Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume26 Chapter7 3

Meandering. Part 3

Putting the library reading room on hold, they surveyed the old greenhouse. The final mission in their "rehashing the past" campaign.

"They'll come here too."

Yoshino-san didn't explicitly state who, but she obviously meant the participants.

"Yeah, I'm a bit worried about that."

Yumi gave voice to her thoughts.

"Why?"

The other two turned towards her.

"Last year, the red card was buried beneath the Rosa chinensis plant, right? Going on the theory that the participants will first check the committee noticeboard and the library reading room, then it makes sense that they'll come here too, but. . . ."

Yumi was thinking that it would be a bit worse for this place than the other two.

"I see. We were fortunate last year that not many students thought the card might be buried in the soil, but that won't be the case this year, will it?"

Because of what happened last year, it wouldn't be considered unthinkable this year. So there would probably be a number of students looking to dig up the ground in the old greenhouse.

"Yeah, and that worries me."

It would put a strain on even the hardiest plant to have waves of people digging up and refilling the soil around its roots.

"Then how about we make the old greenhouse out of bounds?"

Yoshino-san frowned slightly.

"That seems like a bit of a cop-out. To put it in Yoshino-san's words, that would be one way of running away."

When Yumi said this, Yoshino-san's eyes suddenly sparkled and she almost bounded over to grab Yumi's hand.

"Such a great friend. You really understand me."

But their other great friend wasn't swayed by this beautiful display of friendship, instead she honestly voiced her concerns.

"But the soil will definitely be dug up if it's included in the treasure hunt. I don't think we should sacrifice the plants in there for the sake of the event."

Environmental care committee members were naturally quite sensitive to the destruction of the environment.

"So we could print warnings in the Lillian Kawaraban. Telling people not to dig up the ground. We could even put it on the entry form."

However –

"People won't read it."

Yoshino-san was insistent, but Shimako-san wasn't about to concede either.

"And even if they do read it, they'll forget all about it as soon as the event starts. As for warning signs, they don't have much effect when they're not right at the spot, so—"

They were all struck by the same thought simultaneously.

"Right at the spot!"

Indeed, right at the spot.

"So it should be okay if we put warning signs right next to the plants."

Warnings that don't have much effect when they're not right at the spot should work when they were right at the spot. Bravo. Correct answer. Well done.

"It's not just Rosa chinensis, the old greenhouse probably has Rosa foetida and Rosa gigantea bushes too."

Yoshino-san wrote a note on the side of the previous map of the martial arts room. "Warning signs at the three riskiest spots in the old greenhouse."

"Besides the greenhouse, there's other dangerous spots where we should leave warning messages too."

"Dangerous? Like the incinerator?"

"There's also the pond near the statue of Maria-sama at the fork in the path."

The pond would be iced over at this time of year, but Shimako-san was worried about people taking it too lightly. Although if it wasn't iced over, people might think the treasure was hidden in the water. The pond wasn't really deep enough to drown in, but it was still dangerous.

"There's probably other places we want to rule in or out that are too small to put on the map too."

The ideas came one after the other as they picked up steam. It hadn't been much of a concern when she'd been a participant, but as an organizer the safety of the students was the number one concern, even to the point of over-protectiveness.

"But doesn't it seem kind of lame if all the notices are just saying, 'Don't go here.'"

As an experiment, they drew small circles on the map where they would put the warning signs, and the map was awash with circles. Deeming this to be excessive, they reviewed the locations and reduced the warnings to about a third of what they had previously.

"What if we sprinkled in some hints to the cards' locations too?" Shimako-san suggested.

"Hints?"

"It might encourage people to read them carefully if there are some hints in there."

Hearing this, Yoshino-san said, "Hmm. I see. A carrot-and-stick approach."

"That wasn't quite how I was thinking about it, but I suppose it's similar."

For instance, if there were some students that were all fired up about digging for treasure, then the signs saying "No Digging Allowed" would kill their enthusiasm. Finding a hint might stop these dejected girls from giving up. It would be a reward instead. So the hint would be the "spoonful of sugar."

"Alright. Since you came up with the idea, they can be hints to the location of your card."

"Huh?"

Yoshino-san ignored Shimako-san's surprise and wrote a note, "White card hints." Yumi also sat there dumbfounded as Yoshino-san simply said, "I told you the theme of my card, right?"

"You want to astonish everyone. You want them to be annoyed."

"Exactly. And if some hints led to my card being found easily, that would just annoy me instead. Or, what? I could put out fake hints, but I don't think that would be okay."

"No, we couldn't do that."

Shimako-san and her strong sense of justice put a stop to that. Fake hints were completely out of the question.

"Then it's decided. How about you, Yumi-san?"

"I'll . . ."

Yumi was stumped. She couldn't picture what the hints would look like even if she wanted to have them.

". . . think about it once I've decided on my hiding spot."

If she came up with a place that would be really hard to find then she'd have some hints, but if she came up with an easy location then she wouldn't.

"Okay. That's fine."

At any rate, picking a location came first. Even though they'd taken a stroll around these outspread maps, no one had settled on their hiding spot just yet.