Kurumi and I waited in the living room while Nanaougi took a shower.
“Thanks for the bath. I was about to catch my death of cold.”
She emerged wearing nothing but a towel, steam rising from her shoulders.
I wasn’t sure where to look. Kurumi would stomp on my foot if I stared, so I quickly turned away.
“Hey! Why aren’t you dressed?!” exclaimed Kurumi. “I left you a change of clothes!”
“You left me one of your shirts, Kurumi. It was too small. Especially around the bust.”
Kurumi made a face and clicked her tongue loudly. She looked pretty scary.
“…You can borrow one of my shirts till your clothes dry out,” I said. “Men’s shirts may be cut differently, but if the size is big enough, it should fit. Does that work?”
“Nice. Ren’s shirt! The one folded in the basket back in the washroom, right? I’ll slip right into it.”
“I wore that shirt, Natsume. You’re gonna let another woman use it?”
“The situation leaves me with no choice. And it is my shirt.”
“I see,” Kurumi said, and clicked her tongue even louder. Why’s she so scary?
Nanaougi vanished, and we heard her turn on the hair dryer. She had long hair, so this took a while. Kurumi and I were stuck twiddling our thumbs.
A solid twenty minutes later, Nanaougi came out wearing only an oversized dress shirt.
“Augh, Nanaougi! Why nothing down below?!”
“Hm? Ren’s shirt is long enough to cover me. I figured it would be plenty.”
“No, um… Ugh… It’s really not, but I guess it’ll have to do.”
Kurumi sighed, then buried her cheek in her palm, deciding arguments were futile.
It was the right call. Nanaougi was an unpredictable maniac. Anything we said would bounce right off.
Nanaougi pulled out an unoccupied chair and sat down at the table. Three of the four sides were now occupied, with her sitting between us.
We straightened up, our eyes on Nanaougi.
“So,” Kurumi said. “You’re here about Ookuma. Can you elaborate?”
“Um, well. I figured it was about time.”
“Yes…? About time for what?”
“Nanaougi, what have you been up to all summer?” I asked. “We need some straight answers.”
“Don’t come at me from both sides! I’m sorry, I mean it… And I’m here to explain.” Her smile was a tad softer than her usual. “Learning about Kanae Ookuma has your heads spinning, right?” She sounded like she was just making sure. “She’s pretty far gone. Like, headed for a mental breakdown.”
“A breakdown? I heard she was crying…”
“Because of you. Your attacks drove her to it.”
“……”
“But at the same time, I played a part in cornering her.”
I didn’t have time to ask how. Nanaougi kept right on talking.
“Ren, Kurumi, I imagine you’re stewing over whether it’s acceptable to keep hurting Ookuma now that you know how much the darkness of Saigou High gets to her.”
“…Did you plant a bug on us, too?”
“I’m not nearly as big on eavesdropping as you are, Ren… But I take it I hit the nail on the head. How do you think I knew? Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“……”
“Because I manipulated you into this position,” she hissed, her voice going cold.
Then she snapped back into the same cheery tone she’d started with.
“Should I run down the whole timeline?” she asked. “It all started the day I dropped in on the Stargazing Club. I wound you up, promising to pull off an attack you couldn’t dismiss out of hand. I wanted to make sure you’d keep the attacks coming all summer, to compete with me.”
“Hang on, we’re going that far back?”
“Yep! In fact, I’d started putting my plan into action even earlier… By the time you put up those mannequin heads, it had already begun.” Nanaougi smirked. Her words seemed almost rehearsed. “And just as I’d intended, you were spurred into action. Maybe you’d have done all that even without my meddling, but either way—your resistance thrived.”
We had been trying to outdo Nanaougi. And that meant we’d been dancing on the palm of her hand…
“And so, every time you hit the school, I’d go to Ms. Ookuma to discuss what was going on. I brought her the receipt and the test answers and formally discussed them with her.”
So that was what they’d been discussing in the guidance office and that classroom far from the main building.
“Ms. Ookuma is in charge of the summer curriculum. I knew that if any problems cropped up, it would fall to her to handle them. So I turned up the pressure. ‘The school has to do something. I don’t like this unrest. You’re the only one I can go to.’ Very unreasonable.”
“Yeah, you’re a top student; she can’t simply dismiss your concerns.”
“Exactly! But a new teacher can’t do much about this school’s issues.” Nanaougi’s grin grew positively vicious. “Ms. Ookuma wound up caught between me and her boss. And you two weren’t letting up. In the end, she cracked under the pressure and started spiraling.”
“……”
“Kurumi, you said she was crying?” She looked at Kurumi but got no answer, then shrugged and carried on. “Well, whatever. Once Ms. Ookuma fell apart, the rest was easy. I just had to find a chance to pass her planner to Ren, manufacturing this exact situation.”
“So you dropped that planner?”
“I did! I happened across it a while back. Reading it is what made me decide to target her. So? With me so far?”
Kurumi and I exchanged glances, then looked at Nanaougi dubiously.
“…We get the gist.”
At least now we knew what Nanaougi had been up to all summer. And to an extent, we understood how we’d ended up here.
But a critical piece of the puzzle was still missing, still hidden from us.
Why had Nanaougi made Ookuma suffer and made us doubt ourselves? What was the point of building her plan around Ookuma?
“We’ve heard the setup. Now give us some answers.” Kurumi took a deep breath, fixed Nanaougi with her fiercest glare, and asked, “What are you really after?”
“I’ve been telling you ever since we first met. My goal is to launch an attack that’ll convince you to let me join your resistance.”
“Making Ookuma have a mental breakdown is your ‘attack’? Don’t make me laugh. We’re not out to bully specific individuals.”
“I know that. I’m not doing this because I want to make Ookuma miserable. My ‘attack’ isn’t over yet. We’re just entering the final phase. This is the good part!”
“…Meaning?”
Nanaougi flashed us her most indomitable grin yet.
“Meaning, I intend to save Ms. Ookuma while hitting the school as hard as possible. If I pull something like that off, will it impress you?”
That was the goal she’d been working toward all summer. It was what Nanaougi had been after from the start: an attack that would force us to recognize her.
It was something neither Kurumi nor I could possibly have come up with.
“Let’s recruit Ms. Ookuma,” declared Nanaougi. “And if I can make that happen, let me join up, too.”