Chương 63: Chapter 63: Kotegawa Chisa
"Who are you? Scratch that, first of all, can you leave now before I gouge out your eyes?"
Standing in front of my eyes was the heroine of Grand Blue in the flesh. Although young, she had her distinct feature of short brown hair and similarly colored brown eyes.
Actually, you know what? Scratch that. Lots of people have brown hair and brown eyes. But it's impossible to not know her-
"How long are you going to keep staring, you PERVERT!" She threw the basket filled with dirty laundry towards me, forcing me to close the door in the process of chasing me out.
Oops, I was thinking about her face that I didn't think of looking at her body. Not that there isn't anything to look at in the first place.
Forgive me, Shouko. Your man has sinned.
Since I didn't want to return to my room without showering, I just packed all the dirty laundry back to the basket and placed it by the wall. I sat down beside it, hoping that Chisa would hurriedly finish changing.
Looking back, I think this is my first lucky pervert moment. Despite living with Shouko for about 2-3 years, I don't think I ever had a memory of walking into the middle of her changing.
Just as I was reminiscing nothing, the door to the bathroom opened again, and boy, was she not happy.
"Etto...I'm sorry? I didn't know anyone was inside." Spoken like a true protagonist, I unleashed the "I thought no one was using the bathroom" excuse.
Unfortunately, I don't think she forgave me since she just gave me a stink eye and walked away, presumably to complain to her dad. At least she didn't try to beat me up like a tsundere, not that she would manage to beat me anyway.
With enough drama, for the time being, I think it's best I enjoy my bath before anything else comes to ruin my night.
∞
'Who on earth is he?'
After hurriedly changing, Chisa came out of the bathroom and noticed the same boy who had seen her naked sitting quietly on the floor.
She might not have been fully naked with her underwear worn, but to her, it was no different.
"Hmph!" Throwing the stinkiest eye she could possibly throw at the boy, Chisa walked away with her arms crossed. She was angry, but since the boy had apologized, she didn't try to make things too difficult for him. The keywords, though, were 'try' and 'too difficult'. But even if she didn't make things too difficult for him, it didn't mean that she would have a good first impression of him.
Toshio owned two places for people to stay. The first was the shop, while the second was a nearby apartment whose quality isn't the best. While the shop had rooms mainly for close relatives, the nearby apartment mostly was for guests, though anyone could use it (with his permission, of course.)
While the apartment was of a lower quality than the rooms in the shop, Chisa chose to stay at the apartment most of the time because of one reason: it was much closer to the sea.
[A/N: The apartment doesn't exist in the anime. It would later be removed as it isn't cost-efficient to maintain it. So, this would just be plot armor, I guess.]
No one was attracted to anything from the day they were born, but they could be influenced by the people around them. Being born from parents who both worked at the sea, Chisa had loved the ocean ever since she could remember.
Her mother, Sayaka Kotegawa, worked as the Dolphin's Palau branch manager, a diving shop specializing in teaching, accompanying, and guiding both new and experienced divers out to the ocean. And if that wasn't enough, her father had opened up another shop in Owase, providing and renting divers the necessary gears to dive.
Both of them had jobs related to diving; how could she not come to learn and love about the wonders of being underwater?
Chisa did not know why her parents lived separately, and she never confirmed it with her parents. Because as far she was concerned, since both her parents still maintained amicable contact with each other, there was no problem.
Her thoughts strayed for a while before she realized that she wasn't focusing on the current problem. What should she do with the boy?
Her legs had automatically guided her to where she instinctively thought was the best place to ask for advice. Standing in the middle of the empty store and her father sitting behind the counter, Chisa walked up to him.
Noticing her presence, Toshio's head was lifted from whatever book he was reading, and he asked, "Oh, Chisa? What's wrong?"
"...Who was that boy?"
"Boy? You mean Uesugi-kun? What about him?" Toshio was curious why his daughter suddenly asked about the boy.
"Nothing."
"It can't be nothing if Uesugi-kun is mentioned. You can tell your dad what's bothering you."
"It's nothing. I just saw that boy on my way here."
Seeing his daughter refuse to say anything, Toshio didn't know what to do. She had always been this...distant and stubborn, refusing to ask for anything unless absolutely required. It was a trait that was inherited from her mother, and while he did fell in love because of that, it was sometimes tiring to deal with it too.
"Fine. Your mother was always like that as well; I've adapted well enough to deal with stubborn people."
Chisa frowned, "I'm not stubborn."
'And now a tsundere too? How troublesome.' Of course, Toshio didn't say that out loud and just looked at his daughter, "So, what other questions do you want to ask about him? I just met him today myself, so don't expect that I would know everything about him."
"What is he like?"
"More specifically?"
"Is he a pervert?" Chisa's blunt question stunned Toshio for a while before he let out a wry smile once more.
"What? Did he peek at you bathing or something?"
"..."
Seeing Chisa's silence-means-consent, he became more astounded, "Really? He doesn't seem to be that sort of person, though."
"No, he didn't peek at me on purpose, at least. He just walked in because he thought no one was in there."
'Oops. That might be on me...' Toshio suddenly remembered what was itching him in his heart, as though he had forgotten something really important.
"So you want me to punish him?"
"He already apologized..."
"But you still don't like him."
"Well, he partially at fault too for seeing my daughter's body, so why don't the both of you go diving tomorrow?"
At the mention of 'diving', Chisa's interest was piqued once more.
"The boy knows how to dive?"
"He's learning for tomorrow. And it's not like you're that good as well. Remember, you're still a beginner. There's a lot of things you can't do without an accompanying adult, got it?"
"Yes."
"Anyway, since you and Uesugi-kun both deem it as an accident, I'll leave it to you to do whatever you want to him. He'll be sleeping at the apartment. Just don't be too rude to our guest, alright?"
"Fine. I'll be sleeping at the apartment as well."
"Again?"
"I like the sea breeze."
∞
I wonder if Chisa is going to do anything to me.
Well, if it comes to that, it comes to that. But for now, after I returned to the apartment, I set up the futon available and took the book Maruno gave me.
The Guide To Diving for Dummies 101
Hmm...is it safe to follow the instructions and rules inside? The title doesn't exactly give me the confidence that I need. Flipping open to the second page revealed a badly drawn diagram/picture of a person diving.
Breathe in, breathe out. I hope the rest of the book isn't of this quality.
The third page: The Why
Fortunately, it wasn't.
The third to the ninth page showed why diving is so fun and why diving should be recommended to everyone (except for a group of special people). To me, it's just propaganda, so after speed-reading through it that nothing important was mentioned, I went on to the second section.
The tenth page: The What
From the tenth page to the twenty-ninth page, the book explained what exactly is needed and required before we could dive. From any special conditions of our body (like asthma) to the equipment necessary, the twenty pages did a thorough explanation of each and every single piece of equipment. Not a single detail was missed, and all the pictures were professionally drawn.
Somehow, I felt that the last part of the previous sentence needed to be mentioned even though it was supposed to be an official book.
Besides that, I learned a lot about the types of equipment for diving, both the essential ones such as goggles, oxygen tank, weight belt, and the optional ones like the diving computer and the underwater camera.
And wow, that is a lot of knowledge. If it wasn't for my eidetic memory, it would have taken an average person a few days to process all this information by heart and a few more dives later before instinctively knowing which equipment does what.
I have no idea how many countless times I've been grateful to my eidetic memory; it was possibly one of the greatest gifts to anyone who's living in a world like this.
The thirtieth page: The How
This section was probably the longest because it contained two of the most critical parts of diving: the diving process itself and the safety actions that needed to be taken at every step of diving, from the jumping into the sea to the part where we swim about until we get back onto the boat.
This was probably the most crucial part of the book that I should focus on if I don't want to die while diving, or even worse, cause my buddy's death as I drag them down with me.
The ninetieth page: The Where.
The moment I saw the hand-drawn picture of a supposed diver in what seemed to be the sea, I automatically skipped this part and carried on to the next page. Where else would I dive if not in the ocean? The soil? The volcano? The air?
The ninety-first page: The Who
This section was also pretty short as some parts were covered under the How section, where the buddy system played an essential role in safety.
Still, they talked more in-depth about what the buddy system is all about, what the buddy system included, what it means to be a buddy and all that stuff. And finally, we arrive at the last section.
The ninety-sixth page: Hand Signals
Aha! Found the part where Iori just misunderstood every hand signal in every way possible.
Still, I could understand why Iori couldn't memorize it at first. It was only under immense pressure (sleeping beside two beauties) that he was able to desperately remember. Anyway, there were five whole pages dedicated to showing all the hand signals. Though, I'm pretty sure that only two or three pages showed the more frequently used signs, such as the "I'm descending" signal or "I'm running out of air" signal. The others were for more...unique situations that I'm sure Iori could find even more ways to misinterpret.
In conclusion, this 100-page book seemed to be pretty good if you ignore the horrendous drawings. I don't have drawing proficiency, but I'm pretty sure I can draw better than that, which was most probably drawn by engineering students at a university level.
I worry about the designs of the future with these types of drawings.
I spent about 2-3 hours memorizing the entire book word for word, picture for picture, and by the time I was finished, it was already midnight.
Just as I prepared to go to bed, a knock appeared on the door. Opening the door, I found the most unexpected guest of the night in front of me.
"Ano...I have already apologized for my mistake earlier, so if you're here about that..."
*****************
A/N: Two chapters today because it's the national day for Singapore. And I'm very happy about the holidays.
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