Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume33 Chapter2 1 (section)

===<noinclude>The Green Bird and the White Flower. </noinclude>Part 1.===

Yumi was standing by the bus doors so when it arrived at the Lillian Girls Academy stop she was the first off, leading the charge across the pedestrian bridge.

There was still some time until they were supposed to meet. Even if she walked to the classroom, she probably wouldn't be late.

(Even so.)

If five of the six people were already there, the last person to arrive would give the impression of being late even if they were a few minutes early.

(Especially considering...)

Yoshino-san was one of the members, so Yumi expected some irrational complaints. Ahh, she could just imagine it. Yoshino-san standing there with her hands on her hips, saying, 'You're laaate.'

When she got on the bus, Yumi had checked to see if any of the four people she was going to meet (excluding Yoshino-san, who walked to school) were also on board, but she couldn't see any of them. They had all probably caught an earlier bus. As expected, missing the earlier bus to the station had cost her.

Yumi wanted to run, but she thought of the students that were following behind her and instead decided just to walk quickly. As the next Rosa Chinensis, it would not be proper for her to be seen running around with her skirt in disarray.

"Oh?"

Just before the fork in the ginkgo tree lined path, Yumi saw the back of a person that she knew well. 

"Kanako-chan?"

There was no need to wait until she had turned around to confirm this. There were very few students at this school who were as tall as she.

"Ahh. Gokigenyou, Yumi-sama."

"What's the matter?"

Since Kanako had arrived here before Yumi, that meant she must have been on an earlier bus. But if that was the case, then she had taken quite a long time to only get to here. The previous bus would have arrived over five minutes ago, and if it had hit traffic there should have been other students here with her too. Furthermore, Kanako-chan was just standing there.

"It's a bird."

"A bird?"

"Just after I'd stepped through the front gates, a tiny bird on a branch caught my attention so I stopped to watch it."

"For five minutes, or ten minutes?"

"No,"

Kanako-chan smiled.

"It was probably only two or three minutes. I felt like I could stay and watch it forever, but I had to get moving again. When I got here, I saw a student offering another her rosary, so I waited until they were finished."

"I see."

Looking further down the path, Yumi saw two students walking away hand-in-hand. They had probably waited until the crowd of people had passed through before performing the rosary ceremony. Kanako-chan, who had stopped to watch the bird, had become separated from the crowd of people and happened to arrive at just the wrong time. 

Like Yumi had witnessed earlier, there were people that would wait until the day before, or the day of, the graduation ceremony to decide to become soeurs. Don't tell me that the onee-sama is a third year, …, no, there's no way that could be the case.

"Shall we walk together."

Yumi urged Kanako-chan on, and they walked over to the statue of Maria-sama and prayed alongside each other. While they were standing around talking, the next wave of people was bearing down on them.

"You said it was a tiny bird, but what kind of bird was it?"

Yumi asked Kanako-chan, as they walked towards the school building.

"It was a green color, that looked like powdered green tea."

"A Bush Warbler?"

When she heard it described as small and the color of powdered green tea, that was the first bird that came to mind. Yumi looked up. Of course, the small bird that Kanako-chan had seen was nowhere in sight.

"That's what I thought too, so I stopped to have a look at it. I guess it is the time of the year for plum blossoms, after all."

Which means.

"You don't think so?"

Kanako-chan shrugged her shoulders when asked this.

"I can't really say for certain. I was a fair way away from it, and couldn't see all of it. It could have been a white-eye. It didn't really look like a parrot, but it could probably be identified by its call."

"Did it sound like 'hoohokekyo'?"

"Yeah, that's what it sounded like."

If its call was 'hoohokekyo,' then it was undoubtedly a Bush Warbler. No parrot would be able to imitate that sound.

"Do you know what the call of the white-eye sounds like?"

"Nope. But at the very least, it wouldn't sound like 'hoohokekyo,' right?"

"I suppose so."

Just then, they heard a 'caw-caw' sound coming from somewhere.

"And it's not that either."

The pair looked at each other and laughed.