Chapter 8: The Day of the Festival
Chapter 8: The Day of the Festival
Date: x/xx
Weather: Sunny
So many things happened. Incredible things. And at one point, I got to be the star of the show!
I know it’s not very nice of me to celebrate that, considering how hard things were for everyone, but it actually means a lot. In a way, I think it needed to happen... Not that I’d want to go through it again, though.
I think maybe I changed... No, I definitely changed. I found the right opportunity. Now it’s up to me to decide whether it’s phony or the real deal.
I’m only just getting started! My—no, OUR battle has only just begun. And Chihiro-kun’s got a big day tomorrow. Hang in there!
I love you, Cultural Research Club.
+++
Today our class held a meeting for the upcoming cheerleading competition.
Once the cheerleading reps had made a token effort to wrap things up, we all headed back to our desks... except me. I had a “promise” to keep.
As I stand behind the teacher’s lectern, a few classmates look at me in puzzlement.
“Uwa? Was there something you forgot to say?” Shimono asks casually, but I don’t answer. I can’t answer. Every fiber of my being is tied up into nervous knots.
The mood in the room is dismal at best. No one was enthusiastic about this meeting to begin with; partway through, a handful of students lost interest and started talking to their friends instead. There’s absolutely no sense of unity here, and the odds are clearly stacked against me... but I have to fight this fight regardless.
As I stand up here by myself, gradually, more and more of my classmates start to take notice.
See, when you actively care about something, it can come off as uncool... and what I’m about to do is extremely, painfully uncool. I don’t know how this will go, but chances are likely I’ll fail. And assuming I do fail, the results will be disastrous. They’ll all think I’m a loser. It’s straight up social suicide.
But... eh, it’s not the end of the world.
Compared to rock bottom, this is nothing. I know I can bounce back eventually. The world will still be there, the same as always. A little change in social status won’t kill me.
So now it’s time to take action... and change this.
“Listen, everyone. I think we should really try to win the Sports Festival.”
The room falls dead silent—the kind where you can hear a pin drop. Even I’m feeling secondhand embarrassment, and I’m the one who said it. This is so much worse than I imagined... I can’t imagine how much backbone it would take to say this crap on a regular basis.
“Uhhh... Uwa...”
“J-Just think about it! We’re going to have to do this either way, so it can’t hurt to try, you know, just a little or whatever. And if we win, it’ll make the Culture Festival that much better... S-So yeah, let’s try to win this!”
I finish my speech.
Silence.
Not that I blame them, of course. It’s easy to nod along when everyone else is already on board, but being the first? Not so much. When you’re the first, it’s hard to gauge what everyone else wants, and reading the room is an essential component of fitting in.
But if you live your life going along with what everyone else wants, then you can’t change anything, least of all the status quo.
I just need one person to make a move. I don’t care if your courage is a phony pretext to look cool, either.
Okay, seriously, they’re not even going to dignify me with a response? Please tell me that isn’t happening right now. Oh my god, this is so freaking cringey... I don’t feel so good...
Just then, Enjouji jumps to her feet.
“S-Sounds like something out of a movie! Count me in!”
Prior to this meeting, I had asked her to come to my rescue if it looked like we were going to fail to get airborne. After all, as long as someone makes the first move, it’ll be easier to build up momentum. That said, I think “like something out of a movie” is a pretty dorky sentiment, but whatever. Nice work, Enjouji!
Here I stand at the lectern, and Enjouji in the center of the room. Together, we spark the flames of revolution. There may only be two of us, but two is a lot of people, if you think about it in a glass-half-full kind of way. And we won’t be two for long. I’m sure someone will join us... Even just one person... Someone will definitely... Any moment now... Someone’s going to...
...Or not.
Instead, we receive a reception so frosty, it’s practically a blizzard.
“Look, dude, you can’t just spring that on them. Especially not someone as broody—er, quiet as you. It’s just gonna freak them out,” Shimono explains after the bell rings.
“Oh, shut up! I get it, okay?! I get it! Goddamnit!”
After the whole ordeal with «Heartseed» and its supernatural phenomenon, not to mention the resulting melodrama with the Cultural Research Club, I’d forgotten what normal felt like. Of course they weren’t going to jump on board at the drop of a hat. Surely even the CRC senpai were smart enough to dial it down a notch in a classroom environment.
“S-Sorry it didn’t work out, Chihiro-kun,” Enjouji murmurs sadly. “I guess you’re gonna go bald now... I’ll always remember your cool hair, though...”
“First, don’t jump to conclusions! Second, having my head shaved is not the same thing as going bald, thank you very much! Third, you realize my hair’s going to grow back, right? Gah, I don’t know where to start with you!”
“S-Sorry...”
“Is this some kind of two-person sketch comedy or what?” Shimono asks, and everyone around us bursts out laughing. Apparently we’d drawn a fair bit of attention after that stunt we pulled.
Goddamnit... I was really trying up there, and I have nothing to show for it. This is so soul-crushing... No, I won’t give up. I need to figure something else out.
“Do you actually want to try to win the Sports Festival? Or is it just because Uwa-kun suggested it?” one of the girls, Higashino, asks Enjouji playfully, and it’s obvious she’s trying to ship the two of us together.
“I... I want to win, personally! It’s more fun, and rewarding, and... cool!”
That’s Enjouji for you, alright.
“There’s nothing cooler than boys doing sports, that’s for sure. Especially if they actually win. So you want to see Uwa-kun working up a sweat, is that it?”
“Huh? Why him? Oh, um... I think maybe you have the wrong idea... Personally, I’d just feel bad if he went bald this early...”
Again, will you stop jumping to that conclusion?!
“Huh? Wait, so you prefer guys who do sports?” Shimono asks Enjouji.
“Huh...? Oh... um... well... It’s better than the alternative...?”
“I see... So that’s what you’re into...”
Enjouji, I don’t think you understand what Shimono means by “prefer”... Gah, enough about that! I need to figure out how to boost morale around here! My hair is on the line!
Wait a minute...
I turn to Higashino and the other girls. “Hey, can I ask you something? How do you feel about guys who kick ass at sports stuff?”
“Huh? Is this a come-on? Are you trying to suggest you’re gonna show off for us?”
“No, no, nothing like that. This is purely a hypothetical question.”
I’m starting to think Higashino is actually pretty easy to talk to. She’s not intimidating like most girls.
“Well, I mean, I don’t think there’s a girl alive who wouldn’t find that effort pretty sexy.”
From there, the conversation begins to pick up:
“Guys are so dreamy when they’re all passionate about stuff... Well, as long as they’re not too passionate, anyway!”
“Yeah, like the baseball team. They’re pretty cool!”
“I know, right? I love to see them dripping with sweat...”
“Oh my god, you have a sweat fetish?”
“No way! Oh my god!”
“Why do you ask, anyway?” Higashino brings it back to me.
“Actually, I have a favor to ask... Could you bring this up with the rest of the girls, too?”
While there was a massive gulf in our class between the guys and girls, we all got along relatively well among our own gender. Thus, the topic of “sexy athletic guys” spread relatively quickly.
“Hey, Uwa! Just so you know, I’m gonna be doing my best during the Sports Festival.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Me three.”
“Me four!”
As it turned out, the boys of Class 1-B were easily bought.
“Awesome... The guys changed their tune faster than I thought...!”
I can’t claim to understand it, but hey, I’m not complaining. Now I’ve got the momentum I need to get this ball rolling. Next I just need this motivation to spread to the girls and I’ll be set!
“Hey, Uwa,” Tada calls. “That was actually pretty impressive, you know that? The guys are all talking about getting together after school to practice!”
“Yeah, I heard. They’re saying we should give up on the cheerleading competition and use all the time we have left polishing our sports skills. I’m really not that impressive, though.”
If anything, my horny classmates are way more competent at figuring out how to scrape by with a narrow victory.
“What made you suddenly want to win, anyhow?”
“Well, Inaba-senpai—” I begin, then stop short. Is that really the reason I want us to win? Because she told me to?
If she’d never foisted this task on me, what would I have done then?
—I want to win, personally! It’s more fun, and rewarding, and... cool!
“...I just felt like it.”
“Because it’s what Enjouji-san wants?”
“Look, I don’t know what you think is going on with me and Enjouji, but trust me, we’re just friends.”
“Riiight,” Tada laughs. “Alright, so you’ve won the guys, but now you’re trying to figure out how to reel in the girls, is that it?”
“Yep.”
“If you ask me, they just need one more little push. Right now, I guarantee they’re looking at the guys and thinking, should we really just phone it in and let them do all the work?”
“So how do we push them, exactly?”
“Just leave it to me,” Tada grins, shooting me a thumbs-up. Then he raises his voice. “Trust me, now that we’ve got the guys willing to practice, we’ve actually got a shot at this! If we lose, it’s totally the girls’ fault... Oops!” He claps a hand to his mouth in staged surprise, then whispers to me, “See, all we gotta do is turn this into a battle of the sexes! Heh heh heh!”
For what it’s worth, it does seem effective. The girls near us definitely heard that... aaaand now it’s spread across the room to the rest of them...
I guess when you have a girlfriend, you don’t have to worry about what other people think of you. In other words, the exact opposite of Shimono.
“Damn... Smart thinking, Tada. I gotta say, though, I’m surprised you’d want to put in the effort for the Sports Festival.”
“If anyone’s ‘surprising’ here, it’s you, my guy. You’re honestly something else. Thanks to you, people are actually starting to come around on the whole thing, even me! ‘Cuz I mean, like... it’s kinda dorky to care about stuff, y’know?”
“Wait... What do you mean, thanks to me?” I ask. Is it because I gave that passionate speech up there? Did my courage actually change them after all?
“Well, I mean... At this point, nothing could possibly be more embarrassing than that stunt you pulled.”
I slam my forehead into my desk, clutching my hair. I didn’t want to come across as a dork, but life never seems to go the way I want it to. Is this just... how I roll?
If so, I hate it.
□■□■□
I decide to go peek in on Class 2-B to check on Yui and Taichi.
“Ioriii!”
“Whoa, whoa! Your tackle-hugs are too strong, Yui!”
“What’s with you two? First you’re giving each other the cold shoulder, and now you’re all over each other!”
“I haven’t been getting my daily dose of Iori, so I need to make up for it, duh! And I’m not going to let anyone get in my way—not even you, Yukina!”
“Go ahead and load up, Yui! What’s the matter, Yukina? Jealous much?”
“N-No!”
“Hee hee... You don’t have to lie to yourself, you know...”
“Will you quit talking like you know me, Fujishima-san?! You’ve been freaking us all out lately!”
...Yui seems to be having fun with the other girls in her class. No problems there. Next, I look over at Taichi.
“Hey, so, I know we decided to put all the athletic guys front and center for the Sports Festival, but I was wondering, do you have any preference where we put you? Anything you’re especially good at?” Taichi asks a quiet, aloof guy.
“Huh? Oh... Well, I don’t really have a preference, per se...”
“Per se?”
“Well, in elementary and middle school they’d always have me ride on top for the cavalry battle... and I’ve never lost once.”
“What?! That’s incredible! You should totally do that! Maybe we still have time to switch you!”
“Maybe... You’re welcome to try...”
“Okay, I’ll ask Watase!”
“Hey hey hey! Turns out Ooshima-kun has a special talent none of us ever knew about! How d’ya like them apples?!” an excitable pigtailed girl cuts in. “And as for you, Yaegashi-kun, you’re actually pretty slick! What made you think to ask him that, anyway? Confess your sins to Sister Nakayama!”
“Well, you see, I got the idea when I was talking to one of the younger students in my club.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m not sure how to put this... It’s like... Sometimes there are people who really want to do something, but they don’t know how to take the initiative on their own, I guess? I’m pretty sure I used to be like that myself.”
“Oho, I see... You are a force to be reckoned with, young Yaegashi Taichi...”
“What persona is that supposed to be, anyway...?”
These people really are incredible... It’s going to be a while before I can get on their level.
□■□■□
The day of the festival was bright and sunny. The general consensus among the student body was that they would’ve appreciated a bit more cloud cover, but once the event had started, the excitement was enough to overwrite any complaints about the heat. According to some of the upperclassmen, this year’s Sports Festival was even more hyped up than previous years.
The cheerleading competition ended, there was a break for everyone to stop and have lunch, and then the Sports Festival entered the endgame.
“You’ve been kicking ass out there, Chihiro!” Inaba exclaimed, ruffling my hair.
With the final event ahead of us, victory was currently a toss-up between the Green Team (Inaba, Aoki, Enjouji, and myself) and the Red Team (Taichi, Iori, and Yui). At present, Red Team was in the lead... but if the Green Team managed to win the final event, the points earned would be enough to turn the tables and take first place.
“This is coming along swimmingly... I guess that makes sense, considering we’re involved. Now it’s all riding on the last event... and that includes the bet we made.”
“Yeah.”
“And your hair, of course!”
I was hoping she would have forgotten, but alas.
“I won’t be in the last event, so it’s up to you. Break a leg out there, Chihiro.”
The final event was Yamaboshi High School’s infamous co-ed cavalry battle.
A cavalry battle, or “chicken fight” as it’s colloquially known, is a game in which one student wearing a bandanna (the “knight”) rides on the interlocked hands, arms, and shoulders of three to four others (the “mount”) to form a “cavalry” unit. These units then attack each other to try to knock the knight off of their mount, or snatch the knight’s bandanna.
Here at Yamaboshi, each team consisted of both all-guy and all-girl units. Obviously, it wouldn’t be proper to allow rough physical contact between the guys and girls, so a special rule had been instated: Guys were only allowed to attack other guys, but girls could attack either gender.
Now, looking at it on paper, one might think this would give the girls an overwhelming advantage, but in actuality, not so much. The height difference between the sexes meant most girl-on-guy attacks didn’t have the reach to be effective. As such, although the battle itself was technically co-ed, each unit tended to stick to their same-sex opponents, with the girls occasionally going hog-wild and snatching a male unit’s bandanna to uproarious applause. (Additionally, some people would take advantage of the “no guy-on-girl attacks” rule and position their female units to block a male unit’s path, among other strategies.)
After the first two preliminary rounds, it had come down to the Red Team versus the Green Team. And unlike the previous two rounds, the finals match would not have a time limit. Instead, we would keep going until one team had lost all their units. (In the event that the teams ended up with only male units on one side and only female units on the other, the victory would go to the team with the most units intact.)
Excitement was at an all-time high. All eyes were glued to the field going into the final match. Sitting atop one of the mounts as the sun beat down on us, I could hear the cheers from the crowd:
“GO FOR IT!”
“DON’T LET THEM BEAT US!”
“YOU CAN WIN THIS!”
“LET ‘EM HAVE IT!”
Some of these cheers were more... aggressive than others—
“UWA, YOU LITTLE BASTARD, YOU BETTER WIN THIS!”
“DON’T FORGET, IF YOU LOSE, WE’RE SHAVING YOUR HEAD!”
—and some of them were straight-up threats, apparently.
Among them, I heard Enjouji’s voice: “YOU CAN DO IT, CHIHIRO-KUN!”
Honestly, I was surprised. I didn’t know she had the lung capacity to scream all the way across the athletic field.
“Ready... Go!”
And so the final match began.
“Alright, here we go, Uwa!” Tada shouted up from below me, positioned at the front of our unit... and so we began to move.
There were a lot of brawny guys on the Green Team, and so we’d decided to use that to our advantage to power through the preliminaries. By contrast, the Red Team didn’t possess that sort of overwhelming strength, but they had one seemingly quiet second-year guy who turned out to have a vicious competitive streak, as well as a certain feisty little tiger rampaging all around the field: Kiriyama Yui.
Yui was willing to attack not just the girls, but the guys, too. Her mount was a squad of all the tallest girls in her class, boosting her offensive capabilities to the max. Granted, even then, she’d normally never be able to reach any of the male knights... but she wasn’t playing by the normal rules. Instead of sitting on her mount, she was standing directly on their shoulders, an extremely risky feat few would dare attempt.
As much as the guys wanted to take her out of the competition, the rules prevented them from doing so—and none of the girls were a match for her. She had overcome the height difference handicap and was now effectively invincible.
“For now, let’s have the girls distract Yu—er, that long-haired knight—to buy us some time while we take out the guys!” I commanded.
We were a team of all-rounders versus a team with two star players, and we soon proved to be evenly matched; we remained neck-and-neck through a majority of the battle, kicking up dust amid cheers from the crowd. One by one, the cavalry fell, both enemy and ally alike.
Now my unit stood face to face with the Red Team’s other star player, the “quiet” second-year guy. He had stolen his fair share of bandannas, though the crowd hadn’t really noticed, as Yui had completely stolen the show.
“Hyah!” I made the first move, lunging forward in a feint. He took the bait, exactly as predicted.
Then I reached out—“Grah!”—and snatched his bandanna.
“You rock, Uwa!”
“I guess all those years of karate finally came in handy!”
Before I knew it, the only cavalry left standing were mine, a female unit on our team, and a female unit on the Red Team—Yui’s.
“Alright, folks, we’re coming down to the wire!” a commentator from the Broadcasting Club exclaimed over the loudspeaker. “The Red Team’s down to their ace in the hole, the star of the show, Kiriyama Yui-san! Where were you last year, Kiriyama-san?! As for the Green Team, they’ve got one male and one female unit left standing. Now, let’s have our sports analyst take a deeper look at the situation!”
“If Kiriyama-san goes down, that’s an instant win for the Green Team. But if she can take out the Green Team’s female cavalry, we’ll be down to opposite-gender units on either side, which means the game is over. Normally the win would go to the side with the most units, but since they’d both have one each, that means the game would end in a draw, with both teams receiving an equal share of the points. And if that happens, then the Red Team wins the Sports Festival. Now, if Kiriyama-san can take out the male unit, then the game will continue, but it seems likely the Red Team would win in that case. Regardless, with the Green Team’s male unit barred from attacking Kiriyama-san’s female unit, the game is essentially one-on-one at this stage, so I think we can all agree the Red Team’s going to—”
“Wowza, that’s some surprisingly professional commentary! Not to say any of it was wrong, but that last part will ruin the dramatic tension, so I gotta stop you there! In short, whichever side loses a unit first is essentially the loser! That’s all the information you need to know, folks! Now this is one hell of a climax!”
It was pretty obvious what the commentators were angling for. A hush fell over the crowd as their attention turned to the loudspeakers, and the battlefield grew quiet as the momentum came rolling to a halt.
Yui’s unit was positioned directly between mine and the other girls’. I made eye contact with my fellow Green Team knight, and together we closed in on Yui.
Frankly, there was no real point to this pincer attack; after all, the rules barred me from attacking, so it would all come down to the two female units duking it out. The commentators were right; it was undeniably obvious which of them would triumph.
But if I stopped to consider how the Green Team could possibly turn this around... well, there was one option I could take... Now that would be interesting...
To think there’s still a chance, even down here at rock bottom... This world truly is the ultimate game. Now all I have to do is take that phony victory and make it real.
Steadily the distance closed between us until we were within fighting range. Then Yui stood up, with her feet on her mount’s shoulders, carefully maintaining her balance. Standing at her full height, she was pretty damn tall, comparatively speaking—to the point that it really felt like she was cheating.
She flipped her long reddish-brown hair over her shoulder and surveyed the competition.
“Well, this is easy. Chihiro-kun can’t attack us, so like, all I have to do is take out the girls and we win.”
Time to initiate my plan.
“Really, Yui-san?” I asked.
“What?”
“Surely you’re not really going to take the easy road and split the points just so you can win, are you? Because that’s what would happen if you took out the girls’ unit first.”
Play to her competitive side.
“Wha...?! O-Of course not! We’re going to win, fair and square!”
“Yui! He’s obviously trying to bait you!”
And it’s working.
“Whatever! The guys can’t attack us anyway, so we may as well take them out first! Now go!”
“Alright, alright!”
Yui’s unit started to run at us at a speedy pace, and I realized her mount was composed of nothing but athletic girls.
“What do we do now, Uwa?! Run for it?!” asked one of the guys carrying me.
The other female unit was moving in accordance to Yui’s trajectory, but it was clear they weren’t fast enough to intercept her.
“Nope. We’re fine as-is,” I replied.
“What?! But... if we can’t attack her, then... if she catches us, it’s game over!”
Game over, indeed.
It was time to bring this little story to its conclusion—one that I had done my best to ignore for years. But now I was going to make it the real deal, and then I was going to end it for good. It was time for me to move on.
“I was actually in love with you, you know that?”
Her proud, confident gaze shifted to surprise as her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Then, all at once, her face flushed beet red.
“What? What? Ch-Chihiro-kun... are you serious?! Like, for real?! Hold on... I... Wha... Ch-Chihiro-kun...? N-No way... This can’t... What...?!”
She began to panic, and the rest of her unit struggled to keep her upright.
“Yui! Focus! Quit flailing around and try to keep your balance, would you?! Hey! Are you listening?! You’re going to—!”
But it was too late. In the panic, the other female knight managed to snatch Yui’s bandanna.