All of You—Offer the Princess Victory with Everything You Have
“…But Kayano. The cheer squad—are you really all right with that?”
“Well. She accepted, so she must have thought she could handle it.”
Only then did I understand what Tateyama had meant. She and Hinoshita-senpai were close, which meant Tateyama had already known the role I’d been given on the cheer squad. Knowing my personality, of course she had worried.
No. The chance to notice had been there from the very beginning.
What had Hinoshita-senpai said the moment she met me?
“I heard a lot from Haru. Class 1-A… no, it’s Class 2-A now. The Ice Princess of Class 2-A.”
Tateyama had apologized in earnest once she learned what I was actually like. She would never still be going around spreading a nickname like that. Which meant Hinoshita-senpai’s image of me had stopped cold sometime last year.
…No. Wait. Hold on.
Fine—I could accept that she thought of me as the Ice Princess. But what did that have to do with this production? If anything, seeing me that way ought to have made a plan like this impossible. That was what I thought.
“My rule is to try a thing first and decide afterward whether it works. That’s my creed. When you accepted on the spot, though, I figured I’d gotten lucky.”
Hinoshita-senpai said it with a sheepish laugh.
I never thought you’d actually come find me. So it was more of a just-pass-it-on-to-Miyauchi kind of thing.
Now that I thought about it, she had said that, too….
I judged that slipping away without a word was impossible, and so I laid every last fact out for Hinoshita-senpai.
That the Ice Princess nickname had been born entirely of a misunderstanding, from the simple fact that I never talked. That I was, in truth, painfully introverted. That I had joined the cheer squad honestly believing I could stand in the back and do nothing at all.
I hid none of it. I told her everything.
Strictly speaking, I still wouldn’t be doing anything in the routine. Sitting perfectly still was the whole of my part. The real problem was the costume, and the seat I was meant to occupy: a needlessly extravagant dress, and a throne.
They wanted me to wear that dress and sit on a throne in front of the entire student body and every parent who had come? And Mom was here today, of all days? Wouldn’t it be easier to just die? This would be impossible for anyone. It didn’t have to be me.
“This is a problem….”
Once I had confessed all of it, that was the answer that came back from senpai.
“Th-there’s no way to make it work… somehow…?”
“Mmm. We built the choreography around you sitting on that throne. Take the center out and the whole thing looks wrong. Of course it’s our fault—we never properly learned who you were, and we never properly explained the concept….”
“Th-then couldn’t you, s-senpai, or one of the others… s-sit here instead…?”
“If one of us drops out, the balance of the dance falls apart. Rewriting the choreography in the time we have left is obviously impossible. And we can’t just drop you into the empty spot, either….”
“Ugh….”
I knew it. Dance training or not, there was no world in which I memorized an entirely different routine in under thirty minutes. And I hadn’t wanted to sit on this throne in the first place, because I didn’t want to be seen. The moment I started actually cheerleading, it would be the same disaster in a different costume.
“Ah…! Th-then what if someone who isn’t on the cheer squad sat there…?”
“That would be nice, if anyone would. More than that, though, the throne and the dress were both made to match your image….”
Fair enough. Almost no one could sit in a spot that burdensome as if it were nothing.
I was still scrambling for some way out of it when Hinoshita-senpai let out a short laugh.
“Well. Nothing for it. We’ll go on with the throne empty.”
“…What?”
“It might look a little shabby, but not so bad we can’t show our faces. We’ll ad-lib our way through. It’ll be fine.”
“B-but that’s….”
“It’s all right, it’s all right. Like I said, we’re the ones who caused this. You don’t need to feel burdened. You don’t need to feel guilty. Not even a little.”
That was the end of it. She said she wanted a final check, gathered the squad, and started setting the formation.
“Kayano. Leave the dress in the science room on your way.”
“Ah, um, th… yes….”
I took her at her word and started for the science room.
“Haa….”
Once I got there, I looked at the gym clothes I had left behind and let out a quiet sigh. I had thought whoever ended up on that throne was truly to be pitied. I had never imagined it would be me. Still, it had ended without incident. That was a relief… wasn’t it?
I happened to glance out the window, and there was Hinoshita-senpai, moving at a brisk clip. It was exactly the sort of sudden disaster that ought to have annoyed anyone, and yet senpai—no, the entire cheer squad—only laughed, awkward and unbothered. That could only mean they were the kind of people who genuinely enjoyed a moment like this. Exactly the sort who would volunteer for something as potentially mortifying as a cheer squad.
…People I could never become.
That didn’t mean I envied them, or resented them. People live in different ways. They couldn’t live as I did, and I couldn’t live as they did. That was only natural.
I could never be the sort of fool who sincerely believed in a nickname like Ice Princess, who meant to put a person like that out in front, and who kept walking forward even after the plan came apart.
Never. I could not.
“Huu… haaah….”
I am an idiot.
A hopeless, irredeemable, stupid idiot.
“Everyone ready?! We’ve been helped this much—I refuse to believe a single one of us is backing down!”
“YEAHHHHH!”
“Let’s go! For whom?!”
“For our Ice Princess!”
“Whose victory is ours?!”
“Our Ice Princess’s!”
“Red Team!”
“We win!”
“Red Team!”
“Fight!”
Coming up next: a performance by the Red Team cheer squad!
“All right—here we go!”
With that, Hinoshita-senpai, standing at the very front, started the music on her phone.
“WOOOOOOOOOOH!!!”
The squad roared and heaved up the platform that held me and the throne.
“Eep—.”
At first I had been sure it would be impossible to carry the thing with me still on it. Fortunately the throne was hollow under all that glitter, and there was no problem at all. The part I was actually sitting on was just an ordinary chair. S-still, when your view of the world shoots upward all at once, being frightened is hardly something you can help.
“Kayano. It might be embarrassing, but since it’s come to this, I hope you’ll enjoy it with everything you’ve got.”
“A-ah… yes….”
I nodded, quietly crossed my legs, and rested my chin on my right hand. The pose itself didn’t feel awkward. The choreography for Quean, which I had performed at my recent 3D debut stream, had included something just like it. O-of course, the nerves I felt now had to be several thousand times worse than then?! And whether I would actually look as cold as senpai wanted—that worried me, too.
“All right, let’s move!”
At Hinoshita-senpai’s cue, the whole squad moved as one. Out of the backyard, where there had been no one but us, and onto the field where the entire school and every parent had gathered.
“What is that?!”
Naturally, the reactions were all over the place. Some people burst out laughing. Others tipped their heads, trying to work out what they were looking at. If I had to say, though, more of them were sneering that we were doing something ridiculous.
Even so, not one member of the Red Team cheer squad faltered. They must have had faith in the work they had put in. Once they reached the center of the field—their stage—they set the platform down with crisp precision no matter who was laughing, shifted a little to the side, and locked into formation with perfect seriousness.
I-I was, of course, also doing my very best not to let the pose collapse.
“Whose will the victory we take today be?!”
Hinoshita-senpai’s voice rang out.
“It belongs to our Ice Princess!”
The whole squad answered, booming.
“Who is this sports day for?!”
She called out again, just as loud.
“All of it is for our Ice Princess!”
And again they answered, just as loud.
“WOOOOOOOH!”
And with that, the Red Team cheer squad’s routine finally began.
It was, without question, far more overwhelming than the White Team’s routine—overwhelming enough to shut the mouths of even the people who had laughed at the start. A perfect group dance, without a single break in the formation.
But what seized the crowd more than any of it was the gaze of the beautiful Ice Princess seated at the center. Some would later say her eyes had been cold enough to feel like absolute zero, and that they had frozen every spectator where they stood.
After that came the rest of the sports day. The tug-of-war, the ball toss, and even the relay—the flower of a sports day. Every victory belonged to the Red Team. And every one of them was overwhelming.
From that day on, Kayano Mina of Class 2-A at Shiodome Private High School began to be called the Ice Princess….
“…Th-that’s what happened.”
Even now, sitting on that throne was the worst mistake of my life. I very nearly learned that a person can die of embarrassment.
“Didn’t you say your mother was there, too?”
“…Yes. Sh-she filmed the whole thing.”
After the sports day, when she showed me the video and told me she had seen something wonderful, I nearly collapsed on the spot. I begged her to please delete it. Mom didn’t listen at all. She sent the video to my sister instead, and made everything worse.
…Truly, the worst sports day of my life.
“…Hold on. I’m going to get in touch with your mother.”
“…Huh?”
“I want to see it too.”
“W-wait a second, Akabane?!”