Etiquette Dictates That Names Be Asked in Swahili – Part 03

And so, the school festival tour with Haruna began.

I repeatedly warned her not to express any emotion, but Haruna, who didn’t care about others, hated the idea. Still, my offhand remark, “If you can’t even do that, you can’t call yourself the strongest Magiclad Girl around,” had a powerful impact on her, and she promised to stay calm the whole time.

With the girl in gauntlets, plate armor, and cowlick, I walked through the school. As expected, most of the classroom attractions were cafés or haunted houses.

We went through some cosplay cafés and a few unusual haunted houses. I’d bet not a lot of zombies had entered haunted houses before. Well, zombies weren’t exactly scared of ghosts.

As it grew darker, we headed to the courtyard, which looked like a festival street lined with stalls: water balloon scooping, bite-sized sponge cakes, grilled squid, takoyaki, yakisoba. Oh, that last one was the same with our own yokai café.

It was a place lively enough to make you want to wear a kimono.

Among the stalls, one run by the comedy club called Nonstop Nonsense Hotdog caught Haruna’s intense interest.

Looking closer, the sign read: No sale unless you deliver a quip. Ah, so that’s how it worked. That provocative sign probably lit a fire under Haruna’s pride.

“Welcome! Would you like some fries?” the clerk offered.

But fries weren’t even on the menu. In fact, the menu listed beauty salon services: haircut 3,000 yen, perm 5,000 yen, shampoo 180,000 yen. And the pricing was clearly set up to invite quips.

How would Haruna respond?

She wrote in her notepad and showed it to the clerk, pointing at the perm 5,000 yen.

“Tonkotsu ramen, please.”

She shot back with a gag!

The comedy club looked a bit taken aback at the unexpected reply.

“Ah, yes. Here’s your soy sauce ramen—wait, idiot!”

Apparently, our school’s comedy club wasn’t particularly skilled at quips. Hopefully, they hadn’t opened the stall thinking they could just rip off customers’ jokes.

Haruna wrote in her notepad again. “Please sell me tonkotsu ramen.”

The gag advanced another step. Like a Rook promoting to Dragon King,^[1] pressure crashed down on the comedy club.

“Uh… this is a hotdog stall.”

“A normal reply?! Try harder, comedy club!”

“Honestly, we didn’t expect her not to deliver a quip at all.”

Haruna flipped a page of her notepad. “Please sell me authentic tonkotsu ramen.”

“She raised the bar!”

And she had written it ahead of time.

Because I made a comment, the comedy club accepted defeat and silently handed a hot dog to Haruna.

“You don’t need to pay.”

A complete declaration of defeat.

“Too afraid to throw a joke because of a counter joke? What kind of a comedy club are you?”

Haruna shook her head with a sigh and flipped her notebook.

“Maybe you should switch to being a quiz show club instead, like Oda Nobunaga.”

I don’t think Oda Nobunaga was really into quizzes.

A jolt like a lightning strike ran through the comedy club.

She even prepared a parting line in advance. That’s a genius for you. This stupid girl was beyond even my understanding.

“Thank you very much!”

Haruna walked away with three hotdogs as her spoils. On a related note, she didn’t give me a single one.

As she happily bit into a hotdog, the wind suddenly blew. The skirt of a girl walking in front of us fluttered up. I froze in place and bent slightly, either because of male curiosity or animal instinct.

The sign reading No sale unless you deliver a quip slammed into the back of my head. Having dirty thoughts never leads to anything good.

Was this misfortune caused by Haruna’s delight just now?

She showed me a rare apologetic look. She probably thought the same.

“White panties are the best.”

When I joked about panties I didn’t even see, Haruna smacked my tailbone with the sign and threw her notepad at me.

“You pervert! Full thrustle!”

That was fine. I was glad she was her energetic self.

“Sounds like you can still coin some random words,” I said with a smile.

---

After Haruna visited stall after stall, we headed for the gymnasium.

Inside, they were doing live concerts and plays, but if we stopped to watch, we wouldn’t make it back in time.

Half the seats were filled with guys in happi coats and headbands, like some fans cheering for Onyanko Club.^[2] Was some weird idol coming?

It felt uncomfortable, so we moved on toward the old school building. It was near the field, and almost all the rooms were used by sports clubs. For someone like me who was not a member of any club, I’ve got no connection to this place.

As I was about to step into the baseball club’s room, someone called to me. “Hey, Aikawa! Come over here!”

Mihara, with long brown hair tied up and wearing a tank top, waved at me. Must be the girls’ basketball uniform.

Something about girls’ basketball tank tops was really eye-catching. Her number was fourteen.

“Doesn’t seem too busy around here,” I said.

“People do come, you know? Guess you just hit a slow time. Still… Miss Haruna, that’s quite the outfit. You got stuff like that lying around your house, Aikawa?”

She laughed mockingly. She was clearly curious about Haruna’s western-style armor.

“Ah, well. My parents travel around the world a lot, so.”

Vague, didn’t really explain anything, but it kinda made sense. Mihara nodded in understanding.

“Oh, Aikawa. You’re here.”

A tall guy popped up. Handsome, blue-eyed, a nice person overall. His name was Shimomura, but everyone called him Anderson.

“Anyway, come on, just try it once! And spread the word after!”

Mihara grabbed my hand and bounced on her toes. Yeah, yeah.

So she dragged me into the basketball club’s room. It wasn’t that big inside. Lockers lined both sides. In the middle sat a box, made out of cardboard or something, like a whack-a-mole game.

“Three free throws for 200 yen,” said a tall girl working reception.

I paid 200 yen and got a homemade ball, about the size of a baseball, made from crumpled newspaper wrapped in tape.

I see. A free-throw game. You tossed the ball into those whack-a-mole holes and won prizes.

“What can you win?” I asked, throwing the first ball.

“Grand prize is an Indian elephant.”

The unexpected prize made me flinch, and I completely missed.

“If you win the elephant, do you actually get one?”

“Haha, if you land it. The front hole’s a drink, the next is chips, then a fridge, then a Hawaii trip. Oh, and that one’s the elephant.”

The basketball club burst out laughing. Clearly the elephant was just a joke. Looking closer, some of the holes were obviously way too small. No way this ball would fit.

I decided to force it with zombie power. Instead of a free throw, I wound up like a baseball pitcher, then hurled it.

Bonk. The ball bounced off and dropped neatly into the very first hole.

“You win. Coffee or soda?”

“Coffee, then.”

They handed me a canned coffee worth a hundred yen. One throw left.

“Me next.” Haruna raised her gauntleted hand.

“All right, Haruna. Go for the elephant.”

Haruna gave a silent thumbs-up.

“Haha, no way. The hole’s too small.”

Thunk. That was the kind of sound effect it deserved.

The ball, clearly larger than the hole, slipped right into the grand prize slot. It was like a magician tossing a coin into a bottle, an impossible sight.

“No way.”

The balls all rolled back to the front, so no one could prove which hole it landed in. But I knew what I saw. Judging from the stunned faces of the receptionist and Mihara, they had seen it too.

I slipped my hand from my blazer pocket and placed it on Mihara’s shoulder. “I’m looking forward to my elephant.”

Mihara shuddered and lowered her head. I wondered if I looked like a debt collector or something.

“N-No way. No way! I’m so sorry!”

“Again.”

Haruna seemed really into the game, so I paid another 200 yen.

First throw—Hawaii trip.
Second throw—Hawaii trip.
Third throw—Indian elephant.

“Two elephants and two Hawaii trips. Not bad for four hundred yen,” I said.

“How’s it even going in?”

Mihara and the others pressed the ball against the tiny hole, but of course it wouldn’t fit.

“How’d you do it?” I asked Haruna.

“Isn’t it obvious? I compressed it with a barrier and made it into a stick, that’s all.”

That made sense. The ball was just newspaper. In the hands of a Magiclad Girl, she could reshape it however she wanted. Especially now, when she had a full tank of mana.

“You can have your money back. Just please, cut us some slack.”

“What? But we won fair and square.”

I must have looked like a real jerk then. Maybe I pushed it a little too far.

I laughed out loud to clear away the tension, and Mihara and the others laughed too. Everyone except Haruna, who still couldn’t.

In the end, we walked away with a free coffee and headed to the track team’s room next. Might as well see Tomonori while we were at it.

“A-Aikawa!”

When I stepped into the track club’s room, I found Tomonori standing there in a swimsuit. She was holding a sign, her face bright red all the way to her ears.

No other track team members were around. It was just Tomonori in a rather bold swimsuit. And Eu.

Since Haruna wore the gauntlet and plate armor, Eu was wearing something else.

Wait. Why? Why was she dressed as a bunny girl?

Was this a reward? For me? Too good to be true!

Anyway, was it just the two of them? In this tiny clubroom? What were they even doing?

The place was thick with mystery worthy of a detective novel. Where were the other track members? It didn’t look like they were running any kind of booth.

And Tomonori… Man, what a great body. She looked like the type who seemed plain until she undressed.

Maybe all Vampire Ninjas were like that. Vampires were known for their beauty, after all. She might act like a boy, but she still—ugh, what the hell was I thinking about Tomonori?

“Tomonori, explain. Why are you dressed like that in here, curling up like a pill bug the moment you saw me?”

“Uh, well…”

“We’re selling CDs,” Eu answered.

Looking closely, I noticed a rack set up in front of the lockers, filled with CDs. All of them were laid out facing forward. These were… Haruna’s? And that one was Sera’s. This one, Tomonori’s? When did they even make these?

“So why CDs? And why in the track club?”

Tomonori sat down on her soles. “Well… the track team was stuck trying to figure out what to do for the festival, and then Master showed up,” she said solemnly, like a criminal confessing her crime.

“So you ended up selling CDs. But why Haruna’s CDs instead of the track team’s?”

“Honestly, the whole team hated the idea of the festival. No one wanted to do anything. But my class only did an exhibit, so I wanted to do something, you know?”

“And what you came up with was selling CDs in a bikini.”

“First 500 thousand, then we’ll break a million!” Haruna pumped her fist.

The line was ripped straight from that RPG ad campaign, the one infamous for claiming you needed a permit just to buy the thing.^[3]

“Then why’s Eu dressed like that?”

“Because it’s my fault,” she said.

So she felt guilty toward Haruna. Probably said something about doing anything for her, and Haruna took her up on it without reservation.

“Well, with Tomonori in a swimsuit and Eu in a bunny outfit, you must’ve sold a bunch, right?”

“Actually…” Tomonori poked her index fingers together.

“Not a single one,” Eu said.

Haruna’s face twisted in shock. And at that exact moment, a sudden earthquake hit, knocking down all the CDs from the racks.

Oh, and I smacked my head on the rack.

“Haruna, keep your emotions in check,” Eu said, staring at her.

Haruna looked like she wanted to say, Oh, I forgot, and took a deep breath.

Tomonori was picking up the CDs that had fallen to the floor and putting them back on the shelf, so I helped her.

“Nobody bought one as a joke?” I asked.

“Nope,” Tomonori said. “I wonder why. I have zero idea.”

I picked up a CD with Haruna on the cover and studied it closely. Two hundred thousand yen, tax included.

How the fuck would these sell, you moron?! I’d go so far as to say that those who had no idea why they weren’t selling were idiots as well.

The track list was written on the back. It didn’t matter if the jacket was Haruna or Sera, the contents seemed to be the same.

Four songs in total:
Broken Heart Magnum by Haruna
Crazy Snowman by Seraphim
Friend to Friend by Yuki Yoshida
Necromancy by Eucliwood Hellscythe (Instrumental)

Instrumental! So Eu had a track too. She must not have been able to sing when they recorded this.

“Fine. I’ll sell them myself.”

“I see. Want me to help?”

The moment I offered, I was tossed out of the clubroom like some brat getting kicked out of the house. But why tho?

“With a creep like you hanging around, even stuff that could sell won’t sell.”

Sell what, exactly?!

Regretting not savoring Bunny Eu and Swimsuit Tomonori a little longer, I left the old school building.

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1. The Dragon King is the promoted form of a Rook in Shogi (Japanese chess).

2. Onyanko Club (Kitty Club) was a large all-girl Japanese pop idol group in the 1980s.

3. A reference to the ambitious sales target stated by a developer in an interview for the RPG Opoona.