Reiyouki Sentai Seitenger

Record 04 - A Dangerous Race!

Eichirou was still yawning when he went down to the living room, still in his pajamas. It would appear that the preparation for the photo exhibit that he was planning was a really taxing one. Erika soon handed him a cup of coffee.

"Good morning, Eichirou-san," Erika greeted as soon as Eichirou took the cup from her hand.

"Good morning..." the photographer replied quite lazily.

Erika could only shake her head and proceeded once again to the kitchen where she saw Shuichi talking to Hideoki. At that, she couldn't help frowning. What could they possibly be discussing? But even from her position, she could tell that it wasn't anything grave or something.

"You woke up early, Erika."

The pianist turned around to the direction of that voice, only to see his brother reading the music sheets that was on his hand.

"I couldn't sleep," she said nonchalantly. But it was more than enough to catch her brother's attention.

"What do you mean? Are you having nightmares?"

Erika shook her head and smiled. "It's nothing like that, Onii-chan. I was..." Wait, should she even tell the truth about that?

"You were what?" Itsuki asked, coaxing her to speak more about it.

Though the tone that Itsuki used was placid, she could sense an underlying worry in it, as well. She sighed because of that. Why was it that she had a brother like this guy, anyway?

But then, this was her brother. It was to be expected since he was the only one left that she would call her immediate family. They only had each other all this time, together with the others who now became her teammates.

"I was just worried about Helen-chan." There. She said it.

For some reason, she already expected her brother's sour reaction upon mentioning her childhood friend's name. But she couldn't understand why Itsuki would react like that towards Helen when she hadn't even done anything ill towards her brother.

"Onii-chan..." she called out, using a tone that would immediately state her point.

Itsuki sighed and tapped Erika's head. She didn't resist this time and allowed him to do that. "I'm sorry. But I can't really do anything about my opinion to your childhood friend. Unless something happens that could make me see the reason why I should trust her, don't expect me to treat her the same way as the others. Okay?"

The pianist sighed dejectedly at her brother's answer. But since he already stated his point, she might as well respect it. She couldn't do anything about it for now.

Well, the reason why Erika was worried about her childhood friend was because Helen didn't sleep in the mansion but somewhere else that she had no idea about. Even though Hideoki offered the other girl a room that she could use for the night, Helen decided not to take the offer for the reason that she already commissioned someone else where she could stay for a while. Not only that, she also noticed that Helen was pretty quiet for the majority of the time that they were together in that mansion.

'I wonder what's wrong with her. I hope she's okay.' It was a natural thing for her to worry about Helen even though they hadn't seen or even communicated with each other for the past ten years since the hotel fire. And for some reason, she couldn't help feeling a bit bothered about the fact that Helen knew about the Vessels and the Tareans.

Could that be the same feeling that Itsuki had about Helen?

All Erika did was to scratch her head because of so many questions lingering in her mind about her brother and her childhood friend. But then again, it wasn't like she was going to find out the answers anytime soon, right?