Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume26 Chapter8 2

X-Mark. Part 2

"So that would mean that Yumi-sama and my onee-sama haven't decided where they'll be hiding their cards?" Noriko-chan asked as they sipped their tea.

"Yeah."

"That's right."

The pair agreed, and then –

"Honestly, aren't you just procrastinating?"

Even though she'd been a partner-in-procrastination until just recently, Yoshino-san's attitude rapidly shifted the moment she made her decision.

"Hmm. Where would I hide it if it were up to me?" Noriko-chan asked herself, as she picked up the stack of maps that had been left on the corner of the table and started leafing through them.

Indeed, this was the sort of situation where it was good to get a younger person's opinion. A fresh breeze could give rise to new ideas. Although there was only a one year difference in their ages.

"We decided to have hints to my card. But that's about all," Shimako-san said.

"Ooh, sounds fun," Noriko-chan chirped.

"R-really?" Shimako-san asked, with a not-entirely-displeased expression. After all, the emotion Shimako-san was aiming for was "fun," so her face immediately brightened when her petite sœur backed her up by saying it "sounds fun." It looked like Shimako-san had been feeling exhausted too. As they explained how they would mix the hints in with warnings, Noriko-chan became more and more excited, firing off a continuous stream of, "Nice," and, "Sounds good."

"The participants are going to be running all over the school looking for the hints. That'll definitely be fun. It'll be like when we played "Human Suguroku" at Rosa Chinensis' house during the New Year break. I wonder if, perversely, people like being given the run-around like that."

When she heard this, Yumi was initially skeptical about that last sentence, but then she remembered how Rei-sama enjoyed being given the run-around by Yoshino-san, and accepted the possibility that it might be true.

"I think it'd be fun to make it a quiz or a crossword, but we should probably stick to something simple this time around. I wouldn't want the hints to lead straight to the card, but there's a lot of ways to accomplish that — like each hint could be a single word, or a single character, so the location would only be found by gathering multiple hints together and arranging them in the proper order."

The fresh breeze had had a tremendous effect. Noriko-chan had disrupted the stale atmosphere and quickly set things flowing in a good direction.

Getting caught up in the moment, Yoshino-san asked, "So where should it be hidden?"

"That's something my onee-sama has to decide. Since it's her card that's being hidden," Noriko-chan grinned.