Full Power! Starlight Cheers! – Part 01

I got home and started my usual routine of making dinner.

The fridge was always full since Sera did the grocery shopping. What I cooked depended on what she bought. Right now, the sausages, potatoes, and cabbage were close to expiring. All right, we’re having pot-au-feu^[1] tonight. There was bacon too.

I liked tossing rice, egg, and parmesan into the leftover broth and making risotto.

Cooking every day had made me pretty skilled, and I sighed at how practiced I’d become as I quickly chopped and dropped everything into the pot.

All that was left was to let it simmer, so I washed my hands and headed into the living room. Two pretty girls were there.

One was Sera, the black-haired ponytail girl who’d answered the phone earlier. Like Tomonori and Saras, she was a Vampire Ninja, and Saras’s subordinate. Her model-like figure, never tiring to look at, was wrapped in a white T-shirt with English text.

Her full chest pushed the fabric up, and the thin cloth faintly showed the outline of her bra, giving her a casual, at-home look. She wasn’t in the kotatsu. She sat formally on her knees and watched TV.

Her jade eyes flicked to me, then calmly returned to the screen without a word. Laughter spilled from the variety show on TV, but Sera didn’t laugh.

The other girl was half-buried in the kotatsu, head tilted at the TV, sipping from a teacup.

She was a stunning beauty with silver hair and flawless porcelain skin, quiet and expressionless. Her small hand was covered by a gauntlet, and her small frame was wrapped in Western armor.

Her name was Eucliwood Hellscythe, the necromancer who turned me into a zombie after I died. She, too, watched without a smile.

Her gauntleted hand held a pen and tapped the table twice. I looked down and saw a note.

“Dinner.”

Just one word, but my mind saw it differently.

“Big brother, I’m starving! Is food ready yet?”

A cute, little-sister version of Eu translated it for me.

“The pot-au-feu is currently simmering. Just wait a bit longer.”

Her big, crystal-blue eyes looked at me, and she gave the smallest nod. Every little gesture was so unbearably cute I couldn’t help but grin.

“Gross.” Sera glared at me like I was filth.

Sharing a home with such beauties, last year’s me would’ve cried tears of joy. But reality left no time for delight, only plenty of chances to run into misfortune. I didn’t even know what these girls thought of me.

“Hey, we’ve been living together for six months now,” I said. “Shouldn’t your opinion of me have gone up a little by now?”

If this were a game, I would’ve scored decent affection points within a week.

“Oh? You hadn’t realized?” Sera’s long lashes fluttered.

“Realized what?”

“My affection toward you is already maxed out,” she said with a face as cold as an ice rink.

“It’s at that level, huh.”

“Yes. It won’t go any higher. Stop asking weird questions. It’s gross.”

I had no response. The maximum value was way too low.

“Hey, Sera.”

“What is it?”

“Could you call Haruna? The kotatsu feels so good, I can’t get out.”

I was convinced the kotatsu had some kind of magic. Once you got in, you never wanted to leave.

“Gross. Looking at your face makes me sick, so could you go somewhere else?”

“I can call her.”

“Nah, I’ll do it.”

Sera’s glare was colder than the winter air outside, so I climbed the stairs to call Haruna myself.

Upstairs were Sera’s room, my room, and Haruna’s room. Sera’s room used to be my parents’ bedroom, and Haruna’s was my brother’s, but since my family was a bunch of wanderers who never showed any sign of returning, I just let them use it freely.

I knocked twice on the door with the plate that read Genius! hanging from it and said, “I’m coming in,” as I stepped inside. The heated room was warm and cozy.

There was a girl inside. She was short, about 145 centimeters, with a chest that was soft but flat. She had big, round, catlike eyes, brown hair down to her shoulders, and a cowlick that sprang up from the top of her head. The cheeky girl sat on her bed in a T-shirt and polka-dot underwear.

That was Haruna, who came from another world called Villiers to hunt monsters.

If she held an item and chanted a spell, she should be able to transform into a so-called Magiclad Girl, but since Eu had drained her mana, then Chris drained it too, she never managed to become one. A pitiful Magiclad Girl.

What was she doing now?

“Uh-huh, yeah, check it out. Okay, okay. Of course I’ll go! Nyahaha!” She was using my phone without permission.

Ignoring her weird way of responding, I said, “Dinner’s almost ready, so come downstairs.”

“I keep telling you not to barge in! You’re so dumb it’s a problem.”

Her cowlick bounced as she fumed. I was used to it by now, so I brushed her off and was about to close the door when she threw my phone at me.

Hey now, don’t treat my phone like trash. I swear to God, this Magiclad Girl.

Curious who she had been talking to, I picked it up. The name on the screen was… Orito?

What could she and that horny deity have been discussing? It creeped me out too much to ask.

Back in the living room, I warmed myself at the devil’s invention known as the kotatsu. With perfect timing, Haruna, in her shorts, came down the stairs. The timer went off, beeping furiously to let me know the pot-au-feu was ready.

But I couldn’t move. The kotatsu was just too comfortable. There was no helping it. None at all.

“Ayumu.” Sera regarded me sternly.

Wearing a look of pure bliss, I ignored her. She stood up, ponytail flicking, and walked into the kitchen.

She’s so reliable.

“So cold, so cold, so cold!”

Haruna dashed down the chilly hallway, slipped into the living room, sat beside me, and tugged the kotatsu blanket toward herself.

“Hey, Haruna, stop pulling it.”

“But it’s so cold.”

She didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word cooperation and always acted selfishly. We were used to it by now, so we didn’t tell her off too harshly.

Sera brought over my homemade pot-au-feu. We all enjoyed it together, until Haruna, sitting next to me, suddenly glared at me.

“I just caught a bit of gossip with these beautiful ears of mine,” she said, snorting with excitement.

That sounded like a mouthful. She didn’t have to force it.

“What is it?” Sera asked.

“I heard you’re going to some drinking party, Ayumu.”

“Who told you that? I never—”

“That origami guy or whatever.”

She meant Orito. As always, she refused to learn the names of people she had no interest in. That four-eyed pervert. So that earlier phone call was him inviting Haruna to the mixer.

“So, you’re going too?” I asked.

“Of course! If there’s one thing Magiclad Girls love, it’s parties.”

Now that I thought about it, Haruna did love events. She always got things wrong, but looking back on the year, she had done all sorts of stuff. Maybe it wasn’t just her. Maybe Magiclad Girls in general were like that.

“Oh, you mean that thing you were talking about on the phone earlier?” Sera said with little interest, glaring at me.

“I was invited, too. You’re not going?”

Damn it. Eu was invited too? What if some creep stuck to her?

“With the party master Haruna around, making friends is guaranteed!”

“It’s not just a party, it’s a mixer. That’s basically a hellhole.”

Not wanting either Haruna or Eu to go, I strung together whatever lies I could.

“Wuh? Not a party? Oh, right, right. That thing. Yeah, I know all about it.”

Haruna basically believed she knew everything. Whenever she agreed like that, it was her pretending she knew what she didn’t.

I’ll never understand people who fake it.

“A mixer’s a place where strangers fish for boyfriends and girlfriends,” I explained.

“That description seems rather misleading,” Sera cut in.

She was right. Maybe I went too far. I should’ve called it a place where you meet a friend’s friends. Scratching my head, I took a deep breath.

Why did I bluff in the first place? I already regretted it.

“So it’s like matchmaking! Hmm, matchmaking, huh.”

As Haruna munched thoughtfully on a steaming potato from the pot-au-feu, Eu held up a note.

“Practice would help.”

Practice for mixers? I’d never heard of such a thing. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.

---

1. Pot-au-feu (lit: pot on the fire) is a French dish of slowly boiled meat and vegetables, usually served as two courses: first the broth (bouillon) and then the meat (bouilli) and vegetables. The dish is familiar throughout France and has many regional variations. The best-known have beef as the main meat, but pork, chicken, and sausage are also used. ↩