Kayano Mina, the Genuine Social Butterfly Who Even Knows How to Give Gifts
Before I knew it, the fourth week of the culture festival was underway.
The whole class had grown even busier, of course, and some people weren't heading home until it was nearly nine.
And in the middle of all that, I...
"M-Miyauchi. I-I'll be going..."
"You worked hard again today, Kayano."
Somehow, I was still idle.
No—more precisely, I was leaving a little later than I had at the start. The number of decorations I had to make had gone up, after all. Even taking that into account, I was still out the door before five-thirty, on average.
Miyauchi kept saying it was fine, since she had flyer work of her own to do at home, and not one of my classmates let slip so much as a mild complaint. Doing the flyers after I got home didn't change the fact that I was leaving early in the middle of culture-festival prep.
...Why?
I turned it over and over, and at last I understood.
Right. Of course.
If I stayed in the classroom too long, it made things a little uncomfortable...!
A classmate who usually went straight home, who had never once joined a class get-together, who had never even held a real conversation—if someone like that kept lingering, of course it would be at least a little awkward. And I'd only just noticed.
Heh. I was going to have to turn in my title of sharp-eyed social outcast....
The flyers I was preparing came to five in all. The point was to catch people's eyes, and five was what I got from trying to match a spread of different tastes. At first I'd worried it might strain the budget, but fortunately Miyauchi told me there was plenty to spare. The extra work did mean I still had about a day left before they were finished.
"Mmm..."
It was a pretty good suggestion. Adding a drawing wouldn't take long anyway, and just as Koga said, I wasn't entirely free of the sense that it looked sparse. Maybe I'd tuck a little milk-bread loaf into the corner....
I'd just settled on the change and was idly working the stylus when that DM arrived from Koga.
I'd liked drawing quite a lot ever since my past life, so praise like that was bound to make me happy. Not that I went around showing it off in every online community. I'd learned better, back then.
A community, once you started, was a hell with no bottom. Get famous and you were exhausted one way; stay a nobody and you were exhausted another. One careless remark and people tore it apart, and the nuisances piled up without end. Which meant that if you never joined a community in the first place, every problem solved itself.
I wasn't going to make a career of drawing, either, so the reason to be in one vanished even more completely. Letting the people around me see my art was enough.
"Mmm."
Still, if I really did start an art stream, I had no idea when would be a good time. My manager had said it was fine to just begin whenever it was convenient for me, but starting right away felt somehow embarrassing.
...Maybe I'd think about it after the culture festival.
My plan—to send a gift voucher for expensive food and leave both of us satisfied—seemed to have ended in failure. What if Akabane actually came to our school and the food turned out to be nothing special? We'd both just walk away with hurt feelings....
S-still, it was only Tuesday. Her mind might change by tomorrow, so I wasn't going to give up hope.
"M-Miyauchi. I-I'll be heading out..."
"Oh, Kayano. When you get home, could you send the original files of the finished flyers to my email by eight? The print shop called and said it would be best if we handed them in today."
"Yes. I-I'll send them right away."
I'd already meant to send them the moment the last touches were done at home. With Koga's help they'd come out at a pretty high quality, so maybe Miyauchi would even be surprised when she saw them. I hoped she'd be satisfied. This was proof that I'd been leaving early during festival prep for a reason. If she, or the other classmates, decided the flyers fell short of the standard, it would be a disaster. I'd never be able to walk around class with my head up again.
...Not that I'd ever really walked around with my head up in the first place.
"See you tomorrow, then, Kayano."
"Ah... t-take care..."
...Come to think of it, I'd gotten quite a lot of help from Koga this time. Was it really all right to just let that go? The thought came to me out of nowhere. As a thank-you, I ought to give her at least a small gift.
"Hmm."
What would be good? Something Koga liked... she'd said she liked drinking iced chocolate at cafés, hadn't she? Then an iced chocolate, plus a dessert set, ought to do it.
The moment I finished the thought, I opened Misscode on my phone and pulled up my chat with Koga.
"Hoo..."
I almost never sent a DM from my side, so I was weirdly nervous. No—thinking about it, there had only been one time. Exactly once, when I'd asked her to collab. Remembering the uproar that had caused only made the nerves worse.
She'd probably answer by the time I got home, right?
As if to laugh at the thought, a reply came back from Koga before I could even close the app.
...As expected, Koga was kind. Afraid I'd start overthinking, she was doing everything she could to take the weight off me. It was honestly moving.
"Hehe..."
I was giving her a gift from something I'd only half-caught in passing, so wouldn't she be pleased? Maybe she'd even praise me—say my sense for people had gotten unbelievably sharper than before. This was where I started down the path of a genuine, top-tier social butterfly.
"...Eh?"
What was that. She didn't seem to like it very much....
Something about it still felt off, but I decided to just let it go. One of my personal creeds was that nothing was stupider than clinging to a problem my own ability couldn't solve. And above all, I really hadn't done anything wrong....
"...Uh."
My shift ran from morning until one in the afternoon. After that, I was free. Originally I'd planned to slip into an empty classroom and just fiddle with my phone by myself. Well—I'd only be doing that for tomorrow.
Before I knew it, the culture festival would finally begin tomorrow.
Fortunately, the flyers I'd sent had been received very well. Miyauchi had been delighted, saying the quality was far higher than the other classes running something similar. Well—they'd taken a long time, and I'd had Koga's help on top of that. If the quality had been low, that would have been the stranger result.
"Haa."
I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Honestly, I didn't have any of that excitement people talk about, the thrill of the day before a culture festival. I'd been the first to leave school every single day, and I'd made the flyers almost entirely by myself.
Even so.
"I hope it goes well..."
The fact that everyone had worked hard didn't change, and I was surely part of that.
...I-I was, right?
Anyway, I hoped the result would be something all of them could be satisfied with.
When I reached the classroom early, the way I always did, a standing sign like that was set up in front of the door. Dainty little drawings and the paper ornaments I'd made hung from it, and the whole thing looked surprisingly convincing.
...Now that I thought about it, I usually got here early and just lay on my desk. They'd probably rearranged the entire layout for today's event, hadn't they? Then where was I even supposed to sit?
The question made me hesitate to open the door, but I couldn't stand in front of it forever, so I slowly slid the classroom door open.
"Whoa..."
The sound slipped out of me before I knew it.
The balloon art I'd made was up alongside the curtains, and a faint scent of coffee hung in the air—someone must have sprayed a freshener ahead of time. Pure white cloths had been laid over the desks, giving everything a clean look, and the menus were lined up neatly on top. Of course, set beside a professional café, there were shortcomings. There had to be. But those very gaps seemed to show how much everyone had poured into it, and I liked that.
"Ah, Kayano."
"Eek...!"
"Huh? Does Kayano always get here at this hour?"
"I imagine she does."
I spun around, startled, and there stood Miyauchi and Tateyama.
"Y-you're both h-here s-so incredibly early..."
My whole body shook at the presence that had come up behind me, but I managed to get the words out anyway. This was the moment my communication skills—forged by streaming, and by Koga—finally shone.
"It's the culture festival today, and I'm the class president. I came early to see if there was anything left to check."
"Me? Well, I'm the one who pitched the cosplay café, so. Figured I'd give Miyauchi a hand."
"I-I see."
What was I supposed to do? Normally this would have been time I had to myself, face planted on my desk, and a conversation like this would never have happened. Sitting down now and planting my head on the desk out of nowhere would be weird, wouldn't it. Some way to get out of this....
"What do you think, Kayano? The atmosphere came together pretty well, don't you think?"
While I was still scrambling for a way out, Miyauchi asked. Honestly, I wanted to bolt that very second—but I probably shouldn't, not now. I was, probably, for the moment, a member of Class 1-A too.
"Yes.... Y-you can tell e-everyone worked really hard, a-and I think that's... nice..."
"Right?! I'm telling you, everybody worked so hard! As the person who pitched it, I am, like, insanely proud!"
"Oh, and the flyers you sent, Kayano—everyone was thrilled with how well they turned out."
"I saw them too. Hey, the drawings on those flyers—did you do all of them, Kayano?"
"Ah, th-th-uh, y-yes..."
"That's seriously amazing!"
S-somebody save me....