Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume4 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

“Cinderella Queen here! Out of respect for the Japanese-style seaside restaurants, I’m wearing a bikini apron today! If one or the other strap was going to come undone, would you want it to be the bikini or the apron? Now, it’s time to introduce you to today’s matches!!”

“Sigh. You only say that because accidents like that scare you so much.”

“Silence, assistant! No analyzing my motives on the air. Besides, I’ve never been afraid of accidents.”

“You say that, but you’re the one that barged into the program organization office and made a scene, demanding they didn’t air the part where you wet the sleeping bag during that camping project. If only you weren’t so cute, I might blame you for getting yourself kicked out of the TV industry for that one.”

“Gyahh!? Shut up, shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup, assistant!!!!! None of that is true! Stop spreading fake news!! A-a-a-a-anyway, the third round is this tournament’s semifinals. Ha ha. Eh heh heh. We have one match this morning and one in the afternoon, so make sure you stay glued to your screens and witness this historic moment with the cutest queen on the planet☆ Assistant, I am murdering you the instant this stream is over!!!!!!”

“Yamanen,” said Karuta.

He was away from Aine.

After his morning training was complete, he walked past an LCD monitor set up in the hallway and peeked inside his own classroom. They were running a restaurant too, but he was too busy with the tournament to participate. He hadn’t even been told what they were serving.

He took a look inside the classroom decorated with streamers and cellophane.

“Wow, that is quite a smell. Is that habanero?”

“No, no, no. We’re four generations of selective breeding past that, you ignorant fool. This is our super-spicy seafood curry. It’s free.”

A small boy in a light green (or maybe yellowish-green?) kimono staggered out of the classroom. Wasn’t that Omotesandou Shouka, the president’s brother? And how did even his hat look down for the count?

There had to be more to this.

The ingredients weren’t free and then there was the labor that went into preparing the food. He knew his class better than to think they had volunteered to give food away out of the goodness of their hearts. Yamane Deiri answered his skeptical look with a shrug.

“But a glass of ice cold water will set you back 500 yen. We were hoping the starving athletes would come in, chow down, and spend a fortune, but it’s not going so well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He could tell they had even mercilessly gone after Shouka’s elementary school allowance. He could guess the entire class was channeling the spirit of a crooked festival game runner, but Karuta made a mental note to get the boy’s money back before the president said some truly frightening things with a smile.

Yamane Deiri breathed a heavy sigh and shook his head.

“It’s that sexy dance teacher, Kurent-sensei! We worked together to come up with the perfect money-making scheme, but now we’re in the red after that real Indian locked onto us. Can you believe it? We dumped in a ton of crazy peppers so spicy a grove of them is supposed to protect you from a tiger, but she hasn’t ordered a single glass of water. And she criticized it for being nothing but spicy!! She even started giving us advice on spice mixtures that would soften the aftertaste!! C’mon, that’s not the point! We’re trying to rip people off, not make good food! Ugh, and she keeps ordering more free plates, putting us further in the red!!”

(How are you losing that much money on curry when you can just make a single big pot of it? What kind of super rare peppers did they buy? Online shopping can be a scary thing.)

Despite his complaints, Yamane Deiri seemed to be enjoying himself. He loved older girls, so he likely enjoyed all this attention from the teacher. …Which also meant he wasn’t the type to care at all about the ring on her finger.

Karuta lowered his voice.

“Anyway, do you think you can manage what I asked you?”

“Why are you asking that now when you already ''paid up front''? With Amaashi Marika, I mean. Now, I don’t get it at all since I’m into older girls, but lending us one of the strongest has been giving us a lot more customers. We’re still in the red, but the Kurent Recession would already have bankrupted us without the Amaashi Waitress Effect.”

Karuta took another peek inside the classroom and saw the curly twintails girl dressed in a skimpy dancer outfit and surrounded by the class’s girls. Since this was a curry shop, were the waitresses dressed in an Indian-style sari? It had been heavily customized and left her midriff bare, so it looked more like something from an isekai fantasy. It made her look like a model doing a photo shoot or fashion show, so the design was popular with the girls as much as the boys.

(What is this place? It’s turning into a power spot where you can see the world’s strongest in person.)

Marika may have been perfect for the job since she loved attention, but Karuta wanted nothing to do with it. Public appearances always made him so nervous it had to be bad for his heart. But a lot of the audience(?) was satisfied with seeing the famous girl from out in the hallway because they left instead of taking a seat.

Yamane Deiri shrugged.

“So you want to know about Machibula Delphi? The entire class is working to secretly research that sneaky bitch who somehow took her opponent out outside the ring and passed it off as an accident. And if she’s willing to do that, why should we hold back? We’re doing everything we can find her weakness. It would stand out if you did it yourself, so leave all the behind-the-scenes research to us.”

“Thanks, but will you be okay?”

“The world’s strongests aren’t the only ones who fought the fake Threat at the Crystal Beach and the real one at Second Grimnoah and lived to tell the tale. We can handle being your opening act. And I think you’ll be satisfied with the results.”

Yamane Deiri winked and smiled before shoving a plastic sleeve full of paper against Karuta’s chest.

As the “opening act”, they had apparently written up a report on the previous day’s accident.

This was not a game of telephone. By compiling it into a single document, they would have worked out any discrepancies between witness accounts, so he could trust this information from his classmates. Karuta kept to the side of the hallway to not get in people’s way while he flipped through the document.

*The “accident” occurred yesterday preceding Round 2 Match 3 shortly after 1 PM. While the waiting rooms containers were being carried in by tiltrotors, the metal wires snapped and the entire room dropped to the heliport 7m below. Hattori Shizuku’s right wrist and ischium were broken, requiring two months of recovery time. She was forced to forfeit the match.

*The tiltrotor and waiting room container underwent a regular inspection that morning and was inspected a second time just before Hattori entered the waiting room. Both inspections showed no issue with the wires or clasps. Assuming the records have not been tampered with and no employees have been bought off, the sabotage must have occurred after that, when the tiltrotor was ascending and the container was suspended by the wires.

*The actual damage was to the wire attached to the container’s front right corner. It is thought the one wire snapping altered the weight distribution, causing the others to snap in a chain reaction. There is evidence that the metal clasp was burned away by a great heat. A natural heat increase from a twisted wire or friction could not have caused this. And since no one could have physically contacted the container after it was lifted into the air, a slow-acting incendiary chemical or powerful acid could have been applied in advance, or a laser could have been fired from long distance.

“…”

(A laser?)

Then a cheerful voice reached him.

“Hey, handsome. Table for one?☆”

“Huh? Hey, wait, Marika!?”

Karuta looked up in shock to see the isekai dancer waitress had emerged into the hallway and captured his arm. And with smile, she got him in an armlock in order to drag him toward the nearby door.

Yes, into their class’s ultra-spicy curry shop.

Afraid what she would do to his wrist, he didn’t dare tell her his elbow was touching something awfully soft. Still smiling, his childhood friend whispered to him.

“(You’re scaring away our customers by standing at the entrance with a big frown on your face. Don’t forget that we’re officially the world’s strongest, skinny boy.)”

“No, wait! I’ll leave, I’ll leave, so just let me go! Ow, ow, ow, ow!?”

“I will break your arm. I’m not exactly pleased that I’m the only one out here using her body to drive up sales, so you’re going to play your part too. Shouka-kun claimed he could handle anything after his sister’s spicy homemade curry, but that didn’t last long. So we need you to eat some of that red hot curry rice while going on about how it isn’t spicy at all and how it’s so good you could eat plate after plate of it.”

“Um, Marika? I am relieved to learn that you aren’t cruel enough to go after an elementary schooler’s allowance, but you’re my childhood friend. I know you know I can’t handle anything remotely spicy.”

“Surely one of the Four Living Gods who can go head-to-head with the Threat isn’t going to cry over some amateur curry, right? And we need to end this Kurent Recession. She showed up wondering what Japanese curry rice was like compared to the authentic Indian stuff and then she wouldn’t stop ordering more free plates of it! I refuse to accept that a restaurant with me as a waitress can lose money!!”