Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume13 Chapter4 1

=== <noinclude>Gathering Material with Dustpan and Broom. </noinclude>Part 1. ===

In front of the statue of Maria-sama at the fork in the road, a voice called out to her from behind.

"I've been waiting for you, Nijou Noriko-san."

Noriko lowered her hands from their praying position and turned around.

"Yes?"

It was scary how accustomed she had become to it. When she first entered high school, she had gone through the motions to avoid drawing attention to herself, but now she just didn't feel right if she passed this place without joining her hands together in prayer. Her devoutly Christian onee-sama had had a profound effect on her.

"Gokigenyou. Hot, isn't it?"

The lone older student said as she drew closer.

Sunglasses as dark as her Lillian's school uniform, her hair knotted high back on her head, a white and navy blue striped bag in her hand, and black backless shoes with large floral decorations on her feet. At first glance the outfit seemed mismatched, but on closer inspection it wasn't too badly balanced. Although it required abandoning all preconceived notions about the school uniform in order to admit that.

"Recently, the Yamayurikai members have been preparing for the school festival every day, haven't they? Impressive, impressive."

She was walking alongside Noriko, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Um – "

Noriko wanted to ask, "Is there something you wanted?" but wasn't given the opportunity to do so.

Instead she was peppered with a barrage of gossipy questions, like, "Have you finished your homework?" and "You didn't get much free time this vacation, did you?" Noriko had no choice but to keep walking towards the school building, giving short and innocuous responses like, "Yeah," and "Mmm." Since she didn't know what the other girl's motives were, she wasn't about to provide any careless answers.

Just what exactly was this girl's goal?

Earlier, she'd said, "I've been waiting for you." It seemed unthinkable that she would have been waiting in this heat just because she wanted to walk with Noriko.

"Pardon me for a moment."

Having said this, the girl stopped walking. Even though Noriko didn't consider herself to be accompanying this girl, she still had plenty of time so reluctantly she stopped too.

The girl reached into her handbag and pulled something out.

"Here."

She had pulled out a couple of oolong tea drink cartons.

"It's alright, I'm fine."

Noriko politely refused, then the girl said:

"It's not a bribe."

"No, I didn't think it was."

"Really? Then forgive me."

She laughed airily and put one of the cartons back into her bag, then pierced the other with a straw and started sucking on it in the middle of the road.

Not seeing any reason why she should have to wait under the blazing sun for her senior to finish, Noriko bowed slightly and started walking ahead. Then that girl started chasing after her, still carrying the drink carton, and saying, "Please wait a minute."

"That reminds me, you had a meeting with the Hanadera Academy student council the other day. What were your impressions? It's got me interested."

"… Um."

It didn't exactly look as though she'd just been reminded of it, the way she plunged into the topic.

"Is it true that Rosa Chinensis fainted from shock when she met those honorable men?"

Noriko was glad she hadn't accepted the oolong tea. She'd even said it wasn't a bribe, what a lie that was.

"If you want to talk about that, you'll have to excuse me."

She quickened her pace, fed up with this. She may have spoken a bit forcefully, aided by the heat.

"Oh don't say that, wait for me."

The sunglasses followed once again.

"But I don't know anything."

The girl stuck to her like a snake coiled around her, and Noriko couldn't shake her no matter how she tried. As a last resort, she stood in front of Noriko, blocking her path, acting like some primary school bully. That she would go this far took her actions beyond irritating, into the realm of mind-boggling.

"What the heck are you doing?"

Noriko asked, with a sigh, and that girl just grinned and said:

"Liar. Sorry, just making fun. Actually, I was waiting because there was something I really wanted to ask your help with."

"My help … ?"

In her mind, Noriko quipped, "And how would you make fun of someone who would do you a favor after all this?" While Lillian's Girls Academy had a strict seniority-based relationship between the girls in different grades, it didn't mean that the seniors could do whatever they wanted.

"One of my vacation research projects is to investigate Buddhist statues. But our school's Catholic, right? So there's not really any good books on it in the library."

She looked regretfully in the direction of the library.

However, wasn't the girl's start as late as it was audacious that a Catholic school would set a report on Buddhist statues as homework?

(Why's she still only gathering data? Summer vacation's almost over.)

Then the girl smiled in an overly-friendly manner and continued, completely oblivious to what Noriko was thinking.

"So I thought I'd do some research on the internet. Noriko-san, can you introduce me to the site you and your friends use?"

"… You could just do a search."

She'd probably expected Noriko would say this, because she immediately adopted a facial expression that said, "Of course I know that," before continuing with the words:

"But it's a bit scary to suddenly jump in, right? At some sites you can rack up a huge bill before you're even aware of it. So it would be a huge relief if it was a site that an acquaintance of mine already frequented. Is that no good?"

It sounded to Noriko like she was talking about a rip-off joint. Not everywhere was like that, but she had heard tales of similar things before, so she understood the feeling. Because she was dependent on her allowance from her parents, Noriko didn't really go out searching for new sites, limiting herself to the sites she was familiar with as a safety measure.

Noriko was caught out a bit by being called an acquaintance, but since they both went to the same school then in the broader sense of the word it was probably true.

"… I don't mind, but it's just a site for amateur enthusiasts, so I doubt it will be useful as a reference. You're probably better off going to a big public library … "

"Yeah. I'll follow both leads."

"Alright. Hold on a minute."

Noriko didn't see a problem with telling her the site's address. It would be easy enough to find from a search even if she wasn't told it.

"Umm. I think I've got it here."

She'd just happened to bring a printout of the site's homepage with her today. From memory, the address was printed in the upper-right hand corner.

"Ah, this isn't it. Maybe this?"

She'd accidentally pulled out an email from Takuya-kun, so she hurriedly crammed it back into her bag. She'd printed them both out last night so they were stacked one on top of the other.

"h t t p  colon slash slash … um."

The girl spoke as she copied the address into her student notebook from the other piece of paper that Noriko offered.

"w w w  … hey, who's Takuya-kun, is he your boyfriend?"

"Huh?"

"The sender of that email."

"…"

What a blunder.

Despite the handicap of her sunglasses and that she'd only seen it for a moment, she'd apparently pulled that name out of those lines of text.

"Just a friend."

Noriko replied confidently, since she wasn't ashamed of their relationship.

"But he's a boy, right?"

"A boy, well, a man actually."

"He's a male friend, so he's a boyfriend, right?"

"Mm, well … in the loosest sense of the word."

Noriko was getting annoyed enough that she wanted to say, "If you've got the time to talk about that then copy the address already," but decided that arcing up here would just draw things out even longer, so she silently endured it.

"Ah, sorry. It caught my interest, so I couldn't stop myself from asking."

Maybe the irritation was showing on Noriko's face, because the girl sped up her transcription of the web site address and then closed her student diary when she was done. After that, she took the carton of oolong tea out from her bag and slipped it into Noriko's hand.

"Hey, wai … "

"It's fine, it's fine. It's thanks for giving me the address."

The other girl then walked away, leaving behind the impression of over-familiarity, like an old-lady on her way back from the supermarket pushing the sweets she'd just bought onto the next door neighbor's children whether they wanted them or not.

"What was up with that?"

She felt like she'd just been conned somehow.

She had to see her onee-sama's face to remove the bad taste. Noriko hurried off to the Rose Mansion.

It was 12:45pm.

The oolong tea that had been forced on her was lukewarm.

Just how long had that girl been waiting there for her?