“I see... I suppose you have a point. Allow me to explain.” Isuzu closed her laptop and straightened up. I hadn’t expected it to be anything that serious, but... “Do you remember when we were recruiting people in April? We received quite a few applicants then. Over thirty, starting with Adachi-san and the others. But since May, we’ve had less than ten. It was as if, in April, we had someone’s help.”
“Someone’s... help?” I asked.
“Yes. All that I did was upload the hiring information to the park’s official page and put the want ad up on several job recruitment sites. But that by itself had very little effect.” But starting a few days later, she explained, it had ended up posted to various message boards, with links and videos all over social media, which far increased the scope of the ad. “I still don’t know who did it.”
“Ahh...”
“The recruiting notice video was also redone. The copy was left intact, but the design was fixed to be prettier, easier to read, and more eye-catching... At first I thought that Kanie-kun had done it, but he appeared to be as ignorant as I was. It’s surely someone in the park, but...”
“You think that the ‘fairy’ was behind it?”
“That’s what I tentatively choose to call it,” she told me. “Since the one behind it hasn’t named themselves, I’m sure they merely did it on a whim... It’s hardly something I can count on, is it?”
“Yes... I suppose not,” I agreed.
“I’ve heard similar stories from others, and they all simply refer to it as ‘the fairy,’” Isuzu said. “Have you ever had such an experience?”
“Well. Elementario might have...” I said doubtfully. “I don’t really know.”
“I see.”
“Well... did talking about the fairy help?” I asked after a while. “Did it get your mind off of things?”
“I’m not sure...” she sighed. “It may have just made me feel even more incompetent.”
“I see... I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
“......” I didn’t know what else to say.
“......” Isuzu-san fell quiet and returned to work. I silently went back to my meal as well.
Things felt a little awkward. It was hard to eat dinner next to someone you weren’t that close with and couldn’t really talk to. The baked fish was my one salvation; the need to eat it all neatly, by removing the small bones and skin, helped to fill the empty space.
Isuzu-san apparently came from a highly ranked noble family in Maple Land, which made her seem unapproachable for a commonplace spirit like me (though Muse-san didn’t seem to mind much at all). Even Isuzu-san’s use of language suggested nobility; You didn’t see many women who talked the way she did, nowadays. Most women sounded a little pretentious when they used words like “merely,” or “quite,” but Sento Isuzu-san worked them into her speech very naturally. She was always completely sincere; a very rare breed.
By the way, I was born in a small magical realm known as the Elementium Republic. My family lives in a hot springs town where they’ve run a traditional-style inn for generations, and I have two older brothers and a little sister. My parents and grandparents all told me to quit this starving dancer business, come home, and find a husband, but I don’t really want to. After all, they live deep in the country, over three hours away from the nearest manga store. They don’t have fiber-optic Internet, either. And when you order things online, it takes at least three days for them to reach you.
In contrast, my current apartment is thirty minutes from Shinjuku, and fifty minutes from Akihabara or Ikebukuro. I could order something at night and have it sitting in my delivery box when I got home from work the next day. The mortal city of Amagi was really the perfect environment for me. So for as long as AmaBri stood and I was still employed there, I wasn’t going to let it go.
Sorry, I sort of got off the subject... The point is, it’s awkward for a workaday spirit like me to spend a lot of time sitting in silence, picking at baked fish, across from a celebrity like Isuzu-san.
“All right,” Isuzu-san said suddenly.
“Huh?” I asked, caught off-guard.
“I understand why I’m frustrated. It’s... 9:00 pm. It’s been over eight hours since my last bath. That simply won’t do.” She closed her laptop and stood up.
“You’re going to take a bath?”
“Yes, a bath,” Isuzu-san said, placing her damp, pre-meal hand towel on top of her head. Apparently Isuzu-san was from a family of kappa, so maybe she found this gesture soothing... at least, that’s what I assumed. “Thank you for your help, Kobory. I’m going to take a bath and then approach the design with fresh eyes.”
“Ahh...”
“If you’ll excuse me.” Isuzu-san cleaned up her work tools, bussed her teacup, then left.
Once she was gone, I noticed that Wanipii-senpai was looking at me. Oh, but he immediately looked away... What an awkward person. A person has 200 degrees of sight, so even without turning my eyes directly to him, it was easy for me to tell which way he was looking. Most women know when someone’s looking at their skirt hem or at their cleavage, by the way, so watch out for that.
I probably should have just talked to Wanipii-senpai, but my baked fish was now down to the bones, so I decided not to. I just finished off my lukewarm tea and left. “See you tomorrow,” I said to him.
Wanipii-senpai just grumbled, “Ah... pii,” with his eyes focused downward. There was something a little bit cute about the gesture. Very educational.
I probably would have felt better if he had asked me, “Kobory-chan, what were you talking to Isuzu-chan about, pii?!” but he didn’t. Of course, I’m just a plain Jane spirit, and it was probably awkward for him, too. I felt very apologetic about it. I’m sorry.
I had stopped by my locker in the women’s changing room and was getting ready to go home, when I got a text message from Dornell-senpai. 《Kobory-chan. Are you still in the park? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you...》