Chapter 104 — [Faction Review] This Time, Too, the Review Is Truly Strict!
The spring break I had wanted never to end had, at last, come to an end.
Which meant that from today on, I was a high school second-year.
Our school didn't reshuffle homerooms when the year turned, so there was no need to adapt all over again. Said the other way, though, it meant I had to carry last year's relationships forward exactly as they were.
Wasn't that too much?
Fail to make friends properly in your first year, and the system wouldn't let you make any until third year. A setup with not a shred of mercy for loners and outcasts deserved to be smashed to pieces. Change my class this instant and let me start human relationships from zero. Let those smug popular kids learn how it feels to have no friends.
I had poured all of that out to Koga yesterday.
A shocking reply came back.
I had grown so unmistakably that anyone could see it, and she looked straight past even that and said something so cruel. Unable to accept it, I protested to Koga with everything I had.
What came back was Koga, calm to a brutal degree.
She was telling me to wedge myself into relationships that had already formed and force my schedule onto them. No matter how much I had grown, that was absolutely impossible.
Th-that was the whole point. I couldn't do something like that, which was why I'd argued that the classes needed to change.... Building relationships with classmates I was seeing for the first time would surely be possible for the me of now.
...Probably.
But Koga demolished even that thought so cleanly that, in the end, all I could do was slam the keyboard in fury. Of course, if the keyboard actually broke, Mom would scold me, so it ended at tapping the space bar. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Still, wasn't this strange?
The mama role was supposed to stay gentle and kind no matter what, and affirm everything about her child. Failing that, she might say it wouldn't do, only to sigh at the very end—nothing else for it~—and grant every request anyway. Koga was unmistakably my mama, and yet sometimes, somehow, she turned frighteningly cold....
I would have to tell her to reflect on it later. If I warned her that at this rate I would have no choice but to remove her from the mama position, she would surely repent and treat me more kindly.
"Haaahm...."
Cherry blossoms drifted, fleeting, along the road to school. A breeze came through now and then, pleasantly cool, and the simple fact that I was walking a road like this alone felt, somehow, like a small joy.
"Kayano. It's been a while."
I had been sitting there fiddling with my phone when Miyauchi, whom I hadn't seen in ages, came up to me and offered a smile with her greeting.
"Ah, uh.... I-it's been a while, Miyauchi...."
"Hehe. What's this? You're actually awake today?"
"Th-that's... I just... couldn't sleep...."
In the first place, I usually only pretended to be asleep. I almost never actually dozed off. Not that I could say so out loud.
"Starting today, we're second-years too. Doesn't it feel exciting, hearing that we're senpai now? I keep wondering what kind of kouhai we'll get."
"Uh.... Y-yeah. I guess."
The truth was, I wasn't excited at all. I hadn't had friends even through middle school, so of course I'd never had anything to do with underclassmen. But being friendless and being oblivious were different things. I was a loner with a working sense for the room, and I knew that a mood-killing answer here would freeze the air solid.
"Watching the seniors graduate made me a little sad.... But now we have to take on the senpai role ourselves, so we'll have to do our best."
"R-right."
Naturally, I didn't know any of those seniors either. At the third-years' graduation I had honestly slept through it, and gone straight home the moment it ended. Even so, I wasn't about to kill the mood this time either. I was a sharp-eyed loner, and I had grown an incredible amount. If Koga had seen this, she would have been moved, and praised me for how amazing I was.
"Oh, and Tateyama was saying we should have a get-together after class today, since it's been a while. Will you be going, Kayano?"
"...I'll probably go straight home."
"Ah.... That's a shame."
Miyauchi looked genuinely disappointed, her face falling. The guilt that hit me at the sight was no joke, so I immediately waved my hands and scrambled for an excuse.
"Th-that's... it's not that I don't want to get together! I just... have plans...!"
"Ah. If you have plans, then it can't be helped."
Saying I had plans wasn't a lie. I really did have to head straight back today, because of a stream.
That aside, didn't Tateyama like gatherings a little too much? No matter how I thought about it, it had absolutely not been "a while." Friends all getting together at school was about a once-a-year thing, wasn't it? Meet any more than that and everyone would drop dead of exhaustion, right...?
"Hm? Kayano's actually up?"
"Ah, Ookusa. It's been a while."
"Ah, um. L-long time no see, Miyauchi."
After that, the vice president, Ookusa, came in and sat down beside Miyauchi.
"E-excuse me, I'm sorry, a m-message just came in, so I'll just—!"
And I fled, just like that, to my sanctuary: the Old Science Room.
I really did think that if the year changed, the class ought to change with it....
The place I headed after class today was not home.
This was only the second time I had seen it, but the enormous gate still sent a wash of tension down my back just by existing.
"Hoo...."
I steadied my breath and pressed the doorbell. A clear chime rang out. Ding-dong.
"Yes, this is the Shirasaki residence."
"Ah, th-this is Kayano. I, um, said I'd be coming today...."
"Ah, I'll come out to meet you right away. Please wait just a moment."
"Haa...."
I waited, wound tight, and the gate opened.
"It has been some time."
"Ah, ahh.... H-hello...."
It was the huge man with the long scar by one eye, the same one who had come out to receive me last time. I was fairly sure Kurokami-senpai had called him Uncle Yuuto....
"I apologize. For it to be me coming out to greet you again...."
"N-no. It's really fine...."
His face was stern, and the scar was frightening, but I knew that he was, in truth, a wonderful man—my equal, or even more than that.
"Young miss. Your friend has arrived."
"Ah, thank you, Uncle Yuuto."
"This is simply my job."
"You may go in."
"Ah, th-thank you."
"Then I will take my leave...."
"S-Senpai. M-may I come in...?"
"Yes. Please, come in."
We finished a conversation that felt very much like the one I had heard last time, and I slowly slid the door open and stepped into the room.
Unlike last time, when she had worn a kimono of black shot through with pink, Senpai was in a vivid crimson kimono today. I had assumed she'd only put one on ahead of time for the New Year shrine visit, but did she actually go on wearing kimono like this at home?
Well. In a household this overwhelming, it might not be strange at all....
"It's been a while, Izumi."
"Ah, hello, Kurokami-senpai."
"Not Shiro-nee?"
"...Eh? I-I thought that was only for when we're outside...."
"I simply want you to call me that, Izumi. Just this once. Please."
"...Shiro-nee."
"Hehehe...."
Koga was like that, Utsumi was like that, Aki was like that, and now Kurokami-senpai too. For reasons I couldn't fathom, everyone around me seemed to dream of being called onee-san. It wasn't that I failed to understand, but it was embarrassing, somehow. At least Akabane had never said anything of the sort.... Though who knew. The next time I saw her, she might suddenly ask me to call her onee-san too.
"Shall we start getting ready?"
"Ah, yes...."
"Then, before that—would you like to try on a kimono again this time...?"
I meant to refuse, to say I was fine.
"Hehe...."
But I couldn't get a refusal out in front of a senpai smiling like that, and all I could do was nod.
"Speaking of which, Izumi, what on earth have you been eating, to stay this short and still have a chest that big?"
"Hyuu—?! W-wait a second, Senpai?!"
Why were there so many girls around me who couldn't keep their hands to themselves?!
Kurokami-senpai's Faction Review.
It was a segment that decided whether Kurokami-senpai could acknowledge someone as one of her own.
A villainess, so the bit went, needed faction allies around her who could lift her up. And yet the review itself was absurdly difficult, and not a single person had passed it so far. Even Natsu-chan of the original unit, Black Star, had failed twice.
In any case, the Faction Review was, quite literally, an exam. Solve the questions Kurokami-senpai had chosen herself and score seventy-five or higher, and you passed. The difficulty was hellish enough that the highest mark on record was Natsu-chan's sixty-two.
...And the lowest was Aki's twelve.
Could I actually pass?
Well, I had come already assuming I would fail, so it didn't particularly matter.
"Well then, let's begin. You're ready, aren't you, Izumi?"
"Ah, yes...!"
"Question one! When is my birthday?"
...Huh?
"January... the fifteenth...."
"Correct! Then, question two! What is my height?"
"O-one hundred sixty-seven centimeters...?"
"Correct again. Amazing!"
Protests like that flooded the chat, but Senpai ignored them as if they were nothing at all.
"Question three! When did I debut?"
And the Faction Review went on.