The Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Chapter 2: Part 1

Kanda Sorata's morning began relatively early.

It wasn't even six-thirty in the morning.

And before the cell phone he was using in place of an alarm clock would ring, he would be forcefully jolted back to reality by one of his cats, whether it was the white cat Hikari sticking her butt in his face, or whether it was the black cat Nozomi punching him with a paw in the face, or whether it was the spotted cat Kodama jumping on his stomach.

The cell phone alarm that range a bit later was the battle theme to an RPG Sorata used to be into back in junior high. He had set it at his alarm since April to get him pumped up in the morning. Just hearing the chorus once made him feel like he was up for anything that day.

The first thing he did after he woke up was washing his face. After that, he moved to the dining room, along with the seven cats at his feet pining for food.

Once he prepared cat food for the cats, they would go at it at full speed, and Sorata would take that time to eat some toast and gulp down some milk.

It was an ordinary, normal morning routine.

The only thing that wasn't quite normal was that each time Sorata opened the refrigerator, he couldn't help but feel a bit down.

The Sakurasou duty assignments were pasted to the door. And among those assignments was stuck a red note, attached via a number of colorful magnets, that was impossible to overlook.

Mashiro Duty – Kanda Sorata

That red was the red of an eternity. It signified that this assignment was forever.

While dealing with the psychological damage all this had caused, Sorata stood in the kitchen with the mini-laptop he had borrowed from Misaki. He used the laptop to look up a recipe for a bentou (1) that would be easy to make, and began to cook.

He had already planned today's menu last night: fried tuna, a cold ham and spinach salad, and finely chopped cooked carrots. He had already gotten the menu approved by Mashiro. He didn't really know why, but it seemed like she was ok with some fried things, but not others.

Eating another piece of toast, Sorata diligently cooked lunch.

He occasionally glanced at the computer screen to check the recipe. If there was some downtime, he would check some game developer blogs to kill time.

And of course, he didn't forget to respond to Ryuunosuke when his chat window suddenly popped up.

–What does Kanda think of death flags?

–Oh, you mean, those? Like, when someone says in the middle of the war, "when this war ends I'm going to propose to her..."

–Yes, those. There are really quite a number of examples, but it's a concept that holds an incredible amount of power in the storytelling world. Characters who say something careless are immediately marked for death, and whether they go out pitifully or in a blaze of glory, they end up dying. And that's when I thought, are those people aware that these death flags exist?

–No, I don't think they would...

Ryuunosuke was a bit of a strange fellow, but he wasn't an unpleasant person. That was the impression Sorata got from being his online chat partner.

–If we create realistic characters that reflect the spirit of today, it is inevitable that we would come to understand human existence and the things that control that existence. But nevertheless, authors and screenwriters continue to use death flags. Don't you think that they're making a statement on the sadness within human nature here?"