With that, a few students walked up to the podium. These were apparently the students who would be fighting in the Campus Cup. Hana still had zero interest, but seeing a familiar face in that group did catch her attention.
“Oh, it’s Hazuki.”
She saw Hazuki among the team members. Hazuki had a human-form shikigami named Hiiragi, and she had the best grades in Class A, so she was about as obvious a pick for a practitioner team as someone could get. Hana also saw Kikyou and Kiriya—their presence seemed to get the audience buzzing.
“Hey, the two Nijouin clan head candidates are on the team!”
“Weren’t those two students from Campus Two? They were even on the Campus Two team last year. Are they sure about this?”
“It’s like we’re picking a fight with Campus Two.”
“But hey, if it means beating Campus Four, I ain’t complaining.”
“Yeah, we’ve gotta take every chance we can get.”
Some students sounded conflicted about having the twin transfer students on the team, but the majority welcomed them if it meant winning the competition.
“This could very well be our strongest roster in Campus One history. If anyone objects, raise your hand.”
Nozomu declared to the audience. There wasn’t a single voice of dissent, with everyone’s silence taken as a sign of approval. That is, until one person piped up.
“Me!”
The speaker wasn’t among the students before Nozomu; instead, they were behind him. The person who had so firmly raised their hand to make themself known was one of the Nijouin twins, Kikyou. Though typically quite timid, Kikyou had her eyes open wide that day, and she seemed uncharacteristically imperious.
“What is it?” Nozomu asked with a bit of surprise. Apparently, he hadn’t expected a response from Kikyou, either.
“I have an objection!”
Nozomu grew irritated.
“Against what? The teachers already gave this roster the seal of approval.”
“I nominate Hana to be on the team!”
Hana was watching the events unfold with her gaze off in space, but a shiver suddenly went down her spine when she heard her name.
“Huh? Kikyou, seriously, what are you talking about?!”
Hana scrambled to get a word in and beg to please, please, please keep her out of this hassle, but sadly, the debate among the crowd quickly drowned her out.
“Wait, nominate? Isn’t she in Class C? The team’s normally picked from Class A.”
“Maybe that’s just because they’ve never picked from Class C before?”
“It’d be a first for us to pick a Class C student for the team. The other schools would laugh us out of the festival.”
The gazes of the chatting students started gathering on Hana, who now felt incredibly uncomfortable. Many of the voices were critical of Hana being in Class C. Hazuki wore a worried expression as she looked toward her sister.
“Hana is absolutely necessary! Her high level of practitioner skill is now common knowledge! What reason would one have to object?!”
“The team members are practically always selected from Class A,” Nozomu interjected. Hana silently cheered for him, hoping he would try objecting a little more fiercely, but the look on Nozomu’s face suggested he was far from committed.
Just then Kikyou hit the final nail in the coffin.
“Are you okay with losing to that phony princess?!”
Nozomu was taken aback, so Kikyou continued to lay on the pressure.
“Hana’s strength is essential if we wish to make that stuck-up prima donna taste the bitterness of defeat! We must use any means accessible to us!”
With that, she pointed firmly at Nozomu. Kikyou had become assertive out of nowhere.
“You…have a point.”
Just when Hana hoped he’d stick to his guns, Nozomu actually started leaning toward Kikyou’s opinion. And it wasn’t just him; the tide of the crowd was turning, too.
“If it means beating Campus Four, I’m open to it.”
“We’re in no place to start caring about what class someone’s in.”
“This year’s gonna be my last school festival, so I really wanna see us win…”
The previously critical gazes directed at Hana were now becoming hopeful about their new lifeline.
“W-w-wait!” Hana stammered in a rush.
“As a practitioner with human-form shikigami, and even an inugami at her beck and call, Hana will prove to be our greatest weapon! We absolutely must make that woman’s little face twist in anguish!”
Kikyou firmly clenched her hands. Nobody would stop her. Keeping her in check was typically Kiriya’s job, but he just seemed to be in a daze.
“Kiriya! I beg you, stop Kikyou!” Hana shouted, but he didn’t hear a thing.
Before she knew it, Hana was on the Campus Cup team.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
Hana sat still, stunned.
It was the lunch break following that roller coaster of a school assembly. Hana crossed her arms and exuded fury as she scolded Kikyou from the opposite side of a cafeteria table.
“What were you thinking with that stunt?”
“I’m sorry…”
Kikyou’s shoulders slumped dejectedly; she sure didn’t look much like the person who didn’t hesitate to firmly assert herself in front of a massive audience during the assembly. That Kikyou was clearly the weird one; this timid nature was overwhelmingly the norm for her.
“And, Kiriya, why didn’t you stop her? Times like these are what you’re here for!”
Hana found herself pushing the blame onto the boy sitting next to Kikyou, and this was the one time she had to give him a piece of her mind.
“I was looking at the sky and didn’t really notice. There was a cloud that looked like Hibari. I should’ve taken a picture…”
An enigma as always. Realizing that nothing she said would get through to him, Hana quickly gave up.
“I know I nominated you without your permission…but I had no choice! If we want to make that phony princess cry like a baby, we need you…”
Kikyou pleaded with puppy-dog eyes that were on the brink of tears. It was a stance meant to stir one’s protective instincts, but it would take far more than that to touch Hana’s heart.
“Enough of that. Just tell them to take me off the roster right now.”
Joining the Campus Cup was not a joke that Hana found funny. There was no way she’d ever willingly choose to join such an obvious pain in the butt of an event.
And the specifics of that event did not help. A competition testing practitioners’ powers was diametrically opposed to Hana’s goal of hiding her powers so that she could live in peace and tranquility.
Sure, Hana had lowered the veil and shown her powers before, but that was for Hazuki’s sake. Now that those rotten parents of hers were gone, she wanted to go back to blending into the crowd as much as possible.
The only ones who saw Hana exercise her power were the people here on Campus One. Hana wanted to believe that she still had the chance of lying low. She would graduate from school, work at an Ichinomiya Group company until retirement, then she’d cash out on her contractual marriage with Saku to the tune of one billion yen. Finally, she’d live out her golden years in the countryside with her shikigami, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, and on nobody’s terms but her own. Hana had stayed committed to her goal from the get-go.
To preserve this dream, she had no reason to go around using her powers in front of a massive crowd hailing from all five campuses. She could no longer hide the existences of Aoi, Miyabi, or Arashi the inugami, but she still had no desire to take the spotlight on top of that.
“Oooh… Please, I beg you, Hanaaa!”
Even when Kikyou pleaded on the verge of tears, Hana shook her head.
“I am not joining the team.”
“But I want to smash the bridge of that phony princess’s nose in!”
“No. Way.”
Not even Kikyou’s most tearful appeals were enough to sway Hana.
“But I can think of nobody besides you who can stand up to that phony princess, Hana! I beg of you!”
Kikyou was long past the verge of tears and now had actual tears welling in her eyes. It gave Hana the unbearable sensation of being a bully, but nonetheless, she didn’t want to do what she didn’t want to do.
“I don’t wanna.”
Hana continued her firm refusal. But after watching this all unfold from Hana’s side, Hazuki stepped in.
“Hana, I also want you to join. Having you there would be a great help.”
“Oof…”
Hearing Hazuki beseech her with that unshakable gaze put Hana at a loss for words.
The old Hana might have turned her down immediately, the same way she’d just done with Kikyou. But recently, Hana learned that when she and Hazuki were young and her practitioner powers were still weak, her parents had actually planned to put her up for adoption. It was only because Hazuki had offered herself as a sacrifice that Hana was saved, a kindness that Hana had gone almost her whole life without knowing.
Now that Hana knew the truth, she couldn’t bear to oppose her sister that much. Especially not when she was asking so desperately.
“Hmm…”
Hana didn’t know what to do with the pincer attack of clinging gazes. Just then Nozomu came by.
“Hey, you’re on the Campus Cup team, so you better fight like your life depends on it.”
Nozomu was rarely the one to start conversations, but here he was, going out of his way to talk to Hana. He sure was taking this Campus Cup seriously. However, Hana couldn’t have people getting their hopes up over nothing, so she shut him down quickly.
“Hold on—I never said I was gonna do it.”
“You’re not going to do it?!”
“But you must! The only person who can defeat that phony princess is you, Hana!”
Kikyou was starting to get fired up, with the tears in her eyes just moments ago now nowhere to be seen.
“Uh…Kikyou, what’s this ‘phony princess’ stuff even about?”
“The ‘phony princess’ term refers to none other than Campus Four’s ace, Botan Yotsukado.”
“No, I mean, Yotsukado’s not a phony at all, right?”
If anything, Hana thought Botan was as close to being a noble lady as someone got, but Kikyou pursed her lips at Hana’s response.
“I met her not too long ago, and she seemed a lot more refined than you.”
“How rude, Hana! How can you even think to compare me to that skin-deep phony princess?! I’m far more suited to being considered the princess of the five clans, am I not?!”
“No comment.”
Hana kept her thoughts to herself since Kikyou had started to cry again.
“Kiriyaaa!”
“There, there.”
With Kiriya bearing the responsibility of comforting his sister, Hana turned her questions to Hazuki.
“Is the Yotsukado girl really that strong? Come to think of it, I know the Campus Cup is about competing with practitioner powers, but what do you actually do?”
“There are a number of event categories. There are ones testing the strength of our barriers, the time it takes to defeat shades, and even the quality of the talismans we create. Kikyou here has won the talisman-crafting category for the past two years.”
“Huh.”