Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume32 Chapter8 3

What's the Person Beside You Doing? Part 3.

The onee-sama embraces and protects – what's up with that?

Just as she was thinking, 'Geeze, that sounds like something Youko would say,' confirmation came that those really were her words. Beaten again.

Caught up as those two were in their conversation, they hadn't realized that someone was sitting in the seat behind them, straining forwards to listen in.

Well, that's okay, I guess – Sei thought. It would be bothersome if she was found out. She'd just stay like this until the last stop, inconspicuously listening to their conversation.

Sei hadn't realized it while she was waiting for the bus to arrive, but it looked like drill-girl had been there.

Nah, it's not fair to call her drill-girl. She accepted Yumi-chan's rosary and officially became her petit soeur, so even though she has such a hard to remember name, she's earned the right to be called by it. What was it, ahh, that's right, Matsudaira Touko-chan.

Sei had probably been a little bit ahead of Touko-chan in the line. When she got on the bus all the single seats were taken, so she had plopped down in one of the double-seats. That was when the girl with the vertical hair rolls sat down in front of her.

In this day and age you don't often see such wonderful vertical hair rolls as those. It didn't take long to work out it was Touko-chan. Since they were acquaintances, Sei was thinking about saying hello to her and having a bit of fun but then Shimako's petit soeur made an entrance and she decided to watch instead. Noriko-chan seemed to be thinking only of Touko-chan and wasn't paying attention to anything else around her.

Noriko-chan seemed to view Shimako and Yumi-chan as a 'blanket.'

Touko-chan spoke about a great actress stepping down from the stage and a newcomer having to take her role.

Then Noriko-chan asked Touko-chan where she thought students would be congregating currently, and there was a discussion about whether Touko-chan was going to, or went to, the martial arts building. And whether it was manly to grow accustomed to leaving things behind. What's that all about?

Sei found it hard to follow what was being said because she was a few steps removed from the original and had joined in the middle. Nothing she could do about that. Also, they were facing away from her as they talked, so she couldn't catch all they said either. And if you miss a word that's been said when you're eavesdropping, it's not like you can say, 'Huh?' or 'Can you say that again?'

But still, a blanket? That's an eye-opener.

Come to think of it, back when she was a first year, Youko had apparently been likened to a cloth wrapper. Maybe by the time she became a third year called Rosa Chinensis it had evolved into a blanket.

(Youko, huh.)

Remembering what Yoshino-chan had asked her, Sei took out her mobile phone and looked up Youko in her address book.

The subject was 'Free tomorrow?'

Then she typed in the following for the body: 'Even if you're not, add this to your schedule and come. You'll probably see something interesting.'

With that done, Sei turned back towards the innocent chatter that was happening right in front of her.