"I feel very much the same!" Ishimaru was, of course, being one hundred percent open and honest about his feelings on whose company he enjoyed most, and took Mondo's words to be equally true without a second thought.

He very neatly stashed his clothes and towel on the driest, flattest rock he could pick out before joining his brother in the water. The chill of the mountain air hadn't been as noticeable as it was when he plunged his body into the hot water, but he grit his teeth and endured the stinging in his hands and feet for the sake of saving face. Getting out now and trying to ease back into it would just make it worse.

As he finally adjusted to the heat, all tension ebbed from his body, and with it went any thoughts of the stresses of Smash Academy and Hope's Peak before it. Even the worried, homesick feeling that such a traditionally Japanese resort gave him seemed so far away.

There was just the sunlight on his face, the fresh spring air, and the soothing water... drifting along the surface of which was something black and thick. Hair? He grabbed at it and quickly discovered that it was attached to his own head.

What the.