Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume14 Chapter5

The Hanadera War

Part 1

She didn't know if this was the case everywhere, but:

Based on the Hanadera and Lillian's school festivals, the school festival at an all-boys school seemed louder but more tasteless than the one at an all-girls school.

First of all, take the school gate.

The letters on the sign that announced the school festival jutted out over the signboard, reaching over the wall it rested against.

Once inside the grounds, there were signposts that could be called either art or scribblings, and while the trees weren't painted, they were covered with all kinds of ornaments like it was Christmas or Tanabata. But a lot of the things just left her perplexed, wondering, "Why is that there?" Vinyl records, real leather boots, swimming floats, saucepans, hats, dog leashes, etc. All sorts of things up in the trees.

There seemed to be something like a sign-in area near the entrance but everyone was just walking in unchallenged. Inside they saw some middle-aged ladies carrying shopping bags, obviously using the school grounds as a shortcut home from the shops. That sort of openness was something you'd never see at Lillian's Girls Academy.

– So with that, the six members of the Yamayurikai were met at the entrance by Yuuki, Alice and Takada-kun, and escorted into the Hanadera Academy high-school grounds.

But, really, where on earth was this place?

Ninjas handing out fliers, Tarzan running around with a signboard on his back making his trademark roar, some popular anime characters singing a parody of their show's opening theme.

This should definitely be Hanadera Academy, but it felt like they'd slipped into an alternate universe.

All the Hanadera students made an "ohh" sound when they saw the Lillian's Girls Academy uniforms. Applause sprang up from out of nowhere.

"Don't worry. Everyone's been warned not to be impolite to you ladies from Lillian's."

Yuuki explained to Sachiko-sama, who was starting to seize up. He said that if something happened, the student could be suspended or expelled, as well as punishment being levied against the club they belonged to.

Clubs at Hanadera Academy emphasized tradition, with the strong bonds forged between club members lasting beyond graduation, so any student who caused the abolition of a club would be so dishonored that they would never again be able to cross the threshold of Hanadera Academy. Anyone who caused a club to be shutdown would be so ashamed they'd naturally have to drop out of school.

After walking for a little while they came to a fork in the path. Naturally, however, there was no statue of Maria-sama standing there – in front there was a thick grove and a smallish mountain.

"Now then, Yukichi, which way should we take the ladies from Lillian's?"

Takada-kun said loudly, out of the blue.

"Let's see. How about we take the right-hand path going there, and the left-hand path coming back."

Yuuki responded levelly, but his voice was raised too.

"Sounds good, let's go with that."

Even the usually soft voice of Alice joined in.

But why did they have to speak so loudly when they were right next to each other? And in a monotone to boot.

"I get it. You want everyone to hear, right? So neither the Genji or Heishi sides can complain."

Yoshino-san said quietly.

"Ding ding. You're sharp, Yoshino-san."

Alice made a sound like an intercom and pointed his index finger in the air. Apparently even the path that students took to school at Hanadera was split between two factions.

The right-hand path they'd take going there was quite steep. It was built close to the central mountain and undulated, giving it the feel of a mountain trail. A dynamic path with trees close to the edge.

"This would make for great exercise."

Rei-sama said, stepping around a tree stump and climbing the log staircase.

"Is everyone alright? It's like this going there, but the path back is paved and smoother."

When Yuuki said this, all the Yamayurikai members raised their hands in the air and said, "Hooray." However, since the both paths were part of the Hanadera grounds they chose to restrain from more boisterous celebrations like high-fives.

They were right not to be overjoyed.

"But it takes a big detour around the mountain, so it's longer."

"… Oh."

The maidens' smiles disappeared when that statement was added.

Incidentally, the short and tough path was Genji, the long and level path was Heishi. Without walking both of them it was hard to tell which one was easier.

"Which way do you usually go, Yuuki-san?"

Shimako-san asked. As expected from the daughter of a mountain temple, she wasn't even slightly short of breath.

"I do the same thing we're all doing today. Go there one way and back the other."

Yuuki was neither Genji nor Heishi. The boy that valued neutrality became the student council president.

"On that note, I take the left-hand path."

Alice said.

"I take the right."

Takada-kun added. Very much like the two of them.

Yumi pondered which route she would take if she went to Hanadera Academy and decided that she'd probably be like Yuuki, taking one path there and the other back. Not because she was imitating her brother. The Fukuzawa siblings were both equally indecisive.

After following the hiking course a little further they finally arrived at the point where it met up with the longer but flatter Heishi path and were once again greeted with the sight of students putting on various performances.

There were students handing out discount tickets to food stalls, handing out packs of tissues with filers for music acts and plays – all the usual means of attracting customers.

A student in a panda costume was handing out lollipops to little children. When they walked past, he offered one to Yumi, even though she wasn't a kid. The plastic wrapping had indecipherable pink and yellow lettering on it.

"Th-thank-you."

The panda patted her on the head like she was a good girl then went back to the group of kids.

"Even though no-one else is approaching us because of Yuuki-kun's watchful gaze … such incredible bravery."

Rei-sama spoke with admiration, looking back at the panda.

"Perhaps he was emboldened because we couldn't see his face."

Something well worth considering.

"Even so, why did he only give me one … ?"

Yumi took a good look at the candy she'd just received. Yuuki laughed and offered his opinion.

"Cos you look the most like a child here, Yumi."

"Wha … "

Even though Noriko-chan was the youngest. And while she was at it, since she was born in April it made her older than Yoshino-san and Shimako-san, although only by a little.

"It's not so bad. You like sweets, right Yumi? The panda must have realized that."

Sachiko-sama consoled her, but didn't provide much by way of support. Since liking sweets fitted the image of a little child.

"If you don't want it, I'll take it, Yumi."

"No. Because he gave it to me."

Yumi quickly hid it behind her back.

"See."

Sachiko-sama happily said, "You're glad you got it after all, aren't you?" Darn it, she'd been completely played.

Still, since Sachiko-sama was feeling well enough to tease her soeur, it probably meant she was getting somewhat accustomed to the atmosphere. At the very least, it was a good sign.

"Don't eat it while we're walking."

"Oka~y."

Yumi opened her handbag to put the lollipop inside. But just at that moment, she caught sight of a word written on the wrapper.

(Huh.)

Surprised, another word jumped out at her. The yellow characters from the indecipherable text all formed words.

"Mystery Novel Appreciation Society … ?"

Yumi tilted her head in confusion as she read the words. How on earth were a panda and lollipops related to mystery novels? That was the real mystery.

Be that as it may, she felt like she'd heard something about a mystery novel club somewhere before...

"Yumi."

Her onee-sama called out to her because she had lagged behind, so Yumi quickly stuffed the lollipop in her pocket and ran to catch up.

Part 2

The Hanadera Academy's high-school student council room was inside a school building.

It was situated alongside the classrooms, but the entrance was between the toilet block and a staircase, so it was recessed a bit.

The inside was completely different to the meeting room on the second floor of the Rose Mansion that was used by the Lillian's Girls Academy student council.

How best to describe it … right, everything about it gave the impression of a second-hand store. Basically, there were all sorts of non-student-council items scattered everywhere, with some old wooden desks lined up in the middle of the room.

Even at a casual glance, she was able to confirm the presence of washboards, geta sandals, empty goldfish bowls and broken clocks, amongst other things. It was impossible for an outsider to understand why all those things had been left in this room.

In any case, Kobayashi-kun had been waiting in the student council room, so it wasn't long after their 1:30pm arrival that they started the day's planning meeting between the Yamayurikai and the four Hanadera student council members.

"– So, each of the Roses will be on top of a different tower, and when a challenger reaches the top of the tower you'll ask them a quiz question. If they get the question right you'll attach a sticker to their question sheet. This will run for an hour and a half, from 2 to 3:30. Each of the Roses will have a Hanadera student council member at her side. We'll deal with any problems related to the game, so don't worry about that … umm, were there any questions?"

Kobyashi-kun asked, surveying the female camp. He was a strange one, his position was that of treasurer, but he kept putting himself forwards so now he'd become something of a chairman.

"No. We'll leave everything up to you Hanadera gents."

The Lillian's side had heard most of this before and nothing stuck out as needing more attention. All three of the Roses seemed a bit relieved when they heard they'd each have their own bodyguard(?).

"Well then, we'll step outside for now, to let the boutons get changed."

After saying this, the boys proceeded out of the room. Alice was last out, after setting out the things for them to change into, but he was still a boy after all so he reluctantly left the room too.

"Would it be better if we left too?"

Shimako-san asked out of courtesy.

"Ah, no."

A petit soeur getting changed in front of her onee-sama. There was no point being embarrassed about it now. Or rather, it was more embarrassing to be embarrassed about it. Although it might be different for Shimako-san and Noriko-chan, who had only been soeurs for three months.

"I'd rather you helped out."

Yoshino-san said, having torn open the dry-cleaning bag and holding out the safety pins contained within for Rei-sama.

"Alright. Is that … Alice's?"

"Yeah. It's a bit big, isn't it?"

Yoshino-san muttered, holding the trousers up against her Lillian's uniform.

"Hmm. You're not that different in height, but he's a boy. Long legs. Hey, Sachiko, did you bring any safety pins?"

"I did."

Sachiko-sama took two safety pins from her sewing kit and handed them to Rei-sama. Yoshino-san started changing immediately and finally her trouser cuffs were fixed with four safety pins in total – one from Yoshino-san, one from Rei-sama and two from Sachiko-sama.

In other words, the clothes they were getting changed into were Hanadera Academy school uniforms.

The three Roses were guests from the neighboring school, so it was imperative that they wear their school uniform. The three boutons, however, were their assistants. They'd be looking after their onee-samas, who had to stay atop the towers for an hour and a half, but the contestants might get confused if there were girls in Lillian's uniforms walking around at the bottom of the towers. To prevent that, the compromise they reached was that everyone other than the Roses would be wearing Hanadera Academy uniforms while the game was going on.

The uniforms for the boutons were all spares that the three shorter Hanadera student council members had brought from home (obviously after getting them cleaned). Yoshino-san had Alice's uniform, Noriko-chan had Kobyashi-kun's and naturally enough Yumi had been given her younger brother Yuuki's uniform.

Still, "shorter" was a relative term and it was only in comparison to Takada-kun and the Yakushiji brothers. While Alice did present a slender image, Yuuki and Kobayashi-kun were about average height for male high-school students. In contrast, the three boutons were not particularly tall. They could fit into the borrowed uniforms easily enough, but both the shirt sleeves and trouser legs were too long.

"Even if they just roll up their sleeves, it's still four safety-pins each for the trouser cuffs, are we going to have enough?"

They needed a total of 12 since there were three people needing their trouser legs taken up, which meant eight more. Unfortunately it didn't seem like Yumi, Shimako-san and Noriko-chan had eight safety pins between them.

Inside the pocket-sized sewing kits that the girls brought with them was one safety-pin. They'd expected two. Regrettably, they could only scrape together three safety pins, which wasn't even enough for one person.

"I wonder if we could borrow some from somewhere."

Rei-sama murmured, as Noriko-chan finished changing, quickly folding up the cuffs of her trousers and saying, "I'm fine like this."

Yumi tried to copy her. However.

"It's fine for one person, but having two people next to each other with their trousers rolled up is a bit – "

"Yeah … "

Going by the reaction of the Roses, they looked quite foolish. If it was simply a matter of looking foolish she would have just endured it. But it would ruin the whole point of wearing the uniforms if they stood out conspicuously.

Reluctantly, Yumi unrolled her trouser legs.

"That damn Yuuki."

At that moment she resented her lanky younger brother who had outgrown her at some point in the past.

"I wonder if I should just sew them up."

It was her brother's uniform, so as long as she undid it afterward it should be fine. The sewing kit contained a needle, thread and scissors.

"But we don't have time for that."

Yoshino-san said, looking at the clock.

"It could have been done in the time it took you to say that."

Rei-sama, the home economics maestro, snapped open her own sewing kit.

"You can't do it while she's still wearing it. Yumi-san would have to get changed again. You have to include that in the time it takes."

"Ah, right. But still."

The Yellow Rose soeurs ignored Yumi as they launched into an argument about, "There's no time," "Yes there is."

"This wouldn't be a problem if you were wearing high heels. But they probably don't have those in a boys school … "

Sachiko-sama said to herself, perhaps as a joke, as she inspected the excess trouser length.

"High heels?"

Yumi had a flash of inspiration when she heard her onee-sama's words, and raced over to a pile of odds and ends.

"Here. I'll borrow these."

What she'd retrieved was a completely ordinary pair of men's geta sandals.

Having found something suitable, she promptly took off her socks and tried them on. There was no problem height-wise. They made a clip-clop sound as she walked but apart from that they were fine. And her sudden growth gave her a new perspective which put her in high spirits.

While all this was going on, Yoshino-san had coiled up her long braids into buns. They weren't trying to disguise themselves as Hanadera students, but just having her long hair moving about might be distracting.

"Noriko-chan should be fine as she is … what about you, Yumi? Do you want to wear your hair down?"

"I suppose I should."

Her ribbons might attract attention too, which was no good. So with that, she untied her trademark twin ribbons. But her hair already had weird kinks in it, since it had been tied up all morning. They were stubborn enough that they'd have to be brushed out.

"Do you want to wet it?"

"But they don't have a hairdryer, right?"

"… Doesn't look like it."

Even though they had a washboard, mortar and pestle, a bonsai pine tree, a mask from some Asian country and a teddy bear, they didn't have what she needed right then – a hairdryer.

"Oh, that's right. You brought a hand towel, didn't you, Yumi?"

"Uh, yeah."

Her onee-sama asked her to hand it over, which she did. Then Sachiko-sama spread the towel over Yumi's head.

"A turban? Or a headscarf?"

Either one would be bad enough to make her run away; and before she could do anything, the sides of the hand-towel had been pulled around from the front and tied tightly behind her neck.

"Ah, that looks good."

"It matches the geta sandals."

At the unexpectedly positive response, Yumi took out her hand mirror and had a look. Which led to:

"Th-this … "

Was some kind of pseudo-pirate. Well, it most resembled the style adopted by her father whenever they did a spring clean of the Fukuzawa house. But that wasn't a particularly well known example, and the only one that would have understood it was her brother, who was on the opposite side of the door.

But this was probably a pretty good idea. With the hand towel covering everything, none of her crinkly hair was visible. – So with that, Yumi decided to go with it. As a result, all three boutons had completed their metamorphosis.

"Whoa. Yumi-san, you look just like Yukichi."

Kobayashi-kun pointed and laughed upon his return, having been informed that they had finished changing.

"What? Don't say that."

The Fukuzawa siblings objected in unison.

"Just bear with it for an hour and a half."

She didn't have particularly good hearing but she still managed to hear someone say, "Not just their looks but what they say too," so it looked like they'd become a laughing stock.

"Anyway, how did you get all these scratches on your uniform?"

Yumi conducted a closer inspection of her brother's uniform as she put the lollipop she'd received from the panda into a pocket.

Alice's uniform, which was probably about the same age, was impeccably clean. Kobayashi-kun's wasn't as good as Alice's, but it wasn't as bad as Yuuki's.

"Stow it. It's better than this one."

Yuuki held out his left arm, showing a rip about a third of the way up the sleeve that dangled open like a gaping mouth.

"Wh-what happened?"

"Being student council president's a test of strength. Now, it's about time we headed out to the oval."

Her brother checked his watch and quickly turned around. Yumi was a bit concerned for him, but then Alice tapped her on the shoulder.

"It's because Yukichi's energetic, unlike me."

"Energetic?"

"Yeah. He's always running around the school. Because he's the student council president, and because he's not the type to worry about being overly dignified, he's always on the go. There's all sorts of tight corners and he's always watching out for others first. And although it's not often, there probably are times when he has to get physical to make some students listen to him. So his uniform gets tattered quickly."

"Hmm."

She felt like she'd got a glimpse at a side of her brother that she didn't see at home. It seemed unbelievable that he'd get physical with anyone. But apparently Yuuki put up a strong front away from home.

"Hey, who left this box in the doorway?"

The tough guy shouted when he opened the door.

"Oh, when did that happen? It wasn't there a moment ago."

Yumi and the rest of the Yamayurikai followed the Hanadera student council members out into the hallway. When they did, they saw a huge cardboard box had been left near the club room entrance. It was a cube about 70cm along each side. Neatly painted in light brown. They surely would have noticed it earlier if it had been there for a while.

"It could be a prop for a play, or part of some display, I guess. Something might have happened while they were carrying it, so they left it here."

Takada-kun said as he moved it aside. They were next to a staircase, so people probably did leave things there for a little while from time to time.

"Still, putting it right in front of the student council room's door? Even if you were coming right back, you wouldn't put it there."

"And it'd have some kind of label on it if they were delivering it to the student council."

"I don't remember ordering any empty boxes."

"Empty?"

"Yeah, empty."

"… It could have been intentionally abandoned."

"I guess there are some idiots who'd make that gamble."

"Of course there are. But if they were looking to pick a fight, a single box is a bit weak."

The boys crowded around the box and voiced their opinions. But since the people who left it there weren't present, all they could do was speculate.

"Still, just dumping it here is outrageous. I'll put up a warning saying that there will be consequences if it's not moved in 30 minutes."

Yuuki pulled some paper and a thick marker from somewhere, quickly wrote out some sentences and taped it in a prominent position.

Warning!

This box will be disposed of if it's not removed within thirty minutes.

If it happens again, the owner should be prepared for an appropriate punishment.

1:45pm, Hanadera Academy student council president, Fukuzawa Yuuki.

"There, that'll do. Alright, let's go."

He started walking, as though nothing had happened. Having watched the series of events unfold, the Yamayurikai members silently exchanged glances.

– Boys were, in some ways, incredible.

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