Cat & Chocolate: Blooming Days

The convenient location of Itsuki Hashima’s apartment, about a five-minute walk from his publisher, meant his place was often a hangout spot for many of its other writers. Right now, there were two of them—Haruto Fuwa and Nayuta Kani—seated by the kotatsu heated table, along with Miyako Shirakawa, one of Itsuki’s buddies from his short stint in college.

Haruto was at work on his tablet PC, but Nayuta and Miyako were playing a round of Ghosts, the two-player board game.

In it, players maneuvered their team of eight ghost pegs—four “good” and four “evil”—around a six-by-six grid, taking pieces from each other like in chess. Victory was won by either taking all four of their opponent’s good ghosts, having the opponent take all four of their own evil ghosts, or maneuvering a good ghost into the opponent’s exit. Since a ghost’s good/evil status was shown only by a dot on its rear (blue for good, red for evil), there was no way for a player to know the status of their opponent’s pieces. It became important, then, to guess them through how the opponent moved, as well as your knowledge of their personality.

The game offered simple rules but a pretty intense psychological battle of wits, making it a popular selection for a quick two-player game in this apartment.

“Oops! And that’s blue.”

“Dahh, you beat me again!” Miyako exclaimed as Nayuta took her fourth good ghost.

“That makes five in a row for me, Myaa.”

“Mngh,” Miyako muttered at the smiling Nayuta. “Why do you always take just my good ghosts all the time? You didn’t secretly mark the good pieces somehow or something, did you?”

“Oh, I’d never cheat that way.”

“You suuuure?”

She scowled back, and Haruto had to smile next to her. “You’re just too readable, Miyako,” he interjected.

“Right. You give away everything.” Nayuta nodded.

“Everything…? I think I’m usually pretty good at hiding things…”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Myaa. It’s rare to run into people as easy to read as you these days,” Nayuta replied with a smile.

Miyako’s reaction was, in fact, a bit hard to read at this observation. She had, after all, been “hiding” something from Nayuta for a while now.

“All right,” Haruto said, putting his tablet in his bag. “I’m at a good point in this story, so lemme get in on a game of something.”

“Oh, all right, I guess. I’d feel bad about bullying Myaa any more than I am anyway.”

“I’ll beat you next time, okay?!”

“Something easy-breezy for three players… Maybe Love Letter, or Too Many Cinderellas, or Deep Sea Adventure… Do you play board games a lot, Miyako?”

Miyako shook her head at Haruto. “No, just whatever I’ve played with Itsuki and Nayu when I’m here. Have you been playing them for a while, Fuwa?”

“Nah, not really until about two years ago. Before that, I hadn’t played much of anything except for Life with my family. I’ve been doing tabletop RPGs since college, though.”

“Wow, that’s not too long at all.”

Haruto gave a wistful chuckle at this. “Well, me and Itsuki got invited to this game meetup that was being held by this one veteran writer, and we had a lot of fun there. So we bought a couple of the more famous ones, like Dominion and Carcassonne, and started playing them all the time. I actually bought probably, like, seventy percent of the board games in this apartment.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah,” Nayuta confirmed. “Whenever Prince Manwhore buys a new game online, he just has it shipped here.”

“Well, sure. We’re gonna play ’em here anyway, so that just makes it easier. And stop calling me Prince Manwhore.”

Haruto gave the room a carefree smile.

“So how ’bout we get started? Love Letter’s always a nice go-to for kicking off with… Oh, but lemme get some drinks out before we begin. Do you like fruit beer?”

Miyako nodded as Haruto went to the kitchen, helped himself to some glasses like he owned the place, and took out a bottle of Lindemans Framboise and some root beer, pouring each into its own glass. He had purchased most of the beer, cheese, ham, and other snacks in the fridge as well, and Nayuta had started making sure that it always contained a few bottles of her preferred brand of root beer. Otherwise, the fridge had the ingredients, condiments, and premade food from Itsuki’s younger brother Chihiro, along with some Valentine’s chocolate sent by fans. Very little in it actually belonged to the guy who rented the apartment.

After some [root] beer and a few Love Letter games, the trio felt a pair of spiteful eyes aimed at them.

“…You sure sound like you’re having fun…”

Itsuki, who was currently up shit creek over Volume 5 of Sisterly Combat, had been working at his desk ever since the others showed up.

“Yep. How’s it going with work?”

“It’s not,” he curtly replied to Haruto, his eyes resembling those of a dead fish.

“Oh, no? Well, have fun.”

“Why do you have all the time in the world right now, Haruto…? Your next volume goes on sale next month, too, doesn’t it?”

Volume 13 of Chevalier of the Absolute World, the anime version of which was set to launch next month, would hit the shelves at the same time as Sisterly Combat, Volume 5.

“You mean Thirteen? I submitted that manuscript two months ago.”

“What the…?!”

“Huh?!”

This stunned both Itsuki and Nayuta into silence.

“I heard before that you never missed a deadline…but finishing a volume three months before the sale date? That’s unheard of…!”

“Yeah! Talk about coming early! Not only are you a manwhore, but you have no stamina! You’re beyond saving now!”

“I’m not either of those things,” Haruto hastened to say. “And why’s that a big surprise to you all? Other publishers basically demand you turn it in two or three months before the sale date.”

The thought made Itsuki involuntarily shudder.

“Three months as a default? Are you kidding me…? Can all of their authors stop the flow of time or something? Or do they have a Hyperbolic Time Chamber set up inside the office…?”

“Yeah, well, at the same time, with some publishers out there, you can wrap up the manuscript a week before launch and they still get the book published in time, somehow. I heard that’s how it pretty much always is with  .”

“Ooh, mine would delay it for sure if I did that. What kind of magic are they using?”

“I dunno, but if it’s a publisher that releases weekly magazines, then they can do that, too, somehow.”

“Oh. So magazine publishers have given up on being sane human beings, too, huh?”

Nayuta sighed. “Well, it’s thanks to Super Saiyans like you that regular earthlings like us who write at normal speed all look lazy. It’s a real pain, you know?”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Itsuki stood up from his chair, taking out a glass for himself before settling down by the kotatsu.

“You’re okay workwise?” Miyako asked.

“…Hey, sometimes we need a change of pace to recharge,” Itsuki replied, failing to look her in the eye.

“Okay, wanna bust out a four-player game?” Haruto offered.

“Yep.”

Itsuki nodded, and Haruto thought for a moment.

“Let’s see… Well, if you got writer’s block, how about Cat & Chocolate? Maybe it’ll help you come up with something.”

“You don’t need to look out for me… Eh, whatever.”

Nayuta nodded her own agreement as Itsuki pouted.

“What kind of game is it?”

Haruto took the game box off the shelf as he explained it to Miyako. At its core, Cat & Chocolate was a game where players used items in their possession to deal with assorted problems. It was sold in several packages, covering situations from a haunted house to school and office life.

They had picked Blooming Days, the “school” version, to play today. In it, players were tasked with solving crises like “Summer vacation is over and you haven’t done any of your homework” or “You’re on a class trip and get separated from everyone else.” To do so, one would take the item cards randomly dealt to them and use them to explain to the others how you’d solve the issue. If a majority of the other players thought your story was a valid solution to the problem, you earned a point.

Players were always given three cards but didn’t get to decide how many cards to actually play in their stories—the number required was given to them. One might think that using lots of cards at once would make it easier to solve the problem, but instead it became more of a challenge, figuring out how to weave these (often) useless items into the tale.

While it was more of a casual party game than a seriously competitive one, to authors it was a godsend—letting them make the excuse that it was “exercising their creative muscles” and not wasting time. And given the conceptual skills it asked for, among writers it could turn into a scarily intense battle of wills, much like Turtle Soup from before.

Haruto dealt three cards to all the players. “All right, let’s decide who plays first. The rules say ‘The first player is the one who’s enjoying (or enjoyed) their school life the most.’ So, uh, which one of us had the most ‘normal’ time in school?”

“…I was bullied until I dropped out.”

“…I joined a club that fell apart over sex drama.”

“…Not to brag or anything, but I didn’t have any friends.”

Nayuta, Haruto, and Itsuki each made their confessions robotically. A heavy gloom filled the apartment. In response to this sudden onrush of bad memories, Miyako—the only current student in the room—limply raised her head.

“Geez! Well, I’m having a pretty good time at school, all right?!”

“Great, so we’ll go clockwise from Miyako.”

“I look forward to seeing what a well-adjusted college girl can do here, Myaa.”

“Um, sure. Like, I’m all over this. So you just use these item cards to solve problems?”

Miyako turned over the top card in the “event” deck in the middle of the table.

“Umm… ‘Terrorists have occupied the school.’ …Wow, what am I supposed to do about that?”

“Oh, this one’s easy.”

“Yeah, there’s a ton of ways to approach that.”

“Nice stroke of luck there, Myaa.”

Miyako looked at the other three in shock. “…Are you guys being serious? And how is this a ‘school life’ issue at all?”

“Hey, schools get attacked by terrorists all the time. It’s a given.”

“Not in my world, it’s not…”

Each event card had a number between 1 and 3 on it, with the current player required to use that number of cards in their story to solve the event. This particular card had a 2 on it, which meant Miyako had to use two cards from her hand to save the school from the threat of terrorism.

“Hmm… Wow, I really don’t know what I should do…”

She took a few minutes to mull it over before finally plunking down her first card. It showed a student in a gym outfit.

“Um, first I change into this gym outfit…”

Then she revealed her second card—a set of vaulting boxes.

“Then I’ll hide inside these boxes until help arrives… The end.”

She looked at the other three players, gauging their responses.

“Hiding… Yeah, that’s a pretty normal approach,” Itsuki commented.

“Was there much need to change into gym clothes for that?”

“W-well, what else could I do?” Miyako protested at Haruto’s jab. “I had to use two cards, so…”

“Okay, let’s do a little simulation, then,” said Nayuta.

“Simulation?”

As Miyako gazed at her in confusion, Nayuta blandly explained. “…So you’re in your gym clothes, Myaa, inside a dark gymnasium, hiding inside some wooden vaulting boxes. You’re wearing those tight gym bottoms, leaving your long, plump legs fully exposed. Then a terrorist comes in to see if anyone’s hiding. He says ‘Hey, look at these wooden boxes.’ And then… Well, there you go. He’ll check them out and find you, Myaa.”

“Wha?!”

“…Yeah, anyone would check out the boxes,” Itsuki observed. Haruto nodded his agreement.

“And remember, like I said, inside those boxes is a college student, practically about to burst out of her gym suit, with that itsy-bitsy bottom and curvy bare legs!”

“…Any terrorist would love that,” Haruto dispassionately commented.

“Love it how?!”

“Then Myaa would be taken out of the boxes and lain down on the floor. ‘Ah-ha-ha! This girl’s gonna be all mine!’ ‘Geh-heh-heh… It’s been far too long for me. I’m gonna have some fun today!’ ‘Ooh, I—I want ’er to keep the bottom on for me while we’re doing it!’ ‘Ha, you creep…’ And so begins a scene straight out of a porno manga.”

“Too bad about those gym clothes,” Itsuki said. “We coulda saved you otherwise.”

“Ooooh…”

Miyako looked about ready to cry, envisioning terrorists ravaging her. In the end, all three of her opponents ruthlessly voted “no” when asked if her story solved the problem.

“Okay, my turn.”

Itsuki picked up an event card from the pile.

“…‘You accidentally called your teacher “Mom,” and it’s super awkward!’”

“Ha-ha-ha! Yeah, that would suck!”

“Pretty much the end of your social life, if you do that in high school.”

Haruto and Nayuta both laughed at the idea, while Itsuki’s eyes turned toward some faraway point in the horizon.

“My mom died when I was in middle school, so…maybe I kind of saw her in some of the female teachers I had…”

“…Ah… Hey, um…sorry.”

“…Sorry.”

Haruto and Nayuta both awkwardly turned their eyes away, leaving Miyako unsure what to do, if anything.

Itsuki rushed to speak. “Oh, don’t worry about it! Umm, so I have to use one item card. I’ll make it this one!”

He played a card showing one of those anatomical models of the human body seen in science classrooms worldwide.

“I’d play it off as a joke, like ‘Whoa, I was wondering why my mom was here in school for a second, but it was actually this model all along! Ha-ha-ha! Hoo boy!’ …How’s that?!”

Despite the clear enthusiasm Itsuki had for the idea, the response was lukewarm at best.

“Ahh, yeah, that’s good, ha-ha…”

“It certainly is, yes, ah-ha…ha…”

They all voted “yes” for the story, although the atmosphere surrounding them still felt kind of sketchy.

“Okay, I’m next.” Haruto turned over an event card. “‘You have serious bed head.’ Solve with three cards, huh…?”

“If you had my ‘hair gel’ card, this would be no problem, huh?” Miyako flashed a card of her own.

“Well, that’s how this game works. You never have the item you need when you actually need it.” Haruto chuckled, then thought for a few moments. “…All right, let’s go with this.”

The first item he put down was a hairband.

“I put on this hairband.”

“Okay… Wait, huh? But isn’t that enough to take care of bed head right there?” Miyako looked at Haruto, puzzled.

“Well, next up is this… A medaka fish.”

“A fish?!”

“Yeah, I take a fish from the aquarium, put it on my head, and watch my balance real carefully so it doesn’t fall off. Then, right at the end… This guitar card. If I’m strumming a guitar with a fish on my head as I’m walking to school, nobody’s gonna comment on what my hair looks like!”

“Well, of course not! They’ll start to think you’ve gone crazy!”

“Yeah, but I did solve the bed-head problem!”

Haruto resolutely pleaded his case, even as he recognized how silly it was. He had to use the fish and guitar cards in addition to the hairband, when the hairband alone would’ve been enough to solve the problem. Thus, he had to overdo it a bit.

“But… The whole reason you want a solution to bed head is because it’s socially awkward to have it, right? If you make that problem even bigger, I don’t think that gets to the root of it…”

Miyako didn’t seem fully satisfied, but when it came down to the votes, Itsuki and Nayuta overruled her with their “yes”es.

“Nice!” Haruto shouted, pumping his fist a little in the air.

“Whaaa?! How is that okay?!”

“Ahh, it was funny, so…”

“Mm-hmm. Imagining Prince Manwhore walking around with a fish on his head playing guitar made me laugh, so I vote yes.”

Miyako looked at them both, now more dubious than ever. All voting in this game was based on the players’ own subjective views, so even if it didn’t fully solve the problem, stories could be acceptable just for being amusing. This made it important to think about the personalities of the other players.

“I suppose I’m up next,” Nayuta said. “Umm… ‘You broke a window.’ Solve with three items…”

She looked at her hand for a while, pondering the possibilities. Then:

“Okay, here it is!”

She slapped all three cards on the table. They were a fire extinguisher, a dumbbell, and a motor scooter—immediately making Miyako and crew wonder how the hell she intended to explain this.

“First, I swing the dumbbell around to break all the other windows that aren’t broken.”

“Huh…?”

Despite Itsuki’s blank look, Nayuta continued, her demeanor oddly calm.

“…Crash, smash, crunch. The noise is so satisfying as I shatter each and every pane of glass. Some teachers will try and stop me, of course, but I knock them down with a blast from the fire extinguisher, then swing the dumbbell to silence them.”

“Uh, N-Nayu…?”

Nayuta’s smile deepened.

“So, taking up my empty fire extinguisher and bloodstained dumbbell, I start bashing up the windows and walls with greedy delight. Then I drive the scooter up and down the halls at top speed, throwing the dumbbell and swinging the fire extinguisher around to vandalize the school even more. Break it up, break it up, break it, break it, break it break it break it break it break it break it break it all!! Ha-ha-ha! You should just rip that school a new one! They didn’t do a thing to help me! I hated them all! They should just die!!”

“Kanikou, calm down!”

Itsuki gave Nayuta a bop on the head, bringing her back to the real world.

“Oh… Itsuki? I’m sorry… Guess that flipped some kind of weird switch in my head, or something…”

“Y-yeah…”

Haruto and Miyako were supremely unnerved at this unexpected glimpse into Nayuta’s darker side.

“So, uh, that’s pretty much the same approach that I took; causing an even bigger problem to mask the original one. Everyone who wants to give the okay to that approach, raise your hand.”

Itsuki raised his hand. Haruto and Miyako did not, but Nayuta was overjoyed at Itsuki’s choice, almost to the point of tears.

“Itsuki…! I’m glad to see you understand me, at least!”

“…Well, vandalism isn’t all that great, but sometimes violence really is the only solution, so…”

“Oooh, I love you, Itsuki! You’re the only one who can save me! I’d let you do anything to me! Please, just ruin me!”

“Sh-shut up! Get away from— Ah! You dumbass!”

Peeling Nayuta and her hug away from his body, Itsuki stood up.

“Okay, change of pace complete. I’m going back to work.”

“Yeah, hang in there!” Haruto said as he started putting the cards away.

As he did, Miyako picked up another card from the event deck, wondering what kind of problem would’ve come up if they’d played a second round.

The event: “You’ve fallen in love with the same person as your best friend.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“What’s up, Myaa?”

“N-nothing,” she said as she hurriedly returned the card to the pile and handed it to Haruto.

You’ve fallen in love with the same person as your best friend…

What kind of items could she possibly use to solve that problem? Miyako had no idea at all.