Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume27 Chapter7 1 (section)

===<noinclude>The Door That Opened. </noinclude>Part 1 ===

In front of the elephant enclosure, they ran into some quite unexpected people.

"Mami-san?"

"Err, ah, Yoshino-san!"

Both groups were taken aback. Mami-san and her petit soeur Hidemi-san were eating ice-creams. Wasn't it a bit cold for that?

Yoshino folded her arms and started the interrogation.

"I suppose it would be a bit boorish to ask why you're here."

Mami-san was the chief editor of the "Lillian Kawaraban" → She knew that today was the day of the Valentine's Day dates → She came to gather information about the dates.

There could be no other reason for two newspaper club members to be loitering around this area today. However.

"No, listen, listen."

Mami-san and Hidemi-san frantically waved their left arms, which weren't holding ice-cream.

"We're just having our own date."

"Huh?"

"It has nothing to do with a newspaper article. Really."

"Oh?"

"At first, I did think about straining myself to follow you, like my onee-sama last year. But while I was thinking about it, it seemed kind of pointless. Because today, somewhere, somehow, the three winners of the treasure hunt would surely be having a wonderful time."

Hearing this, Yoshino and Chisato-san looked at each other. They answered neither, "Yeah," nor, "No way," instead smiling vaguely.

"And yet, we'd be chasing after them like idiots? On Sunday, of all days? We're not detectives, but we're going to follow them and keep tabs on what they do? And not even get paid for it?"

Mami-san was getting herself down just thinking about it. Apparently this was still a fairly raw topic.

"But my onee-sama wasn't about to give up just like that."

Hidemi-san blurted out excitedly from beside her.

"She said, "If we're going to write an article about a date, we'll write a report about our own date.""

"Hah."

Not really understanding, but just saying something to be polite. This time around Mami-san explained.

"So, basically, a personal account along the lines of, "What can you do for 4000 yen?" Something that our readers can compare to the three dates of the prize winners. Of course, we've covered all the expenses ourselves."

Truthfully, it wasn't just Mami-san and Hidemi-san, there were a lot of soeurs at school that were like that.

"There's two patterns."

Mami-san held up two fingers, making the peace sign.

The first was trying to guess where the future Roses were going on their dates, which had been last week, the other was resolving to go on a date that Sunday. If the details of the date weren't published, most people would probably go with last year's budget of 3000 yen.

Following that thought, once the Valentine's Day special edition of the Lillian Kawaraban was published, there would be a number of girls looking to follow the same route as the future Roses. Next Sunday, a plague of Lillian's Girls Academy students would probably descend upon three areas around Tokyo.

"And with that, I bid you farewell, so we don't intrude upon each other."

The two newspaper club members waved cheerfully, then headed off towards the monkey enclosure.

"Oh my. I guess they really are just out on a date."

The two that had been left behind saw them off with the expressions of those who had just been tricked by a fox.

Sorry to say, but the fox enclosure was in the opposite direction.