Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume32 Chapter2

Onee-sama's Racket

Part 1.

The wooden spoon that comes with the ice-cream has a shape like a tennis racket.

So too the magnifying glass that her grandmother uses to read the newspaper, the ladle used for serving rice and the small hand-mirror she carries in a pouch. She hadn't been conscious of it until just now, but they all had the same basic shape as a racket.

The screen door was like the strings of the racket. So too was the lattice over her neighbor's ventilation ducts. Now she had moved on to noticing racket strings.

(Is this some kind of illness?)

Flopping down over her desk, Katsura sighed softly.

Some time ago she had been cleaning this very classroom. At that time, despite the vast differences in shape and materials, she had thought that the plastic dustpan resembled a tennis racket. And now this problem seemed terminal.

"What's wrong, Katsura-san?"

She raised her head to see who had called out to her and Toudou Shimako-san was standing in front of the lockers at the rear of the classroom, looking her way.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you feeling unwell?"

Shimako-san had a slightly anxious expression. She was still a beautiful person no matter what expression she had on her face, but Katsura still felt sorry for causing her to worry.

"Ahh, no, I'm fine."

Hastily shaking her head, she smiled to show she was well. Her illness may have been terminal, but it was a problem with her mind not her body. So even if she was taken to the sick bay, she didn't think they would cure her.

"Shimako-san, have you been there all along?"

Because there was practice for tomorrow's graduation ceremony and other such things, afternoon classes were called off. Now, after lunch, they were the only two that remained in the classroom – and until just recently Katsura had thought that she was the only one. The third years may have been having private farewell parties in their classrooms but the first and second years were expected to go home immediately or, if they had a reason to stay, to move directly to their destination.

"All along? Umm, no? I had just come from the staff room and stopped in here to pick up some of my things."

Shimako-san opened her locker and took out her coat.

"Are you going to the Rose Mansion?"

"Yeah. There's some odd-jobs to be done."

She'd just been at the staff room and was now going to the Rose Mansion. As you would expect, Rosa Gigantea was busy.

"As for me,"

She hadn't been asked, but Katsura opened her mouth.

"I'd arranged to go home together with my onee-sama. But it seems like her class is doing something, so I'm waiting until they're done."

She hadn't been challenged by Shimako-san, but it sort of felt that way. She wanted to explain that she had a reason for staying back, and wasn't just aimlessly loitering.

But Shimako-san hadn't really been interested in finding out if her classmate had a reason for being in the classroom, and had simply wanted to get something from her locker.

"Oh, really. That's good."

Shimako-san probably thought that going home together with your onee-sama would be 'good.' But for Katsura, she couldn't think about it as something 'good.'

"Well, I think I'll head over to the third year classrooms and see if I can find my onee-sama."

Katsura stood up, and left the room together with Shimako-san. In the hallway they bid each other farewell with 'Gokigenyou' and went left and right, respectively.

Katsura was thinking as she walked along.

She wondered what she would do when she got there. If she arrived while her onee-sama still had things to do, she would have to wait there. Or her onee-sama would have to hurry-up to accommodate her. That would be no good. She didn't want to cause a fuss now that it was right at the very end.

(But will she really be in her classroom?)

Suddenly, she stopped walking.

A very dangerous thought had just entered into her head.

(What am I thinking?)

If her onee-sama wasn't in the classroom, just where could she be, and what could she be doing?

(And who with?)

Stop it, stop it. If she kept thinking about that, her racket illness would worsen.

But would she be able to spontaneously recover from this illness if she went about her life as though she saw nothing, heard nothing and thought nothing?

Part 2.

Just how long had she been unable to stop thinking about tennis rackets.

It all went back to about a week ago. Probably no more than ten days.

After school, they were practicing their swings at the tennis courts that seemed lonely now that the third years were no longer there. Katsura was watching over her petit soeur, Mizue.

For some reason, Mizue seemed different then usual.

Something seemed out of place, as though she was wearing different clothes, or had a new haircut. But her hair was the same as usual, and Katsura was accustomed to seeing her in the clothes she had on.

It wasn't what she had on, but Katsura soon realized what it was. She was using a different racket. Which changed her form when she swung.

Katsura was going to ask her where she got the racket. Was it a newly purchased one? Was she borrowing it from someone? If she had asked about it quickly, it probably would have been a non-event. Mizue would have answered, telling her where it was from.

But Katsura hesitated momentarily. Looking closely at Mizue's racket, she saw that it wasn't a new one. And in the clubroom they had a number of spare rackets, but it wasn't one of those either. But it was definitely one that she had seen somewhere before.

That's it. It was Katsura's onee-sama's racket.

Why did Mizue have it?

Had her onee-sama given it to Mizue? That was probably it.

If a senior said they wanted to give you their racket, anybody, even Mizue, would gladly accept. So that was fine. Then where was the problem?

(… I get it)

Why did onee-sama choose Mizue to give her racket to? That was the question.

She fretted over it, but couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't decide whether or not to ask her onee-sama about it.

(Right. It's not like I'm in any position to judge her …!)

Katsura startled herself.

Maybe this was just her reaping what she had sown.

About this time last year, Katsura had received a racket from the then vice-president of the tennis club, and she too had kept this a secret from her onee-sama.

At that time, she had been overjoyed to have elicited such an action from a beloved senior. For the students in the tennis club, it was like receiving a memento from someone you admired. Thinking that her onee-sama would have been offended by her receiving the racket, Katsura had adorned a wall of her room with it and the commemorative photo that Takeshima Tsutako had taken of them.

(It wasn't an affair. It's just that I admired her like an idol.)

But in that case, why hadn't she told her onee-sama about it. And why had she kept the racket hidden?

Right. Because she was feeling guilty about it. So she hadn't wanted her onee-sama to find out.

Understanding that, she couldn't ask her onee-sama about her feelings.

It was only when Katsura was placed in the opposite position that she realized just how unthinkable an act she had done.

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