Chapter 5: Don’t Let Them Kill the Little Giant
I was brought all the way to Sansetsu-cafe. The setting sun streamed into the shop through the wide windows.
Even the orange color that should have been beautiful felt somehow suffocating.
As if the sky was telling me—in the end, you can’t escape from this cycle.
At the very back of the shop was a single private room. The door across from the restroom that was always closed. Mikage led me there.
“Go in.”
Urged to open the door, I looked down at the stylish brass doorknob. If Mikage intended to talk with just the two of us, she would have opened it herself. Someone was already waiting inside this room.
I cleared my throat a little, then knocked and opened the door.
First, the intense western sun burned my eyes. Gradually, an antique-style table and chairs came into view.
Sure enough, just as I had anticipated, one person was waiting there alone.
“Oh, you came, Del-chi! Thanks for coming after club activities. Sit, sit!”
Hongō Nagisa, the Chemistry Club president. In her school uniform, leisurely drinking coffee.
Across the four-person table, Mikage and I sat facing her. Through the even larger window, we could see the ocean scenery dyed in the sunset glow, but my mind wasn’t in a state to appreciate it.
What kind of conversation was about to unfold in this room?
“No need to be nervous. Here, what’s your order?”
A menu was handed to me across the table. Something felt off about her fingers. The gaudy nail art was gone, replaced with moderately trimmed nails painted only in a turquoise color. If she had been wearing those flashy nails just to earn our displeasure, then I could only say she was impressive.
Sansetsu-cafe’s recommendation was still the Spring Blend, as usual.
“I’ve decided.”
“What about Aya-chi?”
After a brief moment of hesitation, Mikage said only, “The blend,” in a small voice.
“Okay.”
I thought senpai would call the staff, but instead she tipped her cup and drained it.
Then came a knock.
“Excuse me.”
A young male staff member opened the door and entered. Three cups on a silver tray. When Hongō-senpai received her café latte, she gestured with her hand to place the cherry-colored cup in front of me and the white cup in front of Mikage.
No way—I was speechless.
We hadn’t ordered yet. I hadn’t even declared that I would order the Spring Blend.
Yet the cherry-colored cup placed before me was unmistakably the Spring Blend, and I also knew that the coffee in the white cup placed before Mikage was Sansetsu-cafe’s Regular Blend.
It was like a magic trick. …Or rather, did this senpai read my mind?
“Surprised? I’m actually pretty good at this kind of thing.”
“What exactly is going on here?”
It was both anger at her intentions and a question about how she did it.
“If I didn’t demonstrate, you wouldn’t believe what I’m about to say, right? To reveal the trick: I just predicted that Del-chi would choose the recommendation without hesitation, and that Aya-chi usually gets café latte, but today she’d choose the cheapest thing because she doesn’t want to owe me anything.”
Unbelievable.
Setting aside Mikage, how did she know so much about me after only talking briefly at the new student welcome?
…No, she had known.
Because she knew, she was able to manipulate us.
I didn’t touch the Spring Blend, instead staring directly at Hongō-senpai—at the true enemy.
“Why did you summon me here?”
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“Judging by that serious face, it’s probably exactly what you’re thinking, Del-chi. I thought you’d probably notice soon, so I decided to get ahead of it and confess.”
After slurping her hot café latte, she stared back at me with wide-open eyes.
“Come on, ask what you want to ask. Big sister here will answer anything today.”
Mikage seemed intent on maintaining her silence. She probably didn’t want to talk about anything. I could see from my position that she was clenching her fists tightly on her lap.
There was so much I wanted to ask. I should start with the first inconsistency.
After taking a deep breath, I spoke.
“When we went to see the cherry blossoms on the back mountain, we passed you and Mikage-senpai coming down.”
“Yup yup, that’s right.”
“At that time, you said—’We climbed all the way up, but it was disappointing.'”
“And?”
“That’s strange, isn’t it? It was you, Hongō-senpai, who told Mizusaki about the heart in the collapsed cherry blossoms. You already knew that the heart wouldn’t be visible this year, yet you said ‘disappointing.'”
Senpai nodded without losing her smile at all.
“That’s right.”
“Why did you say such a thing?”
“I thought if people actually heard the voice of someone who couldn’t see it, the emotion when they could see it would be greater. You know, like a shill? Cherry blossoms and all—not that that’s the only reason, but I thought if there was no one else, you two might turn back halfway, so just in case.”
She casually mentioned something terrifying. In other words, she was trying to manipulate Iwama’s and my impressions.
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“Didn’t you notice? Even though those cherry blossoms were in full bloom, no one else came to see them. That’s also one of the traditions that’s been on the verge of dying out over the past four years or so of agitation. Apparently until five years ago, they maintained the viewing platform and pruned the cherry trees, but that stopped too.”
I remembered. Despite being famous cherry blossoms according to Mizusaki, aside from Iwama and me, we only saw Hongō-senpai and Mikage-senpai that day. The sign that was covered with lichens.
“The platform position changed because of that too. The teacher who responded when the tree fell didn’t know anything about the legend. Even though the viewing position is important, they just moved the platform so students wouldn’t have to climb over the fallen tree and called it done.”
“…I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“You incited Mizusaki to send me to such a place—what exactly were you trying to accomplish, senpai?”
Senpai raised her eyebrows in surprise. As if to say, you don’t even understand that?
“I thought that if Del-chi and Rio-chi solved the cherry blossom mystery together, you’d become close and get to know each other well. What other reason did you think there was?”
I had been prepared that it might be something like this, so my shock probably didn’t show on my face. But Mikage, who had been sitting still until now, moved her face slightly to look at me. Was she worried about me?
“…How much did Mizusaki know?”
“I just told Mizu-cchi about the cherry blossoms. I said something like, ‘You should definitely tell your friends about it, especially if there’s a guy and girl you want to hook up, it would be good to tell them,’ you know.”
Indeed, Mizusaki would probably find that amusing and scheme to pair up Iwama and me after being told just that.
But why did Hongō-senpai know so much about us?
“I forgot to mention the premise. My boyfriend is well-connected, so I investigated most of the excellent new students before they even enrolled. You know, profiling?”
She explained as if reading my mind.
“What grades that kid got, what clubs they were in, what friends they had, what they did outside school, and to get even more detailed, even what kind of drinks they choose at a coffee shop. Rational, solid kids have no inconsistencies and are really easy to collect data on.”
Really, just what is this person?
“…You were also the one who planned to guide Mizusaki and me to the Biology Club at the welcome event?”
“Of course.”
The Spring Blend just kept getting cold in front of me. Senpai drank her café au lait.
“By the way, Del-chi, when did you catch on?”
“The trigger was the highlighter. The one that emphasized Euler’s identity in Mikage’s math magazine was a highlighter that neither Mikage nor Mikage-senpai uses. You bought that magazine, marked Euler’s identity, and gave it to Mikage. Then you used Mikage-senpai to persuade Mikage. Isn’t that right?”
“Aya-chi, you already told him that much?”
Hongō-senpai looked at Mikage with an exasperated expression.
“Yes. You didn’t tell me not to.”
Mikage flatly returned words like an elementary schooler’s quibbling. It wasn’t that she had been moving entirely at Hongō-senpai’s command—she apparently had something on her mind too. Hongō-senpai shrugged in resignation.
I pressed further.
“The poster put up in front of the Biology room—that was you too.”
“Yup. Because without that, people would think we weren’t even doing a welcome event. Even if Aya-chi brought you guys there, it would be a problem if there was no excuse to enter the Biology room, right?”
The Biology room that had absolutely no welcoming atmosphere. What gave Mikage the opportunity to bring us in was undoubtedly that poster. Had she even thought ahead that far?
“But I didn’t think you’d notice that. Why? Did the design end up resembling the cover of that terrible booklet I gave you?”
So this person had intentionally handed out a poorly made booklet at the welcome event.
But that wasn’t relevant here.
“Tokumura-sensei said that poster was made by the current third-years. However, Karato-senpai is apparently bad with computers. That quality of work can only be produced by someone experienced in design.”
“Well, maybe Rō-chi reused past data and ordered it.”
“That poster incorporated a photo of the light blue parakeet that arrived after Golden Week last year. It wasn’t just rewriting the text—it was specifically designed for this year’s welcome event. And by the hands of someone who isn’t a Biology Club member. The only ones with a reason to be that meddlesome would be you people.”
Hongō-senpai nodded in understanding.
“I see. Well, that’s right, but I don’t like calling it meddlesome. It’s only natural for me to do that much for the Biology Club, which is in the same Science Department, and for my best friend who’s completely lost her motivation.”
Making a poster to help with the welcome event for a friend who had lost motivation—if that were all, it would sound nice, but the plan this senpai had laid out was far more immature than that.
She commanded Mikage to guide Mizusaki and me to solve the mystery of the equation, using a much more roundabout method than simply recommending the Biology Club—but an effective one—to make us join the Biology Club.
And.
“You were also the one who told Kannabi that we joined the Biology Club.”
“Whaat, you already know that much too?”
Senpai drank her café latte deliciously again while recommending that we drink our coffee too. I drank to moisten my throat, but could barely taste it.
“Did Nabi-chi mention my name?”
Feeling a hint of coldness in that tone, a terrifying sense as if she were trying to identify a traitor, I shook my head.
“No. Kannabi simply said ‘the director.'”
Hongō-senpai suddenly burst out laughing.
“Ahaha, really? The director! Same idea as senpai.”
“The senpai who called you Indy?”
“That’s right. Kashiwabara-senpai, the previous Chemistry Club president. Like me, she was also the student council vice president… That person was pretty extreme too, but she gave me a slightly witty nickname. She wanted to say that I was a villainess who uses people around me as pawns.”
So that was it.
Indy. Or rather, indicator.
When Hongō-senpai said it was a nickname only used in the Chemistry Club, it was because it was a silly joke using chemistry terminology. The meaning of indicator—that which shows—here wasn’t referring to meters or displays.
It was a blind spot, but there exists a more appropriate and convincing translation.
In the context of chemistry, indicator means—
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