Part-3 Ch-05 Ep-01

――What are they talking about, I wonder.

While chatting with my classmates, I let my gaze drift toward the hallway.

Just beyond the window that separated the classroom from the corridor, Maki was standing there, talking with Nitobe-sensei.

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes.

The two of them exchanged a few words with serious looks on their faces. Maki's expression tightened into something troubled, and seeing that, Nitobe-sensei's face also clouded over. Then, together, they stepped into the classroom.

At the exact same moment, the chime signaling the start of class rang out.

Maki returned to her seat, and I headed back to mine as well.

Of course, there wasn't any time to ask her what had happened.

For some reason, it feels like things like this have been happening a lot lately.

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"Alright, let's get started with homeroom."

At the teacher's cue, the class representative called out the usual command.

"Stand. Bow."

As I reflexively said, "Thank you very much," I sneaked a glance at Maki, who was sitting a little distance away.

Just then, Maki turned around too, and our gazes collided with a snap. The suddenness of it made me freeze, our eyes still locked together.

She probably hadn't expected to meet my eyes either, because for a brief moment her face went wide-eyed and blank.

But in the very next instant, she broke into a bright, happy smile and gave me a small wave in front of her chest.

It was a slightly feisty, self-assured smile—one that showed a side of her different from how she acted in the game… a side I knew very well as the real Maki.

"Ahaha."

Feeling my heart start to race at that familiar smile I'd seen so many times since long ago, I gave a small wave back.

I couldn't help grinning, and I could feel my ears growing a little warm.

"Okay, no looking around, pay attention properly."

Lightly scolded by Nitobe-sensei, I quickly turned my face back toward the blackboard.

Written across the board was today's homeroom topic: "Deciding Our Cultural Festival Exhibit."

The classroom erupted into excited chatter.

It looked like the very first homeroom after summer break was going to jump straight into cultural festival planning.

So that season's already here, huh… I thought, feeling my mood lift a little.

At our school, the sports festival and cultural festival alternate every two years.

In our first year it was the cultural festival, in second year it was the sports festival, and now, in our third year, it had come back around to the cultural festival again.

I think deciding what to do for our final high school cultural festival is actually pretty important.

For us, who had just come out of summer break and were starting to faintly feel the pressure of being exam-year students, honestly, we didn't really want to take on something that would eat up too much prep time.

But at the same time, because it was our last cultural festival, we also wanted to do something a little exciting; something that would leave behind real memories, something just a bit different.

In other words, we wanted something not too over-the-top, not too half-hearted, and memorable enough that when we looked back on it later, we could say, "We did that, didn't we?" something that still felt like a proper cultural festival event. That was the kind of mood hanging in the air.

Maybe because that feeling had spread faintly through the classroom, people casually tossed out ideas here and there, but nothing really stuck—nothing that made everyone go, "Yeah, let's do that!" with real enthusiasm.

Plays and cafés would take too much time to prepare.

On the other hand, just putting together a plain exhibition would be kind of boring.

So the discussion didn't really go anywhere, and everyone kept glancing around at each other, unsure what to do.

I don't remember who said it, but someone suggested, "How about fortune-telling?"

The moment that idea came up, everyone seemed to warm to it a little. It didn't look like it would require too much preparation, it seemed like each person could handle their own part, it had a bit of a mysterious vibe, and it felt kind of occult and fun.

"Then, by majority vote, our class will be doing fortune-telling in the classroom."

The class representative circled that option among the list of candidates.

And just like that, our final high school cultural festival plan was decided: fortune-telling, along with making and selling related miscellaneous goods.