Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume14 Chapter4
Finding Me
Part 1
"So what happened then?"
Yuuki asked, spinning around on his chair.
"Not much."
Yumi answered, as she leaned back on her brother's bed and tossed a cushion in the air.
"We went to the old greenhouse and they took photos of me with a Rosa Chinensis bud. They're calling it the "Rose Name Series.""
A recent shot of a Rose family member from a Takeshima Tsutako photo-shoot and a mini-interview. Mami-san was jumping for joy as she paid for the pastries.
"Is it okay for you to be doing that on your own?"
Her little brother asked as he tossed the towel he'd dried his hair with over the bed's headboard. Yumi hastily dodged out of the way.
"I got permission from Sachiko-sama. I only co-operated with the newspaper club because she said okay. The Yamayurikai's busy too, so it's a pain if the newspaper club follows us around looking for something to write about. Since they're calling it a series, we'll be able to keep them quiet for a little while with just a photo and a short comment."
Still, Rosa Chinensis was a perennial, so they could find one blooming in the greenhouse at any time, but what about Rosa Foetida and Rosa Gigantea? Well, as long as they had the name of one of the Roses in the title, the newspaper club probably didn't care about the actual flower.
"Hmm. Still, since we're both so busy we don't get to talk that much. Sounds like there's lots going on at your school too, Yumi."
"Well, yeah."
Yumi adjusted her pajama trousers around the knee and sat down cross-legged.
She longed for a quiet and peaceful school life, but she couldn't really spend much time in blissful ignorance. She was Rosa Chinensis en bouton after all.
Yuuki was just as busy, or probably even more so, since he'd been getting home after 7 or 8 at night for a while now. The Hanadera Academy's school festival was next weekend.
The upshot of this was that they'd been having dinner separately and Yuuki was so tired that Yumi would regularly find him lying down in bed when she thought he'd gone for a bath.
Since, unusually, he got home before 7pm today, the entire family had had dinner together for the first time in a while. It really had been a long time since they'd chatted like this before bed.
"By the way, what about Alice? What happened after that?"
Yumi asked the question that had been nagging at her.
"What do you mean?"
"That thing before, where it was like he was being haunted …. what was it, shivers?"
That was it. The victim of "something akin to a haunting but it's probably actually a human" was Arisugawa Kintarou-kun, also known as Alice.
"Ah. Alice has been fine since then."
"Alice has?"
So it sounded like someone other than Alice hadn't been fine. Her curiosity piqued, Yumi questioned him further.
"Kobayashi's been acting kinda strange."
Was the response she got.
"Does Kobayashi-kun have a bad feeling like he's being haunted by something too?"
"No, it's the opposite. He seems to be walking around in an inexplicably good mood."
Yuuki shrugged.
"A good mood?"
"He says someone's got a crush on him, so he's on cloud nine."
What was that all about? Yumi shrugged. Well, Kobayashi-kun was the sort of person who could get a bit carried away.
"Alice is one thing, but I think Kobayashi has the completely wrong impression. He hasn't noticed it himself, but he's picked up Alice's shadow."
Apparently one or two days after Alice had said something about his bad feeling, Kobayashi-kun had happily announced, "Me too."
"But one's a bad feeling and the other a good feeling. They're the complete opposite."
"Not necessarily. They both involve someone harboring a strong emotion towards them, so in that sense it's the same. Depending on how they interpret that, they could have either a bad feeling or a good feeling, don't you think?"
"I see."
That was another way of looking at it.
Someone was watching them.
Whether they took it as a friendly gaze or a hostile gaze would vastly alter their impression of the onlooker.
"Ah, right."
Yuuki suddenly changed the topic, as though he'd just remembered something.
"Are any of the Roses afraid of heights?"
"Why?"
"Everyone sort of got carried away and they've made enormous towers."
"Towers?"
"Yeah. For the Roses to judge from."
"Ah – "
Yumi clasped her hands together.
That's right, Sachiko-sama and the other Roses had been asked to be judges and presenters at Hanadera Academy's school festival. From memory, it was called the "Hanadera War" or something.
"It's tall, huh."
"Well … yeah."
Yuuki answered somewhat reluctantly.
He said that while they were building it, they kept going, "More, more," and things escalated so it was about 1.5 times larger than the original blueprint.
According to Yuuki, "When building this sort of thing, guys tend to be generous." But then he said, "Their eyes were sparkling, like little kids playing with building blocks." Boys were hard to understand.
"If there's someone that can't handle heights, we'll have to change the towers. But in that case, the sooner you let me know the better."
"Alright. I'll ask around."
Having agreed to this, Yumi rose from her younger brother's bed.
As she left the room, Yumi turned around to say goodnight but Yuuki was already nodding off in his chair.
Part 2
"Heights? Ah, Sachiko's no good with them."
Rei-sama said, after school in the Rose Mansion.
"That's what I thought."
It was just as Yumi had expected.
"That's what you thought? So you knew about it, Yumi-chan?"
"Well, a while ago she told me she wouldn't go on the roller coaster. So I thought it might be because of that."
"The roller coaster? Ah, from when you asked her to take you to the amusement park."
As a combination birthday / White Day present for Yumi, they'd agreed to go on a half-day date at an amusement park. For a number of reasons it had been put off and pushed back, and at present it had been shelved for four months.
"Although back then I sort of felt as though it was because she didn't want to go on something fast."
"Ah, but she doesn't like cars either. You should know that, right Yumi-chan?"
"You mean how she gets carsick when traveling long distances?"
She knew that much, even in their first year together. Although the fact that Sachiko-sama had a weak constitution was something she'd been reminded of recently.
"Right, right. But despite this, she still blindly followed her father overseas when he asked. Did you hear about that?"
Rei-sama lowered her voice. Implying that Sachiko-sama had a father-complex proportionate to her man-hatred.
"One of my uncles would get a bit tipsy before getting on a plane, to distract himself from his fear of flying. But Sachiko's underage, so she can't get drunk, right? So what does she do? She relies on the power of medicine. She'll have some just before takeoff, then sleep. Get something to eat, more medicine, and sleep. Like that. On the plane trip for the school excursion, people get up out of their seats to go to the toilet, right? Passing Sachiko's class, all anyone could see was her passed out with drool running down her face."
As Rei-sama laughed heartily there was the sound of someone clearing their throat.
"Who did you say was drooling?"
Unluckily, it was Sachiko-sama herself who had opened the biscuit door and stepped inside. She had an incredible presence, because she'd apparently met up with Yoshino-san, Shimako-san and Noriko-chan somewhere on the way here and they were following her like a retinue.
But.
"Oh, I was just speaking figuratively. No, more of an exaggeration, I suppose."
Rei-sama was neither wounded nor scratched by the glare from her good friend Sachiko-sama. She leaned back in her chair, her head held high.
"Yumi, you mustn't believe Rei's horror stories."
On her way past, Sachiko-sama gently poked Yumi on the forehead.
"Ah, right."
Still, Yumi didn't think the entire thing was a horror story. The part about her sleeping for almost the entire time in the air sounded like the truth and she may even have had a little bit of drool. As she was thinking this –
"That'd be nice, going on a school trip."
She'd unconsciously said what she was thinking, which made Sachiko-sama smile.
"It's not long now until your turn, Yumi."
"Yes."
She obediently responded then stood up to go and prepare the tea. However.
That wasn't it.
The words, "That'd be nice," hadn't sprang from her mouth just because she wanted to go on a school trip. Yumi was coveting "going on a school trip with Sachiko-sama."
They'd both attended Lillian's Girls Academy since kindergarten but, since they were one grade apart, they'd never been on a school trip together.
Of course, that wasn't limited to just school excursions – they'd never been in the same class, never worked on the same graduation project, nor shared the same page in a school yearbook.
And it went without saying that the majority of her time at school was spent separated from her beloved onee-sama.
Just think, if she was in the same class as Sachiko-sama and had a seat near hers, she could spend all that time watching her. Yumi was suddenly jealous of Sachiko-sama's classmates.
Although if they were in the same grade, Yumi couldn't have become her petit soeur. In the end, she knew she was asking for too much.
"Yumi-sama, I can do the rest."
Noriko-chan offered to help but Yumi turned her down with, "It's okay, I've got it."
She was making the tea for Sachiko-sama. Yumi considered the precious time they spent together, the accumulation of trivialities, as her treasures.
That was why she politely and carefully prepared the tea.
All the while hoping this would make it just that little bit more delicious.
"By the way, what led you to discussing aeroplanes?"
Sachiko-sama asked as she sipped the tea that may or may not have tasted a bit better than usual.
"Ah, we were talking about the Hanadera Academy school festival."
Sachiko-sama's eyes clouded over after hearing the details, much like Yumi had expected.
"Um, onee-sama? If it's no good, my brother said they can remake them."
"But that would also increase the cost. And all the time and effort they've put in so far will be for nothing, right?"
As expected of Sachiko-sama. Since she was so involved with their own school festival, she was well aware of things like costs and construction schedules.
"It'll be a bother to them too, right?"
Sachiko-sama let out a heavy sigh.
Naturally, it would be a problem for the Hanadera students who'd made the platforms bigger than planned, but that didn't mean they couldn't tell them to remake them. Although they hadn't stated that the platforms had to be less than a certain height.
"Understood. Then I'll humbly take your place atop the tower, onee-sama."
Yumi thumped her chest, "Leave it to me." At which point Sachiko-sama nimbly took hold of her fist and said:
"Please stop, Yumi. I'd rather do it myself than force it on you. No matter the height, I'll fulfill my duties as Rosa Chinensis superbly, so just watch on quietly."
"But he said it was like looking down at the ground from a second-floor window."
"The second floor?"
"Yeah."
Yumi nodded and Sachiko-sama laughed a high-pitched "Hohoho."
"In that case it's completely fine. The second floor is only as high as the first-floor roof, right? Leaning out a window at that height is nothing at all. You couldn't possibly think that I can't go to the third-floor of the school building, right?"
"… No."
She hadn't thought that.
She hadn't thought that, but had Sachiko-sama properly considered how she'd feel out in the open without the walls and ceiling around her? To say nothing of the fact that the towers were built by untrained high-school students.
Shaky and precarious. Even without seeing them, Yumi could picture them easily enough.
"Enough, no more grumbling. Please just tell Yuuki-san that we understand. Don't say anything more than necessary."
"… Alright."
Even though Yumi didn't think she was grumbling, she knew that Sachiko-sama would just dig in further if she said anything more, so she chose to quietly withdraw. But she thought she should be prepared to step in quickly if the real thing turned out to be too much for Sachiko-sama.
"You've become quite adept at handling Sachiko, Yumi-chan."
Rei-sama whispered softly.
"Huh, no. That wasn't what I intended."
It wasn't what she intended but somehow it had worked out like that.
Although it felt like she'd unwittingly pushed Sachiko-sama to the top of a tall tower.
"Shimako-sa~n."
Yoshino-san called out leisurely, since it didn't affect her directly
"Are you okay with heights, Shimako-san?"
"The second-floor? It might be a little scary."
By putting it into words like that, Shimako-san showed she was the type of person who could look at reality and calmly assess the situation.
In contrast.
"Oh, don't look so worried. It'll be a piece of cake. Now, let's get to work, to work."
Sachiko-sama was the type of person that convinced themselves they'd be fine, then tried not to think about it any more, which left Yumi feeling nervous.
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