🌸Cherry Blossom Palette🎨

🌸Chapter 20: Illumination🎨

Written by EmtenDew

Edited by P. serrulata

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Author's note:

ED: Hey, hey! Our first (and hopefully only) hiatus is over!

Sakura and Hana have joined their senpai, Naoto, in a study group trio, hoping to finish their spring term strong. While Naoto is looking forward to working with the two girls on a Saturday morning, he has other plans later in the day. How will things turn out for our young artist?

I've started posting this story to other sites, including Quotev, Tumblr, and Webnovel (which is lacking in bold/italics/underline/strikethrough/etc.?!), so I'm hoping for some more coverage. Instagram doesn't seem all that useful for this, and Twitter wants information they don't need to know and they only use for no good, and I'm not willing to give it, so those two are probably out.

My editor's also having good times with drumming up support for the story. Some goon on Reddit created an alternate account just to beef about my story when my editor recently advertised a new chapter. Editor called them a "snake" and told said goon to "go fart in the bathtub and giggle about it". LOL. He went easy. I've seen the kind of insults he can throw.

Please look at the Q&A section I set up at the end of the chapter. Ask us anything, and we'll add another section in the next chapter. I would be happy if you ask questions.

Please enjoy what I wrote.

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Saturday, July 6, 2018

Naoto Hachioji opened his mouth and gave a great yawn. To bed by 10:00 p.m., he'd slept plenty, sure, especially with how late he usually stayed up Friday nights, but it didn't mean he enjoyed walking to school on a Saturday morning.

It was early, man!

After a quick breakfast and throwing on his school uniform, Naoto had set off from home just before 7:00 a.m. Considering the hills in the east, the sun was shining, but it had yet to illuminate the entire city, and portions of the eastern half were still cast in shadow.

When he had reason to do so, he'd occasionally head to school this early... on weekdays.

But he had plenty of reason to head in as early as he was for a Saturday.

Having had two days of decent study with Sakura Inori and Hana Sunomiya—both of whom he'd agreed to try and help bump up their grades at the end of the semester—the three of them decided to head in at 8:00 a.m. to spend three or four hours hitting the books together.

Thankfully, it wasn't hot yet, but that would change once the sun fully showed itself over the hills. By that time, however, he'd be in blessed air-conditioning with his two kohai.

About halfway through his walk though, he almost regretted their pledge to have snacks and beverages on hand every time they met. The juice wasn't that heavy, but three one-liter bottles of orange, apple, and cranberry juice felt hefty enough after a while.

Thankfully, Sakura had volunteered to bring a half-dozen muffins, so he wasn't stuck with even more to carry, his schoolbag and three bottles of juice enough of a burden.

That had been most welcome, seeing Sakura's message an hour or so earlier:

<Don't worry about donuts or anything. I'll bring 2 muffins for each of us! Just make sure you get me some cranberry juice, please~~! 😚>