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Sitting in Reiji’s very cool, and ambiguously sized, car, Yuma is excited!
Yesterday, everyone had gathered around the table and discussed what they were going to do today, only to find that none of them had plans. And with such a rare occurrence, the Tamakoma branch collectively decided to spend the day together.
At first, nobody knew where they should go. There’s a lot of options. But then Jin promoted himself to weatherman and predicted that there would be perfect sunshine for one thing: the beach. Things snowballed from there.
Cut to now, with Yuma restlessly awaiting the end of this hour-long car trip.
Equally restless, but probably more annoyed by it, is Hyuse. He’s sitting without Yotaro for once, due to a certain incident that happened a week ago. (Yotaro had the grand idea of swimming in the river. It ended with him getting grounded.)
Across from Yuma sits Osamu and Chika. While Chika is happy to come along on the ride, Osamu looks like he’s evaluating whether he’ll need to do CPR. Surely he won’t.
Finally, Reiji pulls into the carpark and lets them out. Yuma is the first to leave.
He’s got some investigating to do. Or, well, sprinting across the sand to the water with the utmost urgency. It's been too long since he’s seen a beach. The last time must’ve been while travelling with his father years ago.
But, what the beach connects to? Yuma’s never encountered such a vast amount of water in one place.
Of course he runs to touch it.
Skidding to a stop just before the shoreline, he bends over, splashing his hand into the water and nearly tipping over fully. Despite the warmth of the sun beating down on his neck, its–
“Cold!” He exclaims, drawing back. It's freezing cold! At least, it seems to be. Certainly when compared to the scalding sand.
Turning around to the others, Yuma heads back over to where Jin and Reiji are setting up an… umbrella? Aren’t those for rain?
He stares at the cloudless sky. It is not raining. Not even a little bit.
With no clue, Yuma asks them about it, “Why do we have an umbrella?”
“It gives you shade from the sun,” Jin explains, midway through trying to open the red and white contraption.
That makes sense. Umbrellas are really useful, it seems.
As Yuma watches, Jin finally manages to unclasp the umbrella’s holder, wincing a second before it explodes open. A whooshing sound bursts out alongside the attack. This umbrella is massive, compared to the handheld ones Yuma has seen before.
He looks at it with a new appreciation. Much more useful than he had thought. Yuma might need to get one of those for battle purposes. That would be cool.
Jin plants the umbrella in the ground, next to a second one Reiji set up without the fuss.
“There we go.” The brunette observes his set up, nodding to himself in approval, “All in a day’s work for the power elite~!”
A strange thing to say at nine am. Yuma trots under the shade to see if it’s colder underneath, “Jin-san, it’s still the morning.”
His senior shrugs, unfazed, assembling a beach chair and plopping into it, “Close enough for me!”
Well, he can’t quite argue with that.
“Of course,” Reiji sighs, but ends up joining Jin on his own chair.
Finding that the shade isn’t offering much, Yuma heads back over to see what Hyuse is up to. He’s standing around near the water and observing it.
Hyuse mustn’t have seen an ocean before either.
“Hey, Hyuse, the ocean is super big, right?” Yuma says, grinning while he approaches.
The other nods, staring at it distantly, “It’s bigger than Aftokrator.”
His eyes widen. Yuma hadn’t thought of it like that before. But now, looking at the blue that stretches beyond what he can even see, that doesn’t seem far off.
“Yeah! This world is massive!” He agrees. Kicking the sand with his feet, he wonders what else these beaches can offer him.
Luckily, Chika walks over at just the right time, “What are you two doing?”
“Looking at the ocean.” Yuma replies, “What about you, Chika?”
She smiles, “I was about to make a sandcastle.”
A what? Yuma’s brain fries while trying to put those two words together. This better not be like sandwiches, where the sand part is just misleading. They are at the beach, though, so there must be some relevance.
Curious about this new activity, Yuma will join her in the endeavour, “Can I help?”
“Sure!” Chika nods enthusiastically, “Are you coming too, Hyuse?”
The horned neighbour scowls at the suggestion. His antisocial tendencies have not been melted by the sun. Yet.
However, as Chika leads Yuma along the beach to the ideal sandcastle spot, Hyuse tags along. Yuma appraises her choice of location approvingly. Right next to the water with plenty of sun.
He sits beside her as the waves lap the shore, touching the moat she’s beginning to carve out. Copying her method, they make their own little island. Then she puts a pile of sand onto the island and pats it down.
Oh! They’re making a castle out of sand. It may have taken him a while to work out, but now Yuma fully understands what they’re doing.
And they are going to make the coolest castle. He’s sure of that.
Helping to make a wall, they build up the castle shape as Hyuse sits nearby, equally as close to the shoreline. After looking over at their work and understanding what Yuma and Chika are making, he seems to contemplate making his own castle.
Turning his attention back to his, Yuma watches the water start to fall into their moat. It quickly vanishes into the sand, but for a moment, it looked like a real one.
While he and Chika finish up their castle, Konami and Shiori decide to join the conquest, setting up a ways off from the water. In the background, Yuma can see Osamu and Karasuma dragging out a strange white netting. He’ll investigate that later.
“Konami-senpai, Shiori-chan, why are you making your castle so far away?” He asks the older girls, “Doesn’t it have a worse view? And you don’t have the water to limit the direction of attack.”
Tactically and recreationally speaking, their castle can’t match up to the masterpiece beside him. Chika should be proud of herself for getting the best spot.
Shiori glints her glasses excitedly, “This location is safer from water threats. When the tide rises, our castle will stand victorious. And it has better access to the rest of the beach.”
That’s true. Except, what is a tide? The word doesn’t translate properly to anything Yuma knows about. Though, with such a big ocean, maybe this world’s water has hidden monsters in it. Yeah, ‘tide’ sounds like a good name for a water monster.
If that’s the case, Yuma would like to try fighting it. Too bad Osamu already forbade him from trying to hunt down wildlife. All he did to earn that was search for a bear to challenge him.
With Chika adding the finishing touches to their castle, Yuma saunters over to Osamu with the intention of requesting permission to fight a tide. He needs to protect their castle!
His captain and Karasuma are fumbling around with a long net, sticking poles into the ground and tying it to them. Strange. Are they trying to catch something? One of those white birds? Ooooh, or a tide! He hopes it's the latter.
“What’s this, Osamu?” Yuma enquires.
Osamu ties the net to his pole successfully, “This is a volleyball net.”
A volleyball? As inclined Yuma is to assume that there is a second horrifying creature roaming Japan’s beaches, the naming convention sounds close to some other sports Osamu taught him about. That, and there’s a colourfully striped ball lying in the sand nearby.
“Oooh, are we going to play it?” He walks up to the net to see Osamu’s handiwork. It’s a good knot.
Karasuma completes his knot and comes over, “That’s the plan. We’re about ready now. Do you want to get everyone?”
Does he? Is that even a question? He absolutely does!
“Okay!” Yuma agrees, running down the beach to find everyone.
Arriving first at where Jin and Reiji are chilling in matching sunglasses and floral shirts (where did those come from!?) he discovers they’re in the same place he left them.
“Yo!” Jin greets, staring at the underside of the beach umbrella. That can’t be interesting.
Yuma waves back, still curious about where those shirts came from, because he swears they were not wearing them before, “Where did you get those shirts from?”
“There’s a shop further up from the water that sells beach items and ice cream. We went up and had a look.” Reiji explains, “I think Jin got something for you, too.”
Huh? He turns to his senior, who is lazily grinning back. Jin tosses him a shirt but sits up anyway.
Holding the fabric in his hands, Yuma notes the strange texture to it. That isn’t a usual shirt. It has a purple floral pattern on it, though. Nice.
“It’s made for the water.” Jin clarifies, “You’re going to get wet.”
He isn’t very surprised by that. In any case, Yuma should do what he was sent here to; recruit Tamakoma’s tallest guys to play volleyball.
“Karasuma-senpai and Osamu want everyone to play volleyball,” he tells them.
“Sure.” Reiji stands up, stretching, and possibly flexing the scary ten centimetres of height he has over literally everyone else in the branch. Yuma may only have a vague idea of how to play this volleyball, but judging by the net, he has a feeling that Reiji might be overpowered.
“Duty calls.” Jin joins him, ditching the sunglasses for his usual coloured ones. He sure is getting serious about volleyball.
With those two sent off, Yuma makes his way over to the others. Hyuse is working on his sandcastle-
“Woah! Hyuse! You made Aftokrator out of sand!?” He exclaims, staring at the creation that defies the laws of physics a little bit. It certainly is impressive.
Hyuse breaks his keen focus on crafting the perfect stalactites to meet his gaze. He confirms that yes, he is making Aftokrator out of sand, and no, he will not be leaving until he is done. It’s too bad, because Hyuse would help even out their volleyball teams.
Trotting over to the last three he’s yet to rope into playing, Yuma catches them picking up shells. Interesting. He wonders what the shells belong to. The mysterious tide he wants to fight?
“Hi, Yuma-kun.” Shiori says as he approaches, “What’s up?”
“Karasuma-senpai and Osamu want everyone to play volleyball,” he repeats dutifully.
“Ah, we’re a little busy finding some nice shells for the sand castles.” Shiori replies, “But we might come over later.”
Yuma nods, “Okay! See you later.”
Heading back to the volleyball set up, he reports his achievements. Only managing to recruit Jin and Reiji to the cause. Osamu seems to be busy working out how to best divide the teams for they’re even.
After several minutes of careful deliberation, Osamu decides to put Reiji and Jin on one side, versus the other three. That way they’ve got quality versus quantity. It does seem fair, in theory.
By the time Yuma has a grasp of the game and is punting the ball over the net as fast as he can, he realises that it was not fair at all.
No matter how often he’s hitting the ball back over, Jin is always perfectly positioned to throw it to Reiji. And Reiji? He’s taller than the net. They are barely surviving his onslaught.
The ball thuds onto the sand, on Yuma’s side. It’s quickly followed by a second, and a third win. Yuma stares up at Osamu from his place half buried in the sand. He might have to make new teams.
“Konami! Osamu is crying! He wants your help in volleyball!” Karasuma yells down the beach, alerting the blonde. She starts sprinting over.
Well, nevermind, they might stand a chance now. Osamu braces himself for the inevitable karate chops when Konami realises that his eyes are completely dry.
Konami arrives, heaving a breath from running so far, “Alright! Where is he!?”
Yuma’s captain tries his best innocent smile. The chances of that working are next to nothing, but Yuma can respect him for trying. Konami delivers her headlock swiftly, not taking enough time to check whether Osamu was actually crying.
“You! Don’t cry! They won’t stand a chance now!” She scolds him, narrowing her eyes at those on the opposite side of the net.
Just as Yuma is about to assume that maybe Osamu will be safe, Karasuma drops the ball, “He wasn’t crying. I lied.”
And Konami, already holding Osamu captive, stares at him in shock, “YOU! HOW DARE YOU! AAAAARRRRRGGHGHHH!”
Once she’s done, she joins their side to work out her anger through aggressively chucking the ball over the other side. Not even the power of Jin and Reiji combined stands a chance against their team anymore.
They play the game for several hours, occasionally switching out the teams in the hopes of finding some level of balance.
Eventually, it reaches a point where Osamu flops on the ground from exhaustion and declares himself mentally unavailable.
Whatever mentally unavailable means. Yuma isn’t sure. Just that he can convince Osamu to let him fight things now.
“Osamu, can I fight the tide?” He asks, leaning over his captain to block out the sun. Osamu cracks an eye open.
“Sure, Yuma… do whatever you want…” He mumbles sleepily. That’s enough for Yuma.
Running off to track down Shiori and find out where he can battle this creature, he doesn’t notice Osamu get blinded by the sudden sunlight, or Jin drag him under the umbrella and force him to drink some water.
Shiori and Chika are conferring over the picnic basket about making lunch. The thought of eating yummy food is easily enough for Yuma to digress from his original intention.
“We’re eating? What are we eating?” He inquires when he gets there.
Chika perks up, “Chips in a bun!”
“Huh-?” Chips… in a bun? An unusual combination. But if Chika approves of it, then it must be good.
“Heh. Would you like a chip butty, Yuma?” Shiori grins, holding out one of the promised buns. Chika giggles at the name. Yuma does the same.
Gingerly taking the offered food, he happily bites into it, relishing the taste. The contrasting textures of the crunchy potato crisps and soft bun make it even better. His smile widens. Delicious.
After gobbling down the entire bun, Yuma takes on the task of delivering the buns to everyone. It takes all of his restraint to avoid eating them.
Heading down to see Hyuse, Yuma notes that his sandcastle’s moat is now fully filled, and the water is overflowing from it. That’s strange.
“Hyuse!” Yuma calls out, heading over. Hyuse, satisfied with his sand-Aftokrator, stands up to meet him halfway. “I have lunch!”
The other neighbour grunts, taking a bun with suspicion, “What is this?”
“Shiori-chan called it a chip butty,” Yuma explains, “It’s potato crisps in a bun.”
He examines it with narrowed eyes but ends up biting it. From what Yuma can tell, Hyuse seems to be enjoying it. The horned neighbour hungrily finished the bun with approval.
Since he still has other people to deliver lunch to, Yuma calls a goodbye while starting to run along the beach. But he mustn’t have planted his feet properly in the ground, as his left foot skids on the sand and he almost falls over.
A hand grabs the back of his shirt, “Be careful, Yuma. You’ll hur- …drop the food.”
Yuma turns, duckface in place, to see Hyuse, “Oops?”
“Give me some of those,” Hyuse sighs, stealing a bunch of buns from him, “And walk this time.”
With his load significantly smaller, Yuma walks beside Hyuse to visit everyone else. They’re all hanging out under the beach umbrellas. Osamu is drinking water to recover from his state of post-volleyball mess.
“We have lunch!” He announces, handing out the buns to everyone. For some reason, Shiori asked him to give Jin a plain bun. His senior takes it with a mysterious grin.
He hands Osamu his bun. The other accepts it gratefully, “Thanks, Yuma.”
Yuma smiles and turns to see if Hyuse is done. But in his line of sight, he sees the horrors Jin has inflicted on his lunch. Is that- yes. There are rice crackers in his bun.
When Hyuse joins him,Yuma heads down to the water to pretend he did not see that. There’s a moderate amount of rice crackers, a rice cracker addiction, and then there’s Jin. He won’t be getting involved.
They’re heading back over to the sand castles when Hyuse lets out a gasp and starts sprinting. It’s rare for Hyuse to run, so Yuma follows closely behind. When he sees why, he is also left in shock.
The sand castles are gone! He swears they were exactly here. Instead, there’s water lapping at the sand.
“No… Mini-Aftokrator…” Hyuse mourns, brought to his knees, “How could this happen…?”
Only a monster could destroy their creations, Yuma decides. And the only monster he knows about at the beach is a tide. Therefore, he just has to take the tide down to get revenge.
He wades into the water, kicking randomly, “Hyah!”
Hyuse also heads into the water, joining his attack. They won’t let the tide get away with this!
“What are you… doing?” Osamu approaches from behind them.
“The tide ate Aftokrator.” Yuma explains helpfully.
His captain hesitates, looking between the neighbours in utter confusion, “Huh?”
“Aftokrator was here.” Hyuse says, standing in the water, “There’s now water instead. Why?”
Osamu’s expression shifts to understanding and he thinks for several seconds, “That’s because the moon pulls the water over the course of the day and makes it rise.”
Yuma stares blankly at him. The moon does all that? Then, “What about the tide monster?”
“The tide monster?”
“Shiori told me about it. She said that’s why she built her sandcastle away from the water.” He elaborates.
“Oh,” Osamu nods, “The change in the water levels is called the tide. It’s not a monster.”
It isn’t? No wonder he’s seen no sign of it after all his attacking.
Hyuse, in his frustration at the moon and Meeden’s oceans, kicks the water again, causing a spray to hit Yuma and Osamu.
“Hey!” Yuma exclaims. Well, there’s only one good response to that. Scooping his hand under the water, he splashes Hyuse back as hard as he can.
The other neighbour scowls, retaliating with his own splash.
Within seconds, the two are sopping wet, and Osamu is unwillingly dragged into the mess.
The three of them return, the tops of their heads more water than hair, to the rest of the group. It’s getting late in the afternoon.
“You look ready to go home.” Karasuma notes while packing up the volleyball net, “Did you already get ice cream?”
Ice cream? There’s ice cream on offer? Where? Where? Wheeeeeeeereeeeeee? Yuma turns around several times in search of it, but finds nothing.
Karasuma pauses at his antics, “Jin took Chika down the beach to get some. If you hurry, you’ll catch them.”
“Oh!” So they have to buy the ice cream. No problems there. Commence sprinting!
While Yuma heads off to acquire his ice cream, Hyuse and Osamu follow at a relatively slower pace. He skids to a stop by the roadside, where he sees Jin and Chika waiting for them.
Once the others arrive, they all cross the road and head inside to pick out what flavours they like. Yuma grabs a multiflavoured one because choosing between them should be a torture method, Osamu takes vanilla and Chika takes strawberry.
Hyuse is a little less impressed, “Why would I eat Meeden snacks?”
“You don’t have to,” Jin says, “But my side effect tells me–”
Yuma closes the door behind him.
Look, Yuma has a sugar rush. He’s only human. And yes, he did leave the shop without paying and is not following road safety by standing on the crosswalk eating his ice cream, but it's all in preparation for sprinting the way back to the car.
Speaking of cars, there’s one. He turns to stare at it as it approaches. A quick sidestep barely gets him out of the way in time. At least he’s getting better at navigating Japan’s vehicles.
Then he starts his run back.
It’s a blur for the most part. The combination of sugar, the unreasonably hot sun for this time of day, and the fact that his surroundings are more or less the same the entire time, will do that.
He makes it to the car in one piece. Somewhat. There’s a flip flop buried in the sand along his route.
The others take their time to join him, bringing back with them their bounty.
Osamu hands him his shoe, “Be more careful, Yuma.”
Chika has half-finished her ice cream.
Jin is eating rice crackers again.
And Hyuse is carefully holding an icecream still in its packet.
“Aren’t you going to eat your ice cream, Hyuse?” Yuma questions. If the answer is no, he’ll take it off the other neighbour’s hands.
“Yes.” Hyuse instantly responds, a little too quickly, “I’m saving it for later.”
The rest of the branch gets in the car after loading it up with their supplies. Now that everyone’s here, they can go home.