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=== <noinclude>At the Outset of the Date. </noinclude>Part 3 ===

Winding the clock back a bit.

It's 8:50am. Yumi is at M station.

They had arranged to meet at 9, but she hadn't been sure what traffic would be like on a Sunday morning, so she'd left home with plenty of time to spare. The roads hadn't been all that busy but the bus hadn't arrived on time. As a result, she'd arrived just a little bit early.

Yumi waited in a place where she could see the ticket gate, and five minutes later Touko-chan appeared.

"Gokigenyou."

Beneath a shortish red coat Touko-chan was wearing a long denim skirt. She had on short-heeled shoes, or, rather, fashionable leather boots. Seeing her outfit, Yumi reflexively let out a sigh of relief.

"That's good. It seems my choices weren't too out of line."

"Huh?"

"I mean, you said we were going on a mystery tour, so I couldn't take into account our destination. I'd been puzzling over what to wear the entire time."

At that point, Touko-chan finally understood, and said, "Ahh."

Incidentally, a mystery tour is one where the participants don't know the destination until they arrive. The lady that lives next door to Yumi said she and her friends go on them quite often, and it's all anticipation and excitement as they don't know where they're going, or whether to buy souvenirs along the way, and so on. The previous year, she'd brought a salted salmon back as a souvenir from her mystery tour, and shared it with the Fukuzawa family.

Well, with only 2000 yen each, they weren't going to be participating in any group travel booking. So while it was still a mystery, today's was a budget tour that traveler Matsudaira had wracked her brains to come up with.

"See, if I'd worn a frilly skirt and we went mountain climbing, it wouldn't end well. But if I wore jeans and a t-shirt then they wouldn't let us in at a fancy restaurant."

People varied their clothes based on where they were going.

"Since we have to be back within the day, even if we went mountain climbing it wouldn't be that big of a mountain, so a skirt wouldn't be a problem. And if we were having a 2000-yen lunch, then there's no restaurant around here that would refuse you entry just because you're in jeans, right?"

Touko-chan said. In other words, it wasn't something worth getting too worried about.

"Well, I guess. Still, you called it a mystery, so I didn't know what to expect."

Consequently, Yumi had decided against jeans, instead going with beige wool slacks and a black turtle-neck sweater, then throwing on her usual duffel coat as she left. She'd initially put on her sneakers, then thought better of it, and swapped them for her mother's short-length boots.

But seeing what Touko-chan was wearing had filled her with confidence. It appeared they weren't going mountain climbing or to a fancy restaurant.

"Well, shall we get going?"

"But, what about the tickets?"

Yumi asked, pointing at the ticket machines. Touko-chan may have had a train pass, but Yumi went to school by bus, so she'd have to buy a ticket to get past the gate.

"We won't be buying them here. There's no need to."

"Huh?"

True to her words, Touko-chan headed away from the ticket gates. She continued on, pushing her way through the waves of people, and heading down the stairs.

And then.

"First we'll be taking a bus."

Touko-chan said, then headed towards a bus terminal that serviced a different company to the one Yumi took to school.

Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume27 Chapter4 3 - Revision history

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