Calm Time

When Monday came, it was time for Maria to attend her first class, so I don't need to tell you how worried my mother and I were that everything would go well. Like us, Maria is not currently attending the school year; in fact, she just needs to attend and get used to the school environment, see how classes work in a classroom, see how lessons are taught, the rules, how homework is handled. It may seem obvious to many, but for someone who has never been to school before, it's not. That's why Tamamo and I were supposed to help her in any way we could. We made sure she had everything she might need, such as notebooks and pencils for taking notes. We were also worried that the cold might affect her, so we made sure she had good warm clothes. I thought she might have trouble using public transportation, so we also left the house early to teach her how to use the subway. My sister was quite upset and called us controlling; I preferred to see us as preventive. When we arrived at the class and she introduced herself, there was no problem or commotion like when Tamamo or I arrived, and thank goodness, because I was ready to jump in and fight to the death against the first person who said anything negative about her.

To be honest, I didn't expect to have to stay in school for a long time, but it seems that the plan has changed now. It seems that while we were investigating the I.S.C. and why they did what they did, Haru's grandfather asked my mom if we could protect Haru while she goes to school, so it looks like we will be going to school conventionally for a long time.

When we got home, my mother was so happy to see her daughter coming home after class that she couldn't resist crying and taking a video of her coming in the door to send to the rest of the family. I didn't know that; I hope I'm not in the video, or it's sure to cause a lot of gossip. After my mother calmed down, she asked if there were any other things we might need so she could buy them later. It seems that now that she has been rescued from the kidnapping, she is taking things much more seriously and wants to be better prepared, so she asked what we might need in terms of weapons. Knowing that it would undoubtedly be difficult to get things here, I decided to ask for simpler things than I would have liked. For example, instead of asking for an assault rifle, I think a submachine gun would be much better since most of the problems would be indoors anyway. Another thing I would have liked to get were bulletproof vests; it's not like my sword couldn't protect me, but it never hurts to have extra protection because you never know what might happen in a fight. I also asked for a safe to store all the weapons, as it wasn't a good idea to have these things lying around the house.

Among the normal requests, I also asked for more new clothes, since I hardly had any to begin with, although it would be difficult to find pants with room for my foxtail here. My mother took the opportunity to make María and me compare our sizes, as any mother would do, as if I hadn't had this competition with my cousins a million times before. What I wasn't prepared for was to see that María was considerably taller than me. My mother, not satisfied, pulled out a tape measure for further torment - 1.40 meters. I was devastated; I was basically the size of a child. I thought Tamamo was tall because when I hugged her standing up, I could barely reach the lower part of her chest, but now I know she was of average height for a Japanese person. The worst thing was that that was it for me; unlike María, who could still grow a little with luck, I had no such possibility, since my body wouldn't grow any more than it already had. Unchanging, just like the day Nanami died, where not even the passage of time in the world affected her.

On Tamamo's side, she asked if she could get high-quality paper, a traditional brush, and traditional high-quality ink to make better magical talismans. Apparently, the ones she had been using were just made out of napkins and a pen, which were not meant to be used for magic at all. It seems that the better the quality of the materials and the manufacturing process, the better and more powerful the spells the talismans could handle. My mother was not very happy to see that a set of shodō (書道) Japanese calligraphy tools like Tamamo cost around $200, considering that the cafeteria napkins had worked fine until now. Maybe with my mother's salary as a high-ranking official of the Alliance, spending that much on something like this wouldn't be a big deal, but for someone who knew hunger and scarcity from a peasant family background like the one she came from in the past, well, it would make her think twice.

Not much has happened regarding our mission to protect Haru. Her grandfather comes to drop her off personally before classes start. From that moment on, Tamamo and I take care of her. Haru seems quite nervous about everything that has happened, which is understandable. Nevertheless, she seems to be strong enough to come to class normally after being kidnapped here. The news of what happened didn't seem to reach the newspapers, so none of our classmates knew about it. The fact that Haru was unconscious during the whole shooting may have contributed to her not remembering the ordeal. After class, a police patrol came to pick her up.

Back at the house, I didn't have much to do, so I finally decided to have some time to myself and recover from everything that had happened. I was finally able to put the computer to the test by playing all the new video games I had missed all those years during the war. Tamamo seemed to help around the house with my mother when she returned from work. Maria, on the other hand, came to ask for my help to order something by mail. It seemed to be a book, although she wouldn't tell me what it was. She said it was for school, but I don't think they would have asked her for an expensive textbook just to use it for two months at most. I decided to help her after she threatened to publish my browser history.

When night came, Mom prepared dinner and I continued to tell of my bizarre adventures around the world, like all the tests I had to pass to become an Alliance pilot, or how I lost my chance to fly a fighter again after being shot down in Italy, or how I barely made it out alive after the angels helped me with emergency care. Though I still kept some parts to myself, like how horribly disfigured my face was from the burns. They didn't need to know how ugly I really was. My mother talked a bit more about her cafe, and how it seemed that her restaurant's customers had decreased significantly after the grand opening, but that she was still waiting to see the actual results. Tamamo, on the other hand, was watching a documentary about the cafes in Akihabara, and it seemed that she liked the design of a maid's outfit so much that she wanted to try one on, even though the only other western clothing she had worn so far was the school uniform, and only because she had been forced to, so it was strange to see her wanting to wear something other than her beautiful kimonos.

On Tuesday, everyone at school was talking about February 14th, Valentine's Day. They speculated about which girls would give chocolates to whom, or if they would give them to the person they loved. It seemed to be a very important thing for Japanese teenagers. As soon as Tamamo heard what it was about, she ran to the supermarket after class to buy a set to make chocolates. It is also said that here in Japan we have White Day, which is an extension of Valentine's Day. On that day, it would be the men who would give chocolates to show their gratitude to the girl who gave them something on February 14th. As for me, I didn't want to make things more complicated than they already were, so I decided to just buy her something and give it to her on Valentine's Day. Since Tamamo was going to give me chocolates, I thought about giving her something else, so I secretly bought a small teddy bear and hid it.

Back at the house, I saw my mother trying to teach Tamamo how to make chocolate. When the inevitable happened and chocolate ended up on the walls, I could hear my mother crying as she cleaned up, using a ladder to reach the higher spots. Later in the afternoon, a package arrived for Maria. She went to pick it up with extreme caution, making sure no one saw what it was. But for a second I managed to see that it was a small package wrapped in plastic. Connecting the dots of her secrecy and the fact that it was a book, I realized that it must be the book she had found on the Internet and reprinted, the Grimoire, as she called it. She was trying to pretend otherwise to maintain some dignity. Honestly, I have no idea why she reprinted it, especially with Tamamo around to teach her magic, but she'll figure it out.

Speaking of February 14th, my anxiety over the date grew with each passing minute. However, my reasons were very different from those usually associated with Valentine's Day. Unlike many others, February 14th marks the anniversary of many difficult and bad moments in my life: the day the dragons attacked, the day they attacked White Base and my exile to the metro, the day Luna died. I think it was also the day I saw Nanami for the last time, although I don't remember much because of what happened. The desperate end of the war against the dragons and Rose's death also happened on a February 14th. I think it's quite understandable that I see this date as a day of bad luck, apart from my terrible history regarding my youth in matters of love.

But when the dreaded February 14th finally arrived, even I didn't know that it would be as disastrous as all the previous ones, or everything that would happen to me in just one day. As we were having breakfast before going to school, the doorbell rang. My mother, thinking it was another delivery, opened the door only to be greeted by a transparent, angelic being. The little girl turned out to be Momo, her delicate glass body abruptly interrupted by the huge slave collar she wore around her neck. Next to her were a couple of large suitcases and a messenger bag full of tools. The only thing that could make the situation worse was the exact choice of words she used with her first line.

"Hello, I am Cesar's wife and I have come here so that he can take responsibility for what he has done and if I can live with him," the crystal angel said.

My mother immediately turned her head to where I was with a smile on her face, but I knew it was not a smile, it was the face of a raging demon with a thirst for blood and revenge. My self-preservation instinct kicked in and I immediately started running towards the nearest window, which I went through, breaking it as I jumped towards it. Then I started running down the street as fast as I could, but when I turned to look at my mother, I could only see the powerful, legendary weapon with which Latin mothers manage to subdue even the strongest of wills, destroy empires and teach values to their children, the Chancla. In a demonstration of authentic martial arts, my mother did a trick with her foot to avoid even bending over her flip-flop, taking into account the distance, gravity, direction, strength of the wind, the Coriolis effect, and making the necessary corrections for the shot. After that, a sonic boom went through the streets of the neighborhood until it found the head of her target, from which she hit me so hard and accurately that I lost consciousness and fell to the street.