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Chapter 65: Tsundere
Suyan was mildly surprised by Takagi Saya's reaction, but after a moment of thought, it made perfect sense.
Saya was the textbook definition of a tsundere.
A tsundere was fundamentally composed of two distinct halves: the 'tsun' and the 'dere'.
The 'tsun' aspect represented stubbornness, a sharp tongue, and an arrogant attitude. This was easy to understand. In anime, the target of a tsundere's hostility was almost exclusively the male lead. The problem was that the vast majority of anime protagonists were utterly useless, 'yasashii'-style pushovers whose only redeeming quality was being nice. Meanwhile, tsundere heroines were almost universally portrayed as unbridled geniuses.
In the gaming community, there was a strict chain of contempt: Dota players looked down on League of Legends players, who in turn looked down on mobile MOBA players. Even ignoring personality quirks, wasn't it perfectly logical for a legitimate genius to look down on a completely useless protagonist?
Sometimes, even the omniscient audience outside the screen was infuriated by the pathetic actions of these protagonists. It was only natural for a fiercely intelligent character within the story to feel the same way.
The true charm of a tsundere lay in stripping away that prickly 'tsun' shell to reach the sweet, hidden 'dere' beneath.
The 'dere' aspect referred to saying one thing while meaning another, revealing their true, affectionate nature only in very specific moments. If you listened closely to a tsundere and extracted the key information from their words, you'd discover something fascinating. Perhaps because tsunderes rarely had genuine friends, they were notoriously awful at expressing their feelings. As a result, if you were sharp enough during casual conversation, you could actually track your progress on their invisible affection meter.
Not only that, but tsundere characters were highly prone to falling into strange loops of self-rationalization, constantly auto-completing their own romance flags.
It gave off the feeling of playing a Galgame.
Take Saya's current display, for example. It was the purest form of saying one thing while meaning another. Suyan reached out to pet her, and she showed absolutely no resistance. Her mouth spat out rejections, but her body was betraying her true feelings entirely.
So why wasn't Saya bombarding Suyan with her arrogant 'tsun' side like she would in a standard anime plot? Why was she leaking her 'dere' side so easily?
The answer was incredibly simple.
Because Suyan wasn't a useless, 'yasashii' protagonist. He had top-tier grades, a handsome face, and was highly athletic. Aside from his slightly introverted, anti-social tendencies at Fujimi Academy, he was essentially the ultimate normie.
Add to that the fact that immediately after the apocalypse struck, Suyan had displayed terrifying supernatural abilities. And shortly after, he and Saeko had... practically put on an intimate live show right in front of her.
Most importantly, even her mother—Takagi Yuriko—had completely failed to display any arrogance or resistance in front of Suyan.
Under these overwhelming circumstances, Saya subconsciously felt inferior the moment she stood before him. How could she possibly muster up any arrogance?
Suyan pulled his hand away from Saya's head and turned to Saeko. "Saeko-senpai, you've been fighting all morning. You must feel pretty gross right now, don't you? Why don't you go take a shower and change into some fresh clothes? I'll start cooking lunch. It should be ready by the time you're done."
"Alright." Saeko hadn't thought much of it initially, but now that Suyan mentioned it, she did feel quite sticky and uncomfortable.
Knowing she would have time to rest after lunch, she didn't decline his suggestion. Furthermore, with Rei and Saya already assisting him, she abandoned any thoughts of helping out in the kitchen.
Once Saeko left, Suyan rolled up his sleeves and walked toward the kitchen. "Alright, let's see how well you two prepped the ingredients."
He scanned the vegetables they had chopped. His verdict: acceptable.
It was perfectly average. He hadn't expected them to possess master-chef knife skills and carve the radishes into decorative flowers anyway. This was more than good enough. The vegetables, like the radishes and potatoes, were diced evenly. The meat had also been correctly sliced against the grain to break down the tough fibers.
He had to admit, Japan's mandatory middle school Home Economics classes actually paid off.
If they could improve their skills just a little bit more, and handle all the ingredient prep before he cooked, he wouldn't mind doing all the actual cooking moving forward. The two most tedious parts of preparing a meal were prepping the ingredients beforehand and doing the dishes afterward. They had a dishwasher for the latter. If he didn't have to chop anything and only had to focus on the actual cooking, making three meals a day would be a genuinely relaxing hobby for him.
"Good job," Suyan said, freely dispensing his praise.
"I'm so glad we could help," Rei smiled, immediately seizing the opportunity to make a proposal. "How about we handle all the ingredient prep from now on? You can just write down the ingredients you need on a sticky note and put it on the fridge. We'll make sure everything is chopped and ready before you get back."
"Then I'll leave it in your capable hands," Suyan agreed without a moment's hesitation.
"It's no trouble at all. We just want to do whatever we can to help." Rei said, gently nudging the still-dazed pink-haired girl beside her. "Right, Saya?"
"Huh?"
Still lost in the lingering sensation of Suyan's hand on her head, Saya was jolted back to reality by Rei's push. Feeling the gazes of both Rei and Suyan fixated on her, she stammered for a few seconds, completely unable to form a coherent sentence.
"Alright, I'll take over the kitchen from here," Suyan said, not pushing her any further. He gently set the two YukimiBotamon down from his shoulders and shooed the two girls out of the cooking space.
Without established teamwork, extra hands in a kitchen didn't speed things up; they just got in the way.
Understanding this, Rei obediently pulled Saya aside. They didn't leave completely, choosing instead to quietly watch him work from the perimeter. Since it was a semi-open kitchen, they weren't in his way, so Suyan let them be.
As he began moving around the kitchen, Suyan suddenly thought of the woman he had eaten breakfast with that morning. He didn't turn around as he asked, "By the way, where is Takagi Yuriko? I haven't seen her."
Saya paused for a moment before answering, "M-my… I mean, big sister said she didn't sleep at all last night, so she went back to her room to catch up on sleep."
Even though she knew Yuriko's true identity, changing how she addressed her mother was still incredibly difficult.
"Is that so?" Suyan replied, his eyes never leaving the cutting board. "Make sure you wake her up when lunch is ready."
He planned to conduct the Water Divination test on Yuriko right after they ate.
Initially, Suyan hadn't intended to test her Nen affinity this early. She had only just grasped the concept of aura control last night. Given her meager aura reserves, maintaining Ten for a few minutes was the absolute limit of her current capabilities.
Not everyone could be a freak of nature like Busujima Saeko, who had successfully developed and conjured a specialized weapon like Reizan after only half a day of learning Nen, without even understanding the concept of the Six Nen Types. Exposing Yuriko to the advanced Nen chart too early could cause her to overthink things and neglect her fundamental aura training.
However, based on Yuriko's personality, Suyan strongly suspected she was a Transmutation Type. Even without forming a Contract with her, having another Transmutation Type user on hand could be incredibly beneficial for his ongoing research into the Zombie Toxin.
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