Fate: Hammer Time

Chapter 24: Setting Up the Scenes

Raiga still hadn't called him.

Shirou looked at his phone with a frown, glaring at the innocent device as if it held the power to summon the Yakuza-lord at will, but refused to, simply to make his life more difficult.

Raiga had promised to contact him as soon as he had found the Brat, or at least had a good lead, but it had been two weeks already, and there was still no sign of the old man.

Over the past weeks, Shirou had done what Raiga asked of him. He had hunted down every criminal the yakuza-boss wanted removed from the game and delivered them to the police.

All that was left now was the Brat himself. Once that guy was safely locked up too, Rakurai could disappear. With that, the unrest in Japan should hopefully come to an end, and the doom scenario Raiga had envisioned would never come to pass.

That did require however that the Brat would show himself at some point, but so far, the man had managed to completely elude any attempt made to find him or lure him out of hiding.

Raiga had estimated that it would take about a week to get the Brat to Fuyuki, but they'd gone past that deadline eight days ago now and there was still no indication the Brat was coming any time soon.

Shirou didn't like that at all.

Thus his constant staring at the phone.

In the meantime, Sakura was busy in the kitchen, quietly working on their lunch for school, periodically glancing at him as she cooked. At first, she had been disapproving of his budding obsession with the phone, but as more and more time went by without any sign from Raiga, she was also getting anxious.

The matter of Rakurai hung above the Emiya-residence like a dark cloud. Always present, inescapable, and impossible to ignore for long.

On the upside however, Sakura's 'medical leave' had finally ended; she had been deemed mentally stable enough to go back to school without complications. Her examiners considered it odd she had recovered so quickly from her 'terrible experiences', but they had given her a clean record and permission to continue with her life nonetheless.

There had been an offer from her school for her to follow a separate class to catch up on what she'd missed during her forced absence, but she'd only been absent for slightly more than two weeks, so Sakura had refused.

There was no way she was going to delay her re-entrance into normal society even more.

She did appreciate that the school was trying to look out for her, but there really was no need for them to do so. She would much rather have things go back to how they were, though of course, without Zouken.

Despite that however, Shirou could tell that she was troubled somehow.

It wasn't anything big, and Sakura wasn't morose or glum because of it, but at times, when she thought he wasn't looking, she would flinch slightly, or bite her lip with a pained expression, as if she was recalling something shameful.

She hadn't spoken about it so far though, and experience had taught him that it was unlikely she ever would without external pressure. She was still far too worried about being a bother to come to him for help with her problems.

Shirou didn't want to press her, but if the matter was still bothering her by nightfall, after she'd been to school again, he would address the matter himself.

He did not want a repeat of the past years.

Nodding to himself, Shirou went back to staring at his phone, before a bento was suddenly held in front of his eyes, blocking his sight of the device.