After becoming a chaotic daughter

End of school year exams are over.

This is the last exam of the first grade. In the next semester, Nanako will be promoted to the second grade. After the exam, the school is full of people and there are no club activities. The next day is the spring break. The students are in small groups, Noisily walked towards the outside of the school.

The bus stop was full of students chatting and waiting for the bus. They didn't really want to be squeezed into a flat bread in the bus, so Nanako chose to walk home with Miwa very rationally.

They went to the flower bag house to supervise the flower bag exercise for half an hour, and then left the old Japanese-style tile house with their schoolbags on their backs. When they parted at the intersection, they made an appointment to go to the shopping street during the spring break and taste the shopping street. The three-color dumpling in the newly opened dumpling shop.

At the end of February, Yokohama hadn't warmed up yet. Wearing a thick coat and scarf, Nanako walked slowly back to the detective agency. After getting out of the elevator, she just walked to the door with the nameplate of "Armed Detective Agency" and opened the door a crack. , I heard cheerful chatter and laughter coming from the room.

"...Just bask in the sun well! Whether it's people, vegetables, or cows, if you bask in the sun more, you'll feel refreshed, your mood will improve, and it will taste better."

"So it's not a matter of being watered by famous detectives at all!"

"So Mr. Ranpo only waters and doesn't bask in the sun..."

"Tanizaki—what did you say?"

"Eh? No, that, it's nothing...I mean, I'll move it out to bask in the sun later."

"Okay! From now on, you will be the person in charge of basking in the sun. If this pot of cactus dies, then it's your problem, okay?"

"what??"

"Don't worry, I'll help! As long as it's something you grow, you can ask me if you don't understand anything."

"Then if Kunikida-kun is planted in the ground, will many glasses grow in autumn?"

"—The one who should be planted in the ground as fertilizer is you, Dazai!!"

"..."

Standing at the door of the detective agency, Nanako poked her little head in through the crack of the door to have a look, and saw everyone gathered around the chaotic desk, chatting, and there was a figure that Nanako didn't recognize in the crowd.

It seemed to be a boy, and his voice sounded about thirteen or fourteen years old. He was not very tall, and was blocked by the members. Nanako could only vaguely see his blond hair shining like a little sun.

Nanako couldn't see Ranbu who was surrounded in the middle, but she saw Gogol, standing a little outside, next to Kunikida, holding a very country-style straw hat in his hand, and raised it curiously Playing with it, trying to put it on my head.

Nanako silently carried her schoolbag, moved in through the door that was only a little open, and then closed the door without making a sound.I don't know who the blond boy is, maybe it's the client, or the client's child.

She didn't pay attention, walked into the office area, and wanted to put her schoolbag on the vacant desk, when she heard Ranbu calling her: "Nanako—!"

He was sitting behind the desk, blocked by a group of people around the table, but Nanako came back quietly, and he noticed it immediately.Nanako put down her schoolbag, stood by the empty desk, turned to look at him, and waited for him to speak.

He got up from the office chair, hurriedly ran to Nanako's side, pointed at the strange blond boy in the crowd, and said to Nanako: "This is Kenji-kun, a new member of the club, If you can’t find Gogol in the future, you can order him~!”

He said carelessly, in an overly natural tone, and said something very impolite very naturally.

Nanako looked in the direction he was pointing at, and saw the blond boy standing by Ranbu's desk. Everyone stepped aside, so Nanako could see the boy's face clearly this time.

It is a young boy with a little freckles on his face, round golden eyes, and a bright and cheerful smile on his face, reminiscent of "continuous wheat fields", "clear sky", "winter sun" Such simple and comforting words.

He was wearing cotton overalls, the kind of clothes that people who work in the field would wear, and straw slippers on his feet, exuding a "country" atmosphere from all over his body-the kind that only The countryside that only exists in fairy tales is warm, comfortable, clean and tidy.

It is impolite to talk in disorder, but the boy didn't seem to feel offended at all. Instead, he nodded in agreement and said to Nanako: "If you need help, please feel free to come to me! If you can help I'm very happy! — By the way, my name is Miyazawa Kenji, just call me Kenji, please give me more advice in the future!"

The boy's voice was between "immature child" and "powerful boy". It sounded clear and slightly hoarse. Nanako looked at him, said "hmm", and told him her name: "...I'm Nanako."

"Hello, Nanako!" Kenji replied energetically.

He looks very energetic, which is different from Gogol and Ranbu. Another kind of "very energetic", Nanako doesn't know how to describe it. If I have to make an analogy, it is probably the same as the full grains of crops Energetic - I don't know why, looking at him, Nanako always wants to use the things in the field as metaphors to describe.

Kenji seems to be about the same age as she is now, and is only about ten centimeters taller than her. Nanako thought of what Ranpo said just now, that Kenji is a "new member in the club".

"Father." Nanako's dark eyes looked at Ranpo, although the tone was inquiring, but there was no disturbance at all, "... isn't Kenji going to school?"

"Kenji-kun went to school in his hometown." Ranpo said, not paying much attention to this matter, "It's different from Yokohama over there."

"Yes. There are many differences between the big city and my hometown." Kenji raised his face slightly, with a thoughtful expression on his face, "Do you want to go to 'school' in the big city? But in In the village, the children all learn from the oldest Uncle Nagano—me too.”

"Learning what?" Gogol interjected, wearing a worn-out straw hat on his head.

"That...well, fifty syllables, arithmetic, Chinese characters..." Xianzhi counted seriously, "and also identify the seeds of crops, understand different soil types, how to fertilize crops, and guess the next one based on the soil conditions. The weather of the month, talk to the cow, make it rain or stop the rain..."

The learning content he said gradually passed in some strange direction.

The expressions of everyone in the detective agency gradually moved closer to "respect".

"...It's probably these things." After he concluded, he said with a simple expression: "Schools in big cities must learn things that are much more difficult than these things."

Nanako: "..."

Although trigonometric functions and attributive clauses are quite difficult, compared with "learning the language of cattle", it seems that it is not so difficult...?

Not knowing how to answer Kenji's question, Nanako decided to pretend that she didn't hear him, and turned her face to the other side, and the club fell into a brief silence.

Kenji, who didn't know what to do, tilted his head: "?"

The one who finally broke the eerie silence was the famous detective who was the "pillar" of the detective agency.Clapping in disorder, the clear clapping sound attracted the attention of others.

"Okay! Now is the first errand task for newcomers—" He opened a lollipop that he found out from somewhere, stuffed it into his mouth, and said vaguely: "Nanako, take the newcomer to coffee I'm going to buy eggs for Papa... and bread!"

He wanted to say "buy cakes", but the president has already returned from a business trip today. Kenji is the president who brought newcomers back from the remote village where he was on a business trip. So he had no choice but to ask Nanako to buy bread for him.

"Oh." Nanako responded, and took out her small change purse from her schoolbag, then raised her head and called Gogol, "Guoguoli."

Returning the straw hat to Kenji, Gogol responded briskly, "Okay."

Nanako and Gogol took Kenji out together, and the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, which saved them a little time waiting for the elevator.After pressing the down button, the elevator door slowly opened, they walked into the elevator, and took the elevator downstairs.

The metal elevator car descended slowly, Kenji looked at the scene in the elevator with a strange expression on his face.

"Big cities are really convenient!" He sighed. "It would be much easier if there were elevators! There are no elevators in the village."

"Have you never seen an elevator?" Nanako raised her head a little, looked at him and asked, there was no expression on her small face.

"No." Xianzhi replied seriously, "there is no such tall house in the village, and there is no electricity. I saw the elevator for the first time after I followed the president out of the village. Electricity and electrical appliances are amazing. Ah, and the car that Mr. President brought me to the big city ran faster than the ox cart and the horse-drawn cart—as expected of a big city, it’s amazing!"

He admired sincerely, as pure as a piece of white paper, although there are things that he has never seen before, but there is no embarrassment or inferiority in his tone of voice, because it is too natural, but it makes people feel that this It's not something worth caring about either.

The pointer slowly moved from [4] to [1]. With the sound of "ding", the elevator went down to the first floor.

Following Nanako and Gogol out of the elevator, Kenji asked Nanako curiously, "Did you just come back from school?"

"Yeah." Nanako nodded.

"What is the school like in a big city?" Kenji followed Nanako and walked out of the office building with her, "Is it also very big? Like these buildings, the houses in the city are very tall What about the building?"

Nanako didn't know how to answer him, so she could only try to squeeze out some dry sentences to describe to him what "school" was like.

"There are a lot of students, divided into many classes, and there are many teachers in class. There are many classrooms in the teaching building... There are classrooms for classes, there are also classrooms for painting, and classrooms for music classes. During physical education classes, you have to go to the playground or the gymnasium. , going to the swimming pool in summer, there is a library where you can read in the school..."

She seldom spoke such a long sentence, and she struggled to finish a long series, but she couldn't think of words. When she closed her mouth, she felt that her brain was a little lack of oxygen, and her head was dizzy.

Although her description was very dry, Xianzhi kept exclaiming "wow" when listening to it. His eyes, which were already bright, became even brighter.

He seemed yearning for school, so Nanako thought about it and asked him, "Are you going to school?"

"I came to Yokohama because I promised the president to help him work, so now I have to learn how to work. Wait until I learn how to work, and then think about going to school." Kenji said with a bit of regret, Then he asked Gogol on the other side: "Did Gogol go to school too?"

"No." Gogol answered him.

Kenji felt a little strange: "Why didn't Gogol go to school?"

"Hmm~~~" Gogol put on a thoughtful look, narrowed his golden eyes, and instead of answering Xianzhi's question, he asked instead: "Yes, why?"

[Because you don't want to do your homework and you don't want to go to school. 】

Nanako thought silently in her heart.

Pushing open the somewhat heavy glass door, the wind chimes made a crisp crashing sound, and they entered the whirlpool cafe on the first floor of the red brick building.

The auntie waiter wearing an apron greeted Nanako familiarly: "Oh, Nanako, Gogol, are you here to eat cake?... Hey, it's a child I haven't seen before."

"It's a new employee of the detective agency." Gogol said to his aunt.

"Hello, I'm a new employee of the detective agency, my name is Kenji Miyazawa." Kenji greeted his aunt with a smile on his face.

Nanako and Gogol sat side by side in front of the bar, Kenji followed their example and sat in front of the bar.

"Chocolate cake, milk, and pack a piece of white bread for Dad, thank you." Nanako ordered the order with the waiter aunt.

"Just give me a glass of lemonade." Gogol said with a smile.

After they ordered something, Xianzhi was still looking at the pile of desserts and drinks on the dessert list, with a distressed expression on his face, the waiter asked, "What's the matter? Is there nothing you want to eat?"

"Well... I haven't eaten any of these things, so I don't know which one to order." Xianzhi said with some nerve-wracking.

There are no electrical appliances in the countryside, so there is no oven. The most exquisite snack he has ever eaten is Daifuku. He has never eaten anything like cream cake before.

"That's it..." Although I don't know why the boy has never eaten a cake, the auntie still gave him a suggestion, "Why don't you choose this chocolate strawberry cream cake? There are fruits, chocolate, and cream. You can try three flavors at once."

"Okay." Xianzhi agreed without any hesitation, "Then what do we need in exchange?"

"...Huh?" Auntie didn't understand his last words for a while, "exchange?"

Seeing Auntie's confused expression, Kenji knocked himself on the head, with a bright smile on his face: "I'm sorry, I forgot, it seems that in big cities, items are not exchanged with each other... but that, おかに?"

"It's おかね (money)." Gogol reminded him.

"Ah, yes! That's it, money." Xianzhi clenched his fist with his right hand and hammered the palm of his left hand, "It needs to be bought with money... Sorry, I don't know much about this thing yet."

The aunt said patiently with a good temper: "Yes, the total is 600 yen."

Kenji took out a coin purse from his pocket, flipped through it, found 500 yen and 100 yen coins awkwardly, and paid for the cake.

"Fortunately, Mr. President paid me my salary in advance." His tone was very rejoicing.

Nanako felt that it was time to complain, but she didn't know where to start.

Kenji said that he came from the countryside - but how remote the countryside must be to have no concept of "money" and still live in the old era of "bartering things"?

"Everyone in a big city is a good person." Xianzhi said, "Before I was worried about how to deal with a bad person. Grandma said that a big city is much more complicated than a village, but after I came to a big city , I have always met good people. Although I don’t understand anything, everyone treated me warmly and taught me a lot.”

"For example?" Gogol supported his head, his golden eyes were full of curiosity, and his beautiful silver three-strand braid swayed slightly as he turned his head.

Kenji thought for a while and gave an example.

"When I first came to Yokohama with Mr. President in the morning, after leaving the station, Mr. President went shopping and asked me to wait for him to come back at a place called a tennis court by the station. There was a person in the tennis court with me. Talking, praised my hat as 'picky', and called me 'a country bumpkin'."

"Although he doesn't quite understand the meaning of 'country bumpkin', he can tell at a glance that I am from the countryside, and I am worthy of a person from a big city. That's amazing——"

"Later he also invited me to play that tennis... It seems difficult to be able to keep hitting a small ball with a racket, but everyone can do it easily! I can't do it, so Accidentally broke the racket and the ball, and broke a hole in the iron net surrounding the tennis court, causing trouble for everyone.”

"Later, the president came and compensated them for the repairs. They all forgave me and apologized to me, saying that they caused me trouble, and it was obvious that I caused them trouble. Everyone is A tolerant and kind person!"

Kenji sighed sincerely and from the bottom of his heart.

"Yes!" Gogol also nodded with the expression of "you are right".

Nanako: "..."

Nanako felt that something was wrong, but after thinking about Kenji's answer again, she felt that there was nothing wrong.

So she also nodded: "Yes."