Stop Thinking That If You Can Do It, Anyone Else Can Too!!!
Right after the sports festival ended, I acquired a strange new nickname.
…More precisely, the nickname I had already heard from Tateyama and Hinoshita-senpai—Ice Princess—had spread to the entire school.
The reason, needless to say, was that little performance at the sports festival. During breaks, people whose faces I didn't even know started calling me over, and of course I turned every last one of them down. The moment I did, they began leaving letters and gifts in my shoe locker instead.
"You okay, Kayatchi?"
"Um… this is a huge problem."
Nibbling a rather good cookie, I slowly started in on the letter. The contents were, well, about the same as everything that had come so far: you looked so cool at the sports festival, I want to get closer to you, I admire you—praise of every kind, packed in tight.
I won't deny that my looks are ultra-S-rank, number-one beautiful girl in the universe. Even so, this kind of misunderstanding was seriously a problem.
"If it's that much of a problem, wouldn't it be better to just tell everyone the truth?"
Tateyama—our class's reigning social queen, and as of today the girl in the seat beside me—scratched her head as she asked. I quietly shook mine. Because that would be a problem in its own way.
I know how malice works. It sprouts from the most pointless, trivial things. The moment it got out that I was actually a shut-in loser with a communication disorder, the whole school would start watching me out of the corner of their eyes.
No one made a fuss when our classmates and the cheer squad found out, you say? Anyone who talks like that is an idiot.
The misunderstanding in our class was exactly that—something they had dreamed up all on their own. Not one degree of the blame was mine, so there had never been any reason for talk to start. The cheer squad was the same. They had heard the wrong story and never properly passed along the information they should have given me. As Hinoshita-senpai said, I was not the one who had caused the problem.
But who had handed the whole school the fantasy they were under now?
Me. The one who had sat on that throne with her chin in her hand, legs crossed, looking out at everyone.
And now I was supposed to announce that it had all been an act? That I was actually a shut-in loser with a communication disorder who could barely hold a conversation? Say that, after the nickname Ice Princess had already spread?
When a fantasy that forms one-sidedly shatters just as one-sidedly, it is not rare for people to resent you for it. I learned that on the internet.
So telling the whole truth was absolutely not a good decision. No—how was I even supposed to tell everyone the truth in the first place? What standing did I have? It was only a rumor. I could hardly broadcast an announcement to the entire student body.
In short: right now, I was in an incredible amount of trouble. Receiving letters and gifts was a problem. Stepping forward myself to clear the misunderstanding was a problem. And above all, the backlash waiting once that misunderstanding finally came apart—that was a problem too.
…Huh? Had my entire school life just collapsed? Maybe dropping out was the only option left…?
"It's not like I can go around telling people, 'Our Kayatchi is just incredibly shy!' either…."
"Haha…."
That aside, somewhere along the line Tateyama had started calling me Kayatchi, and I still couldn't get used to it. Until now, Utsumi was the only one who had used a pet name like that for me. Being called something like this by a classmate was a first….
"Akakat! A mere Familiar, and you dare to pry into the secrets of your master and her comrade? Impudent."
Even as she said it, Yukari turned yesterday over in her mind and let a quiet little laugh slip out.
"…Well, fine. Ordinarily I would tell you to ask someone else, but it has been a while since we indulged in idle chatter like this. I shall allow it."
Yukari was the type who believed that talking too much about real life blurred her identity as a VTuber, so she rarely shared anything private on stream. Today, though, she had pulled the character she wanted from the Fate's Battle gacha in a thirty-pull and was in a fine mood, and so she decided to tell the Familiars a little.
They had only brought it up because they knew that, if not now, they would almost never hear a word of Yukari's private life.
"…Well, as you all know, Izumi is a high school student, so staying out late into the evening is difficult for her. That is why we disbanded the moment the live ended yesterday as well."
The real reason, of course, was that Izumi's birthday and Mina's were the same day. But Yukari knew how badly Izumi wanted her personal information kept hidden, so for the moment she dressed the story up that way.
"Akakat! Hear me out to the end. If that were the case, I would never have thought to bring it up. You cannot even manage a thought that simple? What a fool."
She hurled the insult at her Familiars without a moment's hesitation, and not a single chat called her on it. Yukari's streams had always been this kind of atmosphere. When chuunibyou-concept Yukari abused her Familiars, they received even the abuse as a gift. That was precisely the quality required of a Familiar.
"Anyway. We decided to gather early, at lunch, and hold a simple birthday party at a restaurant. Ayaka bought a cake first, and we were agonizing over what to eat, when Izumi suddenly spotted the sign for a cheese dakgalbi shop—spicy stir-fried chicken under a blanket of melted cheese—and said she wanted that, so in we went."
"…And just what era are you from?"
"Well. This body has liked cheese dakgalbi since long ago."
Sensing the topic suddenly sliding off somewhere else, Yukari cleared her throat and dragged it back to the start.
"Ahem. Anyway, we were making small talk while we waited for the cheese dakgalbi, when Izumi suddenly gave my collar a little tug."
"Mm. Izumi in the center. This body and Ayaka on either side. Suzuha and Nekoto across from us. Anyway, Izumi tugged this body's collar and whispered in my ear. 'I-is it okay if I o-order a cola…?' …Akakat!"
"Aaah…. You are quite right. That was the first time Izumi had ever looked that cute."
To Yukari, Izumi was, simply put, something like a frenemy. Their broad taste in games was similar, but the small, crucial hobbies nested inside that overlap were the complete opposite. Precisely because of that, talking with Izumi was always fun—and yet she did not like Izumi the way her genmates Suzuha and Ayaka did.
In that moment, though, she thought she understood how the two of them felt. Izumi looking up at her, sending that strangely pitiful look, had been just that cute. Cute enough that Yukari had very nearly blushed without meaning to.
"But it is what came after. The important part is what came after."
"Yes. Seeing that, Suzuha tried to order the cola in her place, but Izumi said, 'I-I'll order it m-myself….' So we pressed the call button, the server came over, and Izumi quietly raised her hand…. Pfft—! The server couldn't hear her asking for a cola…! In the end Suzuha ordered it for her! Akakat! That girl, face bright red, trembling all over—honestly, how cute she was! Even the server went back snickering."
Of course, once the cola arrived, Izumi had also pouted and told Suzuha, "Thank you…." Yukari simply didn't bother including that part. The episode would come up on Suzuha's stream anyway.
"Aaah, truly. That girl is a Demonic Woman…. And the frightening part is that she has absolutely no awareness of it. Ordinarily, those who earn a nickname like that calculate every single action before they move. Izumi is genuinely, purely, just that kind of girl."
After that she laughed about Izumi missing the beat during the live, drifted through other bits of trivial chatter, and ended the stream. But the story that became the biggest topic was still Izumi ordering a cola, and it did not take long at all for the clip to spread across all of Ontube.
For some reason, the chat today was full of talk about cola. I had mentioned liking cola plenty of times before, sure, but this was way more than usual.
"Y-you've been saying c-cola, cola since earlier—wh-what is this about…?"
"…Ah."
Cheese dakgalbi. Cola. Put those two words together, and it was easy enough to grasp the situation. Akabane. So she had told that story.
I-I'm sure I told her to keep it a s-secret….
P-please don't t-talk about this on s-stream….
…Had anyone actually answered that? I didn't think so.
Unbelievable. Tricked again.
"H-hey! E-everyone has things that are easy and th-things that are hard…!"