“Mocchi” had come from the latter half of “Hishimochi,” her surname. It was a pretty rare surname, by the way, written with some odd, kind of cute characters, but the problem was that if I picked a surname-derived nickname for her, it could just as easily apply to her parents too. Imagine if I called her at home, said, “Hi, is Mocchi there?” and her mom or dad was all, “Yes, speaking” or something! It was just asking for misunderstandings, no two ways about it.
In other words, this time, I was set on thinking up a new nickname using her given name, Akane, as its basis. It’d be the better move long-term, for sure!
So... Umm, sooo...
“Akksy?”
“You’re definitely making fun of me now!”
“Am not?! I thought it’d be cute! It has a nice ring, right?!” I’m absolutely not trying to make you sound like a big dumb cow! It’s Akksy, not Ox-y! Half of Akane with an s and a y!
I was operating off of the same system that Makina had used to give me my Yotsy nickname. A system employed by an idol could never be flawed—it would be no exaggeration to say that my new nickname for her could trace its origins back to the most noble and respectable of sources! (Even if Makina was in kindergarten when she gave mine to me!)
“Hmph... Akksy, huh?” the president—or rather, Akksy muttered to herself. A faint smile began to spread across her face. “You know, I think this might be the first time someone else has given me a nickname,” she said as the smile continued to grow, her eyes narrowing contentedly.
Th-That’s so...
On the one hand, her perfectly innocent smile was adorable, and on the other hand, the fact that she’d been calling people nicknames for so long without anyone else ever giving her one of her own was a little tragic. I was torn between “so cute” and “so sad” in equal measure. I hadn’t really considered it when she first told me to call her “Mocchi,” but from the sound of things, she really had come up with that nickname for herself...
“Akksy, Akksy... It still kinda feels like you’re making fun of me, but if you want to call me that, then I guess I wouldn’t mind letting you get away with it,” Akksy said in a hesitant, faltering tone, her cheeks slightly flushed as she looked at me with bashfully upturned eyes. She was actually acting so bashful that I felt a little embarrassed too. I’d given her the nickname pretty casually, but it was starting to feel like that act had carried a lot more significance than I’d realized. “H-Hey. Try saying it, okay?”
“O-Okay! So, umm...A-Akksy,” I said, a little flustered.
“Yeah,” Akksy replied after a slight pause. She still seemed embarrassed, but even more than that, she seemed distinctly happy in a really cute/sad sort of way. “And as for you...since you’re calling me Akksy, I’ll call you Yocchi!” she added with a grin, almost like she was powering through her embarrassment and overriding it with confidence.
From Yotsuba to Yocchi? I can sort of see it, and it’s actually kind of cute, I guess!
I hadn’t thought that Akksy would turn The Makina System right back around on me...and while I’m on the subject, there’s actually a bit of a story to how Makina ended up calling me “Yotsy” in the first place. You’d think that if the goal was just to trim my name down a bit, “Yotsu” would be the obvious choice, but it just didn’t have a very nice ring to it, and going all the way down to “Yot” would’ve made me sound like a boat. “Yotsy” was the nicer-sounding compromise that the two of us ended up settling on together. It was a weirdly heartwarming feeling to more or less live out that old memory all over again as my high school self, and I soon found myself grinning as well.
“I like it!” I said.
“Hee hee... You do...? Then I guess you’re Yocchi starting today!” the president—Akksy—said with a satisfied chuckle.
Actually getting called by a nickname like that really did make me feel like squirming a little, but in a good way. I had a feeling that the way she was acting now was probably the closest thing I’d seen to Akksy’s true personality. That did raise some questions about the crazy hyper persona she’d adopted the first time I met her, of course. Maybe she’d psyched herself up for it since she knew I’d be coming in advance?
Or maybe I’m reading into it too much, and it wasn’t about me after all. If that is what happened, though, then I feel a little bad for visiting her like this today. I did kinda call her out for a talk without any warning at all.
“So anyway, Akksy, about what I actually came to talk about today,” I said, steering us back on track. I felt a little bad for it, but this really was a super pressing problem for me, and I needed someone to give me advice about it. After all, the cultural festival was less than a month away!
“Oh, right. Yeah,” said Akksy. “So, umm, the issue was Miss Makina’s coworker, right? You know, when I step back and look at the big picture, I think you might be the single biggest trouble magnet in the world.”
“Ugh... I can’t argue with that...”
“So now you have a contest going—or I guess you called it a bet.”
“Do you think I could, like...just take it back? No way, right?”
“Yeah, nah, I can’t see that going well. Judging by how you described her, she’s the sort of girl who won’t stop until she’s satisfied, one way or the other.”
“Thought so...” I groaned. My shoulders slumped with dismay. “Come to think of it, didn’t you say that you were a diehard idol fan at one point, Akksy?”
“Oooh, yeah, I guess. Shooting Star’s way outside my area of interest, though,” Akksy replied.