The Goddess Needs A Break!

After their early morning married couple event, Takei and Akari went to school with a lingering silence between them.

"Awkward" could've been a way to explain the atmosphere, but the feelings were too complicated to just simply explain.

Walking to the school, they both split up to go to their respective homerooms.

Takei tried his best to silently enter the classroom, but all heads turned in his direction when he entered.

It was a reasonable reaction due to the context of the situation.

Homeroom had started nearly half an hour ago, which meant Takei was extremely late.

His homeroom teacher was used to him being late, so he just motioned Takei to sit down.

Usually, being late would constitute being written up. However, the teacher knew Takei had placed amongst the top 10 students in the midterms, so he cut him some slack.

Takei gratefully sat down and mouthed a silent "thank you" to the teacher.

Looking to the side of him, Rikka looked incredibly perplexed about his current situation.

"That lazy smile on your face is telling a greater story than any amount of words can..."

Rikka pointed out that Takei was wearing a very unusual smile this morning.

As a result, he reached up and felt his face to see if Rikka was telling the truth or not.

Surprisingly, Takei did manage to feel his slackened muscles in his face.

It turned out that the events earlier in the morning had indeed affected him tremendously.

"Oh, what a joyous occasion. My beautiful little Takei has finally grown up!"

"Shut it."

Eiji had piped up in response to Takei's unusual behavior.

However, Takei managed to retort as if he was on autopilot.

"As I was saying..."

The homeroom teacher coughed and cleared his throat, in order to reset the general mood of the class.

In response to this, all the students zipped their mouths and listened to what he had to say.

"Colors can be found anywhere and really anything can be identified with a color, but then..."

It seemed that the homeroom teacher was going on another one of his tangents.

Typically, there were only announcements and roll call in the morning, but the homeroom teacher would sometimes go on about life lessons.

Most of the time, the life lessons were interesting for better or for worse.

They could be genuinely helpful, or just completely comical in nature.

That's why the students listened in anticipation of what he would say next.

Waiting for the suspense to build up, the teacher finished his tangent with a single question.

"What is the color of your soul?"

"..."

Unsurprisingly, everyone was confused as to what he was asking.

A soul couldn't really be defined by a color, since it was an ephemeral form of one's being.

Seeing the surprised look on all the students' faces, the homeroom teacher decided to go in a little bit more in-depth.

"Obviously, a soul can't have a literal color, it's just a figurative saying. I believe a soul's color could change depending on how a person lives their life. At least, that's what my position on soul color is."

Once he finished explaining, the students finally started connecting his explanation to the thought process in their minds.

"Eh? That means my soul would be bright yellow because I try my best to be happy everyday!"

"My soul would be red, since I love my girlfriend so much..."

"Pfft! Your soul would be red because you're an idiot!"

The class erupted with a multitude of comments from different students predicting their own soul color.

"Yeah, um Takei. How do I say this? Your soul would probably be black."

"I thought so."

In response to Eiji's jab, Takei could only agree.

Up until recently, there was no way he could be proud of the way he lived his life.

For a long stretch of time, he had simply given up on life. Not literally, but mentally. He was a hollow shell devoid of purpose or will.

"But, the color black shouldn't be a bad thing, right? It just means that you have an indomitable spirit that can't be tainted by others."

Surprisingly, Rikka came to Takei's rescue with a different perspective on the color black.

She had decided to take a more positive take on the color black.

Listening to her explanation, Takei nodded in agreement.

He had indeed been convinced by her perspective.

No color was technically bad, it was just all perspective.

For example, the color red is the color for both love and hate. It was a double-sided color that had multiple meanings.

Which meant that it wasn't limited to a single understanding of the color.

"Hmm... If everything has a color, what would the color for high school be?"

Now fully invested into the topic, Takei wondered what color the era known as high school would be.

"Obviously, rose-colored! High school is a time where you meet new people and have new experiences. Possibly even meeting your soulmate..."

Rikka answered Takei's question with a surprising amount of passion.

"I agree as well. High school is a big part of your life, so enjoy it to the fullest."

"You sound like an old man..."

Exasperated at Eiji's perspective on high school, Takei once again retorted without even meaning to.

"Rose-colored huh?"

Takei mumbled to himself as the thought began to overtake his mind even more.

If someone asked Takei if his high school life was rose-colored, he wouldn't be able to accurately answer.

He had indeed met new people and underwent new experiences, but Takei couldn't really call it rose-colored.

It was simply just too idealistic of a color.

In his opinion, the color implied that his life would be a dreamy perfect reality where nothing went wrong.

There were just too many things that he disagreed with, using that perspective on the color.

As expected, Takei was more of a realist than an idealist.

However, he found a different color to describe his high school life.

It was a color that was vibrant, yet perfectly described his current life. A radiant color unyielding to anyone else.

That color, you might ask?

It was...

Golden.

---

Sugar-san: He's too far gone... I'm being blinded by his power...

Serious-san: Where's the op main character tag?

Side Note: Chapter 90 is now out on Patreon (It's a big chapter, literally and metaphorically). If you wish to discuss the series as a whole or just that single chapter, shoot me a DM on Discord: okvertigo#6575