Vol 2 Chapter 2 (2/2)

“Please don’t. In the first place, what good does it do us to make it stand out at night?”

A tall female student was giving various directions to a boy hanging up the posters.

The female student was a third year with an att.i.tude just like that of a supervisor.

Homura recalled seeing her face often at the school’s morning a.s.sembly as well. If she remembered right, she was…

“Here.”

Suddenly, that female uppercla.s.sman turned around and handed Homura a rolled-up poster without batting an eyelash.

“You’re Hinooka Homura-san from Cla.s.s 1-A, right?”

“Yes. Ah, umm, how did you know my name—?”

“That’s my natural responsibility as the student council president, after all.”

The student council president puffed up with pride as she stood at attention.

“Ah, just so you know, she’s lying. She just happened to remember it.”

The male second year student nearby whispered that to her, resulting in the student council president clapping him over the head with a rolled-up poster.

“You’re President Rokujizou, right?”

“YES! Seiran High’s student council president, Rokujizou Takara. Nice to meet you!”

“Y-Yes. Nice to meet you too.”

Homura received quite a powerful handshake.

There were a lot of spirited women like this at this school. Maybe something about the place attracted them here?

“How about it, Hinooka-san? I personally recommend this event here!”

The student council president pointed at the poster she had given Homura.

Doing as told, Homura smoothly rolled open the poster, and on it appeared an event t.i.tle along with the ill.u.s.tration of a slovenly-dressed woman who looked like a geisha or a dancing girl.

“[Tea Ceremony Club and Swimming Club Joint Project, Yamato Nades.h.i.+ko4 Contest]…”

In other words, this was that kind of thing.

“Doing a beauty pageant in this day and age is practically s.e.xual hara.s.sment…”

The second year boy grumbled, receiving another strike to the head in the process.

If Homura remembered right, this male uppercla.s.sman who gave off the feeling of being dominated was the student council’s accountant.

“Hey now, there’s no other event that’s as popular as this. We don’t do it every year as an annual custom just for show, after all.”

“I’m amazed you got the school to give permission for it,” Homura said, impressed, even as she wore a strained smile.

“It’s because it’s listed as a swim meet on paper.”

The student council president replied nonchalantly.

“Huh… eh?”

Homura reflexively looked at the poster again.

When she carefully looked over the main points of the event, there were strange rules included like competing over points divided between being judged artistically for tea making and being judged for your technique in a fifty meter free-style swim.

“Our school’s prided indoor pool plays a big part in the event.”

“The highlight is the girls taking off their kimono and changing into swimsuits at the pool.”

“Uwaa…”

That was pus.h.i.+ng the limit even for showmans.h.i.+p.

“But, though it seems like a popular event, it’s a high hurdle for first year students, so I don’t think many girls will willingly partic.i.p.ate…” Homura pointed out.

“Fufufu, the winner gets a gift certificate for books. And the extra prize… is the right to double the budget of the club the winner is part of!”

“Ah, I see…”

In other words, all the clubs were sending out their best members to partic.i.p.ate.

The student council was truly terrifying.

“Similarly, I was the winner the year before last in my first year.”

Rokujizou smugly pointed at herself with both her thumbs.

“Wow, that’s amazing.”

Homura was honestly impressed.

“That’s right, praise me, praise me more.”

“…It was really terrible. The student council basically took the top rank in all categories, after all. That’s why they substantially lowered the scoring ratio for technique since last year.”

“Don’t. Say. Anything. Unnecessary!”

The accountant was struck so hard that the poster harshly bent after hitting him.

The fact that he properly continued working even while being hit demonstrated how used to this he actually was.

The student council president turned to look at Homura with sparkling eyes.

“So, how about it? You look like you’d really look good in a kimono, Hinooka-san, and I think you could have good prospects for winning.”

“Umm, thanks for the offer, but… I don’t know anything about tea making, and swimming isn’t my forte… Moreover, I haven’t read many books either.”

“It’s fine. That kind of thing is just playing around, after all. In the end, what’s important is the person’s interior substance. What’s inside will show up on the outside. Someone with a pretty and pure appearance will have their heart grow and mature in an upright manner as well. Besides that, you just need to take off your kimono as erotically as possible when you change out of it, right?”

Even if Rokujizou said “Right?”, Homura was troubled over how to respond to that.

“And if there are no major contenders, senpai’s football pool event will also fall through… is what she’s leaving unsaid.”

“Yamas.h.i.+na, you should shut up soon if you know what’s good for you.”

“Keep that a secret,” the president said while putting a finger to her lips and winking at Homura.

It appeared that they were raising money by sending in a.s.sa.s.sins backed by the student council this year as well.

The student council truly was terrifying.

The student council president suddenly stopped moving after she hung up another poster.

“That reminds me, what club are you in, Hinooka-san?”

“I’m… No, I’m in the Going-Home Club5.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why not join the student council. Will you join? You’ll join, right!? Come on, join us!!”

“Hey, President? The student council members for this year have already been decided, you know?” Yamas.h.i.+na interjected.

True, the election of student council members had ended calmly just a few days again with a lack of rival candidates.

“The post of accountant became vacant just now.”

“Hey.”

The student council president held out her open palms apologetically while laughing.

The president took the poster back from Homura and moved to pin it to the wall herself.

Homura also helped by holding down the ends for her.

Having guessed from the atmosphere that her invitation had been declined, the president nodded regretfully.

“I see, how unfortunate… Well, leaving that aside, feel free to come and play at the student council whenever you like. I think it would be good for you to get used to the atmosphere of the student council in preparation for when the accountant dies in an unforeseen accident.”

“T-Thanks. I appreciate the offer.”

The accountant in question, Yamas.h.i.+na-senpai, was in the middle of running errands to the preparations room to get more decorations.

While pus.h.i.+ng down and straightening out the last poster that had been bent after harshly hitting Yamas.h.i.+na earlier, Homura asked the president a question.

“Umm, President? Can I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“Will the Exploration Club be hosting an event in the s.h.i.+nryoku Festival?”

“Ah, the Exploration Club, huh?”

The president murmured while pondering where to place the pushpin on the poster.

After giving up on hanging it up properly, she arranged it in a way that made it look like some crumpled piece of art instead. It was quite a bother to the club that had made the posters.

“Unfortunately, they didn’t hand in a proposal this year. Though I was hoping they would.”

“Like I thought, it’s difficult when they only have two members, right?”

“Hmm? They have three members, you know?”

“Eh? Doesn’t the Exploration Club only have two—”

“……”

As silence descended between them for a while, Rokujizou turned to face Homura.

There seemed to be some stiffness in her expression.

“Who did you hear that from?”

“Umm… Touya-kun, from the Exploration Club.”

“That little brat…”

Rokujizou glared at the pin in her hand with hateful eyes.

Then, she quickly relaxed her expression and looked back at Homura.

“Hinooka-san, could it be that you—”

Rokujizou suddenly cut off her words in the midst of talking.

Her gaze was directed at something behind Homura.

When Homura reflexively turned around, she saw a slender silhouette wearing jeans standing there at the end of the hallway.

For a while, Rokujizou and that person gazed at each other sharply as if competing with each other.

But in the end, the other person left soon after, and the student council president also merely shrugged and spoke to Homura.

“Hmm, never mind. Forget about it. It was a misunderstanding on my part.”

“Hah.”

Homura didn’t press her further.

The president then expressed her grat.i.tude for the help with the posters as she departed.

“Thanks, Hinooka-san. If there are any events you’re interested in, please make sure to partic.i.p.ate, okay? The whole point of a festival is to get pulled along by the flow of events! Get into the thick of things!”

“I-I’ll consider it.”

“Please consider it positively!”

On her way home from school that day.

As she was riding the commute train.

Homura’s fingers froze as she was about to send a text to a friend attending another school.

She suddenly felt sick of the message, reading ‘I really wasn’t able to make a good leading joke’, which could only be taken as an idle complaint, or rather simple discontent grumbling towards the other person.

In the end, she deleted the text and leaned against the handrail to gaze out the train window. Scenery that she had gotten tired of looking at pa.s.sed by outside.

Just as it was about to turn to evening.

She arrived at the station, and just as she was leaving the ticket gate, she once again saw that woman in the summer sweater.

Homura went to buy a coffee milk carton at the vending machine next to the station kiosk, and as she inserted the straw into it, she gazed at the woman for a while.

As always, she was calling out humbly and trying to hand out flyers, but only one person out of thirty at most took one.

Homura had started seeing her at this station around three years ago.

She had noticed the woman while commuting to school by train, but the woman always appeared there once or twice a week (the second time when it was a holiday), with the exact day of the week she appeared differing slightly as time went on.

A summer sweater with pieces of lint standing out on it. Short hair. When Homura had first seen her, she had much longer and beautiful hair. It used to be tied up behind her head, until it eventually became short as it was now. Homura recalled how she had thought it was a waste when she saw the change.

“…She wears very little makeup.”

While sipping on the coffee milk with her back against the station wall, Homura absentmindedly gazed at the woman.

The woman wore a minimal amount of makeup, and she never seemed to wear it well either.

She should still be quite young, probably in her late twenties, but her fingers and eyes clearly indicated inerasable exhaustion.

“How long will she continue like that…?”

Homura had thought, ‘Ah, how sad’, when she first saw the woman.

She also feared what she should do if that happened to someone close to her.

But at some point, she had become completely tired of looking at the woman, and now she was buried in the background scenery of the station without evoking any emotion in Homura. Sometimes, there was a slight change and the woman caught her attention, making part of her feeling depressed at the sight.

On the station bulletin board, there was the same flyer that the woman was handing out. The only difference was that the tape attaching it to the board had aged to the point of fading in color.

A flyer was blown near Homura’s feet by the wind. Someone had probably dropped it there after receiving it.

Homura squatted down and picked it up.

I’m searching for this child.

If you held a piece of hope that you couldn’t throw away, how were you supposed to give up on it?

The picture of a very young baby girl stared back at Homura blankly.

The flyer stated that she went missing when she was one year and one month old.

“Then she would already be four years old by now…”

The clothes she wore when she went missing—such information was completely useless at this point.

The last place where she was seen was the restaurant floor within a department store right near this station.

Even if it said that, that department store had already been closed and the entire block of restaurants there was gone, replaced with supermarkets and diners that were open all hours of the day.

“By now, she would have gone to kindergarten and went on her first traditional shrine visit6…”

She would have been pampered by her grandpa and grandma in the countryside and eaten a birthday cake.

What was the person closest to both this baby and this woman doing right now? Why wasn’t he here? He should definitely exist, this baby’s father—

All the circ.u.mstances surrounding it had absoluuuuuutely noooothing to do with Homura anyway.

Even today, there were plenty of people in the world who were unfortunate, who lost their lives in unreasonable accidents and circ.u.mstances and lost their irreplaceable family. There were plenty of others who were suffering the consequences of their own actions as well.

There were people more unfortunate than this woman who had lost her child. If you were to compare people’s happiness, that is.

It was often said, ‘What are you going to do even if you care?’

Don’t pop songs also say it?

How can you make other people happy if you don’t become happy yourself?

Even manga shouted it.

Things will change. Memories won’t disappear. So forget about it.

“It’s impossible. Someone—”

Someone? Who?

That woman was always standing in the middle of the crowd of people pa.s.sing by and lowering her head like a mechanical doll.

Please. Please. Please.

“Umm.”

Before she knew it, Homura was standing in front of the woman, while holding the flyer she had picked up in one hand and her coffee milk carton in the other.

“…?”

Though she was confused for an instant, the woman soon gave a gentle smile.

“h.e.l.lo again. On your way home, are you?”

The woman looked radiantly at Homura’s uniform.

This might be the first time Homura had seen her smile. And no matter how sad and lonely it looked, Homura couldn’t help but feel it was worth calling out to her because of it.

“So you’re a high school student now.”

“Ah, yes. Umm, I…”

Homura quickly ran over to the station wall to put down her bag there and then came back.

“Umm, may I help?”

Homura held out her hands towards the bundle of flyers.

“Thank you. But it’s all right.”

‘It’s all right.’ Those words resounded heavily in Homura’s chest.

Take, for example, a heavyweight blow.

Her irresponsible sympathy on a whim had caused her to be lightly blown away outside of the ring.

Homura froze as her offered hands lost an outlet.

The commuters pa.s.sing by glanced at Homura and then immediately blended back into the station rotary in the evening.

“No, umm, I—”

She didn’t mind being stared at. Just, the woman’s exhausted gaze—

And yet, despite the exhaustion, those eyes of a mother who hadn’t lost a firm will at her deepest depths made Homura feel tense and strained.

Words of justice repeated in manga and TV dramas went through her brain. But…

“E-Even if I got home now, I’d be bored with nothing to do.”

—What came out of her mouth were those horrible words.

“…I-Is it no good?”

“………”

There was a brief instant of silence.

And then, the woman let a chuckle.

“Then can I rely on you for a little while?”

“Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

Homura accepted half of the bundle of flyers. It had the faint smell of an ink jet printer.

She copied the woman’s manner of doing things, having long gotten used to seeing her at work, and held out flyers while calling out to students her age.

Nothing particularly changed. Even the people who took it after seeing the odd sight of Homura there as well immediately saw it was a familiar flyer and lost interest as they carelessly shoved it into their pockets.

In the end, the peak of the home commute rush ended without them being able to hand out many flyers, just as expected.

After taking a rest, the woman gave a deep bow to Homura.

“If possible, can I ask your name?”

“Yes, I’m—”

Homura gave out her name, and the woman handed out her business card in return.

It held a contact address that was no different from what was printed on the flyer, but Homura treated it preciously as she put it in her commuter pa.s.s case. It was the first business card she had ever received in her life.

Chapter 2 END

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) s.h.i.+nryoku: j.a.panese for “fresh green leaves/verdure”.

(2) To better explain, hiragana is the simpler written system of the j.a.panese language that uses purely phonetic characters. Since the words in question use the more difficult and varied concept-based kanji characters, Homura has trouble reading them and likely does not fully understand the proper meaning and p.r.o.nunciation.

(3) Here, Tsuyu repeats the word twice, once in the original j.a.panese and a second time in English to explain the letters behind the acronym. Since this is redundant in English, I only had her say it once here.

(4) Yamato Nades.h.i.+ko: a woman who displays the feminine virtues of old j.a.pan.

(5) Going-Home Club: the j.a.panese term for those who aren’t in any clubs and simply go home after school.

(6) This refers to a traditional rite of pa.s.sage and festival day in j.a.pan for three-year-old and seven-year-old girls and three-year old and five-year-old boys, held annually on November 15.

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