Snacks on the Sly
Bora and Haru were gone. One of the two had always been around, she was sure of it, but both of them vanishing at once was a first. A faint, nagging emptiness settled over her.
Word was that even Baldy had gone on vacation. They seemed, at last, to have admitted she no longer needed protecting. Not a single calm, sensible adult remained in the place. Not one like her.
With Bora and Haru away, everything was terribly quiet. For the first time in ages she went to eat lunch alone, and she couldn't shake the feeling that the employees were all watching her. A few even came over to talk. She gave them vague answers and retreated to her room.
"Hmm..."
No Bora, no Haru. Today, the world was hers. Grinning, she opened the refrigerator. It was packed with things to drink. Her gaze slid over to the freezer, where chocolate ice cream was stacked in heaps.
She couldn't look away. Cold air spilled out in soft waves, and yet the room itself was baking, hot as a house with the floors fired up. Which was precisely why, spring or not, ice cream would go down smooth.
Bora had been perfectly clear. One a day. Inside her head, though, an angel and a devil were at war.
"Just eat it!"
Her devil-self was pressing her to go ahead. Her angel-self, meanwhile, took a different view.
"Still, two ought to be fine, right?"
Okay. A dramatic compromise had been reached inside her brain. She reached in and drew out a chocolate ice cream, and the cold climbed her hand.
Hehe.
Ice cream really did taste better when the day was cold. In summer you sometimes ate it just to cool off, but ice cream in winter, eaten for the flavor and nothing else, seemed richer by a whole notch.
It didn't even feel as if minutes had passed, and the ice cream was gone. Nothing left but a lonely stick. She pulled out another and started in. One more wouldn't even show.
She had been stockpiling snacks and ice cream for this exact day, and she had deliberately eaten light at lunch. She needed to leave room for what was coming.
Watching Little Magician Rumi, she began to inhale snacks and ice cream in the most literal sense. Had Bora or Haru been there to see the quantity, they would have screamed.
But today she was a free woman. She lobbed the empty wrappers into the trash, flopped onto the bed, and set her mouth and hands flying. Right now she and the ice cream and the snacks were one body.
There was one thing she had failed to account for. The trash can was small, and there was no room left for another wrapper. Now that she thought about it, the moment Haru or Bora came home and laid eyes on that can, wouldn't they be furious?
They might blow up over how much she'd eaten and ban her for a week. She shot up off the bed. The evidence had to disappear, and fast.
She hauled out the bag lining the can. It was so stuffed she had to stomp it flat with her foot just to make it fit, and though it was nothing but plastic, it had a real weight to it. If she got caught, this would not end with a flick to the forehead.
Stepping outside right now, though, was amateur hour. The halls were full of office staff wandering about, and if any of them saw her hauling a trash bag, they might snitch to Bora or Haru. So she waited, patient and still, until evening.
The sun went down. The office workers clocked out. She rose, eased the door open, and checked the corridor. Not a soul in sight.
Like a spy in a movie, she crept along with the bag in her arms, shifting her weight one careful inch at a time.
Then she hit an obstacle she had never planned for. On this floor, the only trash cans were inside the offices. Dumping it there meant getting caught. That was simply how the world worked. She made up her mind to take the trash to another floor.
The bag was so bloated she had to hug it in both arms, and she could barely see in front of her. She reached the elevator at last, hit the button, set the bag down for a breath, picked it back up, and waited for the doors.
Ding!
The elevator opened, and she stepped inside to finish erasing the evidence. She couldn't see straight ahead, but down and to the sides were clear enough, so she sidled past the people already aboard and stood off to one side. The first floor was already lit. No need to set the bag down and press a button.
That was when someone behind her spoke. Ever since she had become a celebrity in the building, more and more people had started talking to her.
"Hana. Where are you going?"
"I'm going to throw out the trash!"
"Hmm... I definitely emptied that can before I left yesterday. Can it really fill up in a single day...?"
She held up the bulging bag as she answered. So long as Haru and Bora never found out, she was fine.
"I ate snacks and ice cream until my stomach was stuffed!"
And then it hit her. A familiar voice, one she absolutely could not afford to hear. That was Bora's voice, wasn't it...?
Reality crashed in, and she began to shake like an aspen leaf. Move this bag aside, and she would be looking at the one person she must not see today.
She desperately hoisted the bag up over her face. First she had to get out of this elevator. But that was never going to last.
"Ack!"
The bag rose into the air all by itself. She flailed, grabbing after it, but it was already high overhead. Then the view it had been blocking opened wide, and there was Bora's face, well past annoyed and deep into angry.
"Hana... we promised you'd eat snacks and ice cream in moderation, remember?"
Just as Bora said, she remembered it. Pinkies hooked. A promise not to eat more than the set amount in a day.
This can't be happening...
Had she been some squalling infant with no intention of keeping a promise at all?! She seized the gap as the doors opened and tried to bolt.
Her short legs betrayed her. She didn't get far before Bora caught her.
"Waaah! I'm sorry, Bora!"
After it came out that she was an elementary schooler, communities tied to internet broadcasts were plastered with talk of Hana for about a day. The extra fuel, though, never arrived.
Hana herself never turned the stream on. She went dark. Interest only keeps burning if you keep feeding it firewood, and between the entrance ceremony and everything else, she hadn't broadcast at all. Enormous as the elementary-schooler scandal was, it dwindled into the sort of topic only discussed by the people who still bothered to discuss it.
Then, after a long while, Hana went live. The instant the notification popped, dozens of people poured into the chat. All the stream was showing was her desktop.
An illustration of Rumi was plastered across it, big as a front gate: Rumi with her magic wand in hand, caught just after a transformation, throwing a kick.
"Hello..."
The voice drifted out, but it sounded like a child who had been thoroughly chewed out by her mother and had come to grumble about it. There was no strength in it at all.
"I ate way too much ice cream and snacks today, and I got caught. I'm banned for a week."
"I'll have to secretly ask a masseuse I know, later. She actually listens to me."
"Um... I don't know about pro. When the time comes, the angle will show up, won't it? First, I'm gonna play!"
The chat of a crowd just shy of a hundred hit harder than the number suggested. Soon Hana sank into the game. She meant to work off today's humiliation in there.