Chapter 3: Katsuragi Kouhei is Surprisingly Troubled
Although most Japanese people aren’t typically mindful of religion, Christianity has influenced them strongly through events such as Christmas and birthday celebrations. You could say that was a result of people’s faith, but also that it came from clever marketing luring them in. The recent trend of celebrating Halloween could be chalked up to the same influence.
What I’m trying to say is that birthdays were rather significant events at this school. The convenience stores, shopping malls, and other campus facilities had special kiosks set up for that single purpose.
This particular story began one week before Ibuki and I ended up stuck in an elevator, when I received a message from Kushida, the class sweetheart.
The message read, Next Wednesday is Inogashira-san’s birthday. Would you care to celebrate with us?
She had sent the message to our group chat. Inogashira was a somewhat quiet, plain girl from Class D, rather like Sakura. She didn’t have many friends, so the idea seemed to be to help her make some. Of course, Ike jumped at the invitation, for a blatantly obvious reason: he liked Kushida and wanted to be in her good graces. He’d probably use this event as a way to get closer to her.
He messaged us. You got a message from Kikyou-chan too, right? Let’s get some presents for Kokoro-chan!
Yamauchi’s response was slow in coming. Well, I don’t got any money. I should be getting some next month, though.
That was right—the Class D students were basically broke. We’d netted good results in the last special exam, and certain students had been promised rather large amounts of private points. Sadly, those points wouldn’t be deposited until September 1. By that time, the elevator incident had happened, so I’d used up a lot of points on the fortune-teller and had almost nothing left.
I would be finishing summer vacation as a poor man. Did these guys plan on buying individual gifts? If this were a close friend’s birthday, that’d be one thing. But none of my friends were close with Inogashira.
Isn’t it all right if the guys just pool their points and buy her one present? In that case, we should be able to buy her a proper gift, even if it’s just 500 points, I proposed.
I thought Yamauchi would agree to that, but apparently his financial situation was dire. He was just barely scraping by, living a life of poverty.
We had been awarded 8,700 private points at the start of August. Compared to an average high schooler’s allowance, that was a little unsatisfactory, but you could get by on it by if you were smart. Fortunately, the school provided a free meal plan, and water was free. So, if you were frugal, it was possible to get by without spending a single yen. Still, most students ran out of money once the end of the month approached, just like when we’d started school there and received 100,000 points in that first month. If people had money, they liked to spend it.
In the end, all three of them agreed with my proposition. We decided to go out and buy the present together.
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