Chapter 262: Final Examination

Time flew by, and July arrived in the blink of an eye.

Early in the morning, Harunaka was in bed when her alarm on the nightstand went off. In a daze, she snoozed it, and the sound ceased immediately. Then, Harunaka rubbed her eyes. She sat up on the bed, and stared blankly into space for a few minutes before she slowly regained consciousness. She picked up her phone, and saw that it was already 6:53 A.M.

Yawning, Harunaka combed her fingers through her hair. She felt as if she had a nightmare last night.

These past few days, Harunaka realized that she had stopped dreaming about her mother. Before this, she would dream about her almost every day, and every single time her mother appeared in her dreams, her senior would be there too.

Now that she had not been seeing her mother in her dreams, she felt that something was missing.

After getting out of bed, she dressed herself, and opened her bedroom door. Her room was nestled up in the innermost part of the second floor, so she could easily wake the other three up by knocking on the doors in sequence.

"Natsui, get up!"

...

"It's time to wake up!" Harunaka took a deep breath, and projected a deafening sound using the Kageyama Kiai style that her senior had recently taught her.

"Harunaka, you moron!" Natsui's voice came from her room, and right after that, Harunaka heard a loud bang from her room. She could not tell if the sound was from Natsui falling onto the floor or throwing her pillow at the door.

"Aaaargh! Harunaka, I'm going to kill you!!" Akino's voice sounded from the second room.

The door to the first room swung open all of a sudden, and Fuyuno emerged in her white pajamas from behind. She stared at Harunaka with her hair dishevelled like a ghost, and said softly, "You might scare people to death."

Harunaka smiled. "Today is the finals, so stop sleeping, and wake up earlier! It was your idea last night for me to wake you up." In the Furuhashi family, only Harunaka's biological clock was normal. She would wake up before 7 A.M. every morning. On the other days, Harunaka woke them up too, but just not as early as today. Today was a special occasion.

Finals! Hearing this word, excitement instantly took over Akino and Natsui. Filled with spirit, they put on their uniforms quickly, and leaped out of their rooms.

"Finals are finally here. I've been looking forward to it for a long time."

"Hah. You've been looking forward to it? What you're looking forward to is the summer holidays!"

"What are our plans for summer?" Fuyuno yawned. She had slept a little late last night, mainly due to excitement as The Sword Saga would be released in a day or two.

As the new work in July, The Sword Saga had been highly anticipated by its fans. As for her, she was excited because she was a voice actress in it!

This was her debut work although it was just a small role. It was also the role of Thunder Master's daughter. Thinking of the Thunder Master that senpai had cosplayed, she was still uneasy about it although it was a younger version of him.

"When it comes to summer, it's obviously the beach!"

Hearing Natsui's statement, Akino scoffed, "The beach? Do you think reality is like anime, and you would go to the beach to be a visual display for stinky men once it's summer? Moreover, didn't we go already last year? Aren't you tired of going again this year?"

Fuyuno retorted, "Akino, you don't want to go because you don't know how to swim." When they went to the beach last year, Akino had spent half a day trying to learn how to swim, but she failed anyway. In the end, she could only watch from afar, and the sand was her only companion.

"I'm not going this year. I want to go to the CM comic con! And my game is almost done, so I'll upload it onto Steam then. Moreover, our team had invited a book painter to paint our corresponding characters in the game, so we can promote the game as we sell the dojinshi at the comic con."

"So soon?" Harunaka was taken aback. "Didn't you just go on and on about getting senpai to help before this?"

"There's no need for that anymore." Akino did indeed plan to get help from Kazuki Kimura, especially with action design as the action designer in their team was very strict and particular about the game characters' skill motions. Originally, she had planned to approach senpai after the Jade Dragon Flag Competition, but he uploaded an informative video on Twitter explaining the Yagyu Flying Sword Style, and the video explained the three main elements of it thoroughly.

When their team's action designer saw the video, he was completely captivated, and had already designed the skill action for the main character. However, there were shadows of the Yagyu Flying Sword Style in it.

"Fuyuno, are you going then?" Natsui was still excited to go to the beach.

Shooting Natsui a nasty look, Fuyuno shook her head. "I'm not going." During the summer holidays, she would be having tuition classes. She had already made up her mind to start studying hard, so there was no way she would waste her precious summer holidays. As she gave it a thought, Fuyuno intentionally looked over at Harunaka. She had also begun to attend cram school, so she probably would not have too much time to spare during the summer holidays.

Fuyuno's crisis awareness was very strong. Not only did she have to compete with Harunaka, she also had to be on par with Chiba Shiori. In fact, Chiba Shiori was now a well-known light novelist online, Miss Gentera. Lately, the plot of Loading File of Tokyo had been achieving new heights again and again. It could be easily agreed upon that Loading File of Tokyo was truly a phenomenal novel.

Just as a wide range of publishers and animation studios were about to contact Miss Gentera, she issued a notice at the end of the fourth volume to announce that she had already signed a contract with Seikisha. As a result, Loading File of Tokyo was put on hold, and the subsequent chapters would be revealed to the public as published work.

As for this, although the readers had regrets, they did not make a fuss as this kind of situation was considered the norm in the world of light novels. Once a work published online was fancied by a publisher, it would basically not be updated online anymore. The only way would be to wait for the publication of the physical copies.

Seikisha had also taken the opportunity to announce that the animation of Loading File of Tokyo had already been moved forward on the agenda. The plan of the first season would be mainly comprised of the first three volumes.

Although this had hyped up plenty of readers, many remained skeptical when it came to Seikisha's abilities.

After all, Seikisha was a new company, so it was difficult for them to believe that the company would succeed in the production of Loading File of Tokyo. However, there were many who understood Seikisha, and knew that the animation of The Sword Saga was produced by the company. Hence, many people had been waiting for the premiere of The Sword Saga. Then, the animated version of The Sword Saga could be used to estimate the quality of Loading File of Tokyo.

"It seems like we'll all be busy on our own this summer." Harunaka chuckled. She was definitely not going to the beach. When they went last year, they were the center of attention as they were quadruplets. Many people tried to strike up conversations with them, and it was a troubling experience.

Just like what Fuyuno predicted, Harunaka had decided to study hard during this summer holiday.

She had been victorious in the Jade Dragon Flag Competition, and she was more than satisfied already.

The next step would be to improve her grades, and put more effort into following senpai's footsteps. She would strive hard to gain a place at the University of Tokyo through the college entrance examination in three years' time, and become senpai's junior once again.