“...I’m sorry too.” The girl in the maid outfit took my hand and stood up. Wait...girl? Huh? Her voice sounded really deep. Also...her voice sounded familiar...
“What?! Urano?!” I couldn’t help shouting. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. The girl in the maid outfit in front of me—no, the person who I thought was a girl—was, to my surprise, Urano Izumi. The boy I was dying to meet was currently standing in front of me wearing a maid outfit for some reason.
“Y-You...”
“...What are you doing? Why are you wearing a maid outfit?”
“Sh-Shut up! This was against my will!”
“Against your will? How on...” I tried to hold back my laughter, but it was no use. “Pff. Ha ha ha!”
“D-Don’t laugh!”
“Come on, how could I not? Ha ha ha! It looks so good on you.” Seriously, it looked so good on him it was funny. Also, it kind of ticked me off. Why did it look so good on him? It was a women’s size, but it fit him perfectly. Seriously, I’m jealous of how thin and pale he is...
“Nnn...”
“Oh, sorry. Don’t be sad... I understand. You didn’t do this on your own...right?”
“Of course not! Obayashi and the others made me wear this!”
“Obayashi...?”
“That jerk said it was punishment for causing everyone trouble and forced me to do it! Damn it, why did this have to happen to me?! Momo even said, ‘Just take your punishment and be happy that you’re getting off this easy,’ and didn’t help me out at all...” It looked like a lot had been happening while I was away from the classroom.
Obayashi, huh? He was a guy who had a central presence in the class, and he had a bit of a big head...but he wasn’t a bad guy. The reason he made Urano wear the maid uniform probably wasn’t to make fun of him; he probably just wanted to take away some of the animosity the class was feeling toward Urano. Urano suddenly being absent had thrown the class into chaos, so there were probably still some people with unresolved feelings toward him. By having Urano undergo such an obvious punishment, he was able to relieve some of their frustration. That was probably what he was aiming for.
Or maybe that wasn’t his aim at all, and he did it without really thinking about anything...
“I reluctantly changed into this, and...I really don’t know why, but everyone got more excited than I expected, and those girls in the class started taking out their makeup kits, so I panicked and ran away...” Apparently, they were about to give him a full-blown makeover. However, I understood how they felt. Right now, Urano seemed like a gem that would absolutely shine if you did his makeup.
“He he. Well, this is good, isn’t it? It’s just like Momota said; you should be glad it was only this bad. I mean, you did skip school at an important time like this.”
“Shut up! Just whose fault do you think that was?”
“Whose fault?” It was then that I remembered. I remembered all of the feelings I had that had been blown away by the shock of seeing him in a maid outfit, and my chest started to hurt from how guilty and awkward I felt. “Hey, Urano... I’m sorry for—”
“Don’t apologize,” Urano said in a low, cold voice. However, he looked straight at me. “I’m...I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“What...?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for causing you trouble.” As he lowered his head, I was rendered speechless.
“Urano...” He didn’t say much, but to me his words seemed way too honest and way too sincere. All sorts of emotions began to well up in my chest, but...
“All right! That’s my apology! I apologized to you!”
...Urano raised his head and copped an attitude that immediately ruined all of those emotions. “That settles everything! You don’t owe me anything, and I don’t owe you anything! No one is indebted to anyone, and no one is to blame! We’re completely even!”
“...”
“You understand?! Now we can pretend like all of that stuff that happened the other day never happened! And don’t try to get a leg up on me with your rambling!”
“Sigh... Seriously, you’re just so...”
“Wh-What...?”
“No. It’s nothing.” He was so ridiculous, and I was so over it, but...for some reason I smiled. Surprisingly, I felt at ease. “Hey, Urano. Give me your hand for a second.”
“Wh-Why? Are you going to slap my wrist? Or are you going to squeeze my fingers?”
“Relax, you’re being too paranoid. Just give me your hand.” I urged him to hurry up, and Urano reluctantly gave me his hand. I wrapped the thing I pulled out of my pocket around his thin wrist.
“This is...”
“Yeah. This is the misanga bracelet from our class’s merchandise. It’s the one we chose together.”
It was a just normal good-luck bracelet that had orange as its main color. I felt it was a little conventional, but that was what we’d decided to go with when we considered the cost and the time we had to prepare.
“They came in yesterday. We gave them out to the class, and I held on to yours since you weren’t there... I thought I’d give it to you if you came today.”
“...” Urano gazed at the bracelet tied around his wrist with an emotional expression.
“All right, let’s get going, shall we?”
“...Yeah.” We headed back to the classroom together. Our school festival was about to begin.
♡
It was nine a.m. when the Seizan Festival kicked off with an opening ceremony held in the gymnasium. Every class and club did their preparations, and then at ten a.m. the ban on parents and guests entering the school was lifted and the festival truly began.
By the way, while some of my classmates were cooking the noodles, I had been working with a few classmates ever since nine a.m. packing soba noodles for eating on the go. There were seats available in our class for people to sit down and eat, but there was a surprisingly high demand for packaged soba noodles you could carry around. According to information our class representative heard from the upperclassmen, people really like packaged soba for when they want to either eat outside or leave the festival before the afternoon.
My class had raffled off shifts that were a few hours long, and I ended up being assigned to work for two hours from the start of the festival. Packing noodles was simple and tedious behind-the-scenes work, but it did have the merit that I didn’t have to work at all after those first two hours.
With five minutes left in my shift, as I was chatting with the other members of the noodle-packing group, tragedy struck. Right as I was arranging the packs of noodles so that they’d look nice, I heard a very familiar voice coming from the entrance to the classroom.
“Momota-kun!” It was Orihara-san. I’d told her to come at around eleven, but I guess she came a little bit early.
“Orihara-san?!” When I lifted my head, I was in for a shock. The moment I saw her I thought I was going to faint and lose consciousness. I gritted my teeth, steeled myself, and rushed over to her. “O-Orihara-san...”
“He he he. I guess I’m a little early. This is amazing...it really does feel like a school festival. I even saw you working for a little bit. You were working so hard! It was really nice to see you with your classmates like that.”
“Hold that thought for a second...” I desperately supported my knees that felt like they were going to buckle from despair. “Wh-Why are you wearing a school uniform?”
For some reason, my girlfriend was standing in front of me in a school uniform from her alma mater, Tourin Girls’ High School. At this stage in our relationship, you could say that seeing the quest item that had been instrumental in bringing us together was nostalgic.