One afternoon, not long before the culture festival...
Some of the boys of Class 2-4 were murmuring excitedly as they stared at the flier that had been passed around to each class. It was a recruitment flier for that major culture festival event, the Miss Jindai High pageant. Last year’s winner had been a third-year who had since graduated, which meant there was no obvious favorite to win this year. This led to a lot of speculation among the boys.
“Who do you think it’ll be this year?”
“Saeki-san from Class 1 would be the obvious choice. She placed second last year, and she’s pretty and classy.”
“There’s room for debate, for sure, but she’s a pretty solid choice.”
“And she’s in the drama club. She’s got that presence, that aura... all on another level.”
“But Mikihara in Class 3 is great, too. She’s more the quiet, unassuming type.”
“Yeah, I get you! She’s got lots of secret admirers.”
“And she’s got hidden assets. She wears a long, modest skirt and acts like a good girl, but in her gym uniform...”
“Yeah, those projectile weapons. Once I was timing their sprints, and...”
“Yeah, I saw it! The jiggling...”
“Amazing. Almost did me in.”
The boys offered their unsolicited opinions one after another.
Incidentally, this was going on concurrently with our last story, while Class 2-4 was still struggling to prepare their café in time. Even though it was lunch time, they surely had better things to do than engage in such leisurely conversation, and yet...
“But enough about the other classes. What about our own girls?” Onodera Kotaro, the main instigator of the topic, offered.
The other guys had a look around the classroom.
“Of course, if you’re just basing it on looks...”
“...There’s an obvious choice, yeah, but...”
Their gazes united on a girl sitting nearby, eating her lunch—Chidori Kaname, who had long black hair and excellent curves, a symmetrical face, and pretty features. She looked like the kind of person who might get scouted as a model any day now. Except...
“Ahh... hahm, om nom nom... Mgh! Man, you can’t beat Hanamaru Pan’s yakisoba rolls! That’s what they call filling! There’s no better moment in life. Irresistible!” She laughed heartily, her face contorted in a way that lacked even the slightest trace of eroticism.
“Kana-chan... you’re such an old man.” Tokiwa Kyoko, who was eating with her, whispered disapprovingly while poking at her own bento box.
“Yeah, every time...” Kotaro sighed.
The other boys agreed, chiming in with their own anecdotal evidence.
“Remember what happened last year when we started talking about nominating Chidori for the pageant?”
“But when we saw her like that, we decided not to.”
“If only she could sit and be quiet...”
Realizing that the boys were watching her, Kaname flinched. “Huh? What? You can’t have my yakisoba roll, if that’s what you want. I won this through blood, sweat, and tears.”
“Wouldn’t want it,” they responded in chorus.
“We were talking about Miss Jindai. You might win it if you could clean up your act a little,” one boy said.
Kaname cackled in response. “Miss Jindai? How stupid,” she scoffed. “It’s nothing but sexual commodification and misogyny. I’m anti-pageant and anti-participation.” She laughed heartily again.
“C’mon, it might be fun. You can nominate yourself, or someone else can nominate you.”
“You might do pretty well.”
“And there’s amazing prizes. A DVD recorder and stuff.”
When Kotaro said that, Sagara Sousuke, sitting nearby eating French field rations (renowned for their tastiness as field rations went), perked up his ears. “Onodera. Is this true?” he asked sullenly.
“Yeah. It runs about 50,000 normally.”
“A pageant, you said? It might be worth entering such an event.” Sousuke thought about it seriously for a few minutes while Kaname and Kotaro stared at him in disbelief. “What is it?” he asked. “Why are you looking at me that way, Chidori?”
“Sousuke... could you summarize what you think Miss Jindai is?” said Kaname. “Fifty words or less.”
“Miss Jindai: short for Mission Jindai,” Sousuke replied. “The participants are given a grueling series of tasks—running a shooting marathon in full armor, indoor CQB, assembling a firearm in a certain time limit—and forced to compete in these fields.”
“The way you can get things so far off the mark... it’s impressive, in its way.”
Sousuke just looked at her in confusion.
Ignoring him, then, Kaname looked back at the other boys and shrugged. “The point is, I’m just not interested. Though it’s an honor to have been considered.”
“Fine, then.”
That was the end of the Miss Jindai talk.
Then the next day, after class, in the student council room...
Kaname was working on minor tasks in preparation for the culture festival, when the door opened and a girl entered. She was tall, with slightly wavy shoulder-length hair and almond-shaped eyes, and fair, smooth skin.
Who’s this? Kaname wondered, having never seen her before. I don’t remember a girl this pretty at our school... Nevertheless, the number of bands on the other girl’s uniform sleeve suggested that she was a second-year.
The girl looked around the student council room and said, “Is it just you here?”
“What? Oh, yes... They all left to buy things and discuss things...” Kaname responded quickly. It was just her and the new girl.
“Do you know where Sagara-kun is?” the girl asked.
She knows Sousuke? Kaname felt even warier now. “He’s tossing out the trash. He’ll probably be back soon.”
“I see. Then maybe I’ll just wait here.” The girl took a seat in a nearby folding chair.
“Excuse me... you mind if I ask who you are?” Kaname asked trepidatiously.
The girl just smiled smugly in response. “You don’t recognize me, Chidori-san?”
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t.”
The girl didn’t appear hurt by her lack of recognition. Instead, she smiled in satisfaction. “Excellent. Ha ha ha...”
“May I ask...?”
“Shoji. Shoji Mia.”
Kaname hesitated for a second in confusion... then shot up out of her seat. “What? What?!” Shoji Mia from Class 2-2—the vice president of the women’s basketball team. She’d caused them a real headache during the first term’s inter-class tournament, and Kaname honestly didn’t like her very much. They hardly ever talked, and they barely interacted, either. “You’re her?!”
“I am.”
“But... but you’re—” Fair-skinned. Pretty. The Shoji Mia that Kaname knew had short hair, a tan, and an overall sporty appearance. When did she undergo this transformation? Kaname wondered. What’s going on here?!
“You already knew that I’m the ‘effort over all’ type,” Mia said quietly, sweeping a stray hair away from her downcast eyes. “After what went down at the tournament, I thought a lot of things over. I lost to you before I even fought; I can admit that now.”
“I... I see...”
“But that doesn’t mean that I lost to you as a human being,” Mia insisted. “And maybe I got a little crazy back there, but I thought I could still beat you in something and knock you down a peg. And then, one rainy day, it came to me.”
“Um... knock me down a peg?” Kaname asked in confusion.