Want to be human, but cube-like

Xiangzi was stunned. She looked closely and realized that she had already cleaned up the cans on the floor last night, but when she came back today, the house was still clean and there was no extra trash.

This only means that her father still hasn't come home today.

This unusual situation made Xiangzi feel slightly uneasy. In the past, even if his father was out drinking all night, he would never stay away from home for such a long time.

After all, if it goes on any longer, he might be found drunk and passed out in an alley, and then taken to the police station or a hospital.

Xiangzi took out his phone and carefully checked all the message and call records to confirm that there were indeed no missed calls or unread text messages on his phone.

He wasn't being held at the police station, so why didn't my father come home for two consecutive days?

I checked the time; in another half hour, the last tram would also stop running.

If Father doesn't come home tonight, then he'll have been out for two nights in a row.

Do not……

Xiangzi paused for a moment. She remembered that she hadn't gone home the night before last. What if her father had gone out the night before last and hadn't come back?

That's three days...

"..."

She took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the unease in her heart.

During this period, calls to him were consistently unanswered.

Should I report it as missing to the police?

The thought flashed through Xiangzi's mind. She knew her father's situation very well. He had been to the police station more than once, and she guessed that he had left a very bad impression there. She was afraid that even if the case was accepted, the investigation would not be very proactive.

After all, it's perfectly normal for an unemployed, middle-aged alcoholic with a prior theft record to spend several days aimlessly wandering around outside.

Maybe he just passed out drunk outside and hasn't woken up yet, and hasn't been...

What happened when someone discovered it?

Holding onto this almost self-deceptive idea, Xiangzi temporarily stopped thinking about this unanswerable question.

Considering that Alex was still waiting for her on the street outside, she began to pack her things.

The reason why Xiangzi brought Alex back to Akabane's side was because of a conversation they had not long ago.

……

That was right after the burger shop had finished its business for the day.

"Xiangzi, what about the matter I asked you yesterday? How have you thought about it?"

Alex, having finished tidying up the kitchen, came out and asked Xiangzi, who was tallying up the bills at the counter.

"yesterday……?"

Slightly startled, Xiangzi then remembered what had happened at the train station yesterday before they parted ways, and the conversation they had.

"Um...I...I've made up my mind."

Perhaps she remembered something, a beautiful blush rose on her cheeks, and instead of turning around to look at Alex, she looked aimlessly across the screen.

“I will join the burger shop as an employee and move here to live.”

In the time it takes to say a sentence, Xiangzi readjusted his mood and turned around.

"I'll be troubling you from now on. Please take care of me in the future, Manager Alex."

She smiled slightly, not with the standard, stiff smile she usually gave to customers, but with a more natural, open smile, as if she had opened her heart.

"Well, please take care of me."

Alex smiled faintly as well.

"By the way, Alex, could you please accompany me back to Akabane tonight?"

After finishing up at the hamburger shop, Xiangzi glanced at the sky and asked hesitantly.

"Of course you can. Does Xiangzi need to go back to get something?"

Alex naturally wouldn't refuse, since she had nothing else to do anyway; at night she would just go back to the Sky Island and sit under the mob farm tower, spacing out.

"Yes, there are some things that need to be packed, but actually, the main thing is that I need to tell my father."

Xiangzi nodded and said.

This is why she didn't bring her packed luggage to the hamburger shop beforehand.

When Xiangzi returned home last night and didn't see her father, she knew she would have to go home again that night.

Regardless of her reasons for moving out, and regardless of whether her father was completely indifferent to Xiangzi's whereabouts, she felt she had to inform her father.

……

I never expected that I still wouldn't be able to see my father when I came back tonight.

But this matter can't be delayed any longer. I've already troubled Alex too many times. As for my father, I'll deal with that later.

There wasn't much to pack. He had already prepared most of it last night. He just needed to stuff it all into his suitcase. Xiangzi zipped up his suitcase and stood up.

She walked to the closet, carefully took the doll off the top, put it into the doll box next to it, and secured it.

Then, there was the electronic keyboard.

"……call."

She lifted the Roland VR-730, which weighed a full ten kilograms, into the violin case, and Xiangzi breathed a sigh of relief before slowly closing the lid.

First, he carried the suitcase downstairs. Then, Xiangzi came back up, carrying the doll box in one hand and carefully carrying the keyboard case, one step at a time, downstairs with the other.

"Xiangzi, let me help you?"

Alex, who had somehow arrived at the door of the rental apartment at the bottom of the stairs, took the violin case from her hand.

"……sorry to bother you."

With a slight flicker in his eyes, Xiangzi glanced at Alex's expression and, seeing that she showed no sign of anything amiss, breathed a sigh of relief.

But then Xiangzi felt a bit self-deprecating, after all, it would be strange if Alex had any unusual feelings about her residence.

"Put it in my backpack, that way I won't have to carry it."

After tentatively asking and seeing that Xiangzi did not refuse, Alex put the violin case, the doll box in Xiangzi's hand, and the suitcase on the ground into her backpack.

The main thing is that tonight, before she went out, Xiangzi had given her countless instructions on what she could and couldn't do outside.

Using your own inventory bag is, of course, one of the behaviors that cannot be done in public.

But there were hardly any people around, so Xiangzi didn't care anymore.

"Xiangzi, is there... anything else?"

Actually, when Alex arrived at this street with Xiangzi, she noticed on her mini-map that there was no one else in the rented room in front of her.

However, seeing that Xiangzi looked preoccupied, she didn't say anything.

"..."

Upon hearing Alex's words, Xiangzi remained silent for a moment.

"My father hasn't come home for two days..."

In the end, she whispered to the only person she could turn to for help.

…………

P.S. If you've read this far and still have your own opinions on whether or not the five-color team from Madoka Magica will appear, and you haven't liked or voted in the previous chapter posts, you can go back to the end of chapter 27. I put two pinned posts there. Currently, the number of likes is more than 80 more for those who don't want to see it than for those who do. If the result doesn't change, then there won't be a five-color team. Maybe we'll only bring them out a long time later when we have nothing else to write about?

You can ignore this if you don't care. If you haven't voted or want to change your vote, you can go back and click it, but don't click it on both sides. I need to decide whether or not to join them in the end, because there might be an opportunity for magical girls to appear in a few chapters.

If they weren't included, the premise would be that there are currently no magical girls in Tokyo fighting witches. Of course, I have a logically consistent plot; the Five Colors Squad is a peripheral character in the outline and not very important—more of a side story. Writing too much of it would make the story bloated.

Volume 1: Chapter 45 Promise me, no matter what...

On the tram.

A familiar scene.

However, unlike last night, tonight's train is the last one from Akabane to Ikebukuro late at night.

At this moment, only Alex and Xiangzi were in the entire carriage.

Since that last sentence, Xiangzi had kept her head down and remained silent until the tram arrived, without uttering a single word.

Alex opened her lips several times, as if she wanted to say something.

But in the end, they simply watched as the atmosphere returned to silence.

She was bad at speaking and didn't know how to ease the atmosphere. Or rather, even after spending several days with Xiangzi, she still hadn't learned to read his emotions.

Alex is not stupid; on the contrary, she is very intelligent and has a keen sense of emotions.

She's just very naive.

In the past, in Alex's world, the emotional expressions she learned from her mother were very straightforward, and therefore, the emotions she could interpret were also very simple.

During their conversation, Alex could sense that Xiangzi seemed to be in a heavy mood, and her words contained unease. However, Alex did not know how to alleviate Xiangzi's emotions.

When Xiangzi, in that almost weak manner, asked her for help, Eric...

Silk froze.

Alex is not good at finding people.

Therefore, she could not give Xiangzi an answer that would put his mind at ease.

A map with a diameter of 430 meters is far too small in this bustling city.

Moreover, the minimap only shows everyone's avatar, not their name. Even if Xiangzi tells Alex that her father's name is Toyokawa Kiyoko, Alex, who has never met the other's father, cannot accurately find Toyokawa Kiyoko's avatar among the densely packed avatars on the minimap.

Identifying the presence of hostile creatures in the surrounding area is arguably the most useful function of this mini-map in the city of Tokyo.

"Want me to come with you to find him?"

After a long silence, Alex could only offer Xiangzi this pale suggestion.

"...Wait a minute."

Xiangzi lowered her eyes, looking at the dappled lights that kept flashing in through the car window on the ground in front of her, and said softly.

"I'll go back tomorrow morning. If I still haven't heard from my father by then, I'll go to the police station to inquire."

She spoke softly of the decision she had just made after careful consideration, as if that could mask the unease in her heart.

"Ah."

As if trying to soothe Xiangzi's unease, Alex responded.

But both sides knew that it was pointless.

The brief exchange between the two ended once again amidst the clattering sound of the tram.

"..."

Alex pursed her lips, slowly leaned back in her chair, looked up at the row of handles swaying back and forth not far above her.

It feels just like Xiangzi's wavering heart right now.

"or……"

She hesitated, then suddenly spoke softly.

"Should I go to Cupid to make a wish?"

Xiangzi, who was listening to her words with his eyes slightly turned to the side, felt a tremor in his fingertips.

then.

"no!"

He turned around abruptly, his brows furrowed.

"We absolutely cannot do something so foolish!"

Her tone was harsh; it was the first time Alex had ever heard such almost reprimanding words from Xiangzi.

"Ah... because I don't have any other wishes, so..."

Shrinking her neck, Alex suddenly regretted saying that she had barely thought of what she was saying.