Chapter 1: Eina (1) |
My phone buzzed quietly on the desk. I dropped my gaze to look at it and ‘You have a new message’ was displayed on the screen. It was a text chat or something from a social networking app. I tapped it and opened the message.
Eina: September 4th. The weather’s nice. I spilt some juice and stained the carpet. Crap, I gotta hide it…
Apparently, it had been sent by an ‘Eina’. I didn’t know the name. You could set your name to whatever you liked but I didn’t have any acquaintances that would use a refined name like that.
“A spam message huh?” I muttered quietly. That was sort of rare. Usually a spam message would be like. ‘You won ten billion yen! You can accept it here→’ and dangle money in front of you. Or an account with a female name would send something along the lines of ‘I had fun at karaoke yesterday’, tempting you to reply before carefully persuading you to sign up to a dating site and pay ridiculous registration fees.
But what’s with that ‘September 4th. The weather’s nice’? Isn’t that something that you’d put in a diary?
Vzzzt.
A second message arrived while I was watching.
Eina: Cover up successful! Onee-chan didn’t notice, hurray!
Again, it was just like a diary entry. What on earth do they want from me?
A third message had arrived, and that marked the final one of the day.
I should go to bed too, I decided, I had school tomorrow after all.
＊
After school the next day, as usual, I was in the literature clubroom. The door was wide open so any potential applicants or sightseers could come in easily. It didn’t seem like anyone would though.
There was nothing for me to do.
And then suddenly, I remembered the spam message from yesterday. I looked at my phone and there had been more messages from the same account. Three in all, and all during the evening.
Eina: Japanese, had a kanji test, easy marks♪
Eina: We ran in PE. I don’t get why they’ve got to stick a rank on it. Can’t they just let the people that finished feel happy that it’s over?
Eina: I saw a clique fight between some girls in the entrance. I’m not part of any clique so I just walked away. I don’t wanna get caught up in it.
I kind of get what position they’re sending these from. First, they’re a girl. Her avatar was a glass slipper like in Cinderella, and the name Eina seemed feminine as well. She was probably about middle school or high school as far as age went.
She was good at Japanese and poor in PE. She also wasn’t in any clique, so she probably wasn’t the type to group up.
In my head, I started to form a vague image of the girl called Eina.
At the same time, I considered what I didn’t know. How tall was she? How long was her hair? Did she have monolids or double eyelids?
I wanted to see her reaction if I replied, but there was also a part of me calmly thinking that I couldn’t reply.
I didn’t know if she was actually a girl in the first place. It might be some old dude pretending. You heard about that kind of thing, old guys acting as women receptive to men.
I’d never heard of this kind of spam message though, so I couldn’t help but get curious.
If I replied, I wonder how it’d go from there…
“Literature club, I’m coming in.”
I looked up when I heard that. Someone I didn’t expect was walking in, a girl from my year.
She was fair skinned, with a delicate nose and long, glossy hair. Her figure was superb as well. Her looks were good enough that she’d overshadow the word ‘beautiful’ itself.
Her name was Minekawa Yukino, the president of the student council at our school.
“President? This is rare, do we have an applicant maybe?”
I think my voice was rather excited. That wasn’t at all because the president was a beauty though. The literature club was currently recruiting new members. It was September now so the recruitment was out of season, but our club hadn’t had a single applicant since April, so we were still recruiting.
I was the only second year at the moment so our future was at risk. I’d be focusing on university exams before long so I’d have to leave too.
Of course, I’d decided that if we didn’t get anyone new joining this year that I’d try to attract more people next year as well, but I’d still be grateful to get more members quicker.
“Of course not, no second year would join a club this far through the year. They’d end up leaving almost as soon as they’d joined.”
However, the president’s shapely eyebrows crinkled into a frown and she refuted me sharply.
The moment she opened her mouth showed her for the intimidating demon-president she was. She had a frank way of speaking that made you feel like you were talking to a senior or a teacher.
“I wouldn’t even mind a second year you know? I’d take anyone at this point.” I tried to persevere, a pained smile on my face. She wasn’t being abusive or anything, just speaking the truth bluntly. The half a year we’d spent as classmates let me know that much. “You like books too, right? Our activities’d be a perf-”
“I don’t have time for pointless chatter, so I’ll get to the point,” the president cut coldly over my words. And then, said something unthinkable and incomprehensible, “Gather your things and get out.”
“Huh?”
“As a result of the recent student council meeting, it has been decided to revoke this room from the literature club.”
“That’s so arbitrary!”
“There are lots of things that would be better in clubrooms. If we were giving clubrooms to clubs like you that don’t actually do anything, we decided we’d be better off giving them to clubs that have a lot of members and will actually do things. Your adviser also gave their consent.”
“Oi, wait a minute, we’re doing things. I’m recruiting right now.”
“You’re just sitting there.”
“Well, no one’s come to visit today.”
I tried to make it look like it just happened to be that no one had visited today. Speaking honestly, no one had come since the end of the summer holidays, but I thought a bluff was my best bet. If we lost our clubroom, considering our poor luck with recruiting anyway, that would spell our end.
“Hmm. Though you seem to be missing the book to greet the new entrants?”
“Ah, that’s…”
That was painful. Every year the literature club published an anthology they called ‘The New Member Greeting Issue’ but we hadn’t this year. There weren’t any manuscripts.
The reason for that was simple.
I couldn’t write them.
The third-years had left, and no first years had joined, so I was the only one left doing activities. And because I couldn’t write a manuscript, there was no way I could publish the book.
“You hadn’t published anything before the holidays either, can you still call that performing club activities?” I had no reply. That sums the president up, she came because she understood everything that was going on. Our moat had been entirely filled in. “Now quickly gather your things. If you leave things you don’t want behind, the student council will dispose of them.”
She laid out her declaration without even a twitch of her eyebrows. I stood in a dilemma.
But I had some backbone myself.
This clubroom means a lot to me. I’ve come here every day since April in first year.
Besides, my seniors and the old boys had memories filling the place too…
I couldn’t just let us be chased out.
“Making it immediate is unreasonable,” I tried to resist as much as I could, “There are things that the third-years and old boys left behind, so we won’t know what to get rid of, I’d like some more time.”
“Well, that’s true I suppose.”
She nodded.
I raised my mental fists in triumph.
Thus was my strategy. There would be the cultural festival at the start of October. It was a tradition to publish an issue for it, but that made it probable for me to be able to get entries. I planned to get the third-years that had left the club to give entries for the end of their student lives. If I could publish a book, they wouldn’t be able to say the club was doing nothing.
“Well then, could you do so within the fortnight? If we can clear the room before preparations for the cultural festival start in earnest, there won’t be an issue.”
“Eh…”
I was lost for words. That was the exact worst time for me. Was she doing it on purpose…?
However, her expression was diligent and asking me to do so rather than a nasty smile. She was strict, but not the type to make others suffer.
“Isn’t two weeks a little too fast?”
“Is it? I would think that if you start contacting them today you’ll easily be able to make it in time. You can just mail the things.”
“Ah, but, um…”
“Ah, don’t worry about the shipping fees, we’ll give you some of the budget. You’re having the room unilaterally removed from you, we can at least be accommodating as far as that goes.”
I could do nothing but close my mouth in the face of her eloquent declaration. It was completely given out of good-will. The president was just a genuine person like that I think.
“Well that’s how it is, so please do.”
After she was finished telling me everything important, the president turned around and happily left the room. Her straight-backed stride was light and all I could do in return was collapse on the desk.
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