Before I knew it I was already in the first year of Junior High. The final leg of the compulsory journey that I had to run to get the opportunity to become rich and buy an island. The gateway to my life of peace and pacifism.

But to get to that life, our club had to pass this final challenge. A challenge proposed by the principal. It was D-day. The day when we showed what our club was capable of. The strength we had been working on for the past couple of months.

What this would get us, on top of perfect co-curricular grades, was a special letter of recommendation applicable to Korean high schools.

And we had it in the bag. This wasn't complacency but confidence.

Our kicks were incredibly strong when we took those heavy braces off. Needless to say, our club was the master of kicking. I believe we could have squared off against the taekwondo club on equal footing.

They definitely had better technique, but our kicks were explosive. But not by a lot in the grand scale of stuff.

But as soon as this year started, the principal decided to do a switcheroo. He said that we were already proficient in kicking from middle school so reusing that meant that there was no progress since 1 year ago. Complete horsedung. But I didn't make the rules.

So why, you might ask, was I still so confident about scoring that letter of recommendation?

Because too bad for the principal, the resources we got from volunteering were excessively important for JiiJii's farming addiction. So instead of focusing on our leg strength, the old man taught us how to punch effectively this year. Like there was no problem with him exploiting us.

It worked in my favour a little too. Since the old man and I shared the same house and hence the same surplus of ingredients. Let's just say that we were eating like kings.

Learning how to punch like a real man consequently turned out to be a pretty good move.

We would:

(1) Woo the principal and get the promised goods.

(2) Ensure the safety of the club.

(3) Become stronger but not to the point Yuuno would start her cult admission.

(4) Be more respected amongst our peers and get our family value up with reference to these village folks.

This was the least I could do for my parents. Yep, that was totally the only reason.

I would say that the strength I had gained from training was within reason. I mean think about it. In the global stage where they are training supersoldiers or in the domestic stage where people like Yuuno exist… I was still a pretty mundane existence. Especially since there were 5 others in our club who had about the same amount of strength as me.

We all learnt from the same master and I was still relatively weak under my own volition.

I could still easily avoid being drafted for war while being just strong enough to defend myself against non-mana users.

"Are you all ready?" The principal asked. Yes, the same one who gives the same redundant speech at the start of every new academic year.

"Yes, sir." We said in unison as we stood in a line.

Our club was stationed outside the gym and we were presented with a log held up by a string. Our goal was pretty clear. Get rid of the log and do as much damage as you can with a single punch.

The first one to go was Greg. He pulled his fist back and blew up a log with a punch. To be honest, Greg was probably capable of turning the log to ash just by rubbing it with that ginormous chad chin of his. But this display was sort of grand too.

He stepped back.

We weren't going by age, just by the order we coincidentally happened to be standing in. Which meant that-

"I'm up then." I said while walking up to my log and immediately stopped at its sight. The dang thing was infested with termites.

I turned towards JiiJii.

'Was he staging this? No way right?' His confident eyes didn't leave mine.

I- to test the log slightly tightened my fist and with the bare minimum amount of force required to call the move a punch, punched.

As soon as I did, the log crumbled.

'SO HE DID FORGE THIS RESULT

.

.

.

GOOD JOB OLD MAN!'

I gave him a thumbs up and he thumbs upped back.

After us, it was the newer recruits' turns and they too nailed theirs.

With everyone done, the turn of the monster amongst our ranks came. Yuuno carried her own fresh wood. Probably to brag. Probably because she wanted to show off the strength she had built over the last couple of years.

In that case, the log was barely strong enough to even serve as a mini display of her strength.

Her wrists flicked the large log in the air and as it fell slowly from the sky she extended her fist out forcefully.

First scattered the wood, then the air. There were palpable shockwaves as the sound got robbed from my ears.

Wind. And debris. Everywhere.

The trees around us were blowing and bending from the air pressure. It was legitimately insane.

It took a second for air to come back to our lungs. I half expected the old men to just die off a hard attack by now.

Yuuno bowed politely and joined our group as if she did nothing special. And by her standards, it really wasn't much.

I placed my hand on her shoulder.

[You didn't have to flex that hard.]

[Hehe~] She chuckled happily. [I wanted to flex a little harder though.]

Do you understand what I meant when I said that growing up mentally was becoming harder?

That little display ended this year's, and our junior high's roundup meets.

Needless to say, it was a success. And the rest of the year was smooth sailing. Just the pleasant usual daily lives of kids living in peaceful countryside.

###

There was a little discrepancy when it came to academic years in our institution. It wasn't 3 years of schooling for Junior High but rather 2 and a half.

Most of the high schools started their admissions early on. And the coronation for nobility occurred every July as per tradition. So it only made sense to end the final year halfway through.

That meant that today marked the midterm break of the second year for me and Yuuno's last day at Amone's academy.

"Are you all packed up?" I asked.

The entire house's population was standing outside the house. Yuuno was sitting on her bag as Clintarou incessantly licked her ankle before biting it.

It was his way of telling her not to go.

She just let him stick to her ankle. It wasn't like that hurt her solid skin.

"Yep. You were there when I packed it yesterday."

"Just checking. But did you get every single piece of cloth?" I started turning her around for inspection. And I checked her handbag while I was at it too. You could never be too sure.

"Unnhnn. In case I missed anything you can just toss it out."

"Do you have enough food for the way?" I put a water bottle in the bag.

"I think so."

"Did you go pee?" Patted her shoulders.

"Bruh wording… I did go to the washroom. And there is one on board."

"What abo-"

"STOP! I am going home not on a journey!" She put an end to my barrage of questions.

"Well, I mean it depends on what you consider home… We did spend more time here than there."

"But that's where the family i-"

"Yuuno-chan! Did you not think of us as your family?" Obaa-chan barged into the scene and looked at her with a pout.

"N-No I do! But."

"I know that you just thought of us as some convenient landowners. I am devastated!" Obaa-chan wiped a tear.

"I DIDN'T!"

"It's really fine. After all, we couldn't do a lot for you."

"NOOOO!"

And thus started the waterworks.

Four minutes and thirty seconds.

"Well, I was only kidding. Do visit us again as soon as you can." The crying ended abruptly and Obaa-chan wore her usual poker smile again.

"I think I'll be away for 5 or so years. How about you guys move to the city?"

"And abandon our farms? Girl, we don't like you thaaat much." JiiJii finally huffed. He was grumpy outside... but everyone in the house knew that he was more of tsundere than both Yuuno and I combined. Which is a huge achievement.

"But you will miss me right?~" Yuuno decided to tease the old man.

"I mean, you were a useful person and a decent pupil."

"Well, that's enough for me. If you can't live in the city at least consider dropping by every winter. That's when we have our breaks."

"I'll think about it but I won't make any guarantees."

"Then that's about it I guess."

The ultimate farewell was rather short and abrupt because this time we had been doing this for a week or so.

There was a lot of sorrow and the parting was by no means foreshortened. At the same time, we knew that this wouldn't be the last time she would ever meet them.

The last couple of days were either spent crying, hugging, or packing. Everyone except for me had dry eyes from all the weeping.

"Yuuno." She looked up while petting Clintarou.

"What?"

I opened my arms.

"Oooh... So this time you're the one who's offering! I remember 9 years ago when I had to force... You sure have grown." This smug littl- I threw my hands down.

"I didn't want to hug you. You're getting pretty old now so I thought you'd miss me as old people do by staring at a picture of me while hugging your dakimakura. That's creepy... So I just wanted to get it over with."

"Tch. I didn't want to hug you either... But I really didn't want you to think of something nasty while imagining me."

"Jeez." -!!

A palm pushed both her and me forward and then enveloped the both of us.

"You won't see each other for months. Stop bantering." Luha trapped us in her arms in a three-way hug. That lasted a while before the big black familiar bus came right in front of our door. This time they took the courtesy of not having us walk a mile and back.

There was a lot of waving before the doors shut. And right after they did the wheels rotated horizontally as the bus started to hover. It quickly turned invisible. That explained the odd sensation of gaining and losing altitude the last time I came back from the winter holiday.

Technology had grown in the past decade. The world went past just flying cars. We even had flying buses now.

It reminded me of how long of a time I had spent in this new life.

It reminded me of how I was older now than I was when I died as a demon lord.

Yuuno would be there too. Our lives were catching up to us.