I Do Not Dream Of Eating Your Pancreas (IWTEYP x Seishun Buta Yarō)

Chapter 6: Tea & Strategy

I thought the mood at dinner might be a bit awkward, having a stranger in the group. The only person I had really eaten with outside of my family was Sakura, and even then it was only just the two of us. Now I was sitting with four people who barely knew me, yet still went out of their way to make me feel welcome.

"Did you get enough to eat? There's some more if you're still hungry." Sakuta asked me, finishing up his own bowl moments before. "No I'm good, it was delicious. Thank you though." Around the table, everyone looked to be satisfied with dinner. Throughout the meal, I listened to the four of them catch up and talk about their lives.

Mai was an actress, recently she had been filiming some commercials in the area. "There was some offers to do some shoots but they were all out of the area, I wanted to stay locally for a bit." She poked Sakuta in the arm. "Someone gets a bit lonely when I'm gone for a few days."

Sakuta smiled at her. "Are you sure it's not you getting lonely? After all, last time you oww." He cut off what he was saying as she began pinching his arm where she was poking him. He rubbed where she pinched him after she let go, though any hard feelings were clearly missing as she placee her hand over his.

Mai looked over at Rio. "How's the academic work coming along? You mentioned you had a big project you were working on." Rio looked away for a moment, in thought. "It was going well, but we hit a roadblock in our research." She looked over to me. "I work in a team that is trying to uncover what causes the syndrome in the first place, and coming up with ways for people to solve things by themselves. That's another reason why I'm helping you, it might help out our research get past the roadblock."

By this point, we had all finished eating. We cleaned up the table, and shortly after any sign that we had dinner was soon gone. "Hey Kaede, we're going to keep talking, you don't have to stick around." Sakuta looked over to his sister, dropping hints so that way we could discuss my problem. "No problem, I'm going to meet Kotomi for a bit."

We waited until we heard the sound of the front door closing. "Sorry about the wait, I just don't want to involve her with this. She's dealt with it enough in her own life." Sakuta finally said. I nodded, understanding enough from what he said. Rio pulled out a notebook and her phone, opening up a recording app. "It's easier to record everything said, any missed detail could be a big help."

Rio drank some of her water in front of her before continuing. "As of now, we have two main problems to solve. One, how to get you out of the syndrome and back to your normal life. Two, what we can do so come tomorrow morning we won't have to start from scratch." She wrote on the paper the two problems and circled them. "The second should be our first priority, as the chances of us solving this the first time around isn't high."

Sakuta nodded, beside him Mai looked deep in thought. "What if we write ourselves letters?" Sakuta asked, but Rio was already shaking her head. "I don't think that will work, if the receipt for his stay at the net cafe was gone in the morning then chances are the letters will be gone as well." She paused for a moment, then looked over to me. "We can try having you write the letters instead, if you don't mind the extra work."

I nodded, having to write a few letters was no problem. "Just tell me what to write and I'll get it done." Rio took 3 pages from the notebook and handed them over to me. "We'll do the letters afterwards, so just hold onto these for later." I set the pages to the side, and looked back at Rio. "There's probably something I should say before we move onto the next problem."

Everyone's eyes looked to me. "When I was getting cleaned up earlier, something happened. I saw things that never happened, but they felt real. Like events that could happen but haven't yet." Rio picked up her pen. "Do you remember what they were?" She asked, ready to begin writing. I thought back to the scenes from the bath.