Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 7 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 ★ July and the Princess of a Thousand Winters Go to the Pool with the Nine-Headed Demon

Hello, everyone! My name is Kuki Madoka, and I’m a fourth grader in class 1 at Yokoi Elementary School.

The first week of summer vacation passed by before I knew it, and a day I’d been planning for ages had finally arrived: it was the day I’d be going out to play at our city’s water park! My best friend, Chii, and I were going there together.

“Isn’t the weather great today, Chii? It’s the perfect day for a trip to the pool!” I said as I looked up at the sky. We were sitting together on a bench at the bus stop, and the sun was shining away above us. There was nothing subtle about the weather that day. It was the height of summer, and nature was making a show of it.

Chii, who was sitting beside me, gave me a little nod. She was carrying Squirrely, the stuffed animal she always brought everywhere with her, as well as a bag stuffed full of individually wrapped strawberry-jam-filled marshmallows. She took out one of the little packets, tore it open, and popped a marshmallow into her mouth.

“By the way, Chii, have you started on your summer homework yet?” I asked as she passed me the empty wrapper, doing my best to sound like I was just making casual small talk.

Chii gave me a grumpy glare. “I hate you, Cookie.”

“Why?!” I shouted, reeling with astonishment. No way! Did I really just ruin our friendship?!

“I hate people with no common sense,” Chii continued.

N-No common sense? I never imagined I’d receive that piece of criticism, especially not from Chii. It was a painful enough thing to hear on its own, and she was the last person I’d ever wanted to hear it from. It was like getting a lecture on the importance of washing your hands from Bacteriaman.

“Listen, Cookie,” said Chifuyu, looking me in the eye with a very serious look on her face. “Summer vacation is a vacation. You don’t think about homework on vacations. That’s common sense. Okay?”

I gaped. I’d never thought that just mentioning homework would make her this upset with me. It seemed that the word “homework” itself was taboo, as far as Chii was concerned. “O-Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry, Chii. I should’ve known better.”

“As long as you understand,” said Chii, seemingly satisfied.

I knew perfectly well that around the end of summer vacation, she’d be begging me to let her copy my homework. That was what had happened last year and the year before that, after all. She couldn’t do anything without me around to help her. Hee hee hee!

“Heeey, Chifuyu! Kuki!” a boorish, boyish voice rang out, cutting off our friendly chat. The boy in question, Andou, was waving at us as he ran toward the bus stop. “Hey, guys! It’s been a while, huh?” he said, greeting us with a friendly smile as he jogged up to our bench.

Chii stood up and raised a hand to return his greeting. “Long time no see, Andou,” she said.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Andou replied. “And man, talk about great weather, right? We sure got lucky it ended up being so sunny out today!”

“I made a rain charm to make sure it would be,” Chii proudly declared.

“Oh, that’d explain it! Guess we have your charm to thank for it being such a clear day, then.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Charmy.”

“U-Uhh... Chifuyu? Are you talking to that...wadded-up ball of tissue you just pulled out of your pocket?” Andou asked concernedly. “That, uhh, really sounds like the sorta name you’d give to the rain charm you made, doesn’t it?”

“This is Charmy’s brain.”

“Its brain?!”

“It’s where Charmy’s thoughts, feelings, and memories are all stored.”

“Holy crap, Chifuyu! I mean, like...I guess you do put a wadded-up tissue in those charms to pad out their heads, and that would sorta count as their brains, but, seriously, just no! Carrying around the inside bit’s not the same thing as carrying around an actual charm! What happened to the outer tissue?!”

“It ran away.”

“Your rain charm’s body ran away and left its brains behind?!”

“It’s okay. The body has a new brain in it now.”

“That... Huh. This is weird, actually. That’s not really all that different from how Anpanman swaps out his head, but getting all anatomical and calling it his brain introduces a whole deep, philosophical dilemma to the scenario... Like, doesn’t this raise all sorts of questions about what part of us is us, and where our consciousness is stored, and stuff?”

“Charmy’s brain is still Charmy, even without a body.”

“Right. So, Chifuyu, I think it’s about time you told us the truth. Why doesn’t Charmy have a body, a face, or any of that stuff?”

“I got bored.”

“Oooh, okay. Yeah, I see how this happened. You do get bored and give up on stuff all the time. Like how you were gonna fold a thousand cranes the other day, but only actually folded one baby crane in the end...”

The moment Andou had shown up, the two of them kicked off a whole cheerful conversation with each other, which I now decided to cut into.

“Andou!” I said. “Thank you very much for being our chaperone to the pool today! I really appreciate you being willing to accompany us on such short notice!”

“You sure are conscientious about this stuff, huh, Kuki? It’s cool, and you don’t have to be all formal with me! Heck, I’m actually glad you bothered to invite me,” said Andou with a slightly awkward grin. “I mean, like... Y’know. We sorta had that whole thing last time... I was kinda worried you hated my guts after all that, honestly.”

“Ha ha ha, what on earth would make you think that?” I said with a perfect smile. “That was a long time ago, and I’ve let bygones be bygones! I certainly never would’ve invited you to chaperone us at the pool if I hated you!”

“Y-Yeah, true enough! Guess I was worrying for nothing, huh?” Andou said, then let out a sigh of relief.

I hadn’t forgotten what had happened last time, of course. I remembered very well that Andou was a hopeless lolicon: the sort of irredeemable pervert who gets aroused by girls who are far too young for him. Did I hate him? Certainly not. My opinion of Andou wasn’t even close to that mild. The dark, violent emotion that surged from deep down in the pit of my stomach, rushing through my whole body, could never have been described so simply as the single word hate. The sin that scummy lolicon had committed—the sin of deceiving Chii and luring her to his side—was deeper than the deepest ocean and heavier than the largest mountain.

“Oh, the bus is here! Hey, do you two have your tickets? Want me to hold on to them just to make sure nobody loses theirs?” Andou offered. It seemed he was trying to act reliable, maybe since he was the oldest of us.

I wasn’t going to let him trick me with that kind front, though. He’d jumped at the chance to portray himself as a nice, helpful role model, but that didn’t change the fact that deep down, he was a genuine lolicon. I knew exactly what sort of wicked intentions he was hiding behind that helpful mask of his.

Heh heh heh! Prepare yourself, Andou! Today, I’m going to tear that mask right off and expose you for who you really are!

“Ugh...”

“What is it, Andou?”

“Nothing, really... I just got this crazy chill all of a sudden. Maybe I’m coming down with a summer cold?”

“I...think I might die.”

“I’ve been feeling my chest get all thumpy...”

“It gets thumpy, and then it’s like it’s getting squeezed...and my face gets red, and I can’t focus...”

“When Andou...”

“When Andou’s nearby. Or when I think about him. My chest gets really thumpy then...”

Chii had come to my home and said all of that to me, blushing faintly the whole time, just a little while before summer vacation had started. Back then, I’d tried to sort of forcibly distract her from the truth by telling her that she should just eat a marshmallow whenever she was starting to feel any of the symptoms she’d described to me. It hadn’t been a great diversion, but Chii had been content to just heed my advice and had told me she felt like she was all better again before she left. Still, after all that, I’d become certain: Chii, apparently, had fallen in love with Andou Jurai.

I felt like I had an okay grasp of Chii’s relationships with everyone in the Senkou High literary club. Their group had a big secret, and I’d gotten into a bit of a fight with Chii over it, but at this point I’d already learned the truth: their secret was that Andou suffered from a terrible and incurable disease known as the lolita complex. He’d admitted it to me personally, so there was no mistaking it. He’d told me that it was only thanks to Chii keeping him company that he was able to suppress his attraction to little girls.

When I really stopped to think about it, the whole story was ridiculous, but I’d decided that as long as Chii was satisfied with that explanation, I would respect her wishes and not protest it. But. But. If the two of them showed any signs of trying to move their relationship past that point, then that would be a very different story. Speaking as her friend—as her best friend—I wasn’t about to let Chii fall into the hands of some lying, stinking lolicon!

Chii had apparently started to develop romantic feelings for Andou, but I knew that was just because she was such an incredibly nice girl. I was certain that she just felt so much pity for that laughably pathetic scumbag that she couldn’t bear to leave him on his own and ended up sympathizing with him as a result. She’d been taking care of him like he was a strange, endangered animal she’d saved from the streets, and she had mistaken those feelings for ones of real affection.

Yes, that must be what’s happening. I’m sure of it! And there’s no way I’ll let that man get away with taking advantage of her kindness!

If there was one upside to the situation, it was that Chii had yet to realize how she felt about him. Thankfully, she still believed that eating a marshmallow was all it’d take to stop her heart from going all pitter-patter for him. On the other hand, that meant that if I was going to make a move, I would have to do it now, before it was too late. That was why I’d decided to set things up so that the three of us would go to the pool together. I called it “Operation Ruin Andou’s Public Image!”

I’d laid all sorts of secret schemes in preparation for today. I’d stayed up really late last night, not going to bed until 10 p.m. to polish my plan to perfection. I knew that once I’d finished carrying out my plan, Chii’s opinion of Andou would drop dramatically, and when it did, the budding flower of love within her would wither and die before it could ever manage to bloom. I felt a little guilty, yes...but I knew that I had to harden my heart and do what had to be done to protect my friend.

Chii’s the most important person in the world to me, and I’ll do my best for her sake!

“Wooow,” Chifuyu said, her eyes sparkling with amazement.

Just one glance at the scene before us was enough to let us know we were in for a good time. There were so many water-based attractions, I couldn’t even count them. They had a lazy river, a water slide, and even a big area made to look like a pirate ship! There was also a stage for holding events and performances. Everything was designed to delight and excite, and each attraction glimmered in the summer sunlight.

“This place looks great, doesn’t it, Chii?” I said.

“Yeah,” Chii replied.

“We’re gonna have tons of fun today, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Chii grunted. She was a girl of few words, but one look at her face told me that she was practically beside herself with excitement. She was so worked up, she was almost hyperventilating!

We headed into the locker room, changed into our swimsuits, then went out to a meeting place we’d picked earlier, holding hands along the way to make sure we didn’t get separated by the crowd. Chii was wearing a frilly one-piece swimsuit, and I had on one of the same design, though in a different color. We’d bought them together specifically for today’s outing, and I’m sure that everyone around us could tell how good of friends we were by our matching swimsuits. Heh heh!

“Andou really is taking his time, isn’t he?” I muttered. We’d changed in different locker rooms, needless to say, and we’d promised to wait for him out by the entrance, but we’d been waiting a while, and he still hadn’t come out yet. I thought that boys were usually supposed to get changed faster than girls, so I was confused. What is he doing in there?

“Ah. I see him,” said Chii, pointing toward the locker rooms.

I looked over, and there he was, walking toward us in a pair of swim trunks designed to look like shorts. He’d certainly taken his sweet time...and actually, he still was. For some reason, he was plodding toward us at a really slow pace, his shoulders slumped and his expression gloomy.

“Andou, you’re late,” said Chii.

“Yeah... Sorry, Chifuyu,” Andou sighed.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Sorta... Look at this, Kuki,” Andou said as he held out a hand toward us. He was holding a pair of swimming goggles. They looked like a perfectly ordinary pair you could’ve bought in just about any store, but one of their lenses had a huge crack running through it.

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“I accidentally stepped on them while I was getting changed,” Andou moaned.

“You stepped on them? Is your foot all right?”

“Oh! Yeah, I’m totally fine. These lenses are plastic, so it barely even scratched me. It’s just, y’know...I just bought the things, so this was a real blow, mentally speaking,” Andou said. He sounded really depressed.

It was an unfortunate accident, but still, this was supposed to be the start of a fun day for all of us, and I didn’t like how he was bringing the mood down for me and Chii. Couldn’t he at least try not to drag us down with him?

“Wouldn’t wearing those be kind of dangerous? You should probably throw them away,” I said.

“Yeah, but, like, I literally just bought them,” said Andou. “I just can’t bring myself to throw them out, you know?”

And now he’s proving that he doesn’t know when to let go. As a guy, he should man up about stuff like this! This just proves that I can’t leave Chii in his hands!

“Plus, I figured I could ask Sayumi to take care of them,” Andou continued.

I cocked my head. “You mean Takanashi?”

“Ah!” Andou gasped. “Nope, never mind! It’s nothing! Yeah, you’re right, I’d better just throw ’em out!”

“Andou...” Chii sighed as she shot him an exasperated glance.

“S-Sorry! My bad, honestly,” Andou said. I wasn’t really sure what had just happened, but apparently, Chii’s opinion of him had gone down a step or two, so I was willing to call it a victory!

With that, the three of us started making our way toward the lazy river.

“I want a swim ring,” Chii said, so we went over to line up at a stand that was renting them out. The pool was pretty crowded, so we were going to have to wait for quite a while, and that meant this was my chance. I’d been handed the perfect opportunity to put one of the plans I’d thought up into action.

Plan number 1: Operation Nobody Likes a Pervert!

My first strategy was ingeniously crafty, and it would make full use of the unique traits of the poolside environment we’d be spending the day in. This very plan was actually one of the reasons why I’d decided to make a water park our destination!

It was summer vacation, and that meant lots of people would be coming to the pool to play. Lots of those people, of course, would happen to be pretty ladies. My hope was that if Chii could catch Andou ogling some girl in a sexy swimsuit, she’d be disillusioned and lose interest in him. No love could be strong enough to survive a face-to-face encounter with that man’s base, perverted true self!

As luck would have it, a group of young, spirited ladies happened to pass right by us as we were waiting in line. They were probably college students, I think? They definitely looked mature, at least, and their figures accentuated by the bikinis they were wearing made them give off an aura so lewd I couldn’t even put it into words. They were also all cute enough that each of them could’ve easily cleaned up if their school ran a beauty pageant! Overall, the college crew (as I had quickly started calling them in my head) had the eye-catching looks to turn the heads of most of the men in the area.

Look at them! They’re so pretty! Andou must be staring too, I thought as I spun around, excited to catch him in the act...

“Ugggh... Man, I just bought those goggles too...”

“It’s okay, Andou.”

...only to find him still totally fixated on his broken goggles. He didn’t even spare the pretty ladies walking past us a glance. It was like they didn’t register with him at all! Just how long is he going to be distracted by those goggles?

In the end, the college crew passed by without Andou expressing even a little bit of interest in them. Hmph. Well, fine! There were still plenty of pretty ladies hanging out by the pool. The college crew was just the beginning!

And, as expected, it wasn’t long before another one passed right by us. Hmm, I thought to myself. This new lady was really something. She was wearing a super revealing bikini, but that wasn’t what made her so eye-catching. No, what really caught my attention were her boobs. They were huge, and they were bouncing around with every step she took!

Oh, my— Wow! I’m actually a little overwhelmed! She had a textbook hourglass figure, and she was showing it off without the slightest hesitation. Naturally, most of the nearby men had their eyes glued to her. Even the lifeguard who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for anyone in need of help had his binoculars pointed squarely at her instead! Ugh, talk about crass! I guess that’s just how all men are, deep down. So, how do you like that, Andou? There’s no way you could ignore a woman like—

“Actually...wait a second! Don’t these goggles kinda work like this? Like, the way only one of the lenses is cracked gives them that sorta ‘fresh off the battlefield’ vibe, doesn’t it?! Like I took a bullet to the goggles and barely escaped with my life after the glass deflected it!”

He’s still obsessing over his stupid goggles?! And he’s talking gibberish to boot! “Fresh off the battlefield”?! What on earth is he on about?!

“Mwa ha ha... Yes, the wounds these goggles have suffered are proof of the glorious deeds they’ve witnessed! A bit of battle damage makes them so much cooler! These are goggles that a heroic soldier would wear on his return from the fields of valor! Hella cool! Cool like the goggles Hange’s wearing in that one cut from the second Attack on Titan OP!”

It was no use. Andou was completely absorbed in his goggles and wasn’t so much as glancing at the buxom beauty walking past him. Then he actually went and put them on, even though one of the lenses was totally cracked!

“Hey, look at me, Chifuyu!” said Andou. “What do you think? Bet I look like I just got back from the battlefield, right?”

“Not really,” said Chii.

“Wha...?! Curses! Maybe they’re not battle-damaged enough?” Andou muttered to himself. Then he started deliberately breaking his goggles more than they already were, with his own two hands! I was completely lost. He’d taken his bizarre behavior so far, I didn’t even know what to think.

What should I do now? It wouldn’t be long before the super stacked lady would be out of eyeshot, so in a moment of panic, I decided to throw caution to the wind and call Andou’s attention to her directly. Right, this should work! The problem’s that he’s so focused on his goggles, he hasn’t even noticed her! The moment he does see her, though, he’ll reveal his base, male nature!

“A-Andou, look at her!” I said. “That lady’s figure is—”

“Gimme some quiet for a minute! Whatever it is, I don’t have time right now!” Andou snapped.

I fell into a shocked silence. H-H-He shouted at me?! Wh-Wh-What the heck? That was scary!

“Dammit... Am I taking it too far? At this point, I might as well smash the other lens too... No, no, that won’t work. I can’t sacrifice the asymmetry element—that’d totally ruin the disequilibrium of its je ne sais quoi...”

Now my silence was a little more befuddled than shocked. What on earth is so fun about playing around with goggles, anyway? Is modifying his goggles really more important to Andou than gawking at a sexy lady? Said lady, by the way, was long gone by now, and my shoulders slumped as I regretted the loss of the one-in-a-million chance I’d been given. The odds of another lady as sexy as the first one showing up were just impossibly low...or so I’d thought, but just then, I heard a commotion nearby. I looked over out of curiosity, and there she was: a really, really pretty lady wearing a swimsuit so sexy it was just plain ridiculous!

Her figure was as good as a figure could be, and she had on... Actually, no. “Had on” isn’t suitable to describe what I was witnessing. Her figure was garnished by her swimsuit, at most. Her attire was basically a super thin, V-shaped strip of fabric that barely hid her chest and her crotch. It was only just doing its job as a bathing suit, really.

I gasped and felt my face flush in an instant. Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What in the world is that?! I can see just about everything! That’s more string than cloth! Walking around naked would probably be less embarrassing! Her figure and looks were more or less on the same level as those of the sexy lady from before, but she was showing so much more skin, it was just crazy! Most of her boobs and butt were totally exposed! The way she was walking seemed weirdly sexy too. I couldn’t help but feel flustered looking at her, and I’m a girl!

What is this strange fascination that’s brewing within me? I feel frustrated and suffocated, but I also feel a surge of passion too... Is this what people mean when they go on about “eroticism”? Suddenly, I felt like I’d gained a profound, instinctual understanding of the meaning of the word “erotic.” That woman was eroticism given human form. She was the avatar of eroticism, descended from the heavens! She had to be!

That purely erotic woman’s voluptuous figure and captivating walk were drawing men from all across the pool toward her. They were like a swarm of ants lured in by her powerful pheromones. It was weird, though—for some reason, all of them were kind of hunched over? I wasn’t sure what was up with that. Do men just hunch naturally when they see pretty ladies? I was starting to get curious, so I decided to look it up when I got home.

Then, as the gazes of countless men were focused on her...something terrible happened. The woman stumbled, and as the rhythm of her gait was thrown off, the portion of her V-shaped swimsuit that covered her chest was dislodged. For a swimsuit that scanty, even the slightest of impacts was apparently enough to cause total devastation. She spilled right out of it for the world to see, her bountiful bosom dancing about in the air.

I gasped even louder this time. I-I-I can see everything... I knew I shouldn’t have been looking, but the sheer volume—the sheer beauty—had me staring in spite of myself. I-Incredible... They’re too incredible. Just look at them jiggle. No way you could get away with showing this on TV, and here it is, staring me in the face... Oh, my.

The erotic lady let out a sexy little scream and covered her chest with her hands. At the same moment, all of the men in the area let out a cry of delight, then they started jostling with each other in the hopes of securing a better position and catching another glimpse of her naked chest. A bunch of people jumped out of the line we were waiting in to get in on the action, and the next thing I knew, the whole poolside had descended into chaos. Just one woman—just two boobs—had drawn all those men into a conflict so brutal, I could hardly bear to watch. I couldn’t blame them, though. Any man would be irresistibly charmed by a woman baring that much eroticism for him to see.

All right, Andou! What do you think of that?! Not even you could turn a blind eye to a scene like this! I bet you don’t even care about your stupid goggles anymore!

“Come on, kid. You know you shouldn’t be playing around with broken goggles like that. The lenses could shatter any moment now, and getting chunks of those in your eye could blind you, in the worst case. You get that, right?”

“I do... I’m really sorry.”

He’s getting chewed out?! Andou was getting scolded by some lifeguard lady about his broken goggles! He was getting a plain old lecture, and he seemed plain old depressed about it!

“Why would you even wear these things in the first place?”

“Umm... Well, I... I kinda just...thought they’d look cool, I guess? Like, they’d have that back-from-the-battlefield sorta vibe, or something...”

“They’d what?”

“Never mind. Sorry. Just forget about it.”

“Well, in any case, I’ll be throwing these out for you.”

“N-No waaay... Ahhh,” Andou moaned with incredibly intense regret as the lifeguard took his goggles and walked away.

When you really stopped to think about it, wearing those would be pretty dangerous, so in my opinion, she was in the right to confiscate them. The thing is, her lecture had also distracted Andou so badly that he hadn’t noticed the avatar of eroticism at all. No woman, no matter how beautiful, could draw his attention away from his goggles.

“Ugh... My poor goggles! My back-from-the-battlefield costume...”

“Sorry, Andou,” said Chii.

“Thanks, Chifuyu...” Andou moaned, then glanced around. “Wait, huh? What happened to the crowd? I thought the line was way longer than this.”

“A bunch of the boys ran away for some reason,” Chii explained.

“Huuuh. That’s pretty weird, but lucky us, I guess! Let’s go get you that swim ring!”

“’Kay.”

“Hey, Kuki, what’re you doing? Come on, let’s get moving!”

I hesitated for just a moment longer. “Okay,” I finally sighed, then plodded along after Andou and Chii as they happily strolled over to the rental counter.

Operation Nobody Likes a Pervert: failed.

We spent a while playing around in the lazy river, and before long, it was time for lunch. We made our way over to the food court, where a bunch of stalls were set up.

“You two feel free to get whatever you want for lunch! It’s my treat,” said Andou.

“Really?” asked Chii.

“Yup! Think of it as a thank-you for inviting me. And anyway, I bet I’m the only one who’s carrying a wallet, right? Getting you guys to pay me back later would just be a pain, so might as well make this easy on all of us,” Andou said with a friendly smile.

I pumped an internal fist. It was time for plan number 2: Operation Nobody Likes a Cheapskate!

1.    Andou offers to treat us to lunch.

2.    I order a mountain of food.

3.    Andou goes “Durr, I said I’d treat you, but that’s too much...”

4.    Chii’s super disappointed in him.

Operation Nobody Likes a Pervert might’ve been flawed from the get-go, considering that I hadn’t taken the fact that Andou was an irredeemable lolicon into account. Even lolicons were sure to value their money, though, so I knew this one would work!

“I want some of the yakisoba from that stall over there, Andou!” I piped up immediately.

“Yeah, sure,” said Andou, casually agreeing without missing a beat. He never suspected a thing.

Heh heh heh! Just you wait, Andou. The yakisoba is only the beginning! I’m going to make you order something from every stall in the food court and eat my way through your wallet until nothing’s left!

Ten minutes later...I found myself face-to-face with a fatal flaw in my plan’s foundation.

“Are you okay, Cookie?”

“H-Hey, it’s fine, Kuki! You don’t have to eat all of it!”

“Ugh... U-Urp!”

I’d failed to account for one simple fact: I wasn’t a heavy eater. I was the sort of girl who felt pretty much full after a single small bowl of rice. I’d fail to finish my school lunch so often that the kids in my class had learned to give me less when they were on serving duty.

“I’m...fine...” I gasped, forcing a smile as I clutched at my bulging stomach. I reached out for the pile of yakisoba—half of which still remained uneaten—but I just couldn’t bring myself to stretch my chopsticks those last few inches and actually take another bite.

The guy who was manning the stand had taken one look at me and said, “Oh, aren’t you a cutie! Here’s a little extra for the little lady,” then given me an especially humongous helping that I hadn’t asked for and did not appreciate. I’d been planning on eating my way from one end of the food court to the other, but in the end, I gave up before finishing off a single plate.

“Kuki,” Andou said, sounding a little worried. “Not wasting food is a good thing, and I’m proud of you for wanting to clean your plate, but you don’t have to force it down if you’re full! I can eat whatever you don’t finish.”

If I agreed to that, it would ruin the whole mission in an instant. How was I supposed to ask for a second helping if I couldn’t even finish the first one? Considering that first serving had me stuffed to my limit, though...there just wasn’t anything I could do to salvage the situation. I gave Andou a silent nod and pushed my remaining yakisoba over to him.

“Are you still hungry, Andou?” asked Chii. “You already ate the leftover half of mine too.”

“Yeah, I should be able to handle a bit more,” said Andou.

“Oh...” Chii muttered.

“Huh? What?”

“I get full so quickly, and I can never eat much at all, so...”

“So...?”

“I think it’s amazing that you can eat so much.”

“Ha ha ha. Thanks, I guess? Kinda embarrassing when you put it that way.”

Ahh, no! They’re getting along better than ever now! Look at how she’s staring at him—it’s like she’s admiring him! I wanted to shout about how there were tons of people out there who could eat a lot, so he wasn’t special, but having just left half of my own meal to him to finish off, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Ugggh... This plan couldn’t have gone worse! I wanted to make him look bad, but I ended up letting him show off to her instead! It got totally turned around on me!

Operation Nobody Likes a Cheapskate: failed.

After lunch, we were planning on playing with a beach ball together. Were planning.

“S-Sorry, Chii. I think...I shouldn’t move for a little while...” I groaned. I was still suffering from the damage I’d incurred over the course of my last failed operation. My stomach was so full, it was actually painful. “I’m going to sit around here for a little, but you two should go have fun while I rest.”

“But...” Chii said with a disappointed look on her face.

“In that case, how about we stick around close enough that we can see her?” Andou suggested.

“Okay. Good idea, Andou,” said Chii with a nod, cheerful once more.

The two of them went over to a nearby pool that was shallow enough for kids to stand in. Meanwhile, I squatted down in the shade of a palm tree to rest and digest while I watched them play. They batted their watermelon-patterned beach ball back and forth, looking like they were having the time of their lives.

Chii was maybe just a little bit unathletic, but Andou was really good at controlling the ball and managed to keep their rally going anyway. That said, I was a little confused by how he kept shouting stuff like “Devil Laser Bullet!” and “Ultimate Dragon Pitch!” and “Ignite Pass: Kai!” What on earth is he screaming his lungs out for? He looked like he was having even more fun than Chii.

After spending some time watching them pass the ball to each other, my stomach finally started feeling better. “All right,” I said to myself as I stood up and set off...but not toward Andou and Chii. I wasn’t planning on joining in on their game, as much as I wanted to. Instead, I walked off in the opposite direction. After all—I had a mission to accomplish, no matter what.

Plan number 3: Operation Nobody Likes a Wimp!

1.    I find someone nearby who looks scary and play a prank on them.

2.    When the scary person tries to get even with me, I run over to Andou and beg for help.

3.    Andou goes “Durr, I’m scaaared, I don’t wanna fight...”

4.    Chii’s super disappointed in him.

When push comes to shove, it’s a man’s duty to stand strong and protect the ladies he’s accompanying! A real man needs the strength and courage to fight back against any opponent! And Andou was, well, how to put it...really, really obviously a weenie. He had the aura of a man who’d get down on his hands and knees if you so much as pounded on a wall in his presence. That’s why I figured that if I picked a fight with someone who seemed a little scary, he’d reveal his wimpy true self for sure!

I looked around the nearby area, searching for someone who would do the trick, and found the perfect candidate right away. It was a man, napping on a beach chair by the poolside. His head was clean-shaven, which made for a poor match with his scruffy beard. He was wearing a pair of pitch-black sunglasses too, and he was so muscular it looked like each of his arms was as thick as my torso. In short, he looked really scary and really tough. Normally, I’d have tried to stay at least three meters away from a guy like him at all times, but he was the perfect candidate to pull into my operation, no two ways about it.

Now that I’d settled on making the bald guy my target, I tiptoed over toward him, ready to play my prank...only to gasp as I found myself face-to-face with another fatal flaw in my plan’s foundation: I was kind of a coward.

I was shy, and timid, and very easily spooked, and I was supposed to play a prank on a terrifying guy like him? N-No way! I can’t! I’m way too scared!

B-But, well, then again...this is probably for the best, right? When I really think about it, pulling some total stranger into my personal operation would be a really bad thing to do. Yeah, for sure! I can’t go around causing trouble for people like that! Okay, plan’s over, too bad, what a failure! Just when I’d convinced myself to give up, though...

“Hm? What’s up, kid?”

...the bald guy noticed me! I let out a squeal as my heart seemed to leap all the way up into my mouth. I was so surprised that I just froze up, unable to move an inch.

“You lost or somethin’?” asked the man.

“U-Umm,” I stammered.

“Mommy and daddy wandered off somewhere, eh? How ’bout I take you over to the lost kiddies desk?”

“Ah, ugh,” I gasped. The incredible, terrifying force of his stare had me overwhelmed and speechless, and the curt, casual way he was speaking to me only amplified the effect. I was so scared and tense it felt like I might just pop under the pressure. I had no idea what I should do, and I was just about to break down in tears...when a voice rang out.

“Hey, Kuki!” Andou called from behind me. “There you are! Sheesh, you had us worried! Why’d you vanish all of a— Uh, huh? Wh-What’s going on here?”

I took just enough time to turn around and make sure it was really Andou, then flung myself toward him, wrapping my arms around his torso and squeezing him as hard as I could. I was just about sobbing at that point. Waaah! I was so scaaared!

“Hey, boy,” said the scary bald man. “You this li’l chick’s brother, or what?”

“No, but, uh...I guess I’m her guardian, basically,” said Andou.

“Then keep a closer eye on her, for cryin’ out loud! You can’t just leave squirts on their own like that. Don’tcha feel sorry for her?”

“You’re totally right! My bad. I’ll be more careful,” Andou politely replied, then led me away by the hand. Our encounter with the bald man was over.

“H-Hey, Andou?” I said, still holding on to his hand for dear life. “W-W-Weren’t you scared?”

“Huh?” Andou blinked. “By what?”

“That guy,” I whimpered.

“Oooh,” said Andou. “Yeah, I guess he did have a pretty wild look going. He seemed like a nice guy, though, didn’t he? Like, it looked like he was worried about you and wanted to help and all.”

Actually...I guess that might be true, when he puts it that way. The bald man hadn’t done anything wrong at all—I’d just freaked out at him for no reason. I’m sorry for being so scared, Mr. Bald Man. And I’m sorry I was planning on pranking you too.

Operation Nobody Likes a Wimp: failed.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Huh? Where’re you going, Chifuyu?”

“That’s not something you should ask a lady.”

“Oooh, okay. Gotcha.”

Chii wandered off toward the restroom, leaving me and Andou alone together.

“Guess we can just hang out around here until she’s— Whoa, Kuki?!” Andou yelped, doing a double take as he turned around and found me slumped on the ground like a corpse. I’d collapsed the second Chii went away.

I let out a long, exhausted sigh. The failure of one operation after another had started seriously wearing on me, emotionally speaking. I’d been keeping up a tough act in front of Chii, but now that she wasn’t around and only Andou was watching, I just couldn’t be bothered anymore. Ugh... I’m starting to hate how little I can actually accomplish, I thought. I’d stayed up all the way until ten o’clock thinking up those plans, and none of them had been even remotely effective. It was the first time in my life I’d burned the midnight oil like that, and it hadn’t earned me a thing in the end.

“H-Hey, Kuki?” said Andou. “Are you okay? You look like a washed-up sea cucumber down there...”

His sympathy only enhanced my self-loathing. Also, calling me a sea cucumber was really mean of him. “Don’t mind me, Andou,” I groaned. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

“O-Oh, that so...? You’re sure you’re okay?” Andou repeated.

He looked like he was really concerned about me. Sure, he was the monster who was deceiving my beloved best friend, and sure, I considered him my sworn enemy...but when all was said and done, I had to admit that he came across as a fundamentally kind and decent young man. He’d just saved me when I was paralyzed with fright by the scary bald man, after all. I was starting to understand, ever so slightly, why Chii had fallen for him. Just a little, though. Really.

“So, uhh...nice weather today, huh?” Andou said, suddenly changing the topic. Apparently, trying to keep a conversation with me flowing while I was collapsed on the ground wasn’t easy. “Guess we have Chii and Charmy to thank for that, huh?”

“That’s right. It’s all thanks to Chii...and Charmy’s brains,” I said.

Andou winced. “So, is Chifuyu, y’know...like that at school too? Always coming up with crazy, out-there ideas and stuff?”

“She is,” I said. “Chii’s always herself, no matter the time or place. That stuff about Charmy’s brain was totally normal compared to some of the stuff she does.”

“That was normal?!”

“For example, last summer vacation, we were supposed to draw a landscape we could see from our houses as homework for our art class. Chii turned in a blank piece of paper and said it was titled The Air.”

“Yup, that’s pretty out-there, all right! No corners left to cut on that one!”

“Our art teacher got really mad at her, of course, but then Chii argued back using 4′33″ as a counter-example.”

“4′33″...? Isn’t that, like, that really weird orchestral piece where the musicians don’t play anything at all and just sit there in total silence for a full 273 seconds? And the idea’s supposed to be that the audience listens to the sounds that they make in the silence, and that ambient noise is the piece or something?”

“Yes, that’s right. Chii insisted that The Air was art in the same sort of way and refused to back down. She dug her heels in and never admitted that she could even possibly be in the wrong.”

“Wow, that’s... I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to just draw an actual picture, at that point?”

“Chii spares no effort when it comes to being lazy.”

“She’s a real walking paradox, huh?”

“In the end, our art teacher backed down and declared The Air to be a legitimate painting.”

“A blank sheet of paper?! Seriously?! Is your art teacher, y’know, okay?!”

“Maybe not, actually. Our teacher went a little crazy after that and submitted The Air to a national art competition. It didn’t win...but supposedly, the judging committee ended up with a split opinion and got into a really heated debate over it.”

“So she slacked her way into being treated like a super cutting-edge, avant-garde artist...? Man, I can never decide whether Chifuyu’s really incredible or not incredible in the slightest,” said Andou with a bewildered shake of his head. He looked pretty conflicted. “You have it rough too, huh, Kuki? Don’t your classmates call you Chifuyu’s mom, or something?”

That nickname—or maybe I should call it a popular opinion—had spread through my class before I knew it, and it had even made it as far as my teachers. I hadn’t liked it at first since I thought they were making fun of me, but when I realized that Chii wasn’t upset at all about them saying that about me...it might’ve made me a little happy. That was why it didn’t bother me at all anymore.

“I don’t have it rough at all,” I said. I was still lying on the ground, but I spoke up as loud as I could and made that point very clear. “After all, Chii’s my friend. She’s important to me.”

And that’s exactly why I can’t hand her off to some boy before I make very sure that he’s worthy of her. That’s my responsibility as Chii’s school mom!

Just then, a ringing noise played over the pool’s announcement system, followed by a voice. “This is an announcement to all park guests. The Pets & Pups Quiz Show will be held at the central event stage. If you wish to participate, please proceed...”

I went from spawled out on the ground to sitting bolt upright in a split second. It was finally time for the final operation to begin!

The Pets & Pups Quiz Show was the day’s main event. Information about it had been plastered all over the flyer that I’d found in my family’s mailbox advertising the pool. It was a special summer vacation attraction that would be running for the next three days, it seemed.

“Let’s see here,” Andou muttered as he looked over the informational flyer posted by the venue. “Participation’s open to everyone as long as you have a kid who’s elementary-school-aged or younger in your group, and each group can have up to five people, huh? I guess that means the three of us could join in.”

The event area was packed with people. We got in line and waited for our turn to handle our registration. When we were just one team away from the front, though, a thought seemed to strike Andou.

“Wait a second... Hey, Chifuyu, Kuki! See that poster over there? It says that since they’re expecting a ton of interest in the event, you have to sign up for it in advance. I think they’re probably gonna turn us away, aren’t they?”

“No, they won’t. I already signed us up,” I explained just as the team ahead of us finished. I stepped up to the receptionist, gave her my name, and she handed me three participant badges on lanyards: one for each of us to wear.

“Whoa, so you were planning on participating in this quiz thing from the very start?” asked Andou, his eyes wide with shock.

“That’s right,” I said. “In fact, you could even say that we came here today for the sake of this quiz show. Right, Chii?”

“Mmhmm. That’s right,” said Chii with an excited nod.

“Huh! I had no idea. You could’ve just told me, y’know?” said Andou.

Oh, but of course I couldn’t! After all, if I’d told you about the quiz, you might have figured out my scheme!

Plan number 4: Operation Nobody Likes a Moron!

1.    We join the quiz show. Chii and I do super well.

2.    Andou’s totally useless. “Durr, these questions are haaard...”

3.    Chii’s super disappointed in him.

This was the final and ultimate plan that I’d be carrying out today. The biggest reason I’d chosen this place as our destination was their quiz show. Normally, you’d think that a high schooler like Andou would be a lot more prepared to answer trivia questions than a couple elementary schoolers like us...but this quiz was themed around animals, and that changed things entirely!

“All right, it’s time for us to begin! Contestants, please make your way to the stage!” said a lady with a microphone who seemed to be working as the quiz show’s announcer.

Ten groups in total, mostly made up of families, filed their way onto the stage. Each team was assigned to a desk, and the desks had partitions separating them from the other teams to make sure that nobody could peek at another group’s answers. Our participation badges told us that we were team number 3, so we made our way to the third desk in the row and stood behind it.

Once all the teams were in position, the announcer lady started explaining the rules. “Okay, everyone,” she said, “Today, we’ll be asking you ten questions about animals! Your parents and siblings can help out as much as they want, so do your best to work together and solve all of them! Once you’ve decided on your answer, please write it on your group’s whiteboard and hold it up for us to see. And last but not least...we have a range of wonderful prizes in store for any group that can get enough questions correct! First up, for families that answer at least three questions correctly...”

As the announcer carried on with her explanation, Andou leaned over to whisper into Chii’s ear. “Hey, Chifuyu,” he said. “You seem pretty into this whole quiz thing, huh? Is there a prize you’re aiming for?”

“That,” Chii said as she pointed toward the corner of the stage where the prizes were displayed. Specifically, she pointed at a huge stuffed whale. It must have been over two meters long—not life-sized, sure, but still big enough to be...kind of off-putting, honestly. It was just...so big.

“The whale, huh? Looks like we need to get eight questions right to get that one. We’ve got our work cut out for us,” said Andou.

“I’ll do it. That’s what I came here for,” said Chii, her eyes sparkling with a sort of enthusiasm that was rare for her.

Seeing her act that excited made all the effort it had taken to plan this outing feel like it was worth it. My ultimate plan would make Chii happy and deal a blow to her image of Andou! It was a super plan that would net me two birds with one stone! Heh heh heh!

“And the final prize! If you make a clean sweep of the quiz and answer all ten questions correctly, you’ll receive...ta-daaa!” the host shouted as a drape that had been concealing the final prize dropped away, revealing a shiny white car. “That’s right! You’ll receive a brand new Pajero!”

“A P-P-Pajero?!” Andou shrieked, his eyes bulging with shock.

“What’s wrong, Andou?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?!” Andou shouted. “They’re giving away a friggin’ Pajero?! Why?! Those things are pretty dang expensive! That’s a crazy jump in value from the next fanciest prize! I mean, sure, giving out cars on quiz shows is a thing sometimes, but this is just ridiculous!”

“I-Is it? I don’t really know much about cars, so I guess I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said.

“Huh?! You don’t know about Pajeros, Kuki?” Andou exclaimed.

“No, I don’t.”

“N-No way... Come on, you must’ve heard of them! Y’know, there’s that one game show where they do the chant? ‘Pajero, Pajero!’”

“Uh?”

“Seriously...? Of all the things to make me feel the generation gap... Guess elementary school kids these days just don’t watch Friend Park... Guess they probably don’t know about the comically short roller coaster the contestants make their entrance on, or how people get so competitive in the air hockey part that it’s honestly kinda creepy...”

I didn’t really understand, but at the very least, I could tell that there was something about the Pajero that had left Andou profoundly shaken.

“But man, holy crap! I can’t believe they’re giving away a Pajero in a quiz show that any random person can sign up for. They’re not even charging us to participate! No wonder all the parents seemed so hyped up about this,” Andou muttered to himself.

“I don’t care about any of that,” Chii bluntly remarked. “The whale is the only prize I want,” she continued with such an unusually serious look on her face, I never would’ve even been able to imagine her making it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. She reached up, undid her pigtails, then tied her hair back in a single ponytail, just like mine.

“Chii...I can’t believe you’re that serious about this,” I said.

“Huh?” Andou grunted. “W-Wait, what...? What’s going on, Kuki? Does Chifuyu tying her hair in a ponytail, like, mean something?”

“Chii only ever ties her hair back like that when she’s really serious about something,” I explained.

“News to me...but I guess I get it. It’s sort of a routine to help her concentrate, right?”

“When Chii ties her hair back...her ability to concentrate rises to five times its usual level!”

“Dang!”

“In other words—about one or two times the average person’s concentration ability!”

“D-Dang,” Andou repeated, suddenly looking more than a little doubtful.

Really, now. He doesn’t understand how significant this is at all! How could he not see that Chii being able to concentrate on the same level as a normal person is basically a miracle in and of itself?

“Try talking to her, Andou,” I said. “I’m guessing she’s already concentrating so fully, she won’t even be able to hear you.”

“Oh, really? In that case, I guess I’ll just have to give it a try!” Andou said, then stealthily slipped over to Chii’s side, leaned in...and blew into her ear!

“Mnaaah! Ah...mnh...ahh...” Chii squeaked. For someone who was supposedly concentrating as hard as possible, she was doing quite a lot of twitching and shivering. She looked like she was so weak in the knees she might collapse at any second, even! Pretty soon she started blushing and tearing up, and finally, she clasped her hands over her ears. “Stop,” she muttered. “I can’t...take it... My ears are...sensitive...”

“Wh-Wh-What are you doing, Andou?!” I shouted.

“Wha— No, it’s not what you think! I just thought that if she was concentrating that hard, it’d be fun to play a little prank on her!”

“So you decided to blow in her ear?!”

“I’m sorry, seriously! I had no idea her ears were her weak point!”

“H-Her weak point?! Why would you say it like that?! Pervert! Andou, you’re a filthy degenerate!”

“Okay, now I’m just being falsely accused!”

“Pervert! This man’s a pervert! You stupid lolicon!”

“Nooo, stop! You can’t shout stuff like that in public!”

“Ugggh... Andou, you jerk,” Chii grumbled off to the side.

While our group descended into a state of chaos, the announcer kept explaining the rules and moving the quiz along. Before long, it was time for the first question.

“Okay, you two,” said Andou, “this is no time to be squabbling about nonsense like this! We have to come together and take this quiz on with everything we’ve got! Our hearts are as one! All for one...!”

“...”

“...”

“...A-And...one for all... Hurraaay...”

Chii and I ignored Andou and his stupid antics, instead turning our attention to the big screen where the questions would be displayed.

Question 1: Name the following animal.

—These animals are found in Africa and are famous for their pink sweat, which works as a disinfectant and moisturizes their skin in the harsh, arid environments they inhabit. Zookeepers also sometimes rub them down with olive oil to help protect their skin.

“Huh? Wait, seriously...? That’s the first question? Isn’t that kinda hard? Who puts a question like that in a quiz for little kids, for crying out loud?! I guess it makes sense you’d have to earn that Pajero, but still,” Andou said, sounding a little dejected. “And, like, olive oil? Seriously, olive oil? Where’s that even coming from? Is that seriously a thing? Was the zookeeper Hayami Mocomichi? Is this just Moco’s Kitchen?!”

“Do you know the answer, Andou?” I asked.

Andou hesitated. “Sorry, but nope. No clue. What do you guys think? Maybe we can come up with a decent guess if we put our heads together and—”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” I said, curtly shutting down his pointless suggestion. “A question like that is child’s play for us.”

“Wait, what do you... Huh?!” Andou yelped as he looked over at Chii, his eyes widening with shock. She’d taken up her marker and started writing her answer without so much as a hint of doubt or hesitation. She’d gone into the zone the second the quiz had started, and now she was directing every ounce of her enhanced concentration toward answering the question. The speed with which her marker zoomed across the whiteboard was downright unnatural.

“Wh-Whoa, she really is concentrating crazy hard on this,” said Andou. “She’s like the TV version of Detective Galileo, seriously... Actually, wait—you said ‘for us,’ right? Do both of you know the answer?”

“Yes,” I said with a nod. “Chii and I are both well versed when it comes to animals. Chii’s family has lots of illustrated animal encyclopedias in their home, and the two of us read them together all the time.”

“Oh, huh... That’s really something.”

“Really, though, I can hardly hold a candle to Chii’s level of knowledge,” I continued.

Chii loved animals, and she knew all sorts of trivia about them. She’d read the encyclopedias in her house so many times that she practically had them memorized front to back. It was no wonder she’d gotten so unusually worked up over the quiz show once she’d learned it was about animals.

Before long, Chii finished writing and held up her whiteboard, upon which she’d written “hippo.”

“And the correct answer is...the hippo!” said the announcer. We’d gotten the first answer right!

“You did it, Chii!” I said.

“Mnh,” Chii grunted as she high-fived me. “I’m just getting started.”

I’ll admit...I was a little bothered by the fact that she’d spent so long concentrating like live-action Detective Galileo, scribbling away on the whiteboard with so much intensity, only to write such a short word, but I decided not to question it.

“Oh, huh! Hippos have pink sweat, and zookeepers rub them down with olive oil? That’s wild,” said Andou.

“I guess you didn’t know any of that, then?” I said with a slightly mocking smirk.

Andou’s eyebrow twitched. “N-No, I mean... I-I knew that, totally! I just didn’t want to steal your moment in the spotlight, you know? Like, what sorta self-respecting adult barges into a kids’ quiz and gives away all the answers, right?”

“Suspicious,” Chii grunted, giving him a disappointed glance.

“Chifuyu, nooo! Don’t look at me like that!” Andou wailed. His desperate excuses had only worked against him!

Excellent. This is going just as planned!

“I see about half of our participating teams got the question correct,” said the announcer. “Maybe that was juuust a little hard for the first question? Feel free to help out, parents—that’s what you’re here for! Moving right along to question two!”

Question 2: Name the following animal.

—This species is the largest type of bony fish in the world. They lack scales, and their skin is covered in a layer of mucus that makes them vulnerable to a wide variety of parasites. These fish are unusually clumsy swimmers, and they are known to be quite difficult to raise in aquariums thanks to their tendency to crash into the tank’s wall and die of blunt trauma.

“What sort of stupid fish is that? They kill themselves by running into walls? That’s just plain sad...”

Andou was muttering nonsense to himself again, and meanwhile, Chii was still in full concentration mode, applying her one-to-two-times-the-average concentration ability to scribble down an answer to the question: “ocean sunfish.”

“And the answer is...the ocean sunfish!” said the announcer. Chii had nailed it once again.

“Great work, Chii!” I shouted.

“Woohoo,” said Chii, giving me another high five.

“Seriously?” said Andou. “Sunfish really lead that tragic of an existence...?”

“That’s right, Andou,” I said with a solemn nod. “Ocean sunfish walk a terribly perilous path in life.” Well, it’s more like they swim one than walk it, really. And I guess they’d follow a current instead of a path.

In any case, I began to explain to Andou the tragic truth of the sunfish’s way of life. “You see...”

•    Even though they can only swim at a speed of about two kilometers an hour, they evolved to have fins that are so small and useless that they still can’t change course well, so they frequently run into rocks...and die.

•    Sometimes when they sunbathe on the ocean’s surface, they accidentally wash up onto the shore...and die.

•    Sometimes during their sunbathing, they get attacked by birds...and die.

•    Sometimes they eat crabs or shrimp, whose shells can perforate their innards...and die.

•    They’re terrible at swimming, but they also can’t breathe unless they swim, so sometimes they can’t find a way to keep moving...and die.

•    They like to jump out from the water to try to shake parasites off their bodies, but they’re not very impact resistant, so sometimes they’ll slam against the surface too hard...and die.

•    They’re basically just vulnerable to physical and mental stress on a fundamental level, so more often than not, they sort of just give up...and die.”

“Okay, that’s gotta be too much random death!” Andou screamed, his words laced with a tragic despair. And he was right. Sunfish, very simply, die way too often. They live short, tragic lives...and die.

“You’re kidding, right?” he pleaded with exasperation. “Is that seriously how sunfish work? That’s not living on hard mode—it’s living on Sunfish Must Die mode! Their name’s so bright and sunny, but deep down, each and every one of them bears a terrible fate... How are they not extinct, seriously?”

“Sunfish females lay lots and lots of eggs,” I explained. “That’s how they’ve avoided being wiped out, I think. They’re said to lay the most eggs out of any vertebrate, actually—they can lay up to three hundred million of them at once!”

“Three hundred million?! Holy crap!”

“But only a very, very small number of those eggs hatch and live to see adulthood.”

“No way... How are sunfish this tragic? They survive one in three hundred million odds only to crash into rocks and die?”

“Poor Andous,” Chii muttered sadly, then looked up at Andou. “You should be nice to all the Andous from now on, Sunfish.”

“Uh, Chifuyu...? I know this isn’t really the moment to correct this sort of thing, but you had that backwards. You know I’m not a sunfish, right?”

“Ah— I think it’s time for the next question, Sunfish.”

“Not you too, Kuki?! Stop it! I really don’t want that nickname to stick!”

Reality is a cold, heartless mistress, and all I could do was turn a blind eye to the sunfish’s tragic fate and return my attention to the quiz as it moved along.

The questions they threw at us continued to be pretty high level, but none of them were enough to give Chii trouble at all. By the time the seventh question wrapped up, we were the only group that had answered every one of them correctly.

“Just one more question, and you’ll have your whale, Chii! We can do it!” I said.

“Yeah,” said Chii, “I’ll do my best. I’ll try super hard.”

“Honestly, Chii, you’re incredible! Not even I knew a few of those answers!”

“You’re amazing too, Cookie. I only got the seventh one right because you helped me think it through.”

“Oh, I didn’t do anything, really! I was just spitballing! You’re the amazing one, Chii! Especially compared to a certain someone,” I added as I glanced behind me at the man who was both the oldest in our group and the least useful member by a wide margin. He’d crouched down at some point, and he looked like he was sulking. It seemed his own uselessness was getting to him. “You haven’t been able to answer a single question so far, have you, Sunfish?”

“You know what...? I deserve this. I’m fine with being a sunfish. Maybe I’ll just go find a rock to crash into and die on,” Andou muttered. He’d ended up in an even more negative mindset than I’d expected.

“You’re useless, Andou,” said Chii, looking down on him scornfully. That, it seemed, dealt the finishing blow, and Andou slumped prone to the ground.

Heh heh heh! My plan’s working out perfectly! Chii’s opinion of him is dropping like a rock!

“All right,” said the announcer, “It’s time for question number 8! These last three questions will be juuust a little harder, but do your best to solve them all!”

I thought that everything was going perfectly...but then the eighth question came along and threw a wrench into the works.

Question 8: Name the following scientific experiment.

—This thought experiment was formulated by a European physicist in order to explain an aspect of quantum theory. The proposed experiment involved shutting a cat in a box with a dose of lethal gas, which, according to quantum mechanics, would leave it in a superimposed state of being simultaneously alive and dead.

“Wha—?!” I choked. I was at a total loss for words. A physicist? Quantum theory? I-I’ve never heard of any of this stuff! The question was a complete departure from the animal trivia we’d been answering up until that point. They hadn’t raised the difficulty level—they’d shunted the whole quiz into a completely different subject! The only way it was even remotely related to the quiz’s theme was that it technically involved a cat! “Why would they do that...?”

There was just no way a kid could know the answer to a question like that. Actually, I didn’t think most adults would be able to answer it either! All of the parents to either side of me certainly seemed to be throwing up their hands in befuddlement. Nobody could have been happy with the fact that we’d gotten slammed with a question like that out of nowhere. It was an outrage, and I was sure the other participants would agree with me...but when I took a closer look at them, I was shocked.

“I guess they would, huh?” said one of the parents.

“No way they’d actually let us win a Pajero from a quiz like this, right?” quipped another.

“Yeah, I saw this coming a mile away! Ha ha ha!”

All of the parents seemed completely unsurprised. The people running the quiz obviously had no intention of letting anyone get every answer correct, but the participants weren’t mad about it at all.

Could it be...they all think this is reasonable? The quiz was scheduled to run two more times, tomorrow and the day after. The people running it probably thought that they couldn’t afford to let their grand prize get snatched away on day one. In a certain sense, it was a given that they’d fine-tune the difficulty on the fly as the quiz went on.

Or maybe, in truth, they’d never had any intention of handing over the Pajero to begin with. Maybe they’d been willing to raise the difficulty as high as it took to make sure that nobody managed to answer every single question. Some of the participants might resent that, sure, but it wasn’t like we’d paid to participate in the quiz, so surely nobody would bother kicking up that much of a fuss about it. Maybe there’d been a tacit understanding between the organizers and the adult participants that there’d be a degree of fine-tuning and string-pulling going on behind the scenes, and when all was said and done, the adults were just here to enjoy themselves. But, if that were the case...

“...That’s not fair,” Chii muttered. Her fingers were clenched so hard around her marker they were shaking. “This isn’t an animal quiz at all!”

The half-shouted words that spilled from Chii’s mouth were laced with bitter frustration. She couldn’t have cared less about the needs and convenience of the adults running the show. She truly loved animals, and she’d approached this challenge with complete sincerity. Her frustration wasn’t about being denied her prize—it was about being torn from the experience. She’d been concentrating her hardest, fully engrossed in the quiz, and enjoying it more than anyone else...but in the end, it had betrayed her, and in a really harsh way.

Oh...this is my fault, isn’t it? If only I’d thought this through more. If only I hadn’t roped her into participating in this sad excuse for a quiz...

“Chii,” I began, but I couldn’t find the right words to say to her. My heart was full of guilt and self-loathing. Chii was right there, looking like she might break down in tears right in front of me, but I couldn’t do anything at all to help.

But that’s when he spoke up.

“Are you frustrated, Chifuyu?” Andou asked, laying a big, gentle hand down on her head.

“Andou,” muttered Chii.

“Do you despise those adults for resorting to such underhanded means?” he asked, speaking slowly and calmly. He was smiling—a smile that was so warm and kind it felt like it could wrap the whole world up in its gentle embrace, but one that also bore a profound strength.

“Yeah,” said Chii. “I’m frustrated. I’m really, really mad...”

“In that case,” said Andou, “how about we smash it all to pieces? We’ll tear those adults’ ugly, rotten world down to its foundations.”

Chii looked up at him. “Can you? Can you really do that, Andou?”

“I sure can,” said Andou. “I’ll make the world itself my enemy, if you so will it.”

“Then do it. Tear it down, Andou... No,” Chii began, then shook her head. “Tear it down, Guiltia Sin Jurai,” she said, reciting the name as if it were the title of a legendary hero.

Andou’s eyes lit up. A fearless, intrepid grin spread across his face.

“Yes, Your Highness!”

Andou took up Chii’s marker, scrawled an answer onto the whiteboard without wasting a second, then thrust it up for the announcer to see.

“‘Sch-Schrödinger’s cat.’ Th-That’s correct!” the host said, her smile twitching ever so slightly. It seemed she was pretty surprised by this turn of events, and I was too! Not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that Andou was knowledgeable about physics!

“Th-That was amazing!” I said. “But how did you know?”

“Oh, please,” said Andou. “Schrödinger’s cat is common knowledge! Hah hah hah!”

“‘Common knowledge’? Well, I’ve certainly never heard of it before. What on earth is an experiment like that supposed to prove?! Teach me, please! In detail!”

A lengthy pause ensued. “C-Come on, Kuki,” Andou finally said. “Nobody likes hearing someone prattle on and on about their pet subjects, right? No matter how knowledgeable they are about them!”

What?! Not only is he well educated, he’s also humble enough to not show it off?! That’s so admirable!

“W-Well, it looks like only one group got that question right,” said the announcer. “In fact, they’ve gotten every question right so far! You’re almost there, but the next question’s going to be even harder than the last one! Good luck!”

Question 9: Name the following weapon.

—This weapon is known as one of the three most famous spears in Japanese history. Wielded by Honda Tadakatsu, a general in the Warring States period, it earned its name when a certain insect landed on its head and split clean in half on account of the spear’s preternatural sharpness.

A w-weapon?! Really?! This doesn’t have anything to do with animals anymore! The last question involved a cat, at least, but this time, the closest the question comes to including the quiz’s theme is referencing an insect! Are they trying to say that bugs count as animals too?! It’d be one thing if they were asking for the general’s name, but asking for the name of his spear is just plain dirty! You’d have to be some sort of history professor to know that!

...Or so I’d thought. Andou, however, once again started scribbling onto our whiteboard, holding it up and shouting his answer at the same time.

“The Dragonfly Cutter!”

“Th-That’s correct!”

And he got it right, again!

“Mwa ha ha! No matter how low my foe chooses to stoop, I shall bring my all to bear and defeat them without resorting to trickery!” Andou declared. He was really hamming it up, but I didn’t mind. He’d earned it.

“That was incredible, Andou! I can’t believe you have the names of famous generals’ weapons memorized!” I gushed.

“Heh heh heh! Come now—who doesn’t have the three great spears and five great swords of Japan committed to memory?” said Andou.

“You know so much about history! I can’t believe it! By the way, what sort of person was Honda Tadakatsu?”

“Hmm—broadly speaking, he’s one of the series’s most powerful characters! Going up against him is just about as rough as taking on Lü Bu. He’s got high stats all around, which makes him a really straightforward character to play as, and he’s also got this really great skill that fills up a bar of the Musou Gauge!”

“A...powerful character? The...what gauge? Excuse me?”

Andou paused for a moment. “Y-Y’know what, Kuki? There’s no point in fixating on a question you’ve already answered! Let’s get our minds in gear for the last question instead!”

Oh, wow! He’s already thinking ahead and preparing for the next challenge! I guess he’s not one to rest on his laurels! There’s always another battle to fight, whether you’re competing in a quiz show or leading samurai onto the fields of war!

“It’s finally time for our last question, and if you manage to answer it correctly...the Pajero is all yours! I’m not sure, though—this last one might be downright impossible! It’s so hard, you wouldn’t believe it,” said the announcer, who was visibly sweating. The other teams had all given up at that point, and since we were the ones on the verge of winning a Pajero, we had naturally ended up the center of everyone’s attention. All eyes were fixed on us as the final question was read out.

Question 10: Name the following object.

—This device was used as an implement of torture in ancient Greece. Made from brass and shaped like a cow, its victims were shoved into—

“The Bull of Phalaris!”

That was instant! This is the last question, and he didn’t even wait for her to finish! That made him look so rude it’s ridiculous, but he doesn’t even care! Incredible!

“Th-That’s correct! That’s absolutely correct! You’ve answered every question flawlessly, and with that, the Pajero’s yours!” wailed the announcer, whose sweat was now pouring down her face in a waterfall. The crowd, meanwhile, was going crazy, clapping and cheering for us with wild abandon. I couldn’t even describe the sense of joy and accomplishment I was filled with—I just didn’t know what to do with myself!

“Andou,” said Chii.

“How’d you like that, Chifuyu?” said Andou. “Satisfied now?”

“Yeah!”

The two of them beamed at each other and exchanged a victory high five.

My ultimate plan, Operation Nobody Likes a Moron: failed. Failed miserably, even. As miserably as a plan could fail. I hadn’t made Andou look bad in Chii’s eyes—I’d given him the perfect chance to save her in a moment of crisis. She probably admired him more than ever now...and even I found myself thinking that he might actually be pretty cool.

The quiz drew to a close, leaving the event staff in a full-blown panic.

“What do you mean they got them all right?! What the hell are we supposed to do now?! That car’s a rental, dammit!”

“Hey, don’t act like this is my fault! I just read the slides like they told me to! If anyone’s to blame here, it’s whoever wrote those stupid questions!”

“Oh no you don’t! This isn’t my fault either! Hell, I was against this whole stunt from the start!”

“Well...shit. I think we might be hosed, guys. I mean, somebody’s gonna have to foot the bill for this car.”

I managed to catch bits and pieces of a foulmouthed exchange, mostly consisting of the organizers trying to foist responsibility for the problem onto each other. It was pretty clear now that they really hadn’t ever planned on actually giving the Pajero to anyone. Before their scandalous spat could reach any sort of conclusion, though, Andou walked up to them.

“Oh! H-Hello, sir,” said one of the staff members, cutting off their argument and stiffening his posture in a second. He was showing an awful lot of diffidence, considering Andou was just a high schooler.

“Hey, hopefully this isn’t too much trouble, but about the prize...can we have the one you get for eight correct answers instead? Y’know, the stuffed whale?” asked Andou.

Every member of the event staff gaped at him. They were completely blown away by his request.

“Huh?!” one of them exclaimed. “I mean... R-Really?!”

“Yeah,” said Andou. “That wouldn’t be a problem or anything, right?”

“O-O-Of course not! Th-That’s totally fine, no issues at all...b-but, are you really sure?”

“Yeah, we were after the whale from the start, honestly. And, like, I don’t even have a license! Plus, it just feels wrong to win a Pajero unless there’s a dartboard involved,” said Andou.

Before I knew it, the staff were bowing as deeply as they could to him and thanking him profusely.

“It’s cool. Just be sure to play fair next time, okay?” Andou said with a slightly smug grin, then walked back over to me and Chii. “I know this might not sit totally right with you, Chifuyu...but this is what’s best for everyone, right? I’d feel kinda bad for all the staff people if we actually demanded they hand over the car,” he said.

“Yeah. I understand,” said Chii. “It’s okay.”

“Are you cool with this too, Kuki?” he asked, turning to me next.

Obviously, I didn’t mind at all, and I nodded in agreement. “But...don’t you mind, Andou?”

“Mind what?”

“Well, you worked so hard, but you’re not getting anything in the end! You could’ve had a brand-new car, but you’re just giving it away!”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. I already got something,” said Andou, sliding his hands into his swim trunks’ pockets and turning his back to us. Then he set off, never looking back, as he delivered his final line. “Your smiles are the best reward I could ask for.”

“...”

So.

So. So. So.

So! Cooooooooooool!

Around three in the afternoon, we decided to get ready to leave. Chii and I headed for the women’s locker room, where I wrapped myself up in a towel to protect my modesty and got changed beneath it. A few moments of rustling around like a moth in its cocoon later, I emerged fully clothed and headed over to the sinks, where I dried my hair off with a blow-dryer. I certainly couldn’t walk around with wet hair, after all! After I was all dry, I got to work drying Chii’s hair as well.

“Andou was amazing today, wasn’t he?” I said as I carefully blow-dried her long, beautiful hair.

“Yeah. He usually is,” said Chii. It almost sounded like she was bragging about him. “Andou knows lots of complicated words.”

“He really does. He must be smart,” I agreed.

“Well...I don’t know,” said Chii.

H-Huh? I thought that using lots of big words guarantees that you’re smart! Was I wrong?

“Andou’s a dummy, after all,” Chii continued. It was a scathing critique, but she wasn’t done yet. “He’s a dummy, but...he always helps me too.”

I could see Chii’s face reflected in the mirror before us. She was smiling faintly as she talked about him, and her cheeks were a little flushed, even though she’d just gotten out of the pool and had to be feeling chilly.

I felt a sense of crushing isolation in my chest as I gazed at her absentminded smile. I think I see now. It could be that this was never about Andou in particular. It might not’ve mattered to me if he was a lolicon or not. Maybe no matter whom she fell for, I would’ve done my best to get between the two of them and test her partner for all I was worth.

It seemed that, in the end, all that had really mattered to me was the fact that I didn’t want someone else to steal her away. I’d been driven by my jealousy and my desire to monopolize her attention, and I’d ended up acting really possessive as a result. I knew that the time I’d tried to force her to choose between me and her club had just made her miserable...but it turned out I hadn’t learned from the experience at all.

“Thanks for today, Cookie,” said Chii, her cheerful words cutting through the gloom I was sinking into. “It was really fun.”

“You shouldn’t thank me. I mean, I was...” I said, then trailed off as I felt a stinging pain in my chest. I’d planned out this whole trip with the hope that it would make her hate Andou. “Hey, Chii,” I said. “Do you like me?”

“Yeah,” said Chii.

“Okay—then do you like Andou?”

Chii paused, and silence fell, broken only by the whirr of the blow-dryer. Finally, she muttered her reply.

“Yeah... I like him.”

Her response was completely different this time. It was obvious. The same single, simple word carried a totally different meaning.

“I gotta go,” Chii said, then stood up without warning. I wasn’t finished blow-drying her hair yet, but she dashed out of the locker room anyway.

“H-Huh? Ch-Chii! Where’re you going?!” I called after her.

“To Andou. I have to tell him something,” said Chii, and with that determined declaration, she was gone.

“Something to tell him...? N-No way!” I yelped. I was about to chase after her, but then I remembered that all of our stuff was still in the locker room. I quickly grabbed the bags that Chii and I had packed our swimsuits in, returned the blow-dryer to its proper position, and then sprinted after her.

This is awful... She’s going to tell him that she likes him, I just know it! She’s going to lay her feelings bare and whisper “I love you, I need you” in his ear! B-But she can’t! Not to him! I just can’t let Andou be her partner! Sure, I might see him in a new light after today, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d be a lolicon dating a grade schooler—though I mean, I guess Chii will be a middle schooler in just three years...and wait, lolicons might not even like middle schoolers, but no, it doesn’t even matter who he is, the point is that I won’t let anyone date Chii because she’s my best friend, and I know that means I should support her instead of getting in her way, but Chii’s Chii, so if I let her do it all her way, she’ll Chii it all up for sure...

B-But whatever! Wait for me, Chiiiiii!

I-I’m too late...

By the time I made it to our meetup spot in the entrance lobby, Chii had already gotten Andou’s attention. Andou was straining under the bulk of the stuffed whale we’d won in the quiz, which he had slung over his back. It looked like it might crush him at any second, but with labored panting, he managed to turn to face Chii as she ran up to him.

Andou’s eyes widened. “Chifuyu...? What’s got you so worked up? And where’s Kuki?” he asked.

I dove behind a nearby decorative plant, doing my best to stay out of eyeshot as I peeked through its leaves and spectated their conversation. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do to stop this anymore, but as Chii’s friend, I felt it was my duty to see it through to the end. Which is not the same thing as being a peeping Tom, so don’t even say it, please.

“Andou,” Chii said after taking a moment to catch her breath. “I want to talk.”

Ahh! She’s finally going to say it! I think I’m more nervous than she is! I’ve got chests in my butterflies!

“Uh, okay,” said Andou, sounding a little confused. “I mean, that’s fine, I guess, but before that, do you know your address? The staff people said they can ship the whale to your house, so it’d be a big help if you could write it down for them.”

Andou, please, take a freaking hint! Nobody cares about the stupid stuffed whale right now! I shouted internally, using some really rough mental language that was very out of character for me. I was just that indignant! I was clenching the plant’s stalk so tightly it felt like I might crush it, even...but I was soon shocked to learn that Chii really had wanted to talk with him about the whale after all.

“I don’t need it,” she said, shaking her head.

“Huh?”

“I don’t need the whale,” Chii repeated.

“Huuuh? B-But...why, though? I thought you joined the quiz to get this thing?” Andou protested.

I was just as bewildered as he was. Why, Chii? You seemed so excited when I showed you the flyer for the quiz! You latched onto the idea right away! Didn’t you try your hardest to win because you wanted it so badly?

“It’s for you,” said Chii, raising her voice just a little louder than usual. “You can have it, Andou.”

“Wait, me?” said Andou incredulously.

Chii nodded. “I was always planning on giving you the whale,” she said.

“You, uh, were?”

“Yeah. That’s why I did my best...even though you had to save me in the end.”

I was stunned. I’d had no idea that that was what she’d been after, and I’d had no idea that she’d gotten so fired up over the quiz because she was participating for Andou’s sake.

“Okay, but...why?” said Andou. “I mean, that’s really nice of you, and I’m really grateful, don’t get me wrong, but, like...where’s this coming from?”

“To pay you back,” said Chii.

“Pay me back for what?”

“For Squirrely. You got him for me.”

“Huh? Wait. Huh? Sorry, did I just hear that right? I...got Squirrely for you? But I thought Miss Satomi was the one who gave him to you? She said that she won him from a crane game...”

I’d heard that same story. Squirrely, the stuffed animal that Chii carried almost everywhere with her, was a gift she’d received from her aunt to celebrate her starting elementary school.

“Shiharu won him from a crane game,” said Chii.

“Right, yeah,” said Andou.

“She won him in one try. It took two hundred yen.”

“Oh, dang! That’s pretty impressive.”

“Someone else was playing first. He spent tons and tons of money and moved Squirrely into the perfect spot.”

“Ha ha! Yeah, that happens, all right. There’s always some moron who gets hit with the crane game curse and blows a huge chunk of cash on... Wait, that was meeeeee!” Andou suddenly screamed. It was so abrupt he made me jump, not to mention a few of the other people who happened to be nearby too.

“Oh, god, that’s right! I totally remember now!” Andou yelled. “He was the one that was so close, but just didn’t quite fall in! This explains so much, jeez! I always thought I’d seen him somewhere before! Man, seriously, it all makes sense now!” Andou said, then he took a long, hard look at Squirrely, whom Chii had clutched to her chest at that very moment. “So, I guess that means you were the super cute little girl Sagami had mentioned... I can’t believe the two of us almost ran into each other way back then.”

I wasn’t completely following the story...but the phrase “super cute little girl” certainly caught my attention. So he really is a lolicon, then! This proves it!

“Seriously, that’s just wild! Talk about a crazy coincidence. But wait—why didn’t you ever say anything about it before now?” asked Andou.

“Because I wasn’t confident enough,” said Chii.

“Ahh... Yeah, I get that. You probably didn’t get a great look at my face, or anything.”

“I thought it’d be nice if it were true, though,” Chii added as she squeezed Squirrely a little tighter than before. “I wanted you to be the one who gave him to me,” she continued, breaking eye contact and hanging her head, as if to run from his gaze. Her cheeks were bright red, and she kept glancing around all over the place. She looked really, really nervous.

“I met Squirrely thanks to you,” said Chii. “You always play with me when I go to the literary club too. And you helped me when I was fighting with Cookie. And...you helped me today too... You’re always helping me, so...I’m giving the whale to you,” she continued. Her voice grew quieter and quieter with every word, but her feelings still came through very clearly.

“Thank you for everything, Andou,” Chii concluded, then buried her face in Squirrely to hide it away from him. From my vantage point, however, I could still clearly see how brightly she was blushing.

It seemed that I’d been jumping to conclusions. Chii hadn’t wanted to tell Andou she loved him. She’d just wanted to thank him. For someone as spacey, lackadaisical, and whimsical as Chii, looking him in the eye and saying an earnest “Thank you” was probably as embarrassing as it could get. No wonder she was still cowering behind Squirrely.

Andou placed a hand on Chii’s head, giving her a gentle pat. “No, thank you, Chifuyu,” he said. “I’ll take good care of him.”

“Yeah,” said Chii. “Hey, Andou? Give him a name too.”

“Oh ho? A name, you say? Let me think... Hmm. He is a whale and all, so I could always take the classic approach and call him Moby Dick. Do you know about Moby Dick, Chifuyu? It’s the title of a novel by a guy named Herman Melville, and they named a move in Prince of Tennis and a boat in One Piece after it!”

“That’s a good name,” said Chii. “He can be Mr. Moo.”

“What? No, wait a sec, Chifuyu. Doesn’t ‘Mr. Moo’ sound like, y’know... Like, that’s totally a cow name, right?”

“S-Sorry for the wait!” I called out. This seemed like a good moment for me to join the conversation...or rather, it seemed like if I waited any longer, there wouldn’t be any good moments left for me to show up at. Anyway, I acted as if I’d just arrived and jogged up to the two of them.

“You’re slow, Cookie,” Chii grumbled.

How can you say that after you ran off and left me to bring you your belongings? Not that I really minded, though. That’s just how Chii was.

While Andou went off to write down his address and get Mister Moo mailed to his house, Chii and I went outside to double-check the bus schedule.

“Hey, Chii?” I said. “How do you feel? Is your heart going pitter-patter?”

“Yeah,” she said. “A little bit.”

“Are you going to eat a marshmallow?”

Chii hesitated for just a moment. “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I don’t need one. This time...it feels a little nice.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, then chuckled. I’d assumed that Chii was in love with Andou, but I’d started to realize that, just maybe, I’d been mistaken. I was starting to think that the way she felt about him was closer to a familial sort of love. Or maybe it was something closer to friendship, or she looked up to him as a sort of father figure, or maybe it really was love-love after all.

But it doesn’t matter, I thought. In the end, there’s no way to tell. Certainly not for me, and not for Chii either, at the moment. That was fine, though. It was better for things to be hazy and ambiguous like that. We were still grade schoolers, after all—still children. The feelings that Chii had wanted to express when she’d thanked him were probably as pure and precious as feelings could be, and making a big fuss about what sort of love they might’ve represented just felt sort of crass at this point. And, in any case...

“Today sure was fun, wasn’t it, Chii?”

“Yeah. It was super great.”

Chii seemed to have had a blast, so I was willing to mark off the day as a good one regardless.