HA3 6.1 – Helping More
When they arrived at their house, Hide and Aizawa found the light was still on and the window was still closed. Wasting no time, the two turned off the light and opened all windows. After that they washed their hiking equipment and put it under sun in the backyard. Then, they went to clean the house right away.
“We just return from hiking, so let’s just wipe out the window, and sweep and mop the floor,” Hide gently said to Aizawa.
“So, we don’t clean the yards this week?” Aizawa curiously asked. “Or washing the bed sheet?”
“Yeah.” After a smile Hide added. “And Big Bro will order pizza from Seiya for our lunch, unless you want something else.”
“Big Bro will order the pizza from Seiya?”
“Yeah.”
“Can Aizawa have mint and strawberry milk too?”
“You can, and let’s have fruit salad too.”
“Mhm.” Aizawa happily nodded.
Wasting no time Hide put the lunch order to Seiya. After that they started the cleaning. Overall, they did it swiftly and happily, and finished it just before lunch time, right after the lunch order from Seiya arrived.
Hide immediately took Aizawa to terrace to enjoy their lunch. They sat facing each other in the floor. After offering the gratitude for the food, the two immediately opened the package from Seiya. Then, they gave their mint and strawberry milk a sip before taking a slice of pizza each.
“How is it?” Hide asked after Aizawa gave her pizza slice a big bite. “Is it yummy?”
“Mhm, it’s super-duper yummy,” Aizawa happily replied.
After a smile Hide gave his pizza slice a bite, and then he asked Aizawa again, “Do you want to go camping again next week?”
“No,” Aizawa firmly replied.
“Why?” Hide curiously asked. “Didn’t you have some fun last night?”
“Aizawa had some fun time last night, but also super-duper afraid of snake.”
“I see.”
“But when Aizawa in fourth grade, maybe Aizawa won’t be afraid of snake anymore,” Aizawa said before giving her pizza slice a second bite. “Then, we can have another camping.”
“Okay. Let’s wait until you are in fourth grade,” Hide happily said and didn’t press the matter further.
The two then wolfed down their lunch heartily and finished everything clean. After that, they took a bath and spent their time idle time casually.
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In her room, Aizawa casually sat behind her laptop. It was Hide’s old laptop, but she like it so much. Hide had moved his file into external hard disk and then installed latest OS he could paired with it.
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Initially, Hide only taught Aizawa to use her hand-me-down laptop to store anime, manga, picture, and other things she could store in digital form. After that, Kaede Sensei taught her to use it to write diary of event that left deep impression in her heart.
And now, she would write diary for the camping in Uruba Hill. It was her first camping and it had lot of things she wanted to write about, both things that made her super happy or things that made her anxious and even super scared.
Hiking the slope in pitch darkness was scary and dangerous. The rain storm and snake were also no less scary and dangerous. Most of all, the camping itself can send us to prison if patrolling police officer found us. We managed to avoid any danger and arrive at home unscathed, but it was super close call.
With ease Aizawa wrote the opening paragraph. After that, words kept pouring out from her mind and it took about 30 minutes to finish the diary. Then, she added the picture she took using her smartphone to it.
Not all of her diary had picture. Take example the diary for her visit to Tohru Ramen right after Hide returned to this world. She had no picture about the event, but it was not a big deal for her. What matter the most for her was that she had recorded it when she still could remember it clearly.
Then, while having big smile in her face Aizawa turned her laptop off and closed it. At the same time, she remembered she wanted to talk to Hide about their weekly grocery shopping. Without further ado she left her room and found Hide was sitting in the dining table.
As usual, on Sunday, after the lunch, Hide would take his time to make record of family expense using his smartphone. Wasting no time, Aizawa sat in front of him.
“Big Bro, do you have a moment?”
Hide immediately turned his gaze to Aizawa and smiled. “Do you have something you want to talk about?”
“Mhm,” Aizawa replied while giving Hide a big nod.
“What is it?”
“Can Aizawa solely handle the weekly grocery shopping?”
“Are you saying you want to carry the weekly grocery shopping alone?”
“Mhm,” Aizawa said while resolution sparked in her clear eyes.
“Why?” Hide curiously asked.
“It’s to lighten up Big Bro’s burden,” Aizawa firmly replied. “Other than weekly house cleaning and cooking breakfast, Big Bro does almost everything else alone.”
After an amusing smile Hide asked Aizawa back, “Are you sure you are ready to lighten up Big Bro’s burden?”
“Mhm.” Aizawa firmly nodded. “In ‘Old Enough!’, lots of kids younger than Aizawa do errand for their parent. There is even a 5-year-old boy who helps his parent run their dinner.
In the morning he will place order for rice, vegies, chicken meat, chicken egg, and other fresh ingredient in the nearby market, and on the way home he will take restaurant linen from Laundromat.
That’s far bigger responsibility than weekly grocery shopping and he was one year younger than Aizawa.”
“I see.” Hide smile became thicker as he muttered, ‘Old Enough! huh… That brings back memory.’
‘Old Enough!’ was a TV show about tradition in Nikko’s family to send their kids to carry errand, entirely without supervision, and it was not rare the kids had to navigate across busy road and transportation system. It was being aired for the first time in 1991, with irregular continuation after that.
It seemed a TV channel started airing its continuation after a few years of hiatus, and Aizawa happened to watch and followed it. Well, even though family circumstances in Nikko had drastically changed over the decades, the tradition remained strong.
Parents from other country mostly would freak out when they watch the show. They also put lots of critics about it. When she saw it for the first time, Emily even blurted out in reflex, “Do this in Britss or Americ, and you will never see your kids again.”
However, Nikko was Nikko, and other country was other country. There were ton of things that worked only in Nikko. One of it was that kids were often expected to learn how to be independent, self-reliant, and problem-solver from early age.
Most parents in Nikko didn’t view leaving their kids to take care of themselves to some extent as neglect. Instead, they believed they were granting their kids freedom and opportunity to mature. The parent also wouldn’t hesitant to leave their kids in home alone while they went to work. Therefore, in Nikko there were lots of kids that literally being called left-alone kids and Hide was one of them.
At the same time, Nikko had grown an environment to allow the kids to receive ample of freedom and opportunity to gain self-confidence. Take example the strong culture of trust. It led into a trusting society and heavy emphasize on group socialization, which then contributed to country’s low crime rate.
The excellent urban planning and development of modern infrastructure also enabled the kids to venture with ease. The neighborhoods were also designed with young kids’ safety in mind, such as very low speed limit, lots of intersection, and encouragement for driver to yield to pedestrians.
In the end, Emily got addicted to send Hide on solo errand. He would do it while puffing his cheek as big as he could, all the way, but his pride didn’t allow him to mess around with the task. Not to mention, he started doing solo errand after he became much older than other kids.
As for Aizawa, she didn’t have the chance to experience it. However, Hide had no intention to send her on solo errand. He had no heart to do it. Even waiting for Aizawa to go back from Kitaro already gave him anxiety attack even though Aizawa was using shuttle service. Sending Aizawa on solo errand would definitely give him heart seizure.
As he gently looked at Aizawa, Hide said, “Big Bro understands your intention. But, weekly grocery shopping is a mean for us to spend time together, and you already help Big Bro a lot.”
“But Aizawa want to help more, like the other kids,” Aizawa insisted and this was the first time she did such thing.
“I see.”
Hide really didn’t want to send Aizawa on solo errand, but he also didn’t want to flatly reject her wish. Fortunately, he had an idea to solve the dilemma.
“How about this?” Hide casually asked. “Instead of weekly grocery shopping, can you help Big Bro keep the family ledger?”
“Keeping the family ledger?” Aizawa curiously asked.
“Yeah,” Hide casually replied. “And it’s far bigger responsibility than weekly grocery shopping.”
“But Aizawa doesn’t know how to do it.”
“Big Bro will teach you.”
After a short ponder Aizawa replied, “Okay.”
*****