Naomi was astonished at the mere suggestion. She’ll never agree to that in a million years… This was Ichigyou Ruri they were talking about, after all. He couldn’t think of anyone less likely to indulge in cosplay.
That wasn’t to say she couldn’t pull it off, of course. There were probably some options that would suit her very well. The first idea to pop into Naomi’s head was Jadis, the White Witch from the Chronicles of Narnia, accompanied by her loyal polar bear. She was a witch who wielded ice as a weapon and took pleasure in executing her enemies. It felt like a perfect fit…not that he was ever going to say so.
“I don’t think so,” said Ruri, predictably enough. “Also, didn’t I tell you to cut that out?”
“Cut what out?”
“The Ru thing.”
“Hmm. Okay. How about I call you Ruru?”
“That’s even worse.”
“Rurine?”
“No.”
“Rudy Rutabaga?”
“Excuse me?”
Misuzu seemed determined to draw Ruri out of her shell for whatever reason, but it was clearly an uphill battle. The wall of ice showed no sign of thawing.
Naomi was only a spectator, but the conversation made him increasingly nervous. Couldn’t she try to be a little more receptive? Misuzu was obviously trying to make friends.
Then again, Ruri was clearly all right on her own. She spent most of her free time reading in the classroom and seemed to prefer being left alone. It was the same in the committee meetings—she was diligent about her duties, but never struck up conversations with anyone.
The girl wasn’t a team player at all, and she seemed to know that about herself.
But wasn’t that going to be a problem?
Sensei’s instructions from that morning flashed back through Naomi’s head.
“The used book sale in June is going to be a big event for us, too,” Sensei said, gesturing at the calendar hanging from the tree branch.
“What do I need to do?”
“At the moment, things are heading in the right direction. If you get off track, I’ll let you know. For right now, just focus on getting books for that sale. Get as many as you possibly can. That’s all I want you thinking about.”
Naomi nodded easily. It sounded simple enough—he just had to do his normal committee job.
Naomi wrote his name on the whiteboard. Ruri was right next to him, doing the same. Rather than the flashier groups like Costumes or Publicity, they’d both chosen the least exciting option: the Book Collection team. After what Sensei had told him, Naomi had fully expected this to happen.
He’d actually been a little worried when Misuzu tried to physically drag Ruri into the Costumes group. But in the end, events had followed their proper course.
The next day, the two of them placed a donation box in their classroom and encouraged everyone to donate books.
Now he had to do everything he could to find more.
8.
HOMEROOM ENDED, and the students flowed out of the classroom.
As the noise died down, Naomi opened the lid of the donation box. Ruri was at his side and peered down into it with him. There were two books sitting at the bottom.
Frowning, Naomi looked over at the blackboard. The date written there was proof that a full week had passed. Two books over five school days meant they were getting a whole 0.4 donations per day.
“Well,” he said with an awkward little smile, “I guess they did say we shouldn’t expect too much…”
The chairman had described the results from recent years, so Naomi hadn’t been expecting anything too amazing. Still, this was a bit more depressing than he’d expected it would be.
This definitely wasn’t good enough, was it?
Sensei had told him to get as many books as he possibly could. Two donations wasn’t close to enough. At this rate, they might diverge from the events recorded in the Ultimate Manual.
Naomi wasn’t sure what to do, though. He couldn’t force his classmates to donate books. He was willing to put the effort in, but he didn’t know how.
“Katagaki-san.”
Looking over, he saw that Ruri was still staring down into the box with a serious look on her face.
“We’re on the Book Collection team, correct?” The look in her eyes was beyond serious. Was she actually a little angry?
“Our job is to collect books. We should pursue that goal any way we can. We might not succeed, but there’s no excuse for not trying.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
Naomi was a little startled at first, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. Ruri didn’t go out of her way to talk to the other committee members, true. But when it came to her actual responsibilities, she took them extremely seriously.
“Let’s do everything we can,” Ruri said, clutching her hands into fists.
They shared a common goal. That was good. But Naomi wasn’t particularly confident he could keep up with her.
Their avenues for action were limited, but they fully pursued every one that came to mind.
First, they got permission to place a new donation box in the faculty lounge, hoping they could guilt some teachers into supporting their students. Of course, the adults were all busy people, so they couldn’t expect much.
Next, Ruri hit on the idea of standing in the hallways at lunch holding donation boxes in their arms and calling out to people passing by. It wasn’t a bad idea in theory, but people rarely walked around with used books they were willing to donate. Still, there was a chance it would at least increase awareness of the donation drive, so they kept at it. Naomi found the process deeply embarrassing, but when he saw Ruri bowing her head to everyone who walked by, he had to follow suit.
Eventually, they even left the school grounds entirely and asked for permission to place a donation box at the nearest community center. The old man at the front desk there didn’t like the idea, but they begged and pleaded at great length. At one point, another staff member came by and said it sounded fine to him, but then they realized he thought the boxes were for recycling old newspapers. They never did manage to get approval.
And as they pursued these dead ends, the clock ticked ruthlessly forward.
Naomi picked up an eraser. Wiping away the numbers on the whiteboard, he wrote new ones: 37 books collected—3 days remaining.
He frowned as he considered the numbers. So did Ruri, standing beside him.
Things were not looking good.
“Hey, that’s not a bad haul, really,” called the chairman from behind them with a casual tone. “Try to bring a couple from home to pad things out a little, okay? It should be enough.” With a wave, he left the room—presumably headed home.
A part of Naomi thought he wasn’t taking this seriously enough. But it was the other way around, wasn’t it? He was taking it way too seriously. Collecting lots of books was a purely personal goal for him, with a totally selfish motivation. He wanted to follow Sensei’s instructions to the letter. He wanted to start dating Ruri.
Without that tantalizing possibility on the horizon, he wouldn’t have gotten so worked up about this either. It wouldn’t be fair of him to expect the other committee members to put in the same effort.