean cut would make the chicks dig you?"
"What are you doing here?!"
"Thought you'd send your minion to get me?" Amarao jumped up quickly, grabbing his pistol. Then, with one hand, he reflexively checked to see if his eyebrows were still on his forehead.
"Huh?"
Kitsurubami felt her body being carried gently. She opened her eyes.
The robot had lifted her up with its large hands, saving her from the cold river water; now, it was helping her stand up on the bank.
And then, to her surprise, as if to say "sorry," it gently patted her on the head.
Kitsurubami's pulse quickened—but not out of fear. She felt her heart accelerate and her blood warm in an instant.
In truth, the late-bloomer Kitsurubami had dated only three guys up until that point. The first had been an assistant professor when she was attending university. The second had been a workplace romance with a superior. And the other had been a man who'd been fooling around, cheating on his wife; he had wooed her, and then they had started dating. She had finally told the married man she'd wanted to break up, claiming it had been because they went out only when it suited him, but the real reason that she'd broken up with him was because men just weren't enough for her. Now, for the first time, she felt like she understood what men had been lacking.
So gentle.
She felt a mysterious aura, and the warm surge enveloped her.
She touched the silent robot.
This was Kitsurubami's first love.
"That robot is too dangerous."
Aiming his gun at Haruko, Amarao slowly got up from his seat. It was like he was trying to move a wild beast into a pen—gently, so as not to excite it.
Just as Kitsurubami had predicted, the reason Amarao had gone to the hairdresser was to prepare to meet Haruko. The woman he'd told the stylist he hadn't seen for a long time was, in fact, Haruko. Although he had a strong attraction to Haruko, though, she also was a source of fear for him.
"You must have noticed," Amarao said reasonably, "that when the robot turns red, it has some connection with Atomsk. If we don't do something soon, MM is going to make a move. They're ready to destroy this planet."
"So what?"
Just hearing her rude words set off Amarao's primal fear, and he ran outside on impulse. It was no good. He couldn't take her alone.
Seeing their boss running out the building for his life, the subordinates who had been waiting outside the hair salon grabbed their own guns.
"Wait!" Amarao screamed, but his subordinates fired at Haruko when she showed herself at the shop entrance. It seemed all the people who worked under Amarao were lacking in battle experience.
Suddenly being shot at, Haruko smiled boldly and waved some metallic object in her hand.
Amarao and his inferiors watched. In front of their eyes, all the bullets had been cut cleanly in two and were now laying on the floor.
Haruko wore the cruel smile of a carnivorous beast.
The metal object in her hand was a razor that had been on the hair stylist's counter.
Amarao was reminded of how terrifying this woman truly was.
"She's really something."
"She's nothing," Naota assessed Haruko as he pulled Mamimi along by the arm to the front of the station. "She's nothing but an idiot."
"That hurts! Why are you pulling me?"
Naota had kept a tight grip on Mamimi ever since they'd left the riverbank, and she'd complained about it again and again, but Naota hadn't paid attention to her protests at all. It was like none of Mamimi's words reached Naota's ears.
"Seriously, since she came, she's been nothing but trouble. We haven't been able to spend time alone, just the two us, for ages. It was better before."
Today, Mamimi is going to be mine.
That's how much he liked Mamimi—he'd decided the girl he had always been thinking of was going to be his. Naota was excited. Three months ago, he had made a decision about his relationship with Mamimi. He didn't like his position of being his brother's substitute, and he was going to tell Mamimi the truth: Mamimi's ideal partner—Naota's brother, Tasuku Nandaba—already had a girlfriend in America. Naota was going to come clean with the hidden reality.
As a result, even Naota didn't know what would happen to his own relationship with Mamimi. He thought that perhaps all the time they had spent together up until now might mean nothing. He knew that she didn't have any particular attraction to him. Yet Naota came to understand that he couldn't just stay being a substitute. Still, Naota had become stuck on his final decision, and had kept playing around with Mamimi to put it off.
Now, however, the situation had changed: Haruko Haruhara had appeared.