I Want to Go Home
"Don't stay too late. Once you've put in a reasonable amount of time, go on home."
"Yes!"
At the homeroom teacher's words, everyone except me answered in a ringing chorus.
...I—I did answer. Technically.
"All right, then let's start by putting the costume team together. First, Tateyama, who suggested the cosplay café, and Onodera, who said she knows how to sew..."
One by one, Miyauchi handed our classmates the roles that suited them best. Which left the question of what, exactly, I would be doing. Odds-and-ends work, surely—the kind that needed no conversation, only orders. I would start with nothing but grunt tasks, and then, the moment a classmate got busy or bored, the dumping would begin. You're just doing miscellaneous stuff, so you don't have much to do, right? Could you take this too? And of course I wouldn't be able to refuse. I would accept, do it in their place, and somewhere in the middle of it taste a hell where the work never ended. The culture festival project's quality would drop, and the blame would settle on me.
...Terrifying.
If the load was more than I could carry, couldn't I just say no? Then I would hear, So you'll help everyone else, but not me? Refuse from the very start, then? That would only get me, All you do is odds and ends, and you won't even help with this much?
A swamp where an outcast had no hope of surviving, scheduled from the moment festival prep began. Had the hour finally come to fire the In-Crowd Death Beam?
"Yano... um, K-Kayano?"
"Ah, uweh..."
The one calling me out of my brooding was, of course, Miyauchi. For some reason she was looking at me with a gentle smile.
...Had she heard that pathetic little noise I'd yelped when I startled?
I stole a glance around the room. As expected, not a single classmate was trying to meet my eyes. No one looked as if they were laughing, either, and my voice is tiny to begin with, so it was hard to imagine it had carried all the way to Miyauchi, standing a fair distance off. Right—she smiled most of the time anyway. I was worrying over nothing.
"Kayano, about this culture festival preparation."
"Yes..."
Here it came. Grunt work.
"Um, I was hoping to give you a little of the simple decoration-making. Would that be all right?"
Huh?
"Decoration... making?"
"Ah, yes. Truly simple things. Balloon art, origami, about that level. There's a handout with examples of how it's done, so you don't need to worry."
"Ah, i-if it's that, then it's f-fine..."
That much I would welcome any day. If someone else later tried to hand me their work, it wouldn't be grunt work, which meant I would even have grounds to refuse.
"As for the daily quota... I think it will be enough if you simply use up all the colored paper and balloons we bring you. There's still quite a lot of time left, and if we made everything now it would only take up space and get in the way."
"Got i-it."
"Ah, and would it also be all right to ask you to make the flyers?"
The flyers. Hmm.
"Um, c-could I m-make those at h-home?"
"Ah, yes! That's perfectly fine. So long as they're finished, that's enough."
Miyauchi was still smiling kindly, and the other classmates didn't seem to have any complaints. Decorations and flyers were fairly important pieces for a class whose theme was a café.
...Ah. Important, so they had deliberately given them to me, meaning to shove every bit of blame my way if I failed?
I-I'd walked right into it. And I had already said yes...
"...Done."
I finished the work and lifted my eyes. The clock hands pointed to four-thirty.
...Wasn't that much too fast? Today was my first time. Following the examples had taken a little longer, and I'd needed time just to get used to it. Even so—four-thirty. Starting tomorrow, if I did well, I might even be finished around four.
...Was I allowed to go home?
"Miyauchi, if we add toast to the menu here..."
"Wouldn't something a little lighter be better for the costumes?"
I looked around. Everyone was buried in festival prep. Quota or not, was it really all right for me to leave in the middle of this? Once I got home I would still have the flyers to do, so it wasn't as if I would be idle... Still, just in case, I ought to ask.
I stood and walked over to Miyauchi.
"U-um, Miya... uchi..."
"Ah, Kayano. Is something the matter?"
"The colored p-paper and the balloons from today, I, um, used them all..."
At that, Miyauchi turned to look toward my seat. Then she nodded and broke into a bright smile.
"You worked hard. I'll see you tomorrow, then!"
"Is there anything else I could h-help with..."
"It's all right. There's still plenty of time anyway, and everyone was given work that suits them. More than anything, even if you go home you'll still be doing extra work, won't you? If you pour too many hours into things here in class, we'd be the ones who felt bad."
"Ah..."
She was right. If I stayed and let every stray task land on me, I wouldn't have enough time at home for the flyers. They must have divided the work with that in mind from the start, and here I was asking something this foolish.
"Th-then I'll head out f-first. I'm sorry..."
"Of course. Get home safe. We'll be looking forward to some wonderful flyers, all right?"
Miyauchi said it with that same gentle smile.
"Yes. Th-then..."
I dipped my head a little and left the classroom.
Perhaps because of the festival preparations, every room I passed was loud. And in the middle of all that noise, I alone was going home.
...Didn't that feel a little like the extraordinary tucked inside an ordinary day? Kind of cool, wasn't it?
"Hehe..."
Setting the aesthetics aside, being able to go home almost the way I always did was its own happiness. Maybe it was all right to retire the belief that culture-festival prep was an outcast's grave.
"Haa..."
Watching Kayano step out of the classroom, Miyauchi let out a sigh.
Is there anything else I could help with...
She had asked for two jobs on purpose, then used the excuse that the flyers would be done at home so Kayano could leave as early as possible. Even so, once the balloon art and the origami were finished, Kayano had come over and asked whether any more help was needed—as if going home now would be a terrible breach of manners. As if consideration like this wasn't necessary in the slightest.
Miyauchi hadn't flustered at all. She had persuaded her with the most objective reasons she could manage.
Then I'll head out first.
Hearing that, Miyauchi thought she had succeeded.
But.
...I'm sorry.
At the words that followed, she couldn't help but swallow.
"She noticed after all..."
The eyes of the girl apologizing for having been shown consideration had looked full of sadness, and the sight left Miyauchi's chest tight. Someone had said that if you happened to meet those eyes, soft as their shape was, the gaze was so sharp you couldn't breathe. Someone had said that when Kayano opened her mouth, the air seemed to freeze. But Miyauchi understood now. Her refusals held a gentleness meant for other people. Afraid that if someone drew near while she was hurting, she might bare an edge without meaning to, she treated everyone around her more coldly on purpose. If that weren't true—if she refused others purely for her own sake—she never would have noticed, not even a little, the consideration Miyauchi and the rest of them had planned together.
"I'm sorry, Kayano."
Miyauchi whispered it too softly for anyone to hear. What slowly filled her chest was guilt: a needless kindness had made Kayano worry.
But.
"And thank you."
Alongside the guilt, relief was blooming too. When Kayano left the classroom, Miyauchi had seen the corner of her mouth lift, just slightly. That had to be Kayano's way of saying thank you, even for a one-sided consideration that might have been rude. After everything hard she had been through lately, she was still thanking someone who had presumed, and reached out anyway.
"You really are a strong person, Kayano."
Could I become like that, too?
Miyauchi asked herself the question. Of course, no answer came back.
"Mmm. S-somehow it worked out. Still, for a while the earliest I'll manage is around s-seven..."
The flyers could wait until after the stream. If I thought of ending at nine, I could work on them until eleven and then sleep.
"O-of course I can."
The this the viewers meant was, of course, Arcana Shooter. The bullet-hell shooter built for long endurance streams, the one Miss Koga had put up as a bet during the last offline collab. Someone might ask why I was volunteering for suffering, but I had my reasons. The crown jewel of every gender-bender streamer story: the scene where, with monstrous reaction speed, you dismantle every pattern and leave the viewers in awe. I still hadn't given up on that dream. Last time, on BN, I'd gotten a decent reaction, but that wasn't enough. I wanted the Iztomo a little more certain. I wanted them to think of me as an amazing gamer.
"Mmm, for the characters..."
At the start of Arcana Shooter, you choose a familiar that uses a special move and a human who uses skills. What I picked was Saya, a cute girl, and a unicorn.
A chat like that flashed past, but I didn't bother answering. I hadn't picked them with that intent in the first place. I'd chosen for performance and synergy. I'd heard the unicorn had a hidden Easter egg: paired with Saya, special-move power went up by ten percent.
Wait.
Then Saya's first time would be... with me...
"Hk. That's dangerous..."
"Th-there just is."
If someone else said it, maybe it would be fine, but if I said it the whole conversation would definitely get weird. In a situation like this, silence was the best answer.
...How did they know?