Story of a Rhythm Game Couple

Chapter 3: Morning routine

The next morning, as usual, the alarm went off.

Upon hearing the sound, Asahi hesitantly turned the alarm off. It had been a while since the last time he had considered taking a little extra shut-eye, given his uptight schedule.

He must have been tired because he was over an hour late for bed. Taking Sana home last night was probably the cause.

Still feeling drowsy, Asahi got out of bed to do his morning preparations. Asahi's routine has been something like this since he started living alone: Before leaving his apartment for his morning jog, he would take care of his personal hygiene. Then, he would get the leftovers from the night before out of the fridge and let them cool so they could be made into breakfast. But since yesterday he hadn't had dinner at home, he opted for a light breakfast from a konbini. If he had both morning and afternoon classes that day, he would also gather ingredients to make simple dishes for his lunch box meal. After getting everything ready in the kitchen, Asahi wore his running shoes and started jogging towards the park nearby, passing the familiar FunZone Arcade, which was still shutting its doors.

The area where Asahi lived wasn't a student town, so people in the neighborhood tended to get up really early, so even though it was still close to daybreak, the park had already been bustling with activity by the time he arrived.

It was quite a large park. It featured a bidirectional, deformed circular path around the lake, and strewn around were a few seats taken by some women who seemed to have done with their exercise. In the outer areas, various kinds of plants naturally bloomed, making the park look really revitalizing through the morning mist. According to many people, those areas had always been well taken care of since the day of the park's establishment, so the gorgeous landscape never once looked disappointing. Since Asahi had been jogging every day for the past week, he found that it was filled with people mostly in their 50s doing different workouts in the morning, and if he had the time to wander around the park in the afternoon, there were usually small kids who would hang out here after school.

Normally, Asahi would spend about an hour at the park, but since he was a little short on sleep last night, he decided to head home earlier to have a little rest. He then had a quick shower, and since today's classes didn't end until late in the afternoon, he also prepared to make his lunch.

After carefully packing his lunch box, he put it in his bag and set out for school. The bike crashed on the ground last night, probably due to the wind. Asahi quickly got it up and started to hit the pedals for school. The breeze was getting a bit chillier compared to yesterday, since fall was coming soon. Asahi was shivering a bit in his short-sleeved uniform, and he regretted not having paid attention to the weather forecast for something warmer.

Halfway to school, Asahi spotted Sana's house, or more accurately, her aunt's house. He had just taken her home yesterday, and since her house was on his way to school, he couldn't help but notice it. He was able to have a clearer view of the house now, in contrast to the utter darkness of the night when he first arrived here. Compared to the neighbors, it was a relatively large house, and its pale yellow paint, in comparison to the theme color of Dining Palace, was lighter and somewhat brighter. The big wooden door on the front stayed shut, not sure whether Sana and her aunt had already left or they were still getting ready for the day. On the second floor, there was a little balcony with a few little ornamental trees set on the tables on both sides. Behind it was probably Sana's room, as the light gray two-wing door had quite a few stickers on it. There was a thick layer of steel barriers crossed into square patterns encasing both the second and third floors, probably to avoid would-be burglars. There was no knob on the door entering Sana's room, perhaps as an additional security measure. There was nothing showing outside of the house on the third floor, so Asahi didn't pay much attention to it.