"Wow, you really look just like her." As soon as Tohka came out, the all-nighter Nia Honjo walked over and circled around her, examining her from every angle. Tohka and Akame had an extremely high resemblance in terms of character design. Even Tohka herself couldn't guarantee that if she'd grown up in Akame's environment, she wouldn't have turned into the same kind of person.
"Really? I don't feel that way at all." Since she had just woken up, Tohka was still a bit grumpy, so she was still in a daze. Hearing Nia's words, she casually shrugged her shoulders. Then she glanced around the place, quickly locking her eyes on a piece of bread, which she picked up and started gnawing on without even acknowledging Nia.
"Peh—ugh!!!" The moment she bit down, she almost broke her teeth. She wasn't unfamiliar with hard bread, like cold French baguettes or the special hard bread sold in America. But she swore she had never eaten something this hard before. In her eyes, this thing was more like a brick than any kind of bread.
"Uuugh—where did you get this bread? It's so hard it almost shattered my teeth." That bit of tossing about finally woke Tohka up completely. Tearfully holding the rock-solid bread, she complained to Nia. It was only then she noticed something—there were ice crystals on the bread, which meant it had just come out of the freezer.
"My goodness, even dumber than the real Akame." But Nia didn't answer her question. Instead, she stared blankly at the tearful Tohka and muttered something that almost made Tohka collapse.
"Shut up!!!"
.....
"So, you're telling me that bread was something you threw in the freezer five years ago? And all this time your fridge didn't turn into a bacteria farm? Also, weren't you supposed to keep bread in the warmer compartment—don't tell me you put it in the deep freeze." At a diner, after leaving Nia's house, the two of them were eating breakfast together. Even though they were heading to the convention, Tohka insisted on having a meal first—after all, you can't fight on an empty stomach. So, she took this chance to interrogate Nia about that bread.
"Oh my, don't fuss over such trivial details. Back then I was too lazy to deal with paying the power bills, so I just paid a year in advance. But I didn't live there for years, so there's still a little credit left." Nia waved her hand dismissively, showing no shame whatsoever. Then she noticed the big bowl of noodles in front of Tohka and couldn't help but comment, "This is your breakfast? You're really okay with eating so much meat this early?"
"Mm?" Hearing that, Tohka glanced at the beef noodles in her arms. As if to prove how fine her appetite was, she slurped up a huge mouthful and polished it off in a few bites, then showed a satisfied expression.
"..." Now Nia was completely speechless. This reaction was almost exactly like Akame's—it made her eyes sparkle. If Kotori had been watching, she would have noticed Nia's favorability meter steadily climbing.
....
"So, this is a convention... so many cosplayers." After breakfast, the two quickly arrived at the venue. Thankfully, there weren't too many tedious security checks, so Tohka easily brought her real sword inside. After all, the sword she carried was the genuine article. Any ordinary woman would have had a very hard time carrying it and would have moved awkwardly. But Tohka was different—she was extremely strong. So, nobody paid much attention to her. Still, the moment she walked in, she was instantly surrounded.
Even at an anime convention packed with cosplayers, there weren't that many who looked this good and had such high-quality costumes. Plus, plenty of them were actually cross-dressing men. A lot of those cross-dressers looked nice, but quite a few were a real eyesore. So, when the crowd saw Tohka—clearly a real girl—she instantly drew tons of attention.
"Hey—what are you doing?" Tohka wasn't the type to get stage fright or be intimidated by crowds. But it was her first time seeing a whole mass of people rushing toward her. One of them was even cosplaying as a zombie—so she reflexively tensed up. She half-crouched, one hand gripping the scabbard and the other ready to draw her blade. Tohka wasn't some pampered princess—she actually knew how to use the weapon. Combined with the fighting aura she'd built up from so many battles; she looked extraordinarily sharp and formidable in that moment.
But Nia was completely panicked. Those people might not realize it, but she knew perfectly well—Tohka had entered combat mode. Without thinking about how striking Tohka looked, she lunged forward and hugged her. For goodness' sake—this could have turned into a bloody incident. They'd come here to have fun, not to start a terror attack. And if you were going to cause trouble, this wasn't the way—one slip and the situation would be catastrophic.
"Uh..." Being hugged by Nia, Tohka finally realized these were just regular people cosplaying zombies, not real zombies. She relaxed her fighting posture, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. But in those few seconds, she had missed her best chance to slip away. She was instantly swarmed—people wanting autographs, photos, and... possibly gropes? It seemed something fishy had gotten mixed in. Nia was squeezed out of the crowd by the press of bodies.
"You bastards—I was here first! Move aside—Akame is mine!" Shoved out, Nia was thoroughly annoyed. What the hell—she was the one who'd brought Tohka here. Just because she'd put on glasses and let her hair down to look a bit frumpy, that didn't mean they should ignore her!
So, a slightly annoyed Nia forced her way back into the crowd. As a spirit, she was far stronger than ordinary people, so she pushed her way through without much trouble, grabbed Tohka by the arm, and dragged her right out of the hall, disappearing past the entrance.