Several days later, Hana’s school held an assembly early in the morning.
“Boooring. Think I’ll skip.”
“Come on, Hana, don’t be like that. This is supposed to be a really important announcement.”
Hana looked like she was ready to escape at a moment’s notice, but her best friend, Suzu, was holding her arm to keep her in place.
“It’s just gonna be another of the vice principal’s rambles, right? I wish he were the one having to listen to all the ‘past glories’ of his days in the field. Nobody wants to be here, for crying out loud. It’s the same decades-old story over and over and over, and I’m sick of it.”
“Hana, he can hear you!”
Not only were the students incredibly quiet for a school-wide assembly, but Hana and Suzu were relatively close to the front rows. As such, Hana assumed the vice principal heard their every word, given that he was in a state of shock despite standing at the podium and being fully prepared to speak.
“Wha…? Are my anecdotes that much of a bother?”
The vice principal turned to the other teachers, but none would look him in the eye. Some of the students averted their gazes, some nodded firmly in agreement with Hana’s words, and some even applauded her bravery to say what nobody else dared. Nobody voiced their agreement out loud, but the vice principal seemed to take the hint.
“And here I thought you all enjoyed my stories…”
The vice principal’s shoulders slumped sadly, and since he was clearly down for the count, a replacement speaker was quickly called in. So the famous muscle head PE teacher stepped up to the podium.
“Er, the vice principal’s feeling a bit down now, so I’ll give the explanation… But, uh, yeah, the vice principal was a super-great practitioner back in his day, so let’s all be just a liiittle nicer to him and open our hearts a liiittle more, or a whole lot more, to what he has to say.”
Those words seemed to only pour more salt on the vice principal’s wounds, but nobody mentioned it. A look in the man’s direction showed him still sulking, but the principal was trying to cheer him up.
“See, Hana? You went and made the vice principal all sad.”
“I, er, really didn’t mean to…”
Even Hana felt some guilt over the wrong she’d done. A very, very small amount anyway.
Back at the podium, the PE teacher cleared his throat and changed the subject. He had the students’ attention.
“For today’s assembly, we’d like to talk a bit about the upcoming school festival.”
Hana could tell that the words school festival piqued the curiosity of the rest of the crowd. Only Hana was left tilting her head.
“Hey, Suzu. What’s this school festival thing about again?”
“Hana, you asked me the same thing last year. When you don’t care about something, it might as well not exist to you, huh?”
Suzu had her pouty angry expression on, but that wasn’t a very scary sight.
“Sorry, my bad.”
Hana apologized, but it was plain for all to see that she didn’t feel too torn up about it.
“The school festival is an event we hold every year where all five campuses of Obsidian High gather together and celebrate.”
“We’ve been doing that?”
“Yeah, you just don’t remember because you think everything’s a pain, and you stayed home.”
“Did I?”
When Hana thought back on it, she…couldn’t find any trace of it in her memory.
“The school festival was held at Campus Five last year, and it was at Campus Four the year before that. Are you sure you don’t remember saying how you didn’t wanna bother going all the way to another school?”
“Hmm… Ah, I feel like I might have said something like that…possibly?”
She had the vague impression that the memory might have been stored in some deep corner of her mind palace, but it was just a vague impression.
“Oh, Hana, really…”
Suzu was angry, but that didn’t stop her from calmly explaining everything in great detail.
“The host campus rotates every year. This year is our turn at Campus One, so all the students from the other schools will be gathering here. There were a bunch of food stalls and stage shows at the Campus Four and Five festivals, too; it was really cool.”
“Huh, you don’t say.”
“I’m sure there’s gonna be a ton of stalls and events this time, too.”
Hana was starting to remember bits and pieces. Now that she thought about it, she did recall hearing Suzu talk excitedly about some other schools before. Hana had been interested in the food stalls, but not interested enough to drag herself to a whole other school, so she’d ended up staying home. Campus Four and Campus Five were both far away from the prefecture where Hana lived; she’d heard that visiting these festivals required an overnight trip, and sure enough, Hana had thought it sounded like a pain.
If it were any other group operating the festival, it would be one heck of a challenge to accommodate every visiting student. And not just one campus’s students, but four other campuses’ worth of students, at that. However, Obsidian High was backed by the five clans who pulled the strings of the country behind the scenes; it was a trifling task for them to complete the paperwork and procure the funding to secure hotel rooms for all those students.
“So you’ll go this year, right, Hana?”
“Hmm, maybe.”
Since the festival was being held at Campus One, the trip would just be another commute to school. And since it was at a practitioner school, people could have their shikigami out with no problem at all. With Hana’s true power now being common knowledge, she could enjoy the day with Aoi, Miyabi, and even Arashi.
“Yeah, sounds fun, so I may as well drop by.”
“Hooray!”
Suzu gave Hana a big, overjoyed hug.
The PE teacher’s speech finished while Hana and Suzu were talking, and then the student council president took to the podium.
At Obsidian High, the student council president was selected from Class B. Class A focused more on practical lessons, providing its students with plenty of real combat experience outside the campus; this kept those students busy and frequently off campus.
The student council president reached the podium and immediately clenched his hands into fists in frustration.
“As I’m sure you’re all aware, nothing matters more than the Campus Cup! This year, I swear that Campus One will prove victorious and send Campus Four crying to their mommas!”
He then thrust his fist into the air, and the entire audience roared in support.
“Whooooooooo!”
“We’re gonna wiiiiiin!”
“Campus Four is going doooooown!”
The students raised an ear-aching cacophony along with their fists, and some were even in tears. Hana glanced to her side, and she saw that even Suzu was shouting “Let’s goooooo!” as she powerfully pumped her fists in the air. Her peers were hitting a fever pitch for some reason, while Hana alone was left in the dust.
“What’s…going on?”
When Hana had recovered from the shell shock, she saw Nozomu rush up to the podium and snatch the mic from the student council president. His eyes were glazed over, like he was moved to action by the fervor in the air.
“Listen up! Our enemy is Campus Four, and nobody else! There’s no need to get distracted by the others. We’re gonna be the ones winning the Campus Cup!”
He was exuding the sheer willpower of a hot-blooded manga hero, so at this point, Hana just had to ask.
“Hey, Suzu. What’s this Campus Cup?”
“Figures you don’t know that, either.”
She was exasperated, but Suzu still explained it to Hana.
“The Campus Cup is just what it sounds like: a competition between the campuses. Each campus chooses a team of contestants who compete against one another using their practitioner skills. Campus One had a long history of taking first place, but for the past two years in a row, we’ve lost to Campus Four and gotten second. That’s why everyone’s so excited to take back the crown. Especially Ichinomiya up there. He’s been on the team since he was a first-year, so it’s a personal grudge for him.”
“Ah, I get it.”
Suzu explained it perfectly, so Hana got the picture.
The streak lasting for the past two years meant the losses started the year Hana enrolled. Nozomu and the rest of the third-years had seen victory snatched away by Campus Four since the year they enrolled, too.
“And those Campus Four people, they stood right in front of Ichinomiya and went, ‘My, how far Campus One has fallen,’ and then started laughing like they didn’t care if we heard them! They’re a rotten bunch, for real.”
“I can already imagine Nozomu taking the bait.”
No, on second thought, Nozomu would have been comparing himself to his brother back then, so he might have gotten sad instead. Even from Hana’s far-removed perspective, she could understand Nozomu’s reason for being so furiously fired up.
“Still, I’m impressed those students managed to say that about a direct Ichinomiya descendant and live to tell the tale.”
If Hana didn’t have Saku himself to back her up, even she wouldn’t attempt to say anything rude to a direct clan descendant. The five clans had more than enough power to snuff out a single human life with the ease of squashing a tiny bug.
“You’d think, but they had the Yotsukado heiress with them, so nothing happened.”
“The Yotsukado heiress?”
“A person named Botan Yotsukado.”
“Hmm…? Ohhh.”
Hana thought she’d heard that name somewhere before, so she paused, then remembered before long. It was that girl who came and talked to Saku and Yukizasa the other night when she went to eat her full-course dinner.
That girl was also a candidate to be the next Yotsukado clan lord, so the other students had likely let their victory go to their heads. Nozomu wouldn’t have wanted to spark a dispute with the Yotsukado clan, so he must’ve turned the other cheek despite them daring to pick a fight.
Well, whatever the reason, absolutely none of it had anything to do with Hana. The memory of Botan’s glare from when they first met had already vanished from her mind.
“The team members are typically picked from Class A. Let’s cheer them all on, Hana!”
“Meh, I think I’d rather tour the food stalls.”
Suzu had enough school spirit to go around, but Hana didn’t care which school won. She was the polar opposite of her deeply invested peers and did not hold one iota of interest.
“Wonder what kinda food they’ll serve.”
“Hana, come ooon!”
Hana’s mind was firmly fixed on food. Suzu called to her with a mix of exhaustion and disappointment, but Hana ignored her. During it all, from the podium, Nozomu was calling for Campus Four’s downfall. And then…
“Here are the members we’ve chosen to grind the faces of those stuck-up Campus Four jerks into the dirt.”