chapter 12

The test results were tolerable .

For now, let me just say that entering the top 20 was not as easy as I thought .

But still, I managed to get the 27th place .

Even the teachers were astonished by the sudden rise in my results .

It is now the period when we must think about our future careers, so my classmates started to feel a little pressed by my sudden improvement in grades .

But well, when I realized that I got the 27th place instead of entering the top 20, I received quite a shock .

I thought that Roll would get angry at me .

However, she didn’t get angry; she, instead, congratulated me .

It seems that Roll considered my entering the top 20 to be a little too extreme .

This made me want to enter the top 20 even more, just in spite of Roll, but well, truth be told, it was a bit extreme .

And by the way, Roll took the 3rd place . As one would expect of her .

Anyway, a month and a half passed since I entered the Anonymous .

It’s the summer vacation now .

My most recent activities include lots of field training .

My skills with the wire emitter are getting better and better, but I am far beyond Roll .

There’s a difference in our abilities . Since she can use rotations, she can control the wire emitter half freely .

It was a bit unfair, but well, it’s the privilege of her abilities .

Now, what the two of us were doing at the moment was the summer vacation homework .

In Roll’s air-conditioned room, all you could hear was the crisp sound of pencils running on top of paper .

However, my pencil stopped unexpectedly .

Roll noticed this and looked at me . Our eyes met naturally .

“Huh, another problem you can’t solve?

Which one?”

Roll was sitting on the opposite side of the desk, but now she moved next to me .

Her nice scent tickled my nostrils .

“This one…… . . ”

“Ah, this one . Here, you do like this and then…… . ”

Roll explained me the problem that I couldn’t solve in an easy to understand manner .

My eyes moved from Roll’s fingertip to her arm, then, before one knows, I was looking at the side of her face .

Roll’s pure white skin was a little sunburnt, making it look darker .

During these midsummer field trainings, no matter how much sunblock lotion you use, your skin still gets sunburnt anyway .

I moved my eyes on my arm .

I am quite roasted too .

And since my muscles are already starting to show, I’m turning into quite a handsome young man, am I not?

As I thought about this, my vision caught sight of Roll’s hand, and she pinched my arm rather strongly .

“Ouch! Hey, that hurt!”

“You didn’t listen at all, right?”

Damn it, I didn’t listen at all .

“I… . I was charmed by you…… . . ”

I uttered an excuse that was in part true .

The fault lies in the difficulty of the summer vacation homework in the first place .

“Stop saying stuff like that .

I’ll explain again so you better pay attention, all right?

We have to finish this today by all means . We’re going on a mission tomorrow . ”

Roll sighed and told me .

“Ro… . roger that . ”

We worked on our homework until 3 in the morning and managed to finish half of it .

_________

The sunlight blazed down on us and the breeze coming from the sea was comfortable .

A boat was floating on the horizon, fishing boats were lined up in the harbor and seagulls were crying all around us .

“It’s hot!”

Roll said as she walked along the coast, feeling refreshed .

She wore a pair of sweltering jeans and a rough shirt that exposed her shoulder .

The straw hat looked good on her .

We were in Dealbell, a city facing the sea .

Roll drove for about 3 and a half hours to get here from our town .

Since it was the summer vacation, I predicted that the road would be more crowded, but we arrived unexpectedly early and we had too much free time now .

So why did we come here in the first place, you ask?

To put it in one word, it’s a date .

That’s just my wishful thinking . In fact, we came to this town for a mission .

It’s an easy one . In terms of difficulty, this is a D rank mission .

All we had to do was to take a certain ‘luggage’ from our branch office here and transport it to our headquarters .

Tonight at 9, the luggage will be moved to a specified location .

The SDF’s net is already untied, so the transfer is supposed to be safe .

That’s why the degree of difficulty for this mission is so low .

Anyway, all we got to do is take that luggage and go back home, but it’s only 1 in the afternoon .

I haven’t even had my lunch .

We planned to eat the lunch inside the car, but since we had enough time, we walked along the coast in order to search for a great spot to have our lunch outside .

By the way, when I say lunch I refer to the sandwiches that Roll prepared for today .

The basket was rather heavy as I held it in one hand .

Just how many did you make, Roll?

I thought about this right when we arrived at our destination, near the lighthouse .

The lighthouse was standing on a breakwater structure .

The scenery up there was as wonderful as expected .

The cloudless sky, the south wind .

Still, it’s too damn hot…… .

Honestly, I actually preferred to have our lunch inside the car where we had air conditioning .

Even my appetite is boiling inside this scorching heat .

Roll sat down on the side of the breakwater and stretched her legs towards the sea .

The lighthouse provided us with its shade, and I sat down next to Roll .

“Let’s eat now . ”

“Yeah”

We opened the basket and started eating the sandwiches .

The taste was as delicious as always .

If I am to force myself to say something, they were a bit too healthy for my taste .

“The wind feels really good……*yawn* It makes me sleepy…… . ”

After we ate all the sandwiches, Roll said this and stretched her body .

“Really? Even when it’s this hot?”

“I wish you could feel what my body feels like after the long drive…… . . ”

Roll pressed her fingers against her forehead as she said .

Come to think of it, I slept in the passenger’s seat the entire road trip .

I’m sorry, kind of .

Because of the homework, we almost pulled an all-nighter yesterday .

I looked beside me and saw Roll desperately trying to fight the sleepiness, as she dozed off repeatedly .

“Wanna go back to the car and sleep? We do have time . ”

“Hm…… . . Let’s do that then . ”

She said, but she was rather reluctant to stand up, so I stretched out my hand .

“It can’t be helped . I’ll carry you on my back . ”

“It’s okay . I can walk by myself . ”

Because of the drowsiness, Roll had a low tension .

I half-forcibly made Roll stand up and was about to carry her on my back .

However, I realized too late that a sluggish person is unexpectedly heavier than usual, so I lost my balance and fell off the breakwater, together with Roll .

The sound of a splash could be heard accompanied by the roar of waves .

__________

“Really now, what the heck are you doing?”

“I’m truly sorry . ”

“Haa, my hair is all sticky . ”

“Sorry, really . ”

“It’s all right . ”

We brought a change of clothes just in case, so we changed into them, and were now sitting inside the car, cooling ourselves .

The air conditioning was a bit too effective as I got a little chilly .

“Now, I’ll be sleeping until 7 .

You should sleep too, Shion . ”

“I might do just that . ”

Just in case, I set my phone alarm to go off at 7 .

I’m so grateful that today’s mission is a quiet one .

I looked at Roll and she wasn’t tense at all .

It appears like it really is an easy mission .

Anonymous’ private car no . 162 . The Sadinta model 1 .

Since we ended up using this car, which has a spacious interior, it means that the luggage is quite large too .

What is this luggage, I wonder?

Since the mission’s difficulty grade doesn’t reflect the importance of the luggage, perhaps we’ll transport some terrible thing .

They didn’t tell us anything about the contents and I probably won’t find out about it anyway……

Maybe Roll knows .

I moved my eyes on Roll . She was sleeping on the side, with her back facing me . I listened to her quiet breathing .

She was covered with a blanket up to her lower back .

She fell asleep so fast .

Because we stopped the car at the beach’s parking lot, playful voices could be heard coming from the seashore .

Listening to them, I gradually started to doze off as well; before one knows, my consciousness got interrupted .