Honma Meiko's Nervousness

After assigning the task to Itou Kaiji, Miyauchi Hiyage followed Miyauchi Renka, who had been watching him expectantly, downstairs.

There are four guests sitting in the living room now, and his parents are sitting next to them chatting enthusiastically.

I remember two of Miyauchi Hiyage, the parents of Honma Meiko. They came to Asahigaoka with a lot of gifts to thank them in person after their daughter was out of danger.

The other two are Honma Meiko and her younger brother.

Miyauchi Hiyage first focused his attention on Honma Meiko.

To the naked eye, she appears to be a somewhat sickly young girl.

But in Miyauchi Hiyage's eyes at this moment, the other party's physical problems seemed to be more complicated than they appeared.

Because there seems to be a layer of dim, yin energy Honma Meiko that can only be detected by careful observation.

It's somewhat like a curse, but there seems to be a difference in its power.

If it were the previous Miyauchi Hiyage, this would be about the extent of what you could see.

But after acquiring card magic and gaining the ability to glimpse a glimpse of fate, Miyauchi Hiyage was able to see much more.

There seemed to be a thin, invisible thread connecting the yin energy on Honma Meiko's body.

This is probably the main reason why Honma Meiko's health did not improve even after seven or eight years since she fell into the water.

The direction this thread connects to seems to point in the direction from which the other person fell into the water.

Is there some kind of monster or Vengeful Spirit on that mountain, or is there some other reason?

Also, what about those unstable spaces on the mountain? Will they have any impact on Honma Meiko?

After all, the area of unstable space in the mountains is quite large, and there is such a trend in a range of more than ten kilometers in the mountainous area.

The only thing that Miyauchi Hiyage could confirm was that there were definitely some problems on the mountain where Honma Meiko almost drowned back then.

If Miyauchi Hiyage and his ilk hadn't appeared five years ago, Honma Meiko would have naturally drowned as originally planned.

Then, five or six years later, one summer after her friends had gone to high school, she reappeared before them as a ghost.

Moreover, she appeared as a 16 or 17-year-old girl.

It must be quite difficult to grow up after becoming a ghost.

After all, at the moment of death, a person's soul is essentially frozen in time.

Unless there is external intervention, even if a dead soul becomes a ghost, at most it can only go back in time and become younger based on its life experiences. It is very difficult for it to continue to grow after death.

Kanoe Yuko has been wandering around the school for half a century, and she still looks just like she did in her youth.

So there must be some reason for this.

However, whether there is a curse or something else in that mountain, and whether the spatial tremor will cause changes in Honma Meiko's condition, is something that Miyauchi Hiyage cannot determine at the moment.

As he pondered this, Miyauchi Hiyage's parents coughed lightly a few times, signaling him to stop staring at the girl.

"Hikage, this Honma Meiko is the girl you and everyone else helped save before. After her health improved a little this year, she came to thank you and those people from back then in person."

Miyauchi Hiyage then nodded slightly to the other party, giving a friendly greeting.

Honma Meiko gave him a somewhat embarrassed smile of gratitude.

Although I had seen photos of Miyauchi Hiyage a few times, seeing them in person for the first time gave me a noticeably different feeling.

She was now a little conflicted, wondering whether she should demonstrate Ripple Breathing in front of Miyauchi Hiyage later.

Then ask the other person to help design a breathing method that is more suitable for you.

After all, her health was not good to begin with, and her comprehension of Ripple was not very good. Even though she invested all the Reading Points she gained each day into improving her proficiency in Ripple Chi Kung, the past month or so of training only allowed her to interact and communicate with others more normally.

It seems we are still a long way from being able to live a completely normal life.

If she could get help from Miyauchi Hiyage to point out the problem with her breathing rhythm, she should be able to recover faster and no longer need to worry her parents.

However, she was too embarrassed to bring it up herself, feeling that it might be too deliberate for her to speak first, so she looked conflicted.

Miyauchi Hiyage could roughly guess the other party's intentions, so he did nothing, only asking a few simple questions about the other party's health and life over the years.

Overall, compared to the changes in their expressions, their verbal communication was still quite awkward.

However, this subtle feeling was still keenly noticed by Miyauchi Kouka, who was sitting on the side watching.

She was quite perceptive to this kind of feeling; after just watching for a few minutes, she could tell that the person had a lot to say to Miyauchi Hiyage, but was too embarrassed to say it.

Moreover, she went on the spring outing five years ago as well.

Although she had forgotten the specific details, she still had a deep impression of the first aid that Miyauchi Hiyage gave to the little girl who had been rescued.

Nine-year-old Koshigaya Komari blushed when she saw that scene. On the way back, she secretly asked her if Miyauchi Hiyage wanted to be like the prince in Sleeping Beauty and wake the girl up with a kiss.

Then, she went with Fujimiya Miki to fool Koshigaya Komari, almost getting her to pretend to be asleep in her own home as well.

This must be the second time these two people have met in all these years, right?

This was probably the first time that Honma Meiko had seen Miyauchi Hiyage while she was conscious.

But why did my younger brother keep staring at that girl's face? And Honma Meiko look at my younger brother with such a strange gaze? Could this be what they call "love at first sight"?

Does my younger brother like this type of girl?

She sized up this Honma Meiko.

She is quite beautiful. It is said that her mother is European, which is why she inherited her silver hair.

However, she seems a bit too weak; she looked tired after just one hour in the car.

This is already an improvement in the situation; Miyauchi Kouka has no idea how the other person survived the previous few years.

While Miyauchi Kouka felt pity for such a girl, she still hesitated if she were to actually make her her younger brother's wife.

However, the specifics will depend on what my younger brother thinks.

After sitting in the living room for a while, both sets of parents noticed that their children seemed to be exchanging glances with each other in the presence of adults. So, Miyauchi Hiyage's father asked her to take them upstairs to rest for a while, and then take them to visit the other families' homes after dinner.

After the young people went upstairs together, the atmosphere during their conversation naturally became much more relaxed, and Miyauchi Hiyage successfully unlocked the other person's nickname "Menma".

However, since Miyauchi Hiyage had Renge and Guanghua with her, and Honma Meiko had her younger brother with her, it was naturally difficult to talk about many things. They basically talked about each other's situation over the years.

Miyauchi Hiyage didn't know much about these things.

Because he was familiar with Menma, who drowned, then returned to the human world as a ghost, finally fulfilled Menma wish, and then disappeared.

His appearance changed her fate, and then strange "threads" appeared on her body, connected by something unknown, causing her to appear so weak.

As for Menma herself, she only briefly mentioned in the group that she was rescued from drowning by the residents of Asahigaoka years ago, without going into detail about her situation over the past five years, probably because she felt it was unnecessary to talk about these things in the group.

Soon, Miyauchi Hiyage asked the question she wanted to know.

When she was first rescued, she felt weak for the first few months and could no longer run around with people like before, but she could still go to school normally without much problem.

But when winter came, she spent a few days in bed with a cold and never recovered.

Even when they went to the hospital for a checkup, they couldn't find the cause; they could only say it might be a side effect of drowning.

In the following years, she went to school much less often and could only study at home.

Occasionally, her childhood friends would come over to help her with her studies. Despite repeating a year, she was admitted to a high school with a decent academic atmosphere that was also relatively close to home.

Now, by using the ripples of her Diary to regulate her physical condition through Ripple Breathing, she is able to attend school a few days a week, meeting the school's attendance requirements. It's clear that she is quite satisfied with her current life and is completely unaware of any other problems that may have arisen within her.

Is it because it's not fatal that the Diary has never issued a warning about this matter?

Miyauchi Hiyage pondered this in his heart.

However, when she mentioned her childhood friends, the expression on her face revealed that the relationships between them had become quite distant over time.

Although the group didn't go their separate ways and drift further apart after Menma's death, as in the original anime, they've hardly gotten together again in the last year or two.

Even when people come to visit her, it's usually alone or in pairs.

However, this is a situation that inevitably occurs during growth.

As time went by, the young playmates gradually found new goals, and thus slowly left their original group to meet more new friends and start new lives.

In the anime, it was the appearance of Menma's "ghost," a supernatural being, that brought Menma's friends, who had never forgotten her, back together.

In this world, they may feel some guilt for Menma's drowning back then, but Menma is still alive and well.

While they can maintain their friendship with Menma, the friendships between others are not so stable.

Under such circumstances, it might not be difficult to get them back together.

However, getting their relationship back to the level it was before they drowned would probably be even more difficult than in the anime.

However, the Menma in front of him was not the Menma he was familiar with in his previous life.

Having spent so many years recuperating in bed, this young girl's mind is naturally much more mature and resilient than that of the girl in the animation.

At least for now, it seems that while Menma regrets the gradual drifting apart of her childhood friends, she is not too fixated on it.

Of course, besides Miyauchi Hiyage inquiring about Menma's situation over the past five years, Menma's side was also very interested in the situation in Asahigaoka.

Chichibu City is not far from Asahigaoka, and many people around her come to this popular village to visit and check in on weekends.

After learning that Miyauchi Hiyage was also a character in a certain work, Honma Meiko, who felt that the two had become much closer, also started paying attention to the videos that Miyauchi Hiyage had filmed before.

"When I watch those horror videos that you, Miyauchi- kun, make, I'm a little scared, so I usually call my younger brother, Acong, over to watch them with me."

Menma's words surprised her Honma Satoshi.

"Oh, so those videos you've been watching lately were all filmed by the eldest brother in the Miyauchi?"

It was only at this moment that Honma Meiko realized with some embarrassment that she seemed to have accidentally let something slip.

She only found out that the videos were filmed by Miyauchi Hiyage through the girls in the group who were close to her. They all overlooked the fact that Miyauchi Hiyage never appeared in these videos and never mentioned these things on her own account.

How should she explain this to Miyauchi Hiyage?

Just as Honma Meiko was at a loss for how to explain herself, Miyauchi Hiyage casually waved his hand and took the Honma Meiko to smooth things over for her. "Although I recently linked my account to Asahigaoka Media, and I'm the only Asahigaoka person filming videos in Tokyo, I didn't expect you guys to be so observant and discover it so quickly."

As she said this, Miyauchi Hiyage looked at the Honma siblings and extended an invitation to them. "If you're not in a hurry to go back this afternoon, I can take you to see the surrounding filming locations."

Chapter 170: Honma Meiko's Nervousness

After the meal, Miyauchi Hiyage took the initiative to lead the two siblings from the Honma family to the film set.

After all, the young people in the village nowadays are either resting at home or working on film sets.

Those children and teenagers who went on spring outings with him back then are the ones who have been the most supportive of his efforts to revitalize Asahigaoka in recent years.

With the ability to earn a considerable amount of money in their hometown without long working hours under the arrangement of Miyauchi Hiyage, a large number of outsiders now want to join Asahigaoka Media to make money. Naturally, few people would choose to leave Asahigaoka after graduating from high school or university.

Today's filming is of the segment that has been circulating on the internet for a long time. "My knife is a poisoned blade coated with deadly poison."

The poor set design and exaggerated acting couldn't mask the relaxed atmosphere on set, and the filming was basically completed amidst various moments of laughter.

However, the main focus of this kind of parody drama is nonsensical humor and pranks. The fact that the atmosphere on set was like this shows that Koshigaya Suguru and Kaede Kagayama did not have any major problems in managing the filming, and the entire crew was able to maintain a stable state to carry out these shoots.

"Ah Cong, why don't you give it a try later? This TV series is a low-budget comedy, and the extras don't need much acting skill or lines. It should be a good experience. Maybe you'll even see yourself on TV when it airs!"

Miyauchi Hiyage asked Honma Satoshi this question, showing that the thirteen-year-old boy was quite interested in these things.

He was initially hesitant, looking at his sister wearing a mask, as if worried that she might not be used to the lively environment on set.

Honma Meiko waved to him, encouraging him to give it a try.

"I'm fine, and with Miyauchi- kun here looking after me, there shouldn't be any major problems. If I feel unwell, there are plenty of places to rest nearby."

She really wanted to find an opportunity to be alone with Miyauchi Hiyage. Before, she was always surrounded by Miyauchi Hiyage's older sister or younger brother, so she couldn't find any opportunities.

As time ticked by, she knew she would only be able to stay there until evening before heading back, and she felt somewhat nervous.

Therefore, seeing her younger brother excitedly choosing clothes and getting his makeup done by the crew members, she couldn't help but look at Miyauchi Hiyage standing next to her.

She was almost a year older than the other girl, but due to her weak health, she was still slightly shorter than other girls her age.

Miyauchi Hiyage, on the other hand, had skin that didn't resemble that of a boy who grew up in the countryside, and at the age of 16, he was already nearly 1.8 meters tall, a full head taller than her.

Coupled with the confident aura emanating from the other person, even Honma Meiko, who had been staying at home and rarely going out for years, couldn't help but feel a little ashamed when she stood in front of him.

So much so that when she finally got a private chat, she didn't even know what to say to the other person.