When I say “almost inaudible,” by the way, I mean to me. Yuna and Rinka definitely couldn’t hear her at all! And so I decided to step in and serve as her interpreter—or, well, more like her megaphone, I guess?—relaying her words as she carried on.
“That’s why you have to let out a little steam every once in a while before it builds up... Otherwise they might’ve started taking really extreme creepshots, or editing their pictures in really bad ways and spreading them around, or even doing something bad to the two of you directly if things got really out of hand. That’s why Mai...why Ms. Mai Koganezaki and I got together and worked out ways that we could make sure it didn’t come to that. We were just trying to keep the fan club wholesome and make sure everyone was satisfied, so, umm...”
“...Is what she said!” I concluded.
“Hmm,” went Yuna.
“Is that so?” said Rinka.
The reactions: understated. Akksy and I: shivering.
“I-I’m not trying to say that I was doing it for your own good, or anything like that,” Akksy piped up. “But...I just wanted to watch my favorite pairing from a healthy distance. I just wanted you to be happy. That’s really all... I’m so sorry...”
“Akksy...”
Tears dribbled down Akksy’s cheeks, and I just couldn’t stop myself from sympathizing with her. From what I understood, she’d always been the sort of person who latched onto an interest and went all in on it, more or less? Back when we first met, she’d told me how she’d once loved an idol group, but circumstances had played out in a way that left her unable to support them anymore... And watching her eyes sparkle with glee as she’d talked about her new obsession just moments before—seeing how full of life she seemed—I couldn’t help but think about how happy she looked. I knew that all of this must have been as unpleasant as could be for Yuna and Rinka, but some part of me still wondered...
“Well...you do you, I guess,” Yuna said with a very perfunctory, half-hearted sigh.
“Huh?” I grunted.
“People have been taking pictures of us without permission since middle school. It’s nothing new,” Rinka added. “In fact, things have gotten a lot better compared to how they were back then.”
“Th-They have...?” I said. I was in a state of minor disbelief, and Akksy seemed just as dumbfounded as she looked up at the two of them.
“And besides, we’re the ones who set the whole Sacrosanct ball rolling in the first place,” said Yuna. “Building up that image was our choice, and now we get to live with it. C’est la vie.”
“S-Say la what...? I-I mean, oh, right!”
I remembered the day they’d revealed that truth to me—the day that I confessed I’d been two-timing them—very clearly. The two of them were each tremendously special in their own rights, and could easily have been the center of attention without the other. When they came together, however, all sorts of problems that they would otherwise have to face more or less resolved themselves. That was why they’d decided to deliberately frame themselves as a set—to put on an act and bring out as much of that certain precious something that could only be achieved when two girls got along really well with each other as they could.
“We started this ourselves, and we knew that there’d be consequences. I suppose you could say that a few pictures making the rounds is the sort of thing we were prepared for,” said Rinka. “Frankly, I’m just relieved to know that the fan club’s president is a decent person.”
“Speaking as an ordinary girl, the fact that we’ve got a fan club at all’s pretty embarrassing... But, I mean, after getting up onstage and having everyone cheer us on at yesterday’s performance, it kinda feels silly to bother getting all worked up about it anymore,” said Yuna.
“Ha ha ha! True enough,” Rinka agreed.
Neither of them seemed particularly worked up about any of this—their laughter was totally natural and genuine. Maybe that only made sense. Maybe you couldn’t put on a show like theirs and get a reaction like they had without building up the nerve to not be bothered by a little attention. In fact, that performance might very well have been what prompted them to reassess their feelings on the matter. An experience like that had to have had a major impact.
“R-Really...?!” gasped Akksy, who had apparently been resuscitated by their words. “So, you mean... If we ask you to attend an official fan-club event, you’ll give us the go-ahead?!”
“We didn’t say that!”
“We did not say that!”
Oh, wow! One second she’s groveling on the ground, and the next her expectations are rocketing through the stratosphere!
“A-A handshake, then...?” Akksy hopefully asked.
“I guess that’d be fine, sure,” Yuna acquiesced.
I’d heard that the best way to get what you wanted in negotiations was to ask for something better than it, then gradually work your way down to your actual goal. I wasn’t sure that Akksy had been intentionally pulling that trick, but one way or another, it had earned her a handshake from both Yuna and Rinka.
“Bweh heh heh heh... Their hands are so silky... And wait—since my hand just touched both of theirs, that means they basically shook each other’s hands secondhand, right...? That’s crazy...”
“I’m really not sure what’s so crazy about that,” Rinka said as she held a hand out to Yuna.
“There’s nothing weird about us shaking hands firsthand, much less secondhand,” Yuna agreed as she accepted it.
“Gyaaah?!” Akksy shouted, reeling back like she’d been socked in the face by an invisible fist before crumpling to her knees! “That’s...so...lewd...”
“It was a handshake!” said Rinka.
“Maybe you could keep going and move on to a hug...?”
“And now she’s asking for more from us?!” said Yuna.
Akksy had officially and entirely pulled the two of them into her own little conversational vortex. As I tried not to laugh, my gaze wandered, and...
Huh...?
...I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye, in one of the school’s windows—a silhouette. It was dark, and I wasn’t totally sure, but whoever it was looked familiar.
Was that...? Could it be?!
“Hey, Yuna, Rinka!” I said. “Take care of Akksy for a minute, please!”
“What?!” yelped Yuna.
“Take care of her how, exactly?!” asked Rinka.
“Please! Just one hug! Pleeease!” Akksy pleaded.
I left the two of them to pull her out of whatever state of confusion she’d worked herself into and sprinted off for the school’s main building.