Vol 1 Chapter 13 (1/2)

“Club activities time!”

Aika declared in my room after school.

“Tell me lots about commoners!”

*THUB*—! She struck her own chest. On her upper arm—— she was wearing an armband saying ‘Commoner Club’.

“What’s that?”

“I made it myself!”

Now, aren’t you bursting with motivation…

“Of course you’ll get one too! It’s proof for being a member! Come, put it on—”

She cheerfully put the armband on me.

“There, done! ——Ah, for your information, only wear it during club activities, okay? Take it off outside. The commoner club’s a secret! If you spill the beans, it’ll mean big trouble!”

Still being stupidly cheerful, she sat down on the zabuton and extended both her hands with a s.h.i.+ning smile.

“Then, let us begin! What are we gonna do first?! What will it be?!”

“…I haven’t given it a thought yet…”

“Haa?!”

“Well, it was just kinda impossible to…”

“Hmph, ’cause you were being all dere-dere with Arisugawa Reiko, huh?!”

Well, I was…

“Let me think.”

Pacifying the suddenly ill-humored Aika, I sat down on the zabuton cross-legged.

What to do? Even if she asks me to tell her about commoners…

“Hey, commoner.”

“What?”

“What’s this?”

When I checked, she had taken out some manga volume from of the bookshelf.

“That? That’s manga.”

Aika blinked in puzzlement,

“Man-ga?”

Uwa, you serious——?

How careless, and here I had intended to be aware of the ojou-samas’ general ignorance.

“You don’t know about it?”

Aika’s eyes suddenly opened wide at me, while mine were oozing an ‘Eh, you don’t know about this kinda thing either?!’ aura.

“I-I do know about it! H-Hoo? So commoners call it ‘manga’?!”

She totally doesn’t know.

“So commoner manga’s are like this, huh?! Looks a bit different from ours!”

Rattling on with her fast-talking, she kept turning the pages.

“Well, there’s no color at all, just black ‘n white, huh?! The pages are really crowded with pictures, do you want to save on the paper, I wonder?! Ara, ara, you guys sure are pitiful! Our ojou-sama manga’s a step ahead, with proper coloring, big pictures, and the cat dies 1000000 times over!”

Aren’t you talking about a picture book?

“And in the end the cat is… it’s… uguuuu…!”

“You’re crying?!”

Ah, enough.

I took out a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped her tears. Then I calmly put a tissue on her nose.

“C’mon, sneeze.”

*sob*, *sob*.

Can’t be helped, huh…

“…! Wait, what are you doing?!”

A sparkling arch was pulled from Aika’s nose.

“Don’t move! The snort!”

……Why did I have to be slapped.

“Hey, commoner.”

While Aika was holding the manga…

“How is it?”

“How?”

“Do all commoners have manga? Do they read it?”

“Hmm—— Well, that’s right. The majority does.”

“Then I’ll read it too.”

Hmmm.

“It’s probably a good idea. You’ll probably come to understand how our campus life and normal lives work too…”

“The commoners’ lives?”

“Yeah.”

And so Aika’s got psyched and energetically turned the pages.

She wanted to learn commoner culture to become popular in her cla.s.s—— her determination was the real deal.

But… since the moment she had casted her eyes on the first page, Aika s.h.i.+vered.

Her brows wrinkled more and more.

“…What’s wrong?”

“I can’t read it.”

“Ha?”

“How do you read this?!”

She stuck it out.

“It’s just weird! I don’t get it at all!”

On the page she had opened was one those distinctive manga panels…

—Ah.

So she doesn’t know how to read the panel layout…?

“I see.”

“What’s with that att.i.tude?! It p.i.s.ses me off!”

“My bad, my bad. Um, with that, you see…”

I pointed at the panel.

“You start off by going from right to left. Then you go down, and then right to left again…okay? You get it now, right?”

“Yeah.”

Perhaps because she was off guard, she answered honestly like a child would.

“And when you come to a two pages spread like this, you…”

I gave her a brief rundown on everything and it seemed like Aika had come to understand how to read it.

Opening the book on her lap, Aika once again started reading.

Turning the pages somewhat awkwardly, she had kept saying various mumbling stuff like ‘Ahh’ and ‘This is a commoner’s school?’ in the beginning, but eventually—she became strangely quiet.

Immersion.

Without any real expression, she was reading with intense concentration.

The manga was called ‘A Magician’s Day[1]’, it was one of those so-called supernatural school battle mangas.

Revolving around the Holy Grail that was sealed in the academy, the students battled each other using their ‘Avatars’. You could also say it was a ‘stand battle[2]‘ type.

It was a manga that got a ‘I kinda like it’ out of someone like me, but perhaps because it was the first manga Aika had ever read in her life, she was reading it with incredible enthusiasm.

I didn’t really have anything else to do so I, reluctantly, headed to the shared community kitchen.

Although I call it a shared community kitchen, this place was a full-fledged, high-standard kitchen and the refrigerator was packed with food.

I made some black tea and as a snack, I cut thin slices of bread and made them into a sandwich with fruits I had sliced up and yogurt; I arranged it all together on a plate. After I was done, I returned to the club room and placed it besides Aika.

Ahh, such a pain in the a.s.s.

Still reading the manga enthusiastically, Aika picked up the sandwich.

I had sprinkled a little bit of salt on the fruit, it was my own personal touch. Salt always goes well together with bread, so it should’ve helped to bring out the flavor.

Not caring about any of that, Aika simply finished it up, *munch* *chomp* *chew*.

Well, not like I put that much effort into it in the first place. I calmly thought while refilling her tea.

…*thud*.

Aika was done reading the entire volume.

“How was it?”

“…It surprised me.”

“Oh?”

“Why haven’t you told me about it?”

“About what?”

Aika looked at me seriously.

“That commoner high school students… are all ‘ability users’.”

What… did she just…

Let’s try to explain this.

Tenkuubas.h.i.+ Aika is a bit of a stupid tsunpure-san.

So, to this tsunpure-san who actually believed this manga setting to be true without batting an eye, I, I…

“To tell you the truth, it’s right.”

“NO WAY?!”

Aika shouted out.

“No way! Commoners! No way…!”

While taken aback, she was trembling all over.

And then, she suddenly stood up.

“If that’s the case, then I’ll become a supernatural too!”

She said.

“If commoners can do it, then there should be no reason an ojou-sama like I shouldn’t be able to!”

“…”

“And with that I’ll show off my avatar to everyone in cla.s.s! This’ll stir up a big commotion and they’ll all be like ‘Aika-san is surely amazing!’. I’ll be popular! Girl A: ‘Compared to our ability user, Aika-san, it’s obvious that chairwoman Reiko-sama is absolutely inferior.’ Me: ‘My, my, everyone, it’s not nice to say things like that, okay?’ Girl B: ‘No, from now on Aika-san shall be the center of our cla.s.s!’ Newly elected chairwoman (me): ‘Oh my, that someone like me… But if that’s what you all wish for, then…’—Serves you right, Arisugawa Reiko! Hahaha!”

She laughed loudly, spreading both her arms apart and striked a pose like Atlas holding up the world.

“Ah, don’t worry, commoner! Even if I do become a popular person, I’ll still talk to you! What an honor, right?! Ufufu!”

“——Well, we should get started with your special training, shouldn’t we?”

“That’s right! What do I do?!”

“To awaken the ‘avatar’ inside you, you need to make a contract.”

“I see. It said that in the manga.”