It was already past noon, so we decided one of us would go to a convenience store to buy lunch for all of us. Since Kisaki and Kokoro could take care of the booth by themselves, I stepped up to go.
The store had mostly been emptied by the other attendees, so I only managed to buy a couple of rice balls and a few sandwiches. When I brought this bounty back, we took turns eating, sitting on the chair furthest away from the table.
As the crowd thinned and the number of customers decreased, Kisaki left the booth in my and Kokoro’s hands for a few minutes to go meet some of her online friends.
When the clock was approaching half past one, Kisaki was back handing a doujinshi to another customer.
“Thank you so much!” my sister said, before pausing and murmuring to herself. “That was the last copy...”
“Really?! You mean you’ve sold out?!” I asked her.
Kisaki had quickly sold all twenty copybooks she had made, but what was more impressive was that she’d also managed to sell fifty of her bound doujinshi.
“That’s amazing!” Kokoro congratulated her.
“Thank you. I can’t believe it! I never thought I’d be able to sell all of them...”
“G-Good going,” I said.
For a middle schooler publishing her first doujinshi, it was an incredible achievement.
Once we’d finished cleaning up our space, Kokoro suggested that we all go and enjoy the rest of the afternoon together.
“I don’t know if they’re still here,” she added, “but would you mind if I invited our friends?”
“You mean those girls who visited the booth earlier? Sure! Go ahead!” Kisaki replied.
Friends? She means Iroha and Mikoto, surely, but... does that also include Minami? But she came to our booth so early that she’s probably already gone home...
“Oh, they replied! Awww, Iroha and Mikoto went home already... Oh! Minami said she was just leaving too, and that she’d love to come!”
“Minami... Is that the blonde girl?”
“Yep! That one!”
I can see her again... That means I’ll get another chance to have a proper conversation with her. But now that I think about it, didn’t Nishina already have plans for after Comiket?
“Hey, didn’t you say you wanted to meet that cosplayer guy after the event was over? Did you manage to invite him?” I asked her.
“I-I didn’t...” she replied, looking understandably disappointed.
“Why don’t you invite him now then? You exchanged LINE contacts, right?”
“What?! I can’t text him like that out of nowhere! We don’t know each other that well yet! I just can’t!” she objected, furiously shaking her head.
And to think she was planning to have dinner with him... Good luck with that, if you won’t even invite him.
“I’d sound totally desperate if I invited him right after he gave me his LINE!” she continued.
“Just tell him that you’re going out with some friends and ask him if he’d like him to come too.”
“W-Well... I guess that could work. But he was here with a friend too, and I wouldn’t wanna be a nuisance, you know? Like, I’d come across as super demanding...”
“Come on, Nishina. Don’t be a wimp. Just tell him a friend of yours wants to meet him or something. The worst that can happen is that he says no, right?”
Of course, if I were in her shoes, I’d be just as nervous about inviting my crush like that. That didn’t make her dilly-dallying any less infuriating though. It’d be a waste not to act when things were going so well, and, more importantly, I wanted to meet this Yuya guy in person myself. He looked harmless enough from his Twitter account, but you can’t judge a book by its cover.
“A friend of mine? Who, though?” Kokoro asked.
“Me, Kisaki, whoever. Just make something up. Tell him we saw a picture and want to see his cosplay in person,” I said, then I turned to my sister. “You do want to see him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I do...” she replied, glancing at me in a weird way. I could tell that she wanted to tell me something, but I couldn’t for the life of me guess what it was.
“Hmmm... Okay! I’ll do it!” Kokoro announced. “But first I have to ask Minami if she’s fine with it. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to come with a stranger there, you know, being a voice actress and all.”
She texted Elena, who quickly replied saying it wouldn’t be an issue. Then Kokoro started carefully crafting her next message to Yuya, writing, deleting, rewriting, and editing it for what felt like an eternity.
“This should do!” she finally said. “Listen to this: ‘Hello! Thank you so much for letting me take your picture today! Did you leave already? I’m about to go have dinner with some friends, and when I told one of them about you, they said they really wanna see your cosplay! Would you maybe like to come have dinner with us? If it’s not a hassle, that is!’”
“Yeah, that sounds fine...” I said.
It sounded somewhat formal for Kokoro and like she was scared to death of offending him, but it was her first text, after all.
“Okay! Go! Ahhh! I sent it! Too late for regrets! If he says no, I’ll have to live with that!”
Once we’d finished packing up, we left the hall and headed toward the café where Elena was already waiting for us.
“Eeeek!” Kokoro squealed all of a sudden.
“Wh-What’s wrong?!”
“H-He replied! He said he’d love to have dinner together! He’s in a diner nearby with one of his friends, and he said he could save seats for us! Awaaah!”
“O-Oh, okay...” I said.
“That’s nice of him!” Kisaki added.
Kokoro was obviously ecstatic that, against all odds, Yuya had accepted her invitation.
“Pinch me! This can’t be reeeal!” she shrieked.
Even though I had been the one to suggest it in the first place, I wasn’t quite sure how I should behave in what had become such a large group: me, Kokoro, Kisaki, Elena, Yuya, and Yuya’s friend. I still didn’t even know how to approach Elena, and I was going to have to watch Yuya’s every move to decide whether I should give him my blessing.
So many people and most of them barely know each other... Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
“Hi, Minami! Sorry to keep you waiting!”
“Oh, hi! It’s a pleasure to see you all.”
When we finally reached Elena, my eyes met hers for a moment, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I just gave her a polite nod. I was happy to see her again—we’d barely exchanged any words when I was at the booth—but I was also worried about how to actually interact with her.
“I’m totally sorry I invited other people you don’t know... Are you sure it’s okay?” Kokoro asked her.
“Of course, it’s not a problem at all. Are they friends of yours?”
“They’re not all friends, really... One of the guys is a cosplayer I kinda look up to. He let me take his picture today... And there’s his friend too.”
“Oh, I see. Good luck, then.”
“Huh?! Oh, haha...”
Elena already knew that Kokoro was looking for a boyfriend, and judging by this conversation, she’d already guessed that Kokoro had invited the guy because she had a crush on him.