Welcome to Part 17 of Azure Striker Gunvolt: Fleeting Memories! If you missed any of parts 1 through 16, make sure you read those first.
Part 17
“Your manners need some work, Miu.”
“I dont care about that Rei!! You screwed up! Big time!!” Miu was really heated.
“What exactly did I screw up?” Rei said as he picked at the piece of grilled fish on his plate with his chopsticks.
“The way you’re going about thanking Upperclassman Himeshiro is what you screwed up! Just thinking about the fact that I was rescued by her puts me on cloud nine! Did you somehow magically forget about all of that?”
“Not really, I just kind of prepared my own thing,” Rei retorted as he transported the pieces of fish he was picking it into his mouth one by one.
“Geez, and you just decided not to take me into consideration?!” She was really in a huff now.
“Knowing your obsession with Himeshiro, I just assumed you would have already taken care of something.”
“Ugh…you really suck at this, Rei!” Miu’s demeanor quickly went from fuming and angry to bummed out and kind of defeated. “Now what I am I supposed to do…”
“Come on, if you mope around like that you’re gonna be late. Himeshiro always has her act together, right? I wonder what she would think if you were late…”
In reality, Rei knew next to nothing about Himeshiro, but rather made some conjecture based on his one and only interaction with her the other day. As it turned out, his assumptions about her were not at all off the mark.
Even her biggest fan Miu said, “Yeah, you’re probably right…” as she silently pondered about the situation some more.
“OK, fine. Just this once, we’ll say it’s a present from both us, and I’ll hand it over to her.” Rei said as he looked over to Miu for approval.
Miu excitedly nodded in agreement. “That’s the ticket Rei! Great idea!”
This kind of exchange, with Miu’s fangirl-ish reaction to his plan was a new experience for Rei. Even as they got closer as family over the years, there is still plenty to learn about someone and plenty of faces of theirs you may never have seen before. In the back of his mind, seeing Miu get so excited about something after all she has been through was major relief for Rei.
“All this time I thought a handkerchief would be good, but now, I dunno…Should I check the pattern on this thing again?” To make sure he didn’t disappoint his sister, Rei was now second-guessing his choice.
“It’s fine! I trust your judgement Rei.” Miu was very reassured of her brother’s plan.
For Rei, there was no way he could have that much confidence in his own sense for this sort of thing. He was amazed at how much faith his sister had in him, and he couldn’t help but be happy about that.