“If you want to stand any chance of winning this, then you’re going to have to get Miss Mio in to see the performance in person,” said Akksy.
“Okay... But how?”
“Gooood question.” Akksy slumped forward, resting her cheek on the table she was sitting at and humming to herself as she pondered our options. “You could talk with the festival’s executive committee and have them shift the show to day two?”
“Well, umm, the thing is...we actually were scheduled to perform on day two at first, and ended up striking a deal to swap with another class who wanted a day-two slot...”
“Ahh. Okay, yeah, then that’s not happening. Asking to change your slot more than once is a really good way to make the scheduling people despise you. And since day two gets way more visitors, it’s more desirable to begin with—shifting to day two would be way harder than shifting away from it.”
I didn’t say it, but there was one other factor as well: I didn’t want to drag my whole class into something that was really my own personal problem. Especially considering how I’d already gotten up on a soapbox in front of them back during the advertising meeting!
“Okay, then, idea number two!” said Akksy. “You could get her to transfer into our school before the day of the festival!”
“Wait, that’s an option?! I guess if she could clear the entrance exam, it might just work...?”
“Ha ha ha! No, it seriously wouldn’t. I bet even the paperwork stage would take too long on its own.”
“Then why did you say it in the first place?!”
“No harm sharing an extra idea or two, right? Even if they’re bad ones!” Akksy said with a rather amused grin.
Is she trying to do some sort of comedy bit right now...? It sure seemed that way, but then again, even joke ideas could hold the key to real solutions from time to time. Probably. I need to start thinking out of the box too...
“Oh, okay, here’s one,” said Akksy. “You could bribe the teachers to look the other way when you let her in!”
“I’m pretty sure I’d be expelled the second I even tried to bribe them!”
“Oh, I guess you would. It’ll be a real shame to lose you, Yocchi, especially since we only just became friends and all. I’ll come see you whenever they give you visitation hours!”
“When did this turn into me getting sent to prison?!” They don’t lock you up in jail for getting kicked out of high school...and anyway, I haven’t even been expelled yet!
That said, it struck me that I might not even need to bribe anyone to make that plan work in a broad sense. If I asked my homeroom teacher Miki for help, then there was a slight chance she’d cooperate...or so I thought for a moment, but I dismissed the idea as quickly as I’d had it. Miki was a tremendously serious person—so much so that she’d given up her time off from work just to help me with my studies—and if I tried to pull her into a scheme that involved breaking the school rules, there was a hundred percent chance she’d get mad at me. Even just using the student guidance room without permission like we were at that very moment would probably make her mad, if she found out...especially since this time, it had been my idea.
“Okay, well, if bribery’s off the table, how about you smuggle her in?! Stuff Miss Mio in a cardboard box, then ship her to school the day before!”
“That’d be super not okay even before you take our school rules into account!”
“Hmm. You’re a real stickler for these things, aren’t you, Yocchi?”
“Also, I don’t think that Mio would let us stuff her into a cardboard box in the first place.”
“Oh, that’s easy to solve. You just, y’know—whack!” Akksy said as she mimed a karate chop to the neck, like how they knock people out in movies. I was pretty sure I’d heard that doing that to someone in real life would most likely just kill them...
It really did seem like sneaking Mio in was our only option. Bribing a teacher was out, though, and shipping her to school in a box was out too. That just left...
“We could...have her act like one of our students and just walk in?”
“Aww, but that’s so played out! Wouldn’t it be boring?”
“Boring?! I think it’d be really risky in its own right, actually...”
“Okay, but sneaking someone in’s going to be risky no matter how you do it.”
“You’re not wrong about that...”
“So you just have to psych yourself up to face the consequences if you get caught. That aside, the only factors worth considering are how to make it less likely that you’ll get busted...and what methods would be the most entertaining!”
“Entertaining?!” I’m seriously worried about this, you know?! Why are you acting like it’s a game? That’s so mean!
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Yocchi. It’ll be fiiine! Just sit back, relax, and wait for your friendly neighborhood savior Akksy to step in with an idea so good it’ll blow your socks off!” Akksy declared.
That was actually the opposite of reassuring...but I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to say so. I decided to have faith that, for all her joking around, she really was doing her best to come up with a plan for me. Plus, it was all but certain that whatever she thought up in the end would be better than any plan I could dream up on my own!
To make a long story short, I left school that day with the details of Akksy’s plan—titled “Operation Sneak Mio Kuruma into the Festival”—jotted down for future reference. Now I just had to lay all the groundwork we’d need before the day arrived.