4

Sometimes the main character can’t enter the village of another species on his own

“The class play…?” she repeated.

“Yeah,” I said firmly. “For the school festival.”

I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted so badly to see the class act out her story.

“B-but…,” she said hesitantly, lowering her eyes.

I could hear her pessimism, but the underlying message was not so much a no as an I’m scared.

I stayed as honest and up-front as I could. “I’d love to see it.”

“R-really…?” She looked away, stuttering a little.

“I don’t want to pressure you…but is it totally out of the question?”

Of course, it would only work if she wanted to do it. I wasn’t about to force her to write something just because I wanted to see it.

“It’s not impossible, but…”

“But what?”

I was leaning forward eagerly, but she was still thinking. Her voice was like the wind caressing a flower to share its secrets. “That last story…was actually the first of the five that I started.”

“…Oh, really?”

She nodded. “At first, it went very smoothly, and I liked all the characters very much. I shouldn’t say this as an author…but I loved that story more than the others.”

“…Yeah.”

Just listening to her gentle voice was such a pleasant feeling, as if her words were slipping directly into my mind.

I listened quietly—no need to interject.

“But that was the problem… I couldn’t decide how I wanted to end a story I loved so much. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen to characters who were so close to my heart.”

She stroked her manuscript like she was caressing a baby.

“So I couldn’t finish it.”

“…Oh.”

Her words made perfect sense.

I didn’t know anything about the craft of writing. But just by reading it, I could tell she had put her heart into that story. There must be some very strong feelings behind it.

“It’s really important to me, so I’m afraid of ruining it…”

“Okay, I understand.”

The more you loved something, the more scared you were to lose it. Maybe making it the class play was insensitive of me.

“Maybe it’s better if you give yourself the time to finish it when you’re ready.”

I felt satisfied with that conclusion.

Kikuchi-san nodded. “Yes, that might be best,” she said. Then she went on.

“But then again, it might not be.”

She smiled teasingly.

I stared at her blankly.

“I used to be scared of so many things outside my own world.” Her eyes glittered like jade, looking brightly toward the future. “When I watched you jump out from your own lonely world into an unknown universe…it made me think.”

I didn’t know where she was looking or what she saw ahead of her. But—

“I want to see that world, too.”

—I knew whatever it was, it was real.

She gave me one of those slightly shy smiles typical of a teenage girl.

“So I’d like to try writing the play.”

That smile was filled with the immense strength of a timid girl taking one step into the unknown.

* * *

After school that day, we had a class meeting about the school festival. The whole committee was standing in front of the class.

The topic of conversation was the play. We’d decided to do an original without having a script or even an idea in mind, and we had to choose something soon, so everyone was getting more and more anxious.

I had one goal: get the class to choose Kikuchi-san’s story for the play.

“What kind of story should we do?” Izumi asked the class.

There was a long silence. After all, we had decided to do an original basically on the spur of the moment.

I watched the class, waiting for an appropriate amount of silence to pass, then seized my opportunity. “Um…can I say something?”

Everyone looked at me. Being the center of attention did make me nervous, but I was getting used to it. Today was already better than the previous day. I guess my magic resistance must have increased. Incidentally, Kikuchi-san’s eyes were wide-open, and her hand was over her mouth.

“You’ve got an idea?” Mizusawa asked.

I nodded. “Um, I have a possible script…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Hinami raising her eyebrows in surprise. No matter how proactive she wanted me to be, she probably didn’t expect me to bring in a script. Too bad, Hinami. This isn’t an assignment—it’s just something I want to do.

“Nice going, Brain! That’s what I was waiting for!” Mimimi said encouragingly. I made an enthusiastic noise to buy time.

“So what is it?” Mizusawa said, apparently eagerly anticipating my answer. In one sense, their total belief in me made my job easier, but in another sense, disappointing them was way scarier.

“Well, take a look…,” I said, holding out the last story from Kikuchi-san’s manuscript to Mizusawa. Everyone was watching the two of us. Oof.

“Oh, you’ve already got something?” he said, flipping through the beginning. “…Huh.” He scanned the first two pages or so, nodding a couple of times. “It’s really well written, but who’s it by? You?”

“No, it wasn’t me.”

“Oh, then who?”

“Uh…”

Mizusawa handed the manuscript back to me. “I think it looks good. I don’t know the whole story, but I can tell it’s well-done.”

“Hey, I wanna see!” Mimimi grabbed the manuscript. She stared at it intently for ten seconds or so. “…This is better than I was expecting!”

Could she really tell from spending only ten seconds looking at the first page? Was she just overwhelmed by all the words, or was she actually an avid reader who could get a sense of a story from the first couple of lines? Mimimi was a surprisingly serious student, so the latter was more likely than you’d think.

Some kids in our class were starting to wonder out loud what it was like, so I handed copies of the manuscript to the person at the head of each row—Kikuchi-san and I had printed them out earlier using the printer next to the dining hall. It would have been better to make a summary or something, but we didn’t have time for that.

“You sure are well prepared!” Izumi said, sounding surprised. What are you thinking, Izumi? If a low-level character isn’t prepared, he’ll get creamed in battle.

“We don’t have much time, so how about everyone just reads through the beginning?” I said to the class. For a second, I was almost leading the meeting. Impressive involvement in the school festival, eh?

I waited a couple of minutes, watching the reactions.

People started chatting among themselves.

“Interesting…”

“I like it!”

“This is the real deal!”

“Yeah…”

“It’s like a novel!”

Hmm. The overall response was positive, but they didn’t seem to be 100 percent excited about it. But that’s about what you can expect for this sort of thing, I think.

To start with, a lot of people were probably turned off by the fact that it was a formally written story, so expecting unanimous approval was unrealistic. I mean, the members of Erika Konno’s group were basically wandering around the back of the class without reading at all, so getting every student on board would literally be impossible. I figured it was enough for people to understand it was a solid piece of writing.

“I was thinking we could use this as a base for talking about how to adapt it and deciding on the roles and stuff,” I said. After all, the story wasn’t even finished, so that process was inevitable.

Okay. The groundwork was mostly done. Considering no one else had a suggestion and I’d come this well prepared, the likelihood of my proposal being rejected was pretty low. It wasn’t like the class had decided to do a play because they had their heart set on anything already.

“But who wrote this?” asked a member of the organizing committee—uh, Seno-san, I think? She was one of Mimimi’s friends who usually took notes when we had meetings and hung out a lot with Kashiwazaki-san, my Instagram follower.

“Uh, um…” I glanced at Kikuchi-san, and she nodded. Okay, I’m good to go. “It’s by Kikuchi-san, in our class,” I said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Mizusawa and Mimimi snapped their heads in my direction.

“Oh, okay. I see now,” he said with a laugh.

I wondered what exactly he was seeing, but it wasn’t really something I could joke around about, so I just nodded and said, “Yeah.”

All Mimimi said was, “Oh. Really?” Her voice was strangely flat.

I turned to the rest of the committee members. “If there aren’t any other suggestions, I think it would be great to use Kikuchi-san’s story as the basis for an original play… What do you think?”

Several committee members agreed, saying things like, “Yeah, it could work” and “Why not?” Again, not totally decisive, but everyone seemed to recognize we didn’t have any other options, and the story was solid. Also, since Kikuchi-san was always so quiet and serious, her image probably didn’t hurt.

“So…does anyone else have an idea?” Izumi asked the class again. Predictably, no one raised their hand.

“Okay, so let’s go with this then,” Mizusawa said with his usual coolness. “Kikuchi-san, think you can bring a simple outline of the story next time?”

Kikuchi-san gave a start, then nodded awkwardly. “O-okay.”

Mizusawa smiled. “All right. And after that, we can decide on roles.”

“Sounds good!” Izumi replied.

“And we should probably post the manuscript somewhere that everyone can access.”

“Good idea!”

Mizusawa had taken over the leadership role, and Izumi was happily backing him up. Especially there at the end. Izumi, are you gonna let him take your job?

“Kikuchi-san, think you can post the file online?”

“Y-yes!” She nodded earnestly, even though she looked like she was in shock.

“Okay. How about I set up a LINE group for the school festival that everyone can join?”

“Y-yes, that’s fine.”

Everything was falling into place so neatly. Mizusawa had mentioned the LINE group super casually, but I wondered if everyone in class knew how to use it. I guess between Mizusawa’s friends and Hinami’s, most people in class would be covered. In fact, up till a couple months ago, I might have been the only one who didn’t have it.

“So I’m starring, right?!” Takei said.

“No way,” Nakamura shot back.

“What?!”

The class laughed at the usual routine.

Anyway, this was looking up. The pieces had fallen into place for now.

Once the manuscript became our class play, a lot more people would see it.

I glanced at Kikuchi-san, and she bowed very briefly toward me with a reassured smile on her face. She was so conscientious.

I felt someone looking at me from the side, so I turned to see who it was. Mimimi was standing there, but her attention was elsewhere. Huh. I must have imagined it.

* * *

After that, the discussion turned to the manga café, and the class started talking excitedly about how to decorate the booth, what to serve, and who would bring what series. The committee wrote down what we’d need to get, and the meeting was over. Huh. I was kinda surprised; the café was probably gonna be a lot of fun, too. I might even be able to enjoy this school festival like a normal person.

Once the discussion was over, we started making stuff like the decorations, signs, and menus. I hung out with Nakamura’s group and worked on firing comebacks whenever he tried to tease me, which happened a lot. It was pretty fun, but I should be using the free time to work on Hinami’s assignments.

Since everyone was working on festival prep for the rest of the day, most students were busy with some project or other.

So if I was smart about it, I should be able to work on my quest.

I pulled up the chat messages from Hinami to see what was left on my photo list.

Narrowing that down further, I realized the Izumi shot would be tough because of the ice cream. It wasn’t impossible, since the cafeteria sold ice cream, but if I asked her to eat it now, she’d probably be like, What, again? so that quest was weirdly risky. Also, pulling her out of Konno’s group would be hard.

As for the Mizusawa quest, I was reaching the point where I could just ask him to do some things, but I didn’t know how to get him to put glasses on. No one I talked to a lot usually wore glasses. Kikuchi-san only seemed to wear hers at work. Should I take him to a store that sold them and convince him to try a pair or two? The next day was Saturday. I’d probably have to come up with a strategy and meet with him over the weekend.

That left two options. I decided to try getting the photo I was less likely to be able to get under ordinary circumstances. Since I’d have plenty of chances to take a photo with Kikuchi-san in the library or when we were discussing the script, that meant the shot of at least two girls I’d never talked to before was at the top of the list. Plus, the mood right now made it easy to start a conversation with anyone.

As I worked on coloring menus and writing funny graffiti on them with Nakamura’s gang, I looked over at Hinami’s group. A picture of Kashiwazaki-san and Seno-san was probably the only thing I could manage right now. Since I hadn’t ever talked to either of them when Hinami gave me the assignment, they’d count as “girls I’d never talked to.” The two of them were drawing some stuff on a big piece of vellum paper with Hinami, Mimimi, and Tama-chan.

I kept glancing over at them, waiting for the right moment, and my eyes kept meeting Mimimi’s. What? She kept smiling at me, too. What? What does that mean?

Eventually, Mimimi bounced excitedly over to us, like she wanted to know what was up. I wasn’t looking at you, Mimimi! Tama-chan came with her and was looking absently at Hinami, Kashiwazaki-san, and Seno-san. Hmm.

“Why do you keep looking at us?!” Mimimi asked me.

“I think you’re imagining it!” Tama-chan shot back sharply.

“Yeah, you definitely are,” I piled on.

Mimimi gaped at me suspiciously. “No way, our eyes met a million times!”

“I don’t remember that!”

As we bantered back and forth and I tried to figure out how to steer this toward my assignment, Mimimi suddenly caught me off guard.

“Hey! When did you and Kikuchi-san have your private meeting?! You really pulled this together fast!”

“Oh…uh, well…” I dodged, while Mimimi pouted.

“Guess you’re just really taking to the director role?”

“No…”

She was being weirdly nosy. I didn’t know what to say, so I changed the subject and tried to steer the conversation in a direction that would help achieve my quest.

“By the way…what are you guys doing over there?”

I glanced at Hinami and the other two girls.

“We’re trying to figure out a design for the hallway side of the booth!” Tama-chan said.

“Ah, I see.”

Mimimi nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, wanna see?” she said, looking toward their group.

Takei jumped in. “I do!!”

“Guess I’ll go, too, then,” I said, acting like I was just going along with him.

“Okay, come on!”

With that, Takei and I merged with Hinami’s group. If I was going to have a buddy in this guerrilla operation, Nakamura or Mizusawa would have been more reassuring, but what could I do? I’d have to rely on myself this time.

Takei, Mimimi, Tama-chan, and I headed into the Land of Girls.

“Ta-daa! Here it is!” Mimimi flapped her hands as she revealed the design.

“…Ooh,” I said in awe.

The big sheet was covered with childish pop-art images of foods, drinks, and comic books.

Someone was obviously good at drawing, and their work was scattered around at critical spots. Because of that, the overall design avoided looking too disorganized and instead clearly expressed the concept of a “kid’s drawing.”

It was a smart way of making the whole thing look good even if some members of the group couldn’t draw very well… My guess was Hinami was behind that idea. When I looked over at her, she was grinning from ear to ear and drawing a childish picture of a fried egg. Huh, never saw her looking that kid-like before…

“Wow, that looks awesome!” Takei said, obviously impressed.

“Right?! Would you like to draw something, Takei-san?” Seno-san asked excitedly.

“No way, really?!” He picked up one of the crayons that was lying around and started to mull over what to draw. Restraint was not in his vocabulary.

Hmm. Why not say that?

“I think he was just waiting for you to ask,” I joked.

And then…

…not only Mimimi, Hinami, and Tama-chan, but Kashiwazaki-san and Seno-san giggled.

S-so…

“Ah-ha-ha. Right? He’s already holding a crayon!” Kashiwazaki-san agreed, turning to me. Seno-san, who was standing next to her, was smiling at me, too. Wait a second, what was going on? Unless I was imagining things, they seemed eager to bring me into their circle.

That was a surprise, but I reminded myself to keep my voice even and come up with a witty reply. What would get everyone laughing even more?

“Exactly!”

I couldn’t think of anything, so I just relied on the cheerful tone. Typical bottom-tier character behavior.

“Hey, I saw your Insta! That picture of Tama-chan cracked me up!” Seno-san said to me. H-huh, what’s happening now? I didn’t understand how, but I’d somehow started a conversation with two girls at once.

This situation was clearly beyond my skill level, so I went back to the most basic of basics and drummed up my confidence with my posture.

But I still couldn’t think of anything to say, so I decided to mention what I was thinking when I took the picture of Tama-chan. It sounded like something I came up with on the spot, but it wasn’t.

“Yeah, that’s an amazing photo, right? She’s like a supernova.”

Seno-san laughed again. “So dramatic!”

R-really? That went well. Good thing I’m always talking to myself. My brain was about to explode, but I propped up my confidence with physicality instead.

“Ooh, show me! I wanna see!” Mimimi interrupted curiously.

“Um, here…”

I pulled up the picture, and she apparently found it hilarious.

“Ah-ha-ha! You’re so damn cute, Tama!”

“You said it, not me,” Tama-chan replied, a proud expression on her face. She wouldn’t have done that a few weeks earlier. She was still herself—just easier to get close to.

Hinami leaned over, too, and smiled as if she’d never seen it before.

“Ah-ha-ha, agreed! She’s so cute, I think we should draw her face right here!” she said, pointing to the vellum paper.

“Let’s not take this too far!” Tama-chan said, and everyone laughed.

As I listened to their conversation, I thought about how to achieve my photo quest.

Everyone in this group knew I’d started an Instagram. Actually, based on how Kashiwazaki-san and Seno-san were acting toward me, I think they saw me as “the guy who just started an Instagram.”

Which meant this would probably work…

I waited for a pause in the conversation to make my proposal.

“…How about we all take a silly picture?”

Mimimi took the bait. “Ooh, good idea. You guys are toast!”

“It’s not a competition, Mimimi!”

Everyone smiled at Hinami’s quick comeback. I’d thought of saying the exact same thing, but my reflexes were way slower than hers. Sometimes, the mentor swoops down and crushes the disciple.

As I was getting my camera ready to take the picture, Tama-chan held out her hand toward me.

“Huh?” I looked at her hand blankly.

“You already have a picture of me, so why don’t you get in the shot with everyone?”

“…Oh, okay, thanks.”

I lined up with everyone, grateful for the straightforward gesture of kindness. We made two rows and waited for Tama-chan to get the camera ready. By the way, Takei, and only Takei, was already making his face. Seriously, dude?

Finally, Tama-chan said she was good to go. Um, okay, silly face, right? The other day, she’d given me a little tutorial on how to do it right, so I’d be fine if I followed her instructions. I nervously made my expression. Never guessed that lecture would come in handy so soon…

“Say cheese!”

As soon as the camera clicked, everyone rushed at Tama-chan asking how it came out. We gathered around the screen, and there the six of us were, each putting our all into making our own version of a funny face. You could find a picture like this on any real popular kid’s Instagram. W-wow. Was this really on my phone?

Kashiwazaki-san smiled as she looked at the picture. “No way! Tomozaki-kun is making the same face as Tama-chan!”

She was pointing at my face—which, since I was carefully following Tama-chan’s instructions, looked exactly like hers.

Seno-san and everyone else started laughing, and for a second, the mood was high.

Wh-what’s going on? It’s like having an Instagram made everyone instantly accept me.

Tama-chan returned my phone, and I was absentmindedly taking part in the conversation when Takei eagerly turned to me.

“That’s a great shot, Farm Boy! Send it to me, okay?”

“Huh? Uh, okay.”

I was happy someone wanted my picture, even if it was Takei, so I sent it to him on LINE without thinking much about it.

“Thanks! I’m posting this baby on Twitter!”

“…Huh?”

And so, thanks to my own carelessness, the happy story of my first good photo came to a tragic end when Takei put it on Twitter before I could get it on Instagram. Takei. Come on. You never know where your enemies may be lurking.

* * *

That day as I walked home with Nakamura’s group, I wondered what I should do.

It was Friday. That meant I was heading into the weekend, when I had to get two of my assignments done.

The three remaining assignments were a shot of Mizusawa wearing glasses, a shot of Izumi eating ice cream, and a shot of me with Kikuchi-san. I should probably prioritize the one of Mizusawa wearing glasses, since I had no idea how to get that one at school.

That meant I had to invite Mizusawa to hang out on either Saturday or Sunday, but the problem was, I didn’t know how to do it.

I mean, how did people invite each other to do stuff anyway? I’d asked Kikuchi-san to go to the movies together, but we had the Andi books in common. What did I have in common with someone as cool and good-looking as Mizusawa? Basically nothing. We were both human, I guess, and we went to the same high school and had the same part-time job. That was it. I didn’t think we had any of the same hobbies or anything.

But the longer I walked along doing nothing, the more time passed, and the fewer opportunities I had to extend an invitation at all.

Mizusawa and I were walking a few steps behind Nakamura and Takei, who were goofing around as usual. I turned to Mizusawa.

“Hey, I was wondering…”

“Yeah?” he answered distractedly. He was busy with his phone while I was struggling to get this damn assignment done!

“Are you free tomorrow or the next day?”

That got his attention. “What’s up? That came out of nowhere.”

“Uh, I know,” I said, fumbling for words. “I wanted to go somewhere.”

“…Where?”

Mizusawa frowned. Of course he did. Who asks someone to hang out without at least suggesting something? Ugh, I should have thought this through better.

“No, I mean, I don’t have plans, so I thought we could just go wherever…”

“Aha!” he said, seeming to realize something. “So you’re free tomorrow?”

He was leaning toward me—so of course, I leaned away. “Y-yeah, I’m free.”

Mizusawa grinned. “Well, that’s perfect, then.”

“…Perfect?”

He thumped me on the back. “I’m going to a school festival.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, Gumi’s is this weekend. It’s invitation only, but I’ve got two tickets.”

“Oh, okay.”

Mizusawa raised one eyebrow and smiled. “I was gonna go on Sunday with someone from work, but if you’re free tomorrow, that’s perfect.”

“Ah, gotcha. Yeah, let’s go then.”

I was flustered by this unexpected turn of events, but I agreed. I probably wouldn’t get a better chance than this. I’d never been to a festival at another school, but I was grateful he’d chosen a place to go.

“Okay, it starts around ten tomorrow. Let’s figure out the details on LINE.”

“Sounds good.”

“We can scout out another school’s festival to get ideas for ours.”

“Y-yeah, true.”

Mizusawa wasn’t nervous at all; meanwhile, I was already getting uneasy thinking about the following day. Behold, the unbridgeable void between bottom-tier characters and normies.

“Okay, that’s a plan.”

“Uh, yeah.”

Maybe Mizusawa noticed I was nervous, because he said in a joking tone, “By the way, Gumi goes to a girls’ school.”

“A g-girls’ school…?”

That struck fear into my heart. Wait a second, a girls’ school? We’re screwed, right? This is like final-dungeon-level, right?

* * *

The next day, I found myself at Kitayono Station, where we’d agreed to meet. Apparently, Gumi-chan’s school was by the station near my house.

Mizusawa sauntered out of the exit gate and waved at me. “Hey.”

“H-hey.”

I tried to answer with the same attitude, but I was so nervous about what we were about to do that I stuttered a little. Man, I thought I’d mastered greetings so well that I didn’t even have to think about them anymore. Would I even be able to complete my assignment in this state? The festival itself was going to take everything I had. Plus, I highly doubted they’d be selling glasses there, so now what was I supposed to do?

“Ready to head over?”

Incidentally, we were both wearing our uniforms. I’d sent Mizusawa a LINE message asking him if people wore street clothes or school uniforms to this kind of thing. He said either was fine, but he’d do whatever I did, so I chose the uniform. That was because I still hadn’t bought a warm, decent-looking jacket, and it was getting cold. According to Hinami, that was something fashionable people did before the weather changed, but as a fashion-backward individual, it occurred to me a bit too late.

“Here’s your ticket.”

“Oh, thanks.”

He handed me a yellow slip of paper with Tokusei High School Festival printed on it. In the column labeled “Host,” Tsugumi Narita was written there in glittery, fluorescent ink. The rounded characters were exactly how I’d imagine a high school girl would write. When it came to that kind of stuff, Gumi-chan was a bit too trend-conscious.

A bunch of students were lined up around us, with some wearing uniforms and others in street clothes. They were probably headed for the festival.

“We’ve gotta take the bus,” Mizusawa said, so we got on one going toward the school.

After we reached our stop, Mizusawa used the map on his phone to lead us inside. Damn it, I feel like I’m being escorted…

Once we passed through a gate, which was decorated with handmade-looking garlands and paper flowers, and got onto the school grounds, I saw groups of kids in uniforms and street clothes milling around. There were probably slightly more girls than guys. And all the guys were from other schools, of course. They really came out in droves.

“Wanna just wander around for a while?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, making a strong effort to remain calm. Mizusawa frowned at me.

“…Are you nervous about something?”

“W-wouldn’t anyone be?” I replied honestly.

Mizusawa cackled. “Relax those shoulders! Smile, man, smile!” He gave me one of his own easy smiles.

“O-okay.”

I copied that expression, at least on the surface. Okay, I think I just got 10 percent less nervous. Fake it till you make it and all that.

We went into the school building and looked around. The walls of the hallway were covered with the kind of cute decorations you might expect to see at a girls’ school, and each classroom had a sign outside. HAUNTED HOUSE, OKONOMIYAKI AND YAKISOBA, ESCAPE ROOM… I guess everyone had essentially the same ideas.

Mizusawa looked over the crowd in the hall.

“Right, let’s go over the basics of hitting on girls,” he said matter-of-factly.

I flinched. “Whoa, that’s some lecture to be getting all of a sudden!”

“Look, why else would two guys go to a festival at a girls’ school?”

“But you said we were doing recon…”

“Ha-ha-ha. That’s just our cover story.”

“What the hell…?”

I couldn’t keep up. Was this ordinary life for a normie? Was that possible?

“Okay, it’s not as big a deal as what you’re thinking. All I mean is chatting up girls our age who we don’t know. It’s like when you join a new class, basically.”

He thumped my shoulder. Honestly, what was he talking about…?

“Well, since girls have never talked to me when I joined a new class, I guess I didn’t need to be nervous.”

“Ha-ha-ha! That works!” he said, laughing like I’d just said the most hilarious thing. Then he went on in a casual tone. “Just take it easy, all right?”

“I definitely can’t.”

This was all so sudden; I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. None of it felt real, so I didn’t know what to do. In part, I literally didn’t know what to do, and just hearing the phrase hit on girls brought to mind a game for only the most popular of normies, the kings of communication.

“Okay,” Mizusawa said, hesitating for a moment. “Look, hitting on girls is no risk, high return.”

“No risk?”

To me, it seemed like nothing but risk.

“Just think about it. Say you try talking to a girl here and it gets awkward. Worst case, she happens to be in Gumi’s class, and you’ll probably hear about it from Gumi later. But what if no one knows about it? If you fail, that won’t impact the rest of your life at all, right?”

His expression was completely laid-back.

“Um, that’s…,” I said, trying futilely to think of a counterargument. “I mean, you might be right, but…”

“I am right.” Mizusawa gave an offhand smile. “Now imagine if it goes well, and you get her LINE. High return.”

As he talked, he was smoothly tapping his phone screen. He pulled up the QR code screen on LINE and showed it to me. What sleight of hand was this?

“Come on, you’re a little too good at pulling that up!”

“Ha-ha-ha. Guilty as charged.” He returned to the home screen of his phone, smiling. “But listen. You’ve got nothing to lose and plenty to gain. How can you say no to that?”

“I do like having time at home for Atafami, so getting more LINE contacts isn’t necessarily a good thing.”

Mizusawa laughed, brushing me off.

“What are you talking about? If you don’t wanna talk after, just don’t make any dates.”

“Guess that would work…”

Once again, I had no counterargument. Damn.

“The choice is yours, right? Play Atafami or go on a date with a girl. Wouldn’t you at least want the option to choose?”

“I guess…getting the contacts is at least backward compatible. You’re right.”

In logical terms, there was no question that if you could choose to have the freedom to choose, then that’s what you should do. The rationale was deeply instilled, so I couldn’t evade Mizusawa’s question.

“Exactly. So you’ve gotta do it, right?”

“Uh, is that the logical consequence?”

“Okay, let’s get started with our first group.”

“Huh?”

Mizusawa stepped away from me as lightly as a leaf floating on the wind and approached a pair of girls walking down the hallway. One had brown hair, and the other had black. They both looked like typical high school normies. Seriously, Mizusawa?

I tagged along timidly, half trying to hide behind him, and watched the situation unfold.

“Hi!” Mizusawa stepped in front of the girls and spread his arms out.

They turned to each other in surprise and then turned to him as he pointed to the cotton candy they were holding.

“That looks amazing!” He sounded like he was talking to his best friend. “Did you make it yourself to bring here?”

Both girls laughed.

“Good guess, but no! We bought it over there!”

“Oh, really? I thought you both were just really into cotton candy.”

“Ah-ha-ha, what does that even mean?”

“No, I just thought if you decided to bring it to the festival, you must be a huge fan.”

Less than a minute had passed since he started talking to them. Already, the mood was relaxing. I just stood there watching, scared out of my wits.

“Seriously, though, can I try some? It looks so fluffy.”

“What? No way!” the brown-haired girl said. Mizusawa shook his head calmly, then pointed to the black-haired girl.

“Oh, no, I was talking to your friend over here.”

“Ah-ha-ha, jerk!” The brown-haired girl laughed happily.

Mizusawa looked at the black-haired girl. “But really, do you mind?”

“Uh, okay, I guess…”

She held the whole mass out to him, and he took a big bite. “Whoa, that…really tastes like cotton candy!” he said.

Both the girls laughed.

“Wonder why!” one of them said.

Huh? What is going on? This is getting sillier and sillier.

“Hey, what’s his deal?” the black-haired girl asked Mizusawa.

“Who, me?”

“Is he by himself?”

Mizusawa threw me a glance before answering. “He’s here with a friend, but they got separated. Actually, if you see him, can you tell us?”

“How do we know what he looks like?”

“I’ll describe him. He has two eyes…”

“Oh, very helpful!”

“…three noses…”

The girls laughed at his smoothly delivered joke.

“Ah-ha-ha. Oh my god, stop!”

“So will you tell us if you see him?”

After another deadpan joke, the ball was in the girls’ court.

“Ah-ha-ha, sure thing. If we see any guys with three noses, we’ll let you know!”

“Okay, thanks! Oh, how will you get in touch if you find him? Write a letter?”

“Pfft, what the heck?”

“Hmm, then how about LINE?”

“What do you think?”

“Um…”

They looked at each other, unsure. Even though they were having fun a second ago, as soon as it came to exchanging contact info, shit got real.

But Mizusawa had a joke for that, too. “Yeah, snail mail is definitely better.”

“Ah-ha-ha! No, I don’t think so. Too much work!”

“Right. Plus, I don’t want to tell you my address. So what do we do?”

“Yeah, let’s do LINE. A little faster than the mail!”

“Got it. Here, scan this.”

Unsurprisingly, the QR code was already pulled up on his phone.

“God, you’re shameless!”

“Perish the thought! I’m just concerned for this lost boy.”

“Ah-ha-ha, right, I forgot.”

I stared in a daze as the three of them exchanged LINE IDs. They all seemed to be having a great time.

I was at a total loss for words.

The girls waved good-bye to him like they were old friends as Mizusawa walked toward me, smug with success. Based on what I’d just witnessed, he’d earned it.

He strolled over to my side, turning toward me confidently. “So what’s my grade?”

“A-plus, sir.”

I had to bow down before his strength.

This guy was multiple levels higher than I’d even imagined.

* * *

“I underestimated you…”

We were both hungry, so we’d headed over to a stall labeled RAMEN and got two servings of what was clearly instant ramen dumped into bowls.

“That time went off without a hitch. Just consider me a master.”

“Oh, uh-huh…”

After what I’d seen, he could say whatever he wanted, and I’d still be kissing his feet.

“So do you know what my thought process was?”

“Nope, no idea,” I said without missing a beat. There’s no way I could figure it out! I hadn’t even caught a glimpse.

He chuckled with amusement. “Okay, I’ll walk you through it.”

“Please do.”

He was the programmer, and I was the machine. I mean, this was an incredible skill for an amateur to learn. Just listening to him explain it should rack up a lot of EXP, so of course I would listen. He was an incredible mentor, but in a different way from Hinami.

“So the first step…is striking up a conversation.”

I thought back to the exchange. “Uh, I do remember you saying ‘hi.’”

Mizusawa frowned. “Did I?”

“You don’t remember?”

He shook his head.

“How can you not remember?”

Didn’t he say he was going to give me a walkthrough? I mean, I’d never talked to someone I didn’t know before, but the first word did seem important. And he already forgot.

“Well, it’s like, the first time you talk to someone, the words aren’t that important.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“Listen,” he said, pausing to gather his thoughts. “It’s not really what you say—it’s how you say it.”

“…How you say it?”

He nodded. “Think about it. If you’re not expecting someone to start talking to you and then some guy you don’t know comes up and says something, do you think you’d even register what words he’s using?”

I played it out in my mind. I’m walking along, and suddenly, a guy I don’t know comes up and starts talking to me…

“No…probably not.”

“Right?” Mizusawa smirked. “The goal of the first word is to get their attention. As long as you do that, it doesn’t matter what you say. You could say Hi or What are you doing? or There’s a goat over there.”

“A goat…?”

I was thrown off by the example.

“Ha-ha-ha. The point is, anything goes. You want to get their attention, so what you really need to watch is where you’re standing, what face you’re making, how you talk, and stuff like that—not the exact words.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. That lined up with what I’d learned in my special training. “And your posture, too?”

“Yeah, exactly! You’re starting to catch on.” He nodded, looking pleased.

“Uh, thanks.”

He was acting very superior, but I couldn’t argue after watching him work.

“Once they notice you and you know they’re not going to just ignore you again, that’s when the conversation starts.”

“So anything you say before then is meaningless…” That was news to me, and we were still only at the beginning. The heavenly realm really is different.

“After that, you can ask them questions or tease them about something they’re holding—basically, have a random conversation.”

“Wait a second. What do you mean, ‘a random conversation’? That’s the hard part.”

I’d let my mind wander for one second, and he’d left me in the dust. This is why people who are good at everything are so hard to deal with.

“Ha-ha-ha. Okay, I’ll teach you the basics. It’s actually really simple. If you make a joke about something there in the moment, like the cotton candy with those two girls, it’s easy for them to respond.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Chances are good they’re already interested.”

I understood what he was saying intuitively. If they’d just bought cotton candy, then they probably had something to say about it.

“Then once you’ve got the conversation going, the next big step is… You know how I asked for a bite? That’s a little technique of mine.”

“Technique?”

I tried to figure out what that would accomplish, even before he explained it. That would help me learn better.

Maybe it had to do with getting close to them by eating the same food? This was all a bit advanced for me, so I couldn’t think of a very good answer.

What would be the result of asking for a bite?

I waited for Mizusawa to reveal the answer.

“Basically, you take control of the conversation.”

“How so?”

“Okay, so picking up girls means we’re the ones approaching them, which puts us in the position of chasing after them.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

It was like a guerrilla-warfare approach to saying, I want to talk to you.

“But by asking them for something, like a bite of their food, you can even out the relationship again. You can pretend you approached them because you wanted some of their cotton candy.”

“O-oh…”

I definitely hadn’t expected that answer. Man, the difficulty level of this conversation was steadily rising. What looked at first glance like casual joking around was actually a fine tuning of the relationship. Unlike Nakamura’s power plays, this normie skill was almost too delicate.

“The instant they sense you’re flirting because you want positive attention, they lose interest. You have to control the pace of the conversation.”

I parsed that information. “And that’s what you call taking control of the conversation?”

Mizusawa smiled. “You’re catching on. That’s about right. If you want her to be more interested in you, you have to stay in the driver’s seat.”

“Huh…”

I realized Hinami had made me do something similar in my assignments. Messing with people and pushing through my opinion were prime examples. If I did it enough, I’d have control of the conversation…I think. Hmm. Mizusawa’s teachings and Hinami’s teachings were linking up now.

“That’s why when the one girl said she wouldn’t give me her cotton candy, I said I was talking to her friend, not to her. That’s another way to keep in charge. It showed I was the one doing the choosing, so I could keep directing the conversation.”

“Y-you were really putting that much thought into everything you said…?”

There was so much meaning in every action, I was starting to feel like I was watching a street performer.

But I still had questions. “Okay, but they must have known you didn’t really come over because you wanted cotton candy, right?”

He could pretend all he wanted, but it was obvious that he was trying to hit on them. They’d never believe it was just about the cotton candy, so wasn’t his whole strategy ultimately pointless?

“Yes, that’s true, but…” Mizusawa’s voice was oddly full of emotion. He smiled and tilted his head before continuing. “When you talk to a girl, the pretense is important. This part may be a little hard to understand.”

“Really…?”

Mizusawa went on at a pleasant clip. “I did the same thing when we were exchanging LINE IDs, remember? I said I wanted them to send me a message on LINE if they saw your friend, and I said LINE would be better than snail mail, right?”

“Uh-huh…”

“We weren’t really talking about your friend, either, right?”

It was starting to make sense. I could see the similarity. “The way you did it made it easier for them to give you their LINE info…,” I said, replaying the conversation in my mind. Just when it seemed like they were going to turn him down, he’d made a casual joke and rallied the mood to his side.

“Exactly! The whole song and dance may seem pointless on the surface, but it’s really crucial.”

I was nodding nonstop, almost against my will.

The two girls didn’t genuinely share their LINE info with him so they could get in touch if they found my imaginary friend, and they must have known Mizusawa never had any intention of exchanging pen-and-ink letters. But the facade had made it easier to trade contact info. Interesting. The proof is in the pudding. Or something.

“The next key to remember…is the fact that Mako-chan gave me a bite of her cotton candy.”

“M-Mako-chan…?”

“The black-haired girl.”

“You’re already on a first-name basis?” I smiled forlornly, to which Mizusawa responded with a matter-of-fact nod.

“That’s not really important. Getting back to my point…”

“Oh right.”

His baseline was just too different from mine. Calling girls by their first name was apparently normal for him.

“…the fact that she gave me a bite of her cotton candy indicates either that she was letting down her guard a little, or that she wasn’t too guarded to start with. Either way, she was easy to approach.”

“O-oh, that’s what it means…”

When you think about it, sharing cotton candy meant an indirect you-know-what with someone you just met. That would be tough for me.

“After that, Mako-chan asked what you were doing. This is the most important point so far.”

“Oh. W-wait, what’s so important about that?”

Shit. Everything he’d said so far had caught me off guard, but now I was completely lost.

He grinned. “You can’t guess? Okay. Up till then, I was the one asking all the questions, but that was when she asked me about myself for the first time. Meaning she started to show interest in me. That’s a really good sign.”

“Huh… Interesting.”

Once again, he took me from baffled to convinced in a single bound. Was he a magician or something?

“Once I traded LINE IDs with Mako-chan, who was more open, it was easier to convince her friend to share hers, too, right? Basically, if you can get one girl interested and then get her info, the bar will be lower for the other one.”

Having finished his explanation, he stood in front of me with his usual casual smile.

“Do you get the general idea?”

“Yes, wise teacher. Your student thanks you for your instruction and encouragement.”

A whole new world was opening up before me.

* * *

We finished our ramen and were relaxing for a minute while we had something to drink.

“So do you have any questions? Ask me anything. I mean, you’re working on a lot of stuff right now, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah…” I thought for a minute. I definitely felt like I could get an immeasurable amount of EXP from Mizusawa in this game. I’d better think carefully about what to ask him.

As I thought about the parts that were still bothering me, I hit on a question that had nothing to do with how to become a normie.

There was an underlying problem with all this.

“Hey…I thought you liked Hinami.”

“…What kind of question is that?” He gave me a quick, surprised look. Then without changing his expression, he answered my question. “I do.”

“Oh, okay.” I wasn’t ready for such a point-blank answer. Now I was the one caught off guard.

He looked at me, unruffled. “But what’s that got to do with this?”

“A lot, I’d say,” I shot back.

How could he be so blasé about it? Especially when he’d just been majorly hitting on two girls! This was the problem with normies.

“I mean, if you like Hinami, should you be going around to festivals trying to pick up girls?”

I did my best getting my feelings across, even if my communication skills weren’t the greatest.

Mizusawa frowned, troubled. “Well…let me put it this way. I’m not dating Hinami right now, am I?”

“N-no, but…still.”

“I like someone, but I don’t have a girlfriend. So I can do what I want and have fun. That’s all. Is there something wrong with that?” he asked point-blank.

“Um…”

He seemed so certain now that I wondered if maybe he was right. He wasn’t betraying anyone, after all.

“It just feels like you’re…not being faithful or something…”

“Faithful, huh?” Mizusawa said, sighing. “Where do you get that way of thinking from?”

“…Uh…”

“You’ve never been in a relationship, have you?”

“Uh, no…but why do you want to know where it comes from?”

As I stood there floundering, Mizusawa peered into my eyes. “My guess is that you got it from some manga or anime or something you saw a long time ago.”

“…Th-that’s…”

I wanted to say it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t completely deny his point. I didn’t have a better answer. It was just a vague intuition. In which case, Mizusawa might be right.

He kept looking at me. “That kind of love story is just a fantasy. In my opinion, it’s meaningless to believe in fiction and try to apply it wholesale to real life. But that’s just me.”

“Fiction, huh?”

When I thought about it, I realized everything I knew about love did come from stories. I had no way of arguing. When Mizusawa said real-life love was different and he felt perfectly fine hitting on girls even though he liked someone else, I had nothing to base a counterargument on. Fine, but still, most people wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t flirt with other girls.

He probed me with a look, then leaned forward confidently. “Now I’ll ask you a question.”

“Um, okay…”

“What do you think makes a guy attractive?”

“Uh, that came out of nowhere.” This conversation had taken a sudden turn.

“I know. What’s your answer?”

I thought about what Hinami had told me and what I’d experienced myself. Then I put it all together to create an answer that was mine. “Well, he takes care of his appearance, and he’s chill… Let’s see, what else? He’s good at controlling the conversation, maybe?”

I shrewdly added the point that Mizusawa had just taught me to Hinami’s lessons.

“Hey, not as bad as I was expecting! Right on all three counts.”

Once again, he was getting kinda high-handed, but I couldn’t argue with the master.

“Th-thanks.”

True enough, not long ago, the only answer I would probably have come up with was He’s smart. So in that sense, maybe I had advanced a bit.

“But you’re still missing something,” Mizusawa said pompously. “That’s all surface stuff. There’s one more thing that’s even more basic.”

“There is?” I echoed.

He gave me a cocky smile, then answered with utter confidence.

“Attractive guys attract people.”

I gaped at him silently.

Eventually, my shock morphed into a wry smile.

“Well, that’s very to the point.”

Mizusawa cackled happily. “Maybe, but it’s true. Look, you listed three requirements just now, right? We’ll assume taking care of your appearance is a must, but if you’ve got girls who are interested, staying cool comes naturally, and it’s easy to control the conversation, too, because you start out with the upper hand.”

“Yeah, I can see that…”

What he was saying wasn’t that complicated. Basically, once you start attracting people, it makes you more attractive.

“Also, your market value goes up, so girls think if they don’t act fast, someone else will get you. So the hotter you are, the hotter you become. It’s like a spiral of hotness.”

“A spiral of hotness…?”

He was saying all this with the utmost seriousness…but everything made sense.

The conversation was getting off track, but I had a question. “Doesn’t that mean it’s impossible for nonhot guys to become hot?”

If hot guys just got hotter and hotter, that didn’t seem to leave much room for nonhot guys to make a comeback.

Mizusawa nodded. “Pretty much,” he said.

“What?”

He smiled jokingly. “Nah, I’m just messing with you.”

“Hey!”

What was with the feint? Was that really necessary right now?

“Ha-ha-ha. It’s simple. Just do as the hot guys do. That’ll give you a fighting chance.”

“Oh, okay.”

I hadn’t directly experienced being attractive, but I could understand it from other contexts. When I felt unsure or nervous, just taking on a more solid stance made me feel more relaxed. Then it showed in my actions and tone. It was just what Hinami had taught me—fake it till you make it.

So the same structure applied to the abstract concept of “hotness,” too. Look at that, I just broke it down to concepts I already know.

Mizusawa leaned back in his chair and continued. “And once you start attracting people, you don’t have to pretend anymore.”

“Are you talking about yourself?”

“Ha-ha-ha. Maybe.” He laughed softly. When I saw this side of him, it was easier to forgive his cocky attitude. “Basically, girls fall for guys who they think have a higher market value than themselves,” he said.

“Huh.”

“So my plan is to raise my value, play around, stay cool…and slowly get Hinami interested in me.”

“Th-that’s where all this leads…?”

So that’s why he asked me that question out of the blue. I get it. “So basically, messing around with a bunch of different girls isn’t a problem because you’re not being unfaithful. You’re trying to increase your hotness level so Hinami will decide she’s interested in you.”

Mizusawa scrunched his brows together. “No, that’s not quite it.”

“It’s not?”

Damn, I’d been perfectly convinced.

Mizusawa gave me a teasing smile. “No. I mean, I’m not just doing all this for Hinami. A big part of this is that it’s fun for me. I mean, I am a guy, after all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shot back. He said some weird stuff when he was joking around.

He cackled before answering me. “What it means is, I’m playing around because I want to. It’s entirely separate from the thing with Hinami… That’s one part of it anyway.”

He grinned confidently, then pointed at me.

“The other part is, I’m not doing it so Hinami will decide she’s interested in me. I’m doing it to make her interested in me.”

“Uh, okay…”

He was joking around expertly, and his expression was so relaxed and in control that I couldn’t help thinking he really was pretty cool. Huh? Wait a second, am I falling for him, too?

* * *

“Oh, Mizusawa-san and Tomozaki-san! You came!”

After we left the ramen shop, we headed over to the haunted house run by Gumi-chan’s class. She was sitting next to the reception table, fiddling with her phone. Looks like she didn’t plan to lift a finger at the school festival, either.

“Hey, look, you grew antennae!” Mizusawa said, looking at the pair of bunny ears on her head. She did have a bit of a Playboy-bunny vibe, so they suited her perfectly.

“Nope! They’re my cute bunny ears. ” She touched her headband.

“So you’ve got four ears now?”

“Ah-ha-ha, yup!” she said, slumping lazily in her chair.

I watched her, thinking I might as well say what I’d been thinking a second ago. It was the Tomozaki Method with a dash of jokey Mizusawa.

“So you’re not doing any work at the festival, either, huh?” I succeeded in the delivery well enough to get a grin from her.

“Hey, I don’t work anywhere!”

“Why do you sound so proud of that?” Mizusawa replied right away.

Man, if he’d given me a chance, I might have said the same thing, but his response time was too quick. In battles, the people who act fastest get the advantage, so maybe I’d better work on my lightning reflexes to make up for my low strength.

“Anyway, go on in! It’s not very scary, though!”

“If you’re saying that about your own booth… Yikes,” I jumped in to say.

Gumi-chan stuck out her tongue at me. “Hey, what’s your class gonna do? It’s at the end of second semester, right? Your school festival, I mean.”

“We’re doing a café where you can read manga. And a play,” Mizusawa said.

Gumi-chan lit up. “That sounds really cool! I’ll try to make it if I can.”

“Gumi-chan, that’s what you say when you don’t plan to go…,” I said.

“That’s not true!”

I was managing to get a line in here and there.

“Just the two of you, right? This way!”

When our conversation wound down, one of her classmates led us into the haunted house.

We walked slowly down the path. It was cramped and dark, but not so dark that we couldn’t see ahead of us.

“Boo!”

“…”

I ignored the guy who shouted at me from the side, since I already knew he was there.

“Ooo~!”

“…Okay.”

We could see the next person, too, so Mizusawa wasn’t startled, either.

That happened a couple more times, and then we were at the exit.

“You survived~.” Gumi-chan stood up and walked over to us. “So? How was it?”

I said exactly what came to mind. “Um…I think the most shocking part of this whole thing was the fact that you got out of your chair.”

“Ah-ha-ha. Yeah, I getcha,” she said lethargically. “Hey, my shift at the reception table is over! Wanna go to the dining hall with me?”

“We just had ramen,” Mizusawa said.

“Oh!” Gumi-chan said, her eyes sparkling. “Then it’s time for dessert, right? That’s perfect! I was just thinking I wanted some ice cream.”

“You’re quite an optimist…”

Mizusawa cackled at my joke. “Just think of her as a human vacuum cleaner, Fumiya.”

“Ah, g-gotcha… Wouldn’t want that for my boss.”

Gumi-chan looked at us in confusion. “I don’t know what that means, and I’m not sure I want to.”

“You’re just imagining things! Let’s go get dessert. Where’s the dining hall?”

“I knew I could count on you, Mizusawa-san. It’s over there!”

That was how we ended up heading over to the dining hall with Gumi-chan after touring her crappy haunted house.

I’d been observing the conversation with the points Mizusawa explained earlier in mind. Even though he accepted her suggestion that we should all get ice cream, he still seemed to be the one in control of making the decision. Amazing technical skill.

* * *

“So did you meet any cute girls?” Gumi-chan asked languidly as she ate her cup of vanilla ice cream. She was going to melt all over the table before her ice cream did.

“Ha-ha-ha. Why would you assume we’re here for that?”

“I mean, isn’t that why two guys usually come to a girls’ school?” she said, like it was completely obvious.

Almost exactly what Mizusawa had said. Must be a thing.

“We haven’t talked to that many yet. I’d say we’re doing so-so.”

“That’s what I thought! You’re the cabbage-wrap type, aren’t you, Mizusawa-san?!”

“I think you’re probably the only person in the world who actually uses that expression.”

I listened to their fast-paced banter, grinning. I think what she meant by “the cabbage-wrap type” was that he seemed like a warm and fuzzy vegetarian on the outside, but he was actually a carnivorous wolf inside. But by the time I’d figured that out, they were on to something else.

At this point, I could inject little comments here and there in fast-paced conversations, but beyond a certain level, I was completely immobilized. This was one of those situations. These two spoke at lightning speed. I think that like Takei and Nakamura, Gumi-chan just has what it takes. She’s a natural.

“What about you, Tomozaki-san?”

Suddenly, the conversational spear was pointed in my direction. But I’d already been searching for a crack where I could slip into the dialogue, so I wasn’t that flustered.

“I don’t really hit on girls…”

“Figures!” Gumi-chan said, her eyes wide. “But a lot of girls at our school are looking for boyfriends, so you’ve got plenty of opportunities!”

“R-really?”

“Definitely. You don’t have a girlfriend right now, do you?”

“Uh, no. Nope.”

I pulled myself up, doing my best to hide how the sudden question had flustered me. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have one right now—I’d never had one ever. I didn’t have the legs for leaping right into a conversation about love.

“Then you should check out my class! We’ve got tons of cute girls who want boyfriends!”

“You do, huh?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. What would get me a passing score on the normie rubric?

Earlier, Mizusawa had said attractive guys attract people, so what would an attractive guy say in this situation? Maybe I should think it through and give it a shot. Well, he probably wouldn’t be desperate for a girlfriend, so he might say something like, That’s not why I came. But that was more like something I’d say anyway, which meant it was wrong. Kinda sad, but it’s true.

In which case, the best approach would probably be to act like Mizusawa and make a joke out of it. Something like this?

“…Maybe I should take another trip through your crappy haunted house.”

I aimed for a light, casual, Mizusawa-esque tone. I’d thought about my answer too much before saying it, so there was a weird pause in the conversation, but I think it was just short of unnatural. Now to wait for the verdict.

Gumi-chan gave me a weak smile, her upper body still melted onto the table.

“Ah-ha-ha! So you’re the cabbage-wrap type, too!”

“I told you, Gumi, no one says that.”

“Okay, fine, I get it!”

Once again, Mizusawa had retaken control of the conversation.

But hey, look at that! My hot-guy imitation got me labeled as a cabbage wrap. I wouldn’t even say I’m a vegetarian—I’m more like a microorganism that breaks down the nutrients in dirt.

So I’d succeeded in impersonating a hot guy—maybe. But was that a step forward?

* * *

After that, I was pulled into exactly the scenario I most feared.

Gumi-chan had gone to enjoy the festival, so Mizasawa and I were walking down the hallway when suddenly, he took my arm.

“Okay, your turn now.”

“What?”

He walked up behind a pair of girls, pulling me along with him. Wait a second, are you serious? You want me to take part in this?

Once he got fairly close to the pair, he let go of my arm and walked around to the right side. “You go left,” he said, leaving me behind. What? We’re gonna start talking from both sides at once?

I followed his instructions and approached from the opposite side— Nah, like hell I did. Instead, I took up a position on his right. I mean, let’s be realistic. That was a big ask for me.

Mizusawa glanced over, smiled wryly, and cheerfully started talking.

“Heya!”

I followed his lead and said “H-heya” as clearly as possible. But my nervousness made my voice kinda mumbly, and I couldn’t control my intonation like I normally did.

One of the girls was wearing a sparkly beret, while the other was wearing glasses. Very school-festival-ish.

Mizusawa confirmed they were looking at him, then pointed at the pince-nez glasses one of them was wearing.

“Those glasses are. So cool,” he said, putting a weird pause before so.

The girl giggled a little. “Uh, I’m not sure that’s a compliment!”

“No, seriously, they look really nice on you!”

“You think so? Um, who are you?”

Starting out, the girl seemed a bit distant. I listened fearfully to the conversation, a weak smile on my face. How did Mizusawa manage to stay so relaxed?

The girl with the beret wasn’t reacting very positively, either. She was looking at us and smiling, but she seemed more puzzled than happy. Huh. Well, I’m not surprised it doesn’t always go off without a hitch.

Mizusawa pointed at a nearby classroom and made small talk. “Have you been to the haunted house yet?”

“No way!” the girl with the glasses answered.

“You should check it out. It’s terrifying how unscary it is.”

The girl burst out laughing. “But that’s the most important part!”

“Ha-ha-ha. You can totally see all the ghosts.”

That got rid of the tension. He was unbelievable. Even if they didn’t go for him right away, he figured out how to get their guard down.

As usual, I was just standing by his side watching…until I realized I should probably say something.

Honestly speaking, this was all so new that it felt impossible, but I had chosen to give this game my all. You gotta try new things and get that EXP. This dungeon was obviously beyond my level, but on the other hand, Mizusawa had gone to the trouble of setting the stage for me.

I decided to try playing along. “Y-yeah, it seriously is not scary!”

“Really?” the pince-nez girl answered smoothly after my awkward stammering. The mood wasn’t really taking off. Is this going badly? I think it’s going badly.

“Y-yeah! You wouldn’t think so, but it’s really not scary at all…”

“I wouldn’t, huh?”

I thought that phrase would work again, but my spirit was crushed. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t ready for this.

In which case, I decided it would be better for me to cut it out with the stupid comments and watch the master. Maybe get a word in here and there if I could. Otherwise, I’d never survive this.

“Did you go to any good booths?” Mizusawa asked.

“Um, well…the strikeout game was fun.”

“I didn’t know they had one of those here. Are there prizes?”

“Yes! If you hit all the squares, you get an iPhone cover or something. All I got was this.”

She took off her glasses and showed them to Mizusawa. Man, they were having a full-on conversation.

“So that’s where you got them!” He calmly took the glasses from her and started scrutinizing them. “These look like something from the dollar store.”

“Ah-ha-ha. They probably are.”

Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration. Even if I couldn’t hit on girls like Mizusawa did, I should be able to complete my assignment.

So I said, “I b-bet those would look good on you, too, Mizusawa.” I stuttered a little, but I think I managed to sound casual enough.

He grinned and put them on his face. “What do you think?”

“Wow, they do look good!” the girl said.

“Hey, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“Ah-ha-ha.”

“B-but they really do look good on you!”

“I agree!”

“What do you think, Fumiya?” Mizusawa smiled and turned toward me.

I summoned my cheerful voice. “Definitely, definitely! Want me to take a picture?”

I held up my phone.

Yeah, pince-nez probably weren’t what Hinami had imagined, but they were a classic category of glasses. Which meant if I took the picture, the assignment would be complete. She couldn’t quibble over this.

“Ha-ha-ha. Okay, go ahead.”

Mizusawa gamely played along. But of course, he kept trying to wave over the original owner of the glasses. “Come on, get in the picture!” Oh, this guy. The other girl was standing there awkwardly, like she didn’t know what to do.

“Okay, say cheese!”

“Cheese!”

“Cheese!”

I succeeded in getting my shot of Mizusawa wearing glasses. Will this be acceptable for you, Hinami-san?

“Show me!” Mizusawa said, looking at my screen. He seemed to be having a great time with this.

“Oh, nice! Here, look!”

The girl with the glasses came over to see, and the two of them gushed over it a little. And then…

“Okay, I’ll send it to you. What should I use to send it?”

“LINE works.”

With that, the photo I took for my assignment was twisted into an excuse for exchanging LINE info. Tell me, is this guy OP or what?

* * *

Thus, I experienced Gumi-chan’s haunted house and Mizusawa’s pickup skills, and before I knew it, evening had come.

After the glasses incident, Mizusawa hit on some more girls, and even though he was just doing it in between checking out festival booths, he still managed to get about ten LINE IDs. If he’d been focusing his full energy on it, I had no doubt this guy would have gone home with twenty or thirty.

We’d left the school grounds and were waiting in front of the main gate for the bus.

“Too bad. I really wanted to see you doing some flirting,” Mizusawa said.

“No way, getting dragged in that one time was plenty for me…”

“Ha-ha-ha. Really?”

Actually, it was more than plenty. “I’m not quite at that level yet…”

“That level, huh…?” Mizusawa looked up at the sky in thought, then said, “You’re doing some kind of self-help book, right? Something about, like, self-improvement or ‘boosting your level’ or whatever?”

“Uh, I guess…”

Hinami was teaching me everything, actually, but she had told me once she essentially had a self-help book in her mind. In that sense, he wasn’t wrong.

“Is it one of those books that’s like, What girls really want is to talk, so you should ask them a lot of questions? They tell you to ask them about themselves, let them talk, etcetera, etcetera? My image of those is kinda ‘eh.’”

“Um…yeah, maybe.”

Since I’d never read one of those books, I didn’t know if he was right, but I decided to vaguely go along with him. Hinami had started out with more basic skills, like fixing my gloomy way of talking, but let’s just forget about that. It’s depressing.

But anyway, what was so “eh” about the things he’d mentioned?

“Do you think that advice is wrong?”

He hesitated for a moment. “No, I don’t think it’s wrong, per se. But based on my experience, it’s not right, either.”

“So it’s neither?”

He nodded. “I agree that when you’re with a girl, you need to make it fun. And listening to her talk about whatever she wants to talk about is an important means to that end.”

“I see.”

“But it’s not enough on its own.”

“You need more?”

“Yeah. If you ask lot of questions and avoid awkward pauses, you’ll have a conversation. But that’s just the bare minimum. You’re not gonna hook up or anything.”

“Hook up…”

In—in what sense…?

“You know what I mean, right?”

“Uh, b-basically. I think.” I nodded fearfully.

“Simply put—it’s not enough to get the girl.” He spoke slowly, his eyebrows raised. His tone was light, but the words behind it carried far more weight.

“I—I can see that…”

The force of his speech had convinced me. I guess that’s what it means to be a normie. How was a high schooler not intimidated by the idea of “getting the girl”? He oozed confidence. Someone as popular as him just had way more experience.

“If you only listen to her talk, you’ll have a decent conversation. But in the end, if you want her to come after you and to really reel her in, you need to convince her you’re worth it.”

“Worth it…” That was ridiculous. Convincing a girl of that sounded like a fairly high bar.

“Basically, for us guys, being harmless isn’t enough.”

“Harmless…”

Strangely, the word stung.

Mizusawa seemed to be enjoying his lecture now. He was a captivating speaker, and he shifted from one expression to the next in an attractive way.

“It’s a surefire path to the friend zone.”

“You mean you have to pursue her a little?”

“Exactly. Or—what was it? Hexactly.”

“Hey, that’s Hinami’s line.”

Mizusawa cackled happily. “You’re getting fairly good at listening, so now you need to work on the attack.”

“Huh?” I said, surprised.

Mizusawa’s eyebrows shot up, like he was surprised by my surprise. “What, you hadn’t noticed? I mean, you’ve been asking me about myself a lot more lately, and your questions are more specific.”

“…Oh.”

Now that he mentioned it, I could think of lots of examples. After all, in the six-plus months since I met Hinami, I’d spent every day coming up with things to talk about with specific people and then starting those conversations when I could. When I had lunch with Nakamura’s group, for instance, I did that a lot.

And since I’d taken the trouble to come up with the topics in advance, they were specific. Props to Hinami.

“You’ve gotten a lot better at responding naturally, too.”

“I have?” I asked stupidly.

Mizusawa smirked. “You didn’t notice that, either? You’re speaking way clearer, and you’ve learned to dial down your responses so they don’t seem exaggerated.”

“…Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

That must be the result of my training, too. I’d recorded myself speaking and then listened to the recordings, revamping whatever didn’t match my image of my own voice. I’d copied the speech patterns of well-spoken people on TV, and even of Mizusawa himself, and then recorded myself again and fixed what needed fixing.

From an ordinary person’s perspective, it probably looks like a dull, repetitive process, but as they say, that’s what it takes to git gud. When I applied that practice to Hinami’s exercises, that’s what I got. And now my work was slowly bearing fruit.

“I realize how much effort that took. You jumped from an awkward loser all the way to where you are now…,” Mizusawa said, laying his hand on my shoulder with a thump. “You must have put in some real steady work.”

I gulped, and he laughed at the look on my face.

“You can try to hide it, but I see you.”

He tapped the middle of my chest with his finger. The gesture somehow reminded me of Hinami.

“I’ve got a soft spot for hard workers like you.” He smiled, and his eyes were kind and accepting.

“Well…thanks.”

“See, you felt it, right? That’s the kind of thing you want to say to girls.”

“Y-you jerk…”

“Hey, here’s the bus.”

I sputtered out an incoherent answer, completely shaken up. What a goddamn playboy. If I were a girl right now, he would have had me, no question about it.

He walked briskly over to the bus, looking so damn laid-back that I could have hit him.

“Wait a—”

I jogged to catch up. Ugh, what am I, his girlfriend?!

* * *

The next day was Sunday.

After I finished my shift at Karaoke Sevens, I stopped at a café in Omiya.

I was sitting alone drinking orange juice when someone came trotting in through the entrance…

“I-I’m sorry I’m late!”

She was a wood sprite, wearing a fluffy white sweater under a cozy-looking, woolly gray coat. The feminine outfit looked frighteningly good on her.

“I-it’s okay,” I answered, my eyes glued to her.

You guessed it—Kikuchi-san and I had agreed to meet in Omiya to talk about the play after we got off work.

She sat down and ordered a cup of tea.

When it arrived, we both let out a deep breath. “Well, um, what should we talk about first?” I said.

Kikuchi-san made a little bow in my direction. “Um, thank you for everything on Friday.”

“Huh?” I was confused for a second.

“For telling the class about my manuscript…,” she said softly.

Oh right. “No problem at all. Don’t even think about it. I wanted to do the play myself anyway.”

She gave me a slightly surprised glance. Then she smiled, looking very grown-up. “…Still, thank you.”

For her, thanking me was just the right thing to do, I think. “…You’re welcome.”

Which was why I gave in. The topic turned to the details of the play.

“Looks like we’ll be casting it next week already…,” I said.

“Y-yes, I think so.” Kikuchi-san laced her fingers together nervously.

Hmm. Moving this conversation along is probably my job, then. “Did you have a chance to write up the summary that we talked about on Friday?”

“Oh, yes. I did. Here it is.”

She pulled a clear plastic folder out of her handbag, and there were several sheets of paper inside. She took one out and handed it to me.

“Thanks. Um…”

I glanced down at the paper. In addition to a simple outline of the story, there were descriptions of the characters as well as notes about how big their part was and how long their speeches were. She’d concisely summarized the whole play.

Huh. She’d gone the extra mile to make the character descriptions, so she must have had casting in mind when she wrote it. She really was on the ball.

“Wow…this looks great.”

“Really?”

I nodded. It was conceited of me to act like I could judge her work, but I had to keep us moving. Lord, please forgive the impudence of a weakling.

“Yeah. This will let people choose parts and stuff even if they haven’t read the whole thing.”

Kikuchi-san took out a copy for herself. “Depending on who takes which part, I’ll need to adjust the script here and there, don’t you think?”

“Um…you think so? I guess you’re right.”

Honestly speaking, I hadn’t considered that, so my answer was pretty vague. But she was right—she’d written a short story, but now she was adapting it as a class play. Adjusting the mood based on who played who was one option.

“Yes. And how much time do we have?”

“Uh, I’m not sure. I’ll check.”

“If we need to shorten it, we could leave out this part…” Kikuchi-san looked down, concentrating intently. Unlike the soft expression she got when she read books, her eyes were sharp and perceptive.

I wouldn’t say that look was entirely surprising, but there was something fresh about it. Kikuchi-san usually observed the world from a calm, outside perspective, but now, calm though she still was, the passion in her eyes was clear. It was fascinating, and I couldn’t help gazing at her face.

The world she had created was about to open its boundaries to the outside.

What could I do to help that happen?

I didn’t know anything about making up stories. I wasn’t well versed in theater. So what could I do?

I thought about it for a few minutes and finally arrived at a conclusion. I was only able to come up with it because of the life-conquering skills I’d recently learned.

I was sure of it.

This was the best way to translate Kikuchi-san’s quiet passion for the rest of the class.

* * *

After we’d discussed the story outline, the characters, and everything else we could think of about the play, the conversation turned to the school festival as a whole.

“I’m really looking forward to the festival,” I said, and I meant it now. I could have added Aren’t you? at the end, but I knew very well not everyone felt that way about these things.

But Kikuchi-san smiled. “Yes, so am I.” Then she opened her mouth slightly, like she’d just discovered something. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” she said.

“How so?” I said.

“I didn’t care about the school festival at all until this year…but now that I’ve gotten involved a little, my perspective has changed completely.”

“…Yeah.”

I’d experienced the same emotion.

When your situation changes, your surroundings change, too. When you stand in a different place, everything looks different. But when your frame of mind changes, those changes are even more pronounced.

“I think I know what you mean,” I said.

“Yes…I had a feeling you’d experienced it yourself.” Kikuchi-san placed one hand on top of the other and smiled kindly.

I remembered something. “Oh yeah.”

She gave me a confused look.

“Would you take a picture with me? We can get the overview you wrote in the picture, too. Kind of like a promise to give this play our all.”

Of course, taking a photo with her was one of my assignments, but I really did want to capture the moment. Huh. I was starting to understand those people who always have their cameras out.

“A picture…?” Kikuchi-san thought about it for a moment, then nodded and smiled. “Okay, that’s fine.”

“G-great. So…”

I pulled up the camera on my phone. Right. We were sitting across from each other at the table, but that wouldn’t work if we wanted to take a picture together.

I had no choice but to accept the challenge.

“Um, mind if I come over there?” I pointed to the empty spot next to her on the couch. She tilted her head, a little flustered.

“You mean…next to me?” she finally said.

Her voice was shaking, and the last few words trailed off into near silence. As she glanced hesitantly at me, I noticed the mesmerizingly long curl of her eyelashes.

“Um, yeah.”

My voice was shaking, too; her nervousness was contagious. She nodded, seeming to have made up her mind, and moved the slightest bit to the side. Then she set both her hands on her lap and sat up stiffly.

“O-okay…”

I got up the nerve to stand and move to her side.

We’d never been this close before. The magical sprite was a mere ten centimeters from me.

A gentle scent tickled my nostrils, and the slight hitch in her breathing made my heart race.

I pulled up the camera on my phone and moved it around until we were both in the frame.

That’s when it happened.

“Oh!”

Our hands touched on the sofa.

“S-sorry.”

“Um, i-it’s okay. I’m sorry…”

We both jerked our hands back. An extremely awkward silence followed.

Kikuchi-san tried to distract us from what just happened. “Uh, um, you were taking a picture, right?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“R-right…”

I succeeded in snapping the shot, although we avoided each other’s eyes the whole time. My assignment was complete, but by this point, that was the least of my worries.

“I-I’ll send it to you later, okay?”

“O-okay…”

So went our conversation, in fits and starts of awkward breaths and stuttered words.

I mean, that was a real shock.

Up till then, I’d thought of Kikuchi-san as some sort of heavenly creature, but when our hands touched—when for the first time, her human warmth reached me through our fingertips, and I felt her presence—my face was on fire.

* * *

It was Monday morning, and I was in Sewing Room #2.

Seven days had passed since Hinami gave me the photo-quest assignment, which meant this was the last day of the quest.

“Well, you’re doing nicely, aren’t you? Look at all those likes you’re getting.”

“Y-yeah, I guess…”

We were looking at the trends for the photos I’d posted on Instagram. The one I’d put up on Friday was getting an especially good reaction, even though Takei had posted the same one on Twitter. It was a great picture, after all. Of course, that “especially good reaction” was six likes instead of two.

“Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting those glasses…”

“S-sorry about that.” I was a little ashamed at her sarcasm, but at least she accepted the picture.

By the way, I didn’t post the photo of me and Kikuchi-san from Sunday. I did show it to Hinami, but Kikuchi-san had said she didn’t want me to put it on Instagram. Honestly, I would have been embarrassed to post it myself, so I was glad for that.

“It looks like some people from our class are following you even though you didn’t tell them about the account, right?”

“…Yeah.”

It was true. I’d only signed up a few days earlier, but already, a couple of people were following me—though I wasn’t sure if they’d found my account because one of their friends liked one of my pictures, or whether the app recommended they follow me, or what. I still only had twelve followers, though. That was one three-hundredth of what Hinami had.

“Anyway…you really surprised me the other day. I know I told you to take an active role in the school festival, but I was not expecting the play to be based on Kikuchi-san’s story.”

She seemed very pleased by the enthusiasm of her disciple.

“That was something I wanted to do, even if you didn’t give that assignment to me.”

“…Is that so?” Hinami said, frowning. “Well, never mind. As long as you’re approaching your goal, it doesn’t matter how you get there.”

“Right.”

I nodded, but something bothered me. She was right that the ends justified the means in this case, and I was used to Hinami sticking her nose in my business based on that philosophy.

But the same question occurred to me again.

Why did she want me to reach my goals so badly?

In the beginning, I felt like she’d just been following the momentum of our relationship as nanashi and NO NAME, but why was she taking it this far? Why was it such a big deal?

What did it mean to her?

“Hey, Hinami?”

“…What?”

She sounded slightly wary—she must have caught the shift in my feelings. Nothing got past her.

“This is kind of a basic question, but I’ve been wondering.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you want to turn me into a normie so badly?”

She looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you suddenly want to know?”

“I just do…”

“…You don’t remember?” she asked me with surprise.

“Remember what?”

She answered quietly. “When nanashi and NO NAME first met. Do you remember what you said that made me take you to my house?”

“…Uh…”

Hinami sighed softly. “You said: ‘You can’t change characters in real life.’ ‘Your character is just better than mine.’”

“Oh yeah,” I said as the conversation started coming back. “I did say that.”

Thanks to her, I’d closed a lot of that distance—I’d almost switched characters entirely, in a sense. So…I might have been wrong.

“Mm-hmm. When I heard you say that, I wanted to prove I was right.”

“…Really?”

I understood what she was trying to say, but I still wasn’t quite convinced. She was the queen of efficiency, so spending so much time on that one goal didn’t seem to fit.

“What? You don’t seem convinced.”

“It’s nothing.”

As usual, she saw through me in a second. “I hate losing. Remember?”

“Well, that’s true.”

I think she meant she didn’t want to lose in the clash of ideas about the game of life, especially since she was going up against nanashi. If that was true, then she was even more competitive than I’d given her credit for. But I still felt like there must be another reason.

“Anyway, none of that matters. Let’s talk about you—did you choose anyone yet?”

“You mean…what we were talking about before?”

Had I chosen a girl to pursue, after taking a look at my own feelings?

“Yes. Who you want to date. Since you said you wanted time to think, I gave you a whole week. I expect you’ve done plenty of thinking since then?”

I flinched as she bore down on me with her questions.

“Yeah…I have.” I nodded.

I still hadn’t solidified my decision and resolve in the way I’d have liked. But over the past few days, I had thought about what I wanted to do.

“Okay. Well, we decided on one full week, and I don’t want to hurry you, but I do want to be sure we’re on the same page. By tomorrow morning, please tell me the names of the two girls you want to get closer to.”

“O-okay.”

She really emphasized the word two. I guess that’s a requirement, then.

“Today is the last day of your photo quest. Keep your nose to the grindstone!”

“This again…”

And so my last photo quest began.

* * *

“Braiiiiiin!!”

An energetic voice greeted me when I got to our classroom, despite the early hour. Crap. Mimimi Attack 2.0 was coming. But now that I knew, I should be able to avoid it!

“Oof!”

“Nice try.”

“Ow!”

I had dodged right into her attack, and pain exploded across my shoulders.

When I glanced over at her, she was giggling. “You’re still too slow!”

“Why are you even attacking me to start with?!”

“Good question!” she admitted with a smile. “But anyway, I have a favor to ask. I’m in need of some snappy comebacks!”

“Wh-what?” I had a bad feeling about this, but I waited for her to go on.

“Sooo…the track team is talking about doing a comedy routine for the school festival…”

“Uh-huh…” The bad feeling turned into a certainty.

“I’m planning to play the funny girl, but Tama didn’t want to be my partner.”

“Well, she is on the volleyball team, after all…”

“I’ve already gotten permission for the straight man to be someone who doesn’t run track! No one on our team wants to do it!”

“O-oh…”

This was getting painful. But I still didn’t want to be in a comedy routine. Plus, wouldn’t that be hard for an amateur like me?

“That’s why I’m asking you to do it!”

“Uh-huh.”

I wanted to bury my head in my hands. Mimimi was talking about all this in a very loud voice, so Hinami could definitely hear our conversation.

Which meant she would not be happy if I said no. Damn it!

“I—I guess it’s fine…”

“No, I really want you to— What?!”

“Hey, don’t be so surprised that I said yes!”

“But I didn’t even have to convince you!” She stuck her nose in the air. “So you’re hooked, huh? Can’t resist playing old married couple with me, can ya?”

“Uh, not exactly…”

“Ouch!”

She pressed her hands to her chest. Man, she had so much energy. Can you not press your chest like that? I don’t know where to look.

Was this really going to work? I’d said okay since one of my assignments was to participate actively in the festival, but comedy would be a real challenge.

“Do you think we have enough time to practice? We have to work on the class play, too…”

“We’ll manage! Just leave it to me!”

“Um…”

This was not good. I definitely could not leave it to her.

“So should we talk about it more later or something?” I said. I’d probably have to come up with an idea. Hmm. What to do?

“Good idea! Then it’s a date!”

“O-okay.”

“Okay!”

With that, she hopped over to Tama-chan and hugged her from behind. What the heck? Was she some kind of migratory bird?

Wait a second, I’d just casually accepted a role in a comedy routine. Now I was on the organizing committee, helping Kikuchi-san with the class play, and doing a skit with Mimimi. What’s going on? Why am I taking on so many responsibilities? I am in way over my head.

* * *

After school, the whole class had a discussion about the play.

The committee chair, Izumi; the usual note-taker, Seno-san; the playwright, Kikuchi-san; and I, the initiator, were all standing in front of the blackboard. Since there were fewer people up here this time, there was more attention on each of us. If that made me this nervous, I couldn’t even imagine how Kikuchi-san must be feeling after getting tossed into this so suddenly.

“Okay, let’s do the casting!”

Izumi was getting used to her role as leader; her voice sounded a lot more casual than last time. Seno-san wrote Roles on the blackboard.

“Has everyone read the summary we handed out earlier?” Izumi asked.

Some yeses came back from the class. Kikuchi-san had made some small changes to the document we reviewed at the café, printed out copies for everyone, and handed them out.

Izumi turned her gaze over to her. “So…am I right that the main characters are Alucia, Libra, and Kris?”

“…Uh, um…”

“Yeah, those three are the main characters.”

Kikuchi-san sounded pretty flustered by the sudden question, so I did my best to slide in and back her up.

“Okay! Let’s assign those roles first!” Izumi said cheerfully.

Kikuchi-san looked up at me apologetically. No worries, Kikuchi-san! From here on out, this is my job. I’m using all the skills I’ve got to get what I want, and what I want is for your play to be a success.

Seno-san wrote Alucia, Libra, and Kris on the board.

“So, um, how do we decide who plays who?” Izumi asked me, sounding slightly worried. We’d shared the manuscript over LINE the day before, but it was unlikely everyone had read it in a single day. Assigning roles wouldn’t be easy.

“How about the people who’ve read it go by the full manuscript, those who haven’t go by the summary, and we all try to figure out who seems like they’d fit the roles?” I said.

“Yeah, that sounds good! Let’s start with Alucia!” Izumi looked at Kikuchi-san again. “…By the way, do you have an image of the character in your mind?”

“Um…of Alucia?”

Alucia was the princess directly in line to be queen, and the childhood friend of the locksmith’s son, Libra.

I could tell Kikuchi-san was struggling under the whole class’s attention, but she seemed calmer than before. I couldn’t answer this one for her, so she’d have to do the best she could on her own.

“She’s an outstanding student, and a quick thinker…and her words have a lot of power.”

Everyone tried to think of someone who matched that description, and of course, all eyes gravitated to one person. No surprises there.

“Well, if we need a powerful speaker…,” the jock Tachibana said. He didn’t need to finish his sentence.

The person in question smiled under literally every eye in the class, raised her hand, and assumed a comically authoritative tone. “Then…it’s gotta be me!”

The class laughed at her exaggerated confidence. Amazing how she could wring a laugh out of the slightest nuance of tone or words. If she messed it up at all, the silence afterward would be incredibly awkward, but she never made a mistake. Her words truly did hold power.

“Yes…I think this one definitely has to go to Aoi!” Izumi announced happily, and Hinami gave a conciliatory smile.

It was true, though. When I thought about the scene where Alucia had to bluff in front of the king himself to save Libra, the role did seem perfect for Hinami. Good choice.

“But won’t you be double-booked with your work as student council president? Will you be okay?” Izumi asked worriedly.

Hinami reflected for a moment. “I might not be able to come to all the rehearsals, but if we have an understudy for those times, it should be okay. As long as I have a copy of the script, I can pull it off!” she said confidently.

Her words really were powerful. She had convinced everyone she could do it, so no one contested the decision. And I had no doubt she would excel at the acting.

“Okay then, thank you! Unless anyone else wants that part, we’ll go with Hinami!” said Izumi.

No one raised their hand, so the role of Alucia easily went to Hinami. That left Libra and Kris.

“Okay, next… How do you imagine Libra?” Izumi asked Kikuchi-san.

Libra. He was the son of the locksmith, a young commoner. He was sentenced to death for opening the forbidden door to the garden where the flying dragon was kept, but Alucia saved him by claiming he was her brother.

Kikuchi-san must have been waiting for the question, because she didn’t panic this time.

“Libra… He’s very curious, and good at getting close to people…”

“Hey, that sounds like me!” Takei said, before she’d finished talking. Stop, dude. He did match the specific traits she’d just listed, but come on. Just stop.

“And he’s smart…”

“Oh, never mind…”

But as she continued, he dejectedly pulled back. Well done, Takei. You do know yourself.

“I think those are the basics.”

Apparently, no one in the class matched that description very well, because we didn’t gravitate to any one person like we had with Hinami. I couldn’t think of the perfect person for the role, either.

We had to nominate people for the role or get volunteers.

The nominees were Mizusawa, the basketball player Tachibana, and Yanagisawa, a jock I didn’t know. Takei volunteered, too. Well, that was a rapid recovery, Takei. But I don’t like your chances.

“All right, let’s choose which of these people would be the best Libra,” Izumi said before taking a vote.

Honestly, I didn’t think any of them was a perfect choice, but I voted for Tachibana, who I felt was the closest fit based on our few, very brief conversations. I could have voted for Mizusawa, but he was too smooth, too much of a flirt to play Libra. Libra would never go out and hit on girls.

But since voting was based mostly on popularity, Mizusawa won with twenty-four votes. Thanks to the girls, he won in a landslide. Damn, this guy…

“Well, I’ve gotta say, I’m not sure this role is for me, but if you want me to play it that bad, you can count on me!”

He acted like he was being passive while letting everyone know he would do well, so he came off as super reliable. Was this another facet of the Mizusawa Method…?

Anyway, I think it turned out for the best. He was extremely versatile, not to mention his amazing speeches during the student council election, and I knew he’d do a good job with the acting. He probably was a good choice.

Now that we were assigning roles, this was all starting to feel real. Very exciting. Kikuchi-san’s story really was going to be made into the class play.

And the main roles had gone to Hinami and Mizusawa, who were both good-looking and reliable actors. I bet this would go over well with the other classes.

“Next is Kris. What’s your image of her?”

Kris. The orphan girl who was shut away from the world in the palace garden to raise the flying dragons.

Kikuchi-san thought for a moment before answering.

“Kris is timid, but honest and innocent. A bit childlike…I would say.” She must have been getting more and more used to her role, because she hardly sounded nervous at all now.

Our classmates thought about who would fit the role and started calling out names.

Izumi, Mimimi, Tama-chan, and a friend of Hinami’s named Uehara-san were nominated. No one volunteered. It’s hard to volunteer for an “innocent” role, I guess. By the way, I thought Tama-chan would turn down her nomination right away, but she accepted it without protest. So she wouldn’t mind being chosen?

Izumi looked a bit flustered. “I-I’m on the list…? Well, okay, let’s choose the person for this role.”

She took a vote, and Tama-chan won with fifteen votes. Izumi got eleven, so it was a fairly close race.

“Huh? Me?” Tama-chan said, sounding surprised. Everyone was looking at her with congratulatory smiles. Their eyes didn’t show the slightest hint of hostility or aggression.

Actually, it was amazing she won. She was the perfect person for an “honest, innocent, and slightly childlike” role, but our classmates didn’t used to like that about her before—just look at the whole mess with Konno. And now here she was with the most votes, leaving her mentor in the dust. I must say I was very pleased.

So the main characters had been cast.

Mizusawa was playing Libra, the locksmith’s son.

Hinami was playing Libra’s childhood friend Alucia, the strong-willed princess in line for the throne.

Tama-chan was playing Kris, the orphan girl shut away in the palace garden to care for the flying dragons.

The casting had actually turned out really well. Tama-chan’s acting ability was an unknown, but she was similar enough to her character that I didn’t see any red flags.

After that, we cast the smaller roles, and even though each decision involved a mix of nominations and volunteers, the choices generally seemed like good fits.

But when it came time to cast Rei, a female knight of the castle, we had a minor incident.

Kikuchi-san described the character like this: “Her will is strong, and so is her skill with the sword. Also, she takes good care of those below her.”

The description already brought a certain person to mind, but the decisive factor was the description written on the summary sheet.

“The captain of the castle’s female equestrian guard. She monitors the actions of Libra, Alucia, and Kris as the castle rules demand, but when it matters most, she takes their side. She is tall, with long blond hair and a sharp gaze.”

Ever since the role of Alucia went to Hinami, everyone had been interested in a certain other member of the class.

That person was twirling her bleached hair around her fingertip and looking out at the class with a slightly surprised expression.

Izumi brought her hands together in a gesture of pleading and addressed her. “Please, Erika! Can you take this one?”

Erika Konno sighed with irritation.

The strong-willed girl who had long blond hair, a sharp gaze, and took care of those below her—that was absolutely Konno.

“Whatever, I guess…” She sighed, accepting the role with surprising ease. Huh. I thought she’d get all grumpy and turn it down, but she was going to do it. I wondered if it was because her friend Izumi had asked her, or if she had a hidden love for the theater. Well, whatever the reason, the role suited her perfectly, so it was a good thing for the play.

“Is that it? Then let’s have a round of applause for the cast!” Izumi said, fully comfortable in her role now, and we all complied.

Kikuchi-san stared at the blackboard like it was a miracle, clapping softly with her dainty little hands. Her spirit seemed to be floating in the air.

Of course it was.

Right now, at this very moment, the fantasy she’d dreamed up and written down as a story had happened to end up in my hands, and now it was being performed as the class play.

I knew that feeling.

You take a single step forward, and suddenly, the whole world spreads out before you.

Kikuchi-san must have been wholly immersed in that experience right then.

Just imagining it made my heart pound. I was glad I suggested her story to the class, even if it pulled us out of our comfort zones.

* * *

After the class meeting, I went with Kikuchi-san to the library.

She was going to spend the next few days writing a script for the class to use, and I’d come to the library to talk it over with her. I had to do something about my last photo quest, the shot of Izumi eating ice cream, but I assumed Izumi would be staying late at school. I’d try to figure something out on the way home. I couldn’t abandon Kikuchi-san just for an assignment.

“Great job today, Kikuchi-san.”

She must have been reeling from how new the whole experience was. I knew more than anyone the emotional toll of being plunged into something so intense, so the words really came from my heart.

“Thank you… I’m a little tired.”

Kikuchi-san giggled, and her smile was fresh and bright. She was tired, but I think it was the good kind of tired.

“Don’t you think the casting went well?”

“…Yes. The actors matched my image perfectly,” she said, smiling softly.

“But now you’ve got to write the script…”

“Th-that’s true…”

She tensed up a bit as I shifted into a getting-down-to-business tone, and she pressed her lips together with determination for the job ahead. I’d learned that tone from Hinami in our meetings.

“You’re still not sure how to end it, right?”

“…Right.”

That was going to be the biggest challenge.

“So you’ll be able to adapt the rest directly from the story…but now you have to figure out the climax.”

I’d checked with Izumi about how long the play could be, and she said up to twenty minutes. That was about the same length as an anime or drama on TV if you left out the opening and closing credits and commercials, which was probably a good way to imagine it.

Since it was a short story to start with, she shouldn’t have to cut too much to make it into a play.

But the ending would be all the more important.

“What are you unsure about, specifically?” I asked her.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could come up with a good suggestion even if she told me what the problem was. But I was hoping talking it out might help her think of something on her own.

“…Well…,” she began, still thinking. “The part I’m most unsure about is, when Libra gets together with Kris or Alucia…what should happen to the other one?”

“Oh…yeah, I see the problem.”

That probably would be one of the things the audience remembered most. Even though romance wasn’t the core of the story, whenever love was involved, people tended to focus on that. And they would probably feel for whichever character didn’t end up with Libra.

It was a small detail, but it would change people’s overall impression of the story. At least, in the opinion of a novice like me.

“Um…have you already decided who Libra will end up with?”

“No, I’m still not sure. Maybe…I’m afraid to decide.” She sighed.

“Oh, okay…”

She’d said the same thing before—she’d come to love these characters, so she was especially wary of ruining the story.

“I’m afraid to decide the fate of all three characters at once.” She lowered her head. “I think I’ve been unsure of this part ever since I came up with the story.”

“Oh…”

This was going to be tough to solve.

She was afraid to pair Libra with Kris or Alucia, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to be with neither of them. She knew she had to choose one or the other, but she was afraid to make the decision.

There was no right answer to this problem.

“Well, then…”

But maybe not having a right answer would make it easier to solve.

I wanted to give her a way to find the answer. I wasn’t sure if my suggestion would help, but I wanted to tell her my general approach to these things. When you have a question with no right answer, there’s only one standard for deciding problems like that.

“If you were Libra, who do you think you would choose?”

That was it.

The world is full of problems with no right answer. In the end, those problems are always decided based on individual preferences—some hazy notion of what would be more fun. That was the underlying reason why I played Atafami, too.

If that was true for me, then the easiest way for Kikuchi-san to choose, and the way that was least likely to leave her with regrets, would be for her to decide based on her own preferences—on what she wanted.

But she shook her head. “No, I don’t think that would work.”

“…Why not?”

When she answered, she sounded somehow lonely. “I may have an idea of what I’d like to do in his place.”

“Yeah?”

“But I need to think about what would be best for the story. What path for the characters would be ideal for that world? That’s why I’m having trouble deciding.”

“What would be ideal for that world…”

To tell the truth, I probably only understood about half of what she was saying. But I did know that in her own way, she was trying to face her creation head-on.

“I feel like bringing my personal feelings into it would somehow lack integrity…”

“Hmm…”

She’d clearly put a lot of thought into this, and it wasn’t like I had some deep philosophy that I could argue for. Was there anything else I could say?

As I puzzled over the answer, Kikuchi-san took a deep breath.

“Um, Tomozaki-kun?”

“Yeah?” I answered, my guard completely down.

She looked me straight in the eye.

“Do you like anyone right now?”

A weird, choking sort of noise escaped my mouth.

“M-m-m-m-me?”

Kikuchi-san was staring at me with a red but very serious face. “Yes… You.”

Our eyes met. Hers were as pure as a child’s, twinkling with an innocence that seemed to purify everything it took in.

“I—I… I’m not sure.”

I couldn’t tell her I was supposed to be thinking about exactly that question right now, so I just mumbled a vague reply. I couldn’t just say the name that rose to my mind.

“Oh,” she muttered, sounding a little deflated. Then she turned her impassioned eyes on me again.

“Well, just imagine, then. Imagine you cared about more than one person…”

“…Uh-huh…”

Her petite, beautifully shaped lips had so much power behind them, slight as the movements were.

“And if you were only able to choose one of them…”

It wasn’t truly magic; it was the simple power of words.

“…who would you choose?”

I couldn’t help being startled.

Her question was gently stirring up everything that had settled at the bottom of my heart.

It was as if she was asking me to look closely at what was rising up inside me.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak, and I felt an emotion I’d never really experienced before bubbling up.

Her question was hard for me to answer right then.

“Well, to tell you the truth…”

She was asking me with total sincerity.

Kikuchi-san was a shy girl. Just asking a guy her age a question about love probably took a huge amount of energy.

It wouldn’t be right to answer with a lie, or a theoretical ideal, or a front, or a future goal. I had to tell her what I was thinking and feeling now, as I was.

So I took responsibility and dived down deep inside my heart to see what my real emotions were—and there, I found something I’d been trying not to see for some time.

It was the answer to Kikuchi-san’s question—and also, I think, to Hinami’s assignment. Embarrassing as it was, this was what I’d found.

“I don’t feel like I have the right to choose another person.”

There it was. Once I’d said the words, I was certain of how true they were.

“…Um…” Kikuchi-san seemed confused.

Hinami had asked me over and over who I was going to choose. She’d even made me imagine what I’d do if different girls told me they liked me.

Here was the underlying reason I’d put off answering.

Of course, I didn’t want to be insincere and pick someone without knowing my own emotions, but there was a bigger reason.

It was the seventeen years I’d spent convinced I deserved to be at the bottom.

I wasn’t worthy of being chosen, let alone choosing someone else. If I had to say, I was more like a harmless rock lying by the side of the road. Nothing more, nothing less.

I could never choose someone else, much less take responsibility for involving myself in someone else’s life. In fact, I shouldn’t.

I could only handle the responsibilities of my own life—that belief was a solid conviction, founded on my own weakness.

When Hinami had asked me to imagine girls saying they liked me, I was embarrassed by the vivid picture of such a scenario, but the most powerful force on my heart was the inexpressible guilt of imposing myself on other people. The imaginary voice jeering at me for having the audacity to choose another person when I was so pathetic. The underlying sense of incompetence that controlled all my thoughts about the game of life I was playing.

And it had nested deep in my heart.

For a moment, Kikuchi-san couldn’t find a reply.

“…So that’s how you feel,” she finally said.

I wasn’t sure how much of my thoughts she’d guessed, but she nodded gently.

“Yeah. So honestly, that kind of stuff is hard for me to talk about… I’m sorry.”

I could hear how lifeless my own voice sounded, but I couldn’t hide it now. It was like some switch had been flipped, and all the dark parts of me were spilling out uncontrollably.

“…I understand.”

We were both silent for a little while, and it was suffocating. I’d never felt like that with Kikuchi-san before.

I’d let her see the worst of me.

“…Yeah, I’m sorry.”

I felt awful, and I at least wanted to apologize for that.

With that, Kikuchi-san and I left the library.

* * *

When I went back to the classroom to get my bag, Mimimi, Izumi, and Nakamura’s group were still there, along with a few other people. They were making signs and menus for the manga café.

“Yo, Farm Boy!”

“Hey.”

I managed to make my voice sound somewhat normal as I answered Takei’s greeting and joined up with the group.

“Hey, it’s the director.”

“Pfft, you mean me? I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

I managed to joke around a little with Mizusawa, too. I was so used to this kind of banter that I could at least fake it even when I felt crappy.

But for some reason, Mizusawa gave me a suspicious look. “Fumiya?”

“Yeah, what?” I said, no awkward pause or anything.

He glanced around the group, and I did the same. Everyone was working on their projects. After another pensive pause, he said, “No, never mind.”

“Huh?” I asked.

He smiled slightly and nodded. “Hey, I heard from Gumi. She said she’s coming to our festival.”

“Oh, really? She is?”

We shifted into chat mode. Something felt slightly off, but maybe I was imagining it.

As we talked, I heard Mimimi heckling us from behind. “Hey, who are you talking about?!”

“None of your business.”

“You’re so mean, Takahiro!”

“Wanna get going?” Mizusawa said casually, and everyone took his lead. A few minutes later, we all left school.

When we got to the station, we scattered in various directions to head home.

I kept up my normal outer appearance, joining in the conversation so no one would guess how weirdly depressed I felt.

But when I was in this funk, my brain couldn’t handle the extra task of figuring out how to take a picture of Izumi eating ice cream, my final photo quest, so I ended up saying good-bye without making a move.

Mimimi and I got off at Kitayono Station.

“We finally made it!” she said.

“Uh, it was only one stop from Omiya…”

“You could also say that!”

“Um, I think you could only say that…”

We walked along side by side, joking around as usual.

“By the way, Mr. Tomozaki!!”

“Wh-what?”

Mimimi made her hand into a microphone like she was interviewing me. Usually, when she did that, it meant she was about to drop a bomb of a question. I braced for impact.

“Who is this mysterious Gumi-chan?”

“…Um, uh…”

But her question turned out to be fairly silly. I was expecting something that cut a bit deeper, so I was almost disappointed.

“Hmm, a lackluster reaction.”

“Uh, well… She’s just a girl who works with Mizusawa and me.”

“I-is that really all? Sounds suspicious.”

“Yeah, surprisingly, that’s really all…”

Mimimi usually had a very sharp sense for the subtleties of relationships, but this time, her guess missed the mark. Huh. Actually, that was a good thing. I’d be in trouble if she always saw right through me.

“But it sounds like you went to her school festival?”

“Yeah, because I was invited.”

Who did she hear that from? Maybe Mizusawa mentioned it like it was no big deal? Not that there was anything to hide, of course.

“You are acting suspicious! And I heard she goes to a girls’ school!”

“Why does that matter?”

Okay, I admit, going into a girls’ school is akin to illegally crossing a national border.

Now Mimimi was acting sullen. Why? “It’s just…you don’t seem like the type to hang out at girls’ schools.”

“Hey, do you really think they’d arrest me for showing up at a girls’ school? Plus, Mizusawa got a proper invitation.”

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better…” She pouted even more. What?

“What do you mean?”

“…Nothing!”

She glared at me fiercely. Wh-why are you getting mad?

Then she gave a loud sigh. “Tomozaki, you’re really cool sometimes, but when you’re not, you’re really, really not.”

“I—I am? I mean, there are times when I’m cool?” I asked in all seriousness.

She glared at me harder. “Yes! You helped me out a lot, and you worked really hard to help Tama, too!”

“O-oh. Right. Sorry.” Now that she was borderline hostile, I couldn’t help apologizing. I think I might have said the wrong thing.

The next sigh was even louder. Lots of sighs today. Probably all of them my fault.

“You don’t need to apologize for that.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I respect my Brain, you know.”

“Huh?” I said. That was unexpected. “You respect me?”

Her eyes met mine. “Yes, I do. Is that weird?”

“N-no, not weird, exactly, but…I feel bad, or…”

I was struggling to convey my emotions.

Mimimi ran her finger over the hand-sewn seam on the charm attached to her bag. “Do you remember when I told you you’re like Tama?”

“…Yeah.”

I nodded. Mimimi and Hinami had both said that to me. And after going through the Konno ordeal with her, I had to agree that the foundation of my way of thinking was similar to hers.

“You’re both scaredy-cats, but when you make up your mind to do something, you do it. You head straight for what you want. It’s everything I want to be but can’t. I think you two are amazing.”

Her words reminded me of what Izumi had said to me a while back.

“…Oh.”

Mimimi was a different kind of person from Tama-chan and me. She could do anything. She was great at adapting to her surroundings, while Tama-chan and I were terrible at it. But in exchange, you could say we had more confidence about saying what we thought and sticking to it.

Just as I couldn’t do what Mimimi did, maybe she couldn’t do what Tama-chan and I did. Even if she wanted to.

I was trying to figure out how to reply when she stopped walking one step ahead of me and grinned.

“That’s what I like about you.”

“Uh…”

I was at a loss for words. Um, what did she just say?

I stared at her face as my brain completely stalled.

She opened her mouth wide and laughed. “…Ha-ha! You thought I meant I liked you like that, didn’t you?!”

“N-no, I didn’t…!”

Oh, come on! Bottom-tier characters are always jumping to conclusions about this stuff, so at least be a little careful! People talk about how they can’t use a heart emoji on LINE without sending the wrong message, but it takes way less than that to confuse me! I haven’t gotten a single heart emoji in my life; dealing with this face-to-face is way too much for me.

As I scrambled to cover up my mistake, Mimimi smiled teasingly.

“Actually, I do like you like that.”

“What?”

“Bye!”

She ran off ahead of me and turned the corner where we usually split up. Wait, my brain hasn’t caught up yet! Huh? What?