Overlord of Biblical proportions

Overlord of a High School (10)

Miki opened her eyes, with the cold from the dawn highlighting the emptiness of her own room, The gradual brightening of her room the only thing that tells her that time is still moving.

Miki's gaze slowly moved towards the clock, hanging opposite the bed. The tick down of the clock, usually almost inaudible in any other time, was almost deafening in the silent morning hours. It's currently a quarter past six.

It was the usual time at which Miki used to wake up, just enough to prepare for the day's goings-on, to prepare breakfast and lunch for Issei and... Gorou. Ten to fifteen minutes to brush her teeth and shower, fully washing away the leftover morning drowsiness, and she would go down to the kitchen, leaving herself a full hour to cook. Cooking something big or gourmet in that time was difficult, but breakfast was neither the former nor the latter. When she was in a good mood, oyakodon or even curry for packed lunch.

By the time everything was ready, the rest of the household would be finally awake, going down to the kitchen with a fully prepared breakfast...

'Does that make any sense?' Miki silently caught the last thought in her mind, looking at the clock that was so disgustingly slow and loudly counting down the passing seconds.

'Why am I awake at this time? Gorou is gone, Issei is also gone... I am the only one left, what's the point in waking up so early?'

Suddenly, another thought flashed through Miki's mind. 'Just me and Satoru...'

Miki covered her eyes for a moment, trying to understand what she was feeling at this time, from this thought. Joy? Regret? Anger?

The tangle of thoughts in Miki's head shrank after time passed, but failed to generate an answer. Instead of a clear understanding, only a heap of emotions came to her. Like a computer repeating error messages, after deleting some very important files, spitting back panicked errors that made no sense. As if someone had ripped out some critical part of Miki's mind that kept it functioning, and now it had to hobble on, encountering error after error.

'Does this even make sense?' Miki's shattered mind couldn't even tell her what she liked and didn't like, and what that even meant in the first place.

Miki waited a few seconds, as if clarity would come to her... And that epiphany came along with the slight, barely audible squeaking of a pen on sheets of paper. Someone else was already awake even earlier than her, and seemed to be already busy working.

'It's Satoru.' The realization came to Miki a moment later. 'He's up even earlier than me and already working...? While I can't even decide if I should get up at all... Ha, he must be hungry, right? That should be something that I could do... But he's a much better cook than me... No, just because he made a fancy breakfast yesterday, have I now decided that I can dump all my responsibilities on him? What purpose would I even have then...'

Miki exhaled and then got out of bed forcefully, throwing back the blanket before heading off to do her morning routines. A bath should help clear her head, at least, she hoped so.

A few minutes later, Miki came out of the bathroom, refreshed but still not knowing exactly what she needed to do with her life. At least, she knows what she is going to do in the next hour.

Slowly, trying not to make any noise, Miki tried to determine where Satoru was at the moment, then froze in her steps when she realized the answer to that question.

Satoru was in Gorou's office.

'Haha, really, it's not like I could blame him, it's not like I gave him a room. Even if I did, there's only an extra bed in the home, and that's in Gorou's office. So, the most logical thing for him to do was to settle in there.' Miki smiled sadly to herself, but still with a wistful happiness. It was as if Satoru had cut another little thread leading to her past, relieving her of another chain weighing on her that she hadn't even suspected was there before.