Light Novel Chapter 20

教会シンドバッド (Kyoukai Shindobaddo, lit: Church Sindbad) is the twentieth chapter of the light novel series of The "Hentai" Prince and the Stony Cat.
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==Plot==
In his third year of middle school, helping his friend Ponta look for his pet rabbit, Yaji-san, Yokodera Youto ends up at a church near the children's park.
At the front of the church is a children's choir. In front of them stands an enraged nun, scolding a girl named Emanuela, who has arrived late and is covered in dirt, with the girl stayinv silent throughout. However, when the nun presses her for a response and asks if she doesn't feel sorry for her father, who allowed her to join the choir, Emanuella boldly tells the nun to shut up. Insisting that her papa has nothing to do with this, she begins bombarding the nun with a barrage of insults.
With the nun at a loss for words, the girl runs away, crashing into Youto head-on in the process. The nuns in the church are left discussing Emanuella's immature actions. However, noticing the girl biting her lip and holding back tears as she left, Youto decides to go after her.
He finds the girl crouching in the corner of the church's garden, and as expected, bawling her eyes out. He asks if she is okay, but is told to shut up and leave her alone as she complains that everyone scolds her without thinking or trying to understand her. She then proceeds to continue rapid-firing curses at the nun.
Deciding that he cannot let a girl cry in his presence, Youto addresses the girl as "princess," and uses flowery words to try to convince her to stop, trying to act like the hero who rebels against the evil church that made the girl cry, like Don Quixote or Sindbad. Youto declares himself as a knight in shining armor who guards the smile of every girl. The girl however does not appreciate his efforts, believing him to be a pervert and turning as if to leave.
Coming back to his senses, Youto spots a small animal she holds in her arms — a rabbit, none other than Yaji-san, who is just as dirty as the girl holding it. He explains that the rabbit belongs to his friend, and asks the girl if it was the reason why she is so dirty. In tsundere fasion, the girl tries to deny it and claim that she wanted to bully the rabbit, but it is clear that she was instead trying to help it, so he thanks her.
Now paying atttention to the girl's in fact soft and beautiful figure, Youto can't help but grin, imagining the sight of her in ten years or so. The girl, finding this disgusting, knocks Youto's hand away when he tries to pat her head, and the two of them quarrel for a while.
Hearing the sound of the choir coming from the chapel, Youto offers to tell the nuns the truth, that Emanuella was late because she was helping out Yaji-san and there is no need to scold her. She however, refuses the offer and claims that she didn't cry because the nun got angry, and in fact she never cried at all. When Youto insists, she proceeds to punch him in the gut with impressive force.
Emanuella insists that there is no point trying to convince the nun, and that she does not have any allies, nor does she need any. Believing that she is simply making excuses and giving up too easily, Youto continues to blurt out heroic light novel lines, inviting her to shake hands in trust and promising to live together in this dirty world.
Once again feeling disgusted, the girl asks if Youto always spouts whatever nonsense comes to mind. She questions Youto's determination, believing that he only tries to act cool but will forget all about his empty words the following day, which unfortunately hits the bullseye. Youto tries to deny it, but his voice betrays him.
The girl then follows with a series of odd requests: handing over the bunny, she tells Youto to close his eyes. Youto is convinced that she is trying to go for a kiss, but she then instructs him to lower his waist, stick out his tongue, and jump. Before he realizes it, the girl has pulled down Youto's jeans and underwear and snapped a photo with her phone. In utter shock, Youto falls to the ground, and is unable to pull his jeans back up in time as he needs to protect Yaji-san. The devilish girl takes the opportunity to snap even more pictures.
His dignity stolen, Youto lies in the grass defeated. When he asks the girl for an explanation in protest, she responds that it is to force him to commit to his promise of being her ally — she would post the photos online otherwise. She introduces herself as Emi and asks for Youto's name.
Emi tells Youto to come back next weekend. As a last struggle, Youto exercises his right to remain silent. However, the devilish girl begins taking off her clothes and screams for help dealing with a pervert, adding that she has pictures to prove it. Youto has no choice but to give in to her demands.
For the three months that followed, Youto is forced to go to church on every free day, doing whatever Emi demanded. One of these such demands was to write her a letter, which she asks for out of the blue. The next day, Youto brings a letter where he addresses Emi as his little sister, which of course earns him a good scolding. However, despite throwing it away at first, Emi later takes it back to keep it, all while denying any attachment in tsundere fasion.
One day, Emi comes up with a plan to sneak into the church at night to vandalize it. Even though he has put up with all of Emi's demands up to this point, he feels that an act of revenge would be crossing the line. However, he still stands no chance against Emi, who claims that she left her phone in the church and set it up to ring midnight, which means Yokodera's photo, which she set as the wallpaper, would be discovered.
When they sneak into the church that night, Emi finds a note written by Youto, warning the church of "a certain devil's indictment," so she punishes Youto by forcing him to write "the angel Emi is even more invincible than an angel" 100 times. While Youto does as she says, Emi simply sits around and kicks her legs, apparently only having thought as far as sneaking into the church with no idea what to do afterwards. Her gaze jumps around, but always lands back on the staircase for the choir.
Youto has spent enough time with Emi to tell that she's been wrestling with herself — She wanted to get along with evergy, but her personality got in her way, not allowing her to be honest with herself. Every time this happened, she grew frustrated with herself and dashed out of the church. Her only reason for sneaking into the church at night was so she could gaze at where the choir would be with nobody to get in her way.
Youto decides to be honest with Emi and voice his observations. Emi tries to deny it and blame her father for keeping her in the choir, but in no time, she starts crying. She complains that she is treated as a troublemaker wherever she goes, that she has nowhere to belong, and that she has no idea what she can do. After making sure to also Youto while she's at it, she childishly stomps on the ground, calling the world boring. Though he tries to play a hero like a manga protagonist, Youto too finds himself at a loss, unable to do anything to cheer Emi up and starting to cry himself.
This is until the alarm on Emi's phone goes off, attracting the nuns' attention. Youto and Emi run out of the church and through the city lights in panic. In an residential area, Youto ends up promising Emi to take her to a sports festival when he gets in high school, one that is perfect for a rascal like her. Though in reality, Youto doesn't even know what high school he's aiming for, he has just blurted out whatever came to mind, simply wanting to see Emi smile. Some more of their usual back-and-forth later, Emi decides to give it some thought.
Though in hindsight there was much more that Youto feels he should have talked about with Emi, such as her family problems, he simply didn't know where to start. The only thing he manages to tell Emi is to please not quit the choir. He then brings up that he's actually never heard Emi sing, asking if he could listen once in a while. Emi's immediate response is berating as usual, but she then murmurs to herself about one day getting better at singing. When Youto asks what she plans to do then however, she retracts her words.
Their meetings continue, and so does Emi's hopeless tsundere behavior. One day, she decides to bombard Youto with all kinds of random questions, eventually landing on "what is your favorite type of girls." Youto answers that it would probably be someone older, earning him the usual insult. She then asks him what his preferences are for younger girls, to which he responds "someone with twin tails, who talks in unclear expressions and in third person, and who would say 'I love Onii-chan'." Despite calling Youto disgusting as always, she would later try to act in the image Youto described, using a puddle of water as a mirror: "Um, Youto-Onii-chan... you know, Emi actually..."
She quickly deems it impossible however, and returns to her usual self.
==Characters==
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