My Childhood Friend And The Culture Festival

According to my childhood friend, “You know how people say the way a person acts when they’ve got no breathing room is their true nature? But isn’t that really just a rare side of them, and not their true nature at all?”

…so she says.

Then again, this is coming from a strangely complicated girl, the kind who normally runs on pure whim and impulse yet quietly hides a side only I know about… so maybe she’s onto something.

And that scheme-hoarding childhood friend of mine, one Sakura Ayuri, well…

◆◆◆

“Here, Nonomiya, take this over!”
“Okaay~”

Festival day. The cooking room was my station, and it was packed, a whole crowd of us working away at our own jobs, myself included.

“How do I put it… this is going over better than I expected… way too busy…!”
“It’s a classic staple, sure, but I didn’t think it’d be quite this much… they apparently thought it over and went with a slightly smaller variety of potato… looks like that was the right call.”
“Though it’s cranked the busyness up to match…!”

Grumbling under my breath alongside Sumire, I dug the eyes out of the potatoes, careful not to nick my fingers.

With jaga-butter, I figure the usual move is to sell one big potato. But between how long that takes to cook, the equipment we could actually get our hands on, the fact that people eat on the move at a culture festival, and everything else, they’d apparently settled on cupping several small ones together and selling it that way. The plan had marched right along somewhere I wasn’t looking. Whose idea it was, I’ve no clue, but thanks to it, we were swamped.

◆◆◆

“Nice work, you two~. I’m here to take over the shift… you two okay?”
“Ah, Nitta… my hand’s kinda starting to hurt…”
“Same here…”

Of the kitchen jobs, digging out the eyes meant working a knife, which made it the roughest, so we’d arranged to rotate fairly often. Still, I honestly hadn’t expected the pace to come on this fierce. There was plenty of slack left, but with the day barely started, the road ahead looked rough.

“Hmm… maybe we should speed up the swap pace a little?”
“I think so too…”
“Ditto here… let’s just figure it out as we go with everything else…”
“Yeah~. Depending on how it goes, we could even call over someone from the booth out front~.”

All right, then. Next up was the easy job of just steaming them and carting them over. It shouldn’t take as much nerve, or wear on me as much, as gripping a knife and repeating the same motion over and over.

…or so I thought.

“Waagh! I cut my finger!”
“The hell are you doing, Kengo?! Go get yourself a bandage, quick! I’ll take over!”
“We’ve got slack for a while yet, but at this pace the butter stock’s gonna—! And we haven’t even burned through half the potatoes!”
“I’m gonna go talk to the class rep for a sec!”
“Are the new potatoes ready yeeet?!”
“They’ll be done in a bit! I’ll bring ’em over when they are! …Till then, tell ’em to just stall for time with some banter or whatever!”
“Banter?! Got it!”
“Wait, you actually ran with that?!”

Busy. Way too busy.

No way I was touching anything as much of a pain as customer service. …Or so I’d been thinking, but the problems just kept coming, one after another. And on top of all that…

“You’re really the star of the show, Gink— …Chief!”
“Why’d you rephrase that, Sumire…”
“I think it’s cool, though?”
“I’m not happy about it…”

This. I don’t know who started it, but while I was busy putting out one rushing problem after another, somewhere along the way everyone had taken to calling me “Chief.” Who on earth kicked it off… it felt like something Ayu would pull, but right then that girl was tied up with the serving…

“Chieef~”
“…Something up, Nitta?”

Nitta, our resident gyaru, came over while I watched the potatoes steam. She’d apparently just finished hauling the last of the steamed batch over to the stall.

“The class rep says, ‘Fujino— no, the Chief keeps solving all our problems, so I think we’ll get a little breathing room. I’ll send reinforcements your way, so once they’re there, take a short break, even a quick one’… so they say.”
“Why’s the whole ‘Chief’ thing spread over there too…”
“I told Ayu-chin, and it caught on★”
“Nittaaa!”

Pull that and of course it spreads! I could just picture Ayu gleefully parading it around to the whole class.

“Heya~, how’s it going in here?”
“Oh, they’re here, they’re here… anyway, Fuji— Chief, go take your little break~!”
“…Haah, whatever, fine… guess I’ll go check on how things are going over there for a change of pace.”

(Off to go see Ayuri, are we…)
(Off to go see Ayu-chin, huh…)

“…What’s with those eyes.”

“Nothing~,” the two of them chimed in unison.

“Haah… well, hold down the fort for a bit.”

I really was a little tired, so I figured I’d take them up on it and steal a bit of time to myself. Even if the look in their eyes seemed, if anything, faintly warm and knowing.

◆◆◆

“Thank you very much~! …Oh, the Chief’s here~!”
“Great work, Chief!”
“Great work!!”
“…”

I fought my way through the cheerful crowd to the outdoor stall, only to be met by… classmates who, no different from the kitchen, called me “Chief.”

Isn’t this basically mild bullying at this point?

“…Class rep.”
“Chief? Something wrong?”
“I’ve taken emotional damage, so can I go home?”
“Don’t go home?!”

I was kidding, obviously. I did want to catch the light music club’s live show, after all.

I glanced around our class’s surprisingly busy stall… huh, this side was livelier than I’d figured too… wait, were both Ayu and Hina gone?

“Yuuya~”
“…Ah, Chie— sorry, sorry, it’s a joke, don’t glare at me… you need something?”
“Where’re Ayu and Hina?”
“Uh, ah… those two are… oh, right! They took the sign and went off to advertise.”
“Hmm… guess I’ll go look around for them, then. Knowing that girl, she might’ve used this as an excuse to slip off to the special building.”
“Ahh…”

An image floated up in my head: Ayu leaning out a third-floor window of the special building, snapping photos of the stalls below, chirping, ‘Watching all the buzz from a distance is the good stuff, y’know!’

Come to think of it, the cooking room was on the first floor of that same special building. Might be worth chancing a peek in on my way back to my station.

“Ahh, I dunno about that — those two looked like they were talking things over while checking the map, so~. Maybe they’re off watching some attraction around there, surprisingly?”
“Hmm…”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Ayu even once since this morning. She’d apparently left home early to help out the light music club, and a message like this had come in over LINE:

“Even to my eyes this year’s live show looks amazing, so you absolutely have to watch! I mean it!!!”

When I replied, it got marked as read, so it wasn’t like she was completely swamped.

“…Ah, Gin~ haven’t seen you since yesterday~”
“Hm? Ah, Hina… huh, where’s Ayu?”

Speak of the devil, sort of. Hina came back with a drawing-paper sign slung around her neck… but Ayu was nowhere beside her, and Hina was carrying what had to be Ayu’s sign in her hand too.

“Ahh~… Ayu, well, she went off to where the light music club folks are~”
“Again? Wasn’t she there this morning too?”
“Seems like some kind of trouble came up~, and she went, ‘Maybe I can help with something!’ and just took off~”
“Hmm.”

Equipment trouble, maybe? Though I’d think an amateur like Ayu turning up would only get in the way. Then again, she’d apparently sat in on a ton of the practice for this show, so she must’ve been anxious about whether it’d go off well. Some kind of parental-love thing, maybe?

“Well, if that’s the case, then fine. So, before I head back… Hina.”
“What’s up~?”
“That thing from yesterday — were you able to bring it up with Ayu properly?”

Asking this was part of why I’d come over in the first place. In that sense, Ayu being gone was awfully convenient.

“Well, about that~…”
“…”
“Yep! Nailed it~!”
“…I see. Then that’s good.”

I don’t know exactly how she’d brought it up, but it had clearly gone fine. Hina’s bright, clear smile was proof enough of that, or so I thought.

◆◆◆

“…Yeah, the small ones are pretty good too.”
“They are.”
“Tasty~”

The three of us grabbed a meal once our shifts were done. The plan was to finish eating, then head to the gym early to claim seats.

For the record, we were eating our own class’s jaga-butter. Small potatoes, not the ones we’d made among ourselves before, but good in their own right all the same.

“Has Ayu already eaten, I wonder.”
“She said she’d eat once the live show’s over~, so we’ve had Ayu’s portion set aside for her~”
“I see.”

In the end, even after my little break, I still hadn’t managed to catch Ayu. I’d meant to sneak a look and check how she was doing: finally getting the culture festival she’d longed for, past life and all, and whether she was really enjoying it. But worst case, I could just ask her later.

“Honestly, she’s just an outsider helping out, so why’s Ayu so fired up about it…”
“…I’m sure it’s because there’s a song she wants people to hear that much~”
“Yeah. You’ll get it once you go. Probably.”

Probably… going by the way the two of them were acting just then, they knew Ayu’s real scheme. And yet, at that point, I hadn’t caught so much as a fragment of any such secret.

That’s why…

“…Ayu?”
“…”

The culture festival had a slot where any student who wanted to could get up on the stage and put on plays, manzai routines, and the like.

That I’d end up spotting my childhood friend, the one I hadn’t laid eyes on since yesterday, standing up there on that stage… at that point, I hadn’t imagined it for even a moment.