“Botan, that’s not what I want from Hana.”
“Oh, but that won’t do for a bride of a clan lord. You must at least have her learn to carry herself with the dignity that Seiran here carries in a single finger.”
At this point, Hana was less angry and more impressed by how committed this girl was to insulting her. If anything, Hana now questioned why she was so confrontational to begin with.
“But enough of that. Lord Ichinomiya, Father has said he’d very much like to celebrate your succession as clan lord.”
“Yeah, fair enough.”
“And you, Sankourou, have managed to reach Obsidian rank at such a young age, so he’d very much like to extend the celebration to you, as well.”
“Nah, it’s nothin’ worth celebrating over.”
“Oh, I do believe it’s plenty worth celebrating.”
Botan, who laughed with yet another high-class “Tee-hee-hee,” was no longer even acknowledging Hana’s presence, and she continued having a lively chat with Saku and Yukizasa. Seiran, like Hana, was not a part of the conversation, but something made Hana feel like she herself was being explicitly excluded and left in the dust. Hana wasn’t dense; nobody had to tell her it was intentional—she could pick up on it from the atmosphere. And it was from someone she’d just met, too…
Hana didn’t like wasting energy and so tended to avoid dwelling on things, so if they were planning to ignore her, she would’ve continued doing likewise without a second thought. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. Still, since Saku didn’t bother to say a word about it, maybe it wasn’t worth Hana reacting to it at all.
If everyone else was going to catch up on old times, then Hana would have loved to let them and go home herself, but Saku held her arm in a tight grip, as though telling her she wasn’t going anywhere, so Hana was stuck listening to them. Annoyed at having gotten tangled up with this pain in the neck, Hana could only wait for their conversation to end.
Hana felt that no full-course French dinner was worth suffering through this, but it was too late for regrets.
“I do believe it’s about time for us to leave. I’m afraid our chance encounter might have made me a bit too talkative, so I apologize for having taken up so much of your evening.”
Hana barely kept her knee-jerk response of Yeah, I’ll say from leaving her lips. The joy at having been freed from this agony took priority.
Botan looked at Hana one last time and snickered suspiciously.
“It appears that we of Campus Four will face little challenge to our dominance at the school festival.”
Botan said those parting words and then left with Seiran.
“School festival?”
A question mark appeared in Hana’s mind as she tilted her head. Saku then placed his hand atop her still-tilted head.
“What?”
“Oh, I was just impressed how maturely you handled that.”
“Do you think I’m a grade schooler or just a toddler?”
Hana gave him a glance that was none too pleased, but Yukizasa soon interrupted by busting out laughing again.
“Guess Botan’s still pretty green, eh?”
“What do you mean?” Hana asked Yukizasa with a look of curiosity—a look aimed upward, given Yukizasa’s supermodel height.
“Botan’s a candidate to be the next clan lord, just like Kikyou, but she stood right next to you and didn’t show any sign of noticing your power. Even I could tell when we first met, too. Just goes to show that she might act like a know-it-all, but she’s still a student. A greenhorn.”
Yukizasa spoke with a bit of disappointment apparent on his face.
“Wait—isn’t it kinda unfair to compare her to Obsidian-rank practitioners like you two?”
She didn’t mean to toot her own horn, but Hana had stood alongside Obsidian-rank practitioners like Saku and Yukizasa to solve no small number of their problems. And what’s more, her daily routine involved fending off the many powerful shades that targeted her, so she had enough combat experience to make her nauseous. She was confident in both the strength of her powers and her skill in controlling them for all these years, so it wasn’t so easy for anyone to see through her.
Though, according to Saku, her older brother, Yanagi, had found out on the day after that fifteenth birthday when her powers suddenly sprang up out of nowhere, but she hadn’t known how to control them back then, so there wasn’t much she could do about that.
“No, Kikyou and the other Nijouins focus on the crafting of talismans, but the Yotsukado clan specializes in attacks. Someone who can’t sense the level of another’s power is far from having what it takes to serve as the clan lord.”
Saku criticized the girl quite harshly.
“She’s still a third-year in high school, right? Aren’t you being a little cruel?”
“You can measure people’s powers, right, Hana?”
Hana had to chuckle at how Saku asked this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. If the question was whether she could or couldn’t, then of course she’d say yes.
“Well, yeah.”
The powers Botan possessed were certainly strong, but Hana judged that they didn’t match her own.
“Still, doesn’t that sorta thing come with experience?”
What kind of level was he expecting from a girl in her teens? Besides, to two Obsidian-rank practitioners, even Hana probably counted as an immature greenhorn.
“Maybe. But Botan’s got a ridiculous ego, so that’s keeping her actual skills from growing. She won’t be anywhere near ready for the seat of the next clan lord if she keeps that up.”
“I’ll say,” said Yukizasa in agreement with Saku’s critique. Hana was practically clueless about the five clans, so it was hard for her to judge one way or the other.
“Well, it’s true there aren’t many other candidates to be clan lord who can see through Hana’s power. That’s not happening without a lot of skill and experience.”
“If anything, it’d be a rubber stamp for anyone who could see through her.”
“Fair enough. It’s a clear way to separate who’s got power and who doesn’t. We ought to toss Hana into a room full of the candidates to be clan lord and see what happens.”
“Ooh, that idea ain’t half bad. Sounds fun!”
With a wicked smile, Saku made a suggestion that didn’t quite sound like a joke, and Yukizasa cackled along anyway.
“I’m not a toy for your amusement, you know.”
The scary thing about the two men was that those plans could very well have been serious. Tossing her into a room filled with candidates to be clan lord was a plan that could come to fruition. And given her experiences with the other clan members whom she’d met, she couldn’t imagine willingly choosing to involve herself with that crowd.
Kikyou and Nozomu were enough of a headache for her, thank you very much.