Ski Trip! On The Bus.

“HEY, HEY, HEY~♪♪♪”

Inside the bus, a girl’s singing voice echoed throughout the cabin.

The song was a love song by a female idol group.

She was holding a handheld karaoke microphone, so the echo and other effects weren’t particularly strong.

However, the girl singing was clearly well-accustomed to karaoke.

Her voice carried well, and she was quite skilled.

Even though the volume was high, her singing wasn’t a nuisance.

She expertly utilized vibrato, glissando, falls, and long tones.

The problem was the voices coming from the people around her.

“YEAAAH!”

“Wooo-hooo!”

“HONOKA-CHAAAAN!!!”

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call them rowdy; the voices of several male students rained down from the seats behind.

To put it bluntly, it was nothing but noise.

The girl who was singing… no, that description isn’t enough.

Honoka Sakurajima, a “Shiro-gyaru” (fair-skinned gyaru) beauty with long hair dyed a stunning platinum blonde, finished her song and immediately made a sideways V-sign by her eye, writhing her body into a pose.

“The best!”

“So cuuuute!”

“L-O-V-E, Love, Love, Honoka!”

“Marry meeee!”

“Encore! Encore!”

Listening to those shouts behind me, I lowered my gaze to the five or so cookies remaining in the box.

“Um… were they not tasty?”

The girl sitting next to me (she was also an incredibly lovely beauty), Ishida’s younger sister, Meika-chan, peeked at my face anxiously.

“No, that’s not it. They’re good, really.”

I forced a smile and answered, but in reality, my mouth was full of powdery dryness.

Perhaps the baking time had been insufficient; the cookies were unevenly baked, and a fair amount of raw flour remained.

To make matters worse, I hadn’t brought a drink onto the bus.

Consequently, I couldn’t get rid of the sensation of flour sticking to my throat.

“Yu-san, if they aren’t good, you don’t have to force yourself to eat them…”

Looking at the sad expression on Meika-chan’s face, I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Then I’ll leave the rest.”

She surely must have worked hard with unpracticed hands to make these cookies for me.

“No, they’re really delicious. Don’t worry. I’ll eat them all.”

Saying that, I forced the remaining five cookies into my mouth.

I’ll buy a drink the moment we get to a service area… I thought.

“Isshiki-saaan!”

Clinging to my neck as if she were about to kiss me was Honoka, who had been singing enthusiastically until just a moment ago.

She threw her outstanding figure over Meika-chan toward me.

“En-chan, you’re heavy!”

Meika-chan pouted.

“Sorry, sorry. But the rotation time passed three minutes ago. Consider it a sign that I couldn’t wait any longer.”

Apparently, Meika-chan and Honoka had decided to take turns sitting next to me every hour.

Meika-chan reluctantly stood up and sat in an empty seat across the aisle.

“Hey, hey, Isshiki-san. What do you think? Look how popular I am!”

Honoka asked with a confident smile, nuzzling against my neck.

“Amazing, amazing, you’re just amazing. There, is that good enough?”

I gave a half-hearted reply while untangling Honoka’s arms from my neck.

“What’s with that? Here I am, turning down all those other guys asking me to ‘come sit closer’ just so I can sit next to you!”

Honoka’s face immediately twisted into a pout.

An ordinary guy would probably think this expression of hers was “cute.”

But I knew how calculating she could be.

“I never asked you to do that, did I?”

At that, the upperclassmen in the seats behind us all raised their voices at once.

“Honoka-chan! Just leave that cold guy alone and come over here!”

“Yeah, yeah, come play a game with us!”

“Isshiki, you’ve already got Toko-san, haven’t you!”

“Don’t monopolize both of the beautiful sisters! At least pass Honoka-chan over to us!”

“It’s not just two of them. If you include Meika-chan, Isshiki is monopolizing three beauties! This is wealth inequality! We demand redistribution!”

I shot back at those seniors.

“I’m not monopolizing anyone! And isn’t it a bit of a problem to talk about girls like they’re objects!”

Several frustrated voices flew at me from behind.

“Dammit, only Isshiki gets the good stuff.”

“Isshiki, go explode!”

“I’m gonna bury you in the snow!”

I could hear them grumbling even after that. I gave a wry smile.

With those voices behind her, Honoka once again rested both hands on my shoulders.

Squish.

Her ample bust—which didn’t seem like it belonged to a seventeen-year-old—was pressed against my left arm.

It was quite elastic.

She then whispered, resting her chin on my shoulder.

“But really, even you must be starting to think I’m ‘quite a catch’ by now, right?”

Her breath brushed my cheek.

But I shifted my body away from her.

“Not really. It doesn’t matter to me who finds you popular or who pampers you.”

“Aww, jeez! You’re so cold!”

Since Honoka’s posture became awkward when I shifted, she pulled herself up and sat back down properly in the seat.

“I guess I’m just no match for Onee after all…”

She muttered sadly.

…Did I treat her a bit too harshly?…

Seeing Honoka act like that made a sense of guilt well up inside me.

“I told you, that’s not what I mean. You’re plenty attractive in your own right. In fact, in less than an hour, you’ve become incredibly popular with almost all the guys in this club.”

“I don’t need half-baked comfort!”

Honoka said sulkily.

This was bad; she was the type of person who, once her mood started dropping, tended to sink all the way to the bottom.

In particular, she had a massive complex regarding her older sister, Toko-san.

“It’s not comfort. I acknowledge that you’re cute. But look, I’m dating your sister, Toko-san. I can’t exactly go around creating a ‘weird atmosphere’ with you, her little sister, can I?”

“Well, I’m trying to create that ‘weird atmosphere’ specifically so I can steal you away from Onee!”

“Don’t say that so loud! We’re on a bus; everyone will hear you.”

“Ehehe~”

Honoka poked her tongue out while miming hitting herself on the head.

It seemed her mood had recovered.

Looking at Honoka, and at Meika-chan who was staring at us intently from across the aisle, I reflected once again on the events leading up to this ski trip.

It was the end of February, and we were participating in the club’s ski retreat.

However, there was one problem.

The number of people wanting to participate in the trip had fallen below the minimum required for the reservation.

Part of the responsibility for this lay with me.

At the Christmas party, Toko-san and I had delivered an overwhelming blow of retribution by dumping our respective partners—Kamokura and Karen—after confronting them with evidence of their cheating.

As a result, Karen and Kamokura could no longer stay in the club.

Furthermore, four guys who worshipped Karen like an idol and more than ten girls from the women’s university who were fans of Kamokura had left the club.

Consequently, we suddenly had to find several people to fill the minimum quota.

Honoka, Toko-san’s sister, and Meika-chan, Ishida’s sister, had caught wind of this.

Both were high school juniors and happened to be on break after finishing their exams.

And so, they ended up participating in this ski trip…

For me, it was extremely awkward.

This was because, about a month prior, both of them had declared themselves “candidates” to be my girlfriend.

I could still understand Meika-chan.

She is the sister of my best friend, Ishida, and we’ve known each other since middle school.

I had also (technically) heard from Ishida before that “Meika is interested in Yu.”

However, I was shocked when Honoka said she was “running to be my girlfriend.”

After all, she had initially approached me specifically to “break me and Toko-san up and pair me with Meika-chan.”

Because of that, my initial impression of Honoka had been the absolute worst.

She had even tried to blackmail me with a honey-trap scheme.

…How did things get so twisted that it ended up like this?…

I looked at Honoka with a feeling of half-disbelief, remembering the events of a few weeks ago.

Honoka was fiddling with her phone.

She must have noticed my gaze, though.

When she looked toward me, she flashed a brilliant smile.

I felt an involuntary flutter in my chest at that expression.

…It’s true that, looking at her normally, she’s an exceptionally beautiful girl…

I turned my eyes toward the window, trying to brush the thought aside.