Summer.

The direct sunlight would have been difficult to bear without the anesthetic of the phrase “summer sale” and it was joined by an expanse of water, a slight scent of chlorine, and countless swimsuits in all sorts of bright colors.

“Touma, Touma. I think it’s time we settled something once and for all.”

“Hm? Settled what?”

He wanted to propose a new diet in which one ran away from delinquents at night. If he wrote a book on it and focused on the very, very specific category of “E-book Rankings > Hobby and Practical > Health > Essay > A Student’s First and Troubled Attempt at a Blog”, he could probably rank at the top for about an hour. His name was Kamijou Touma and he was surprisingly skinny but also a little muscular.

However, that male beauty that could be adored like a Greek sculpture did not matter at the moment.

The silver-haired, green-eyed nun suddenly – truly suddenly – gave her answer!

“We casually came to this lazy river together, but is this a date or not!?”

(↑Before he thought of this as a date. ↓After he thought of this as a date.)

Kamijou Touma, the boy in swim trunks, stared into the distance and floated in the waves.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait. You’re still bothered about that kind of thing? We’ve been living together for a while now, so why does being together suddenly gain special meaning when we’re outside the dorm?”

“No! You can’t look at it like that!”

“And you can’t call it a date when we didn’t prepare anything in advance. We only stopped by here on the way back from doing battle at the special supermarket sale. That old woman shrieked at me and used her nails!! But it was I who left with the one-day offer of an industrial fifty-pack of butter! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“You have a girl in a swimsuit right in front of you and you’re busy reminiscing about some old lady with a perm? Touma, you’re too dense in far too many ways.”

“Says the defenseless girl who showed up at someone’s house, started eating all his food, and sleeps in his shirts!!”

She tried to bite him, but the lazy river’s current was stronger than expected. To make sure they were not separated in the crowd, the pointy-haired boy called for half-time and attempted to approach for a rendezvous.

“There’s something wrong with you, Touma.”

“And there it is. Thanks for calling your landlord weird.”

“There hasn’t been enough narration about my swimsuit! There’s barely been any!! Why is that!? Are you not interested!?”

But Index kept up the fight during the interval. If this was an international match, then she was the group of hooligans pouring out of the stands and onto the field.

“It’s amazing how those guys can gather strength in their gut for a perfect six pack. My stomach never ends up like that no matter what I do. I do feel like I’ve got a bit of muscle building up in my bicep though.”

“There it is again. You have a girl in front of you and you’re focusing on your own muscles instead!”

Kamijou calmly forced down the little people in his head like he was a part-time security guard, but Index made a suggestion while brushing her wet silver hair back.

“You need to look at everything like it’s new. You need to be more surprised. There’s a cute girl unconditionally standing by your side. Don’t take that for granted!”

“So you’ve finally stooped to calling yourself cute, have you? But are you sure you want that!? Are you sure you want Kamijou Touma’s exposed adolescence focused on you!? It’s gonna be creepy. Are you sure you want a Kamijou-san who worries until his brain cells boil over about who takes their bath first!? And it will happen again and again, day after day! You asked for this, so you don’t get a cooling off period!!”

“Hmm???”

Oh, dear. She’s tilting her head.

The small Kamijou Touma who he could not allow out before ten at night was rising to the surface, so he quickly forced it back down to the bottom of his mind. He had to be sneaky about it.

Index must have been bored with the lazy river because she had climbed halfway up one of the ladders on the side of the pool when she tilted her head. She did not seem aware that stopping there placed the butt contained in her wet swimsuit right at the pointy-haired boy’s eye level. Thanks to that, the exposed adolescence (i.e. the prototype Kamijou Touma that was prone to losing control) that he had supposedly sealed in the depths of his mind came dangerously close to popping back out like a cuckoo clock. The pointy-haired boy of chosen adolescence activated a surging big bang of the brain in order to thoroughly seal away that mental demon king. The electric signals running through his synapses seemed to form special signs, securing a region of nothingness for Student Sage Kamijou Touma. With his heartrate back under control, he slowly worked to persuade the butt in front of his eyes.

“The worlds gather like air bubbles and the laws of the gates by which they connect are revealed before me… I feel like I could neatly answer even the most difficult problem in a mere 140 characters. Very well. Explain it all to me, Index. What led to that sudden comment of yours?”

“We’re out in the city on a Sunday and you walked right past the poolside crepe stand, Touma! They said on TV that a date is where you walk around eating all sorts of delicious food!!”

“How is this any different from normal!? You need to bring some more surprises to the table!!”