Quite the Curious Development

Mariko reacts to Tani’s exit by slapping her palms onto the table and asking, “What the frig does he mean by 8 points?? There’s points in this game??”

Ume shakes her head and throws her hands up. “Beats me!”

“I still don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with these cards.” Charl adds.

The three turn and send a wanting gaze to Emilia, who returns their attention with the energy of a wet ball of cotton.

“Why are you all staring at me like I know something you don’t?”

“But you and Anita were totally crushing this game!” Mariko replies.

“I barely heard a word she said.”

The three react to this revelation as though it were a blast from a cannon.

“How is that even possible?” Mariko bemoans.

Emilia hangs her head when she abashedly answers, “She has her hair in a ponytail today. I was distracted by how pretty she looked.”

Although surprised by the high level of distraction that Anita’s appearance had caused her, a little bit of thought given to the image of their Norwegian clubmate does enough to at least find Emilia's excuse to be pretty valid.

“Alright, I have an idea.” Ume says, gesturing for everyone to gather around her at the table. “Let’s try and play this game with the four of us together. We’ll do the best we can with what’s in front of us, so when Tani comes back we’d have a built-in excuse for why we played the game wrong.”

Mariko doesn’t spare a second to push back against that plan, she quickly sits opposite of Ume and smiles. “Sounds great to me! He can’t be mad at all of us if we go at it as one big team.”

The other two take their seats and the group begins to rearrange the cards by colors and place even stacks of each in front of them. All of the scrabble tiles are now in the middle of the board, most of the letters on these tiles fit in each language barring the diacritics that the English alphabet doesn’t use.

Ume takes her de facto role as leader in this game and says, “Okay, I’ll pull the first card, and all of us will try and make a sentence around it. Since there is Japanese print on the other side of each, we can get creative and mix and match languages. After we’re done we can flip it over and find out if we made something that makes sense.”

Pulling a piece out of the yellow stack, she flips it onto the table so everyone can see.

“Hmm…” Mariko ponders the words presented to them.

Completely unable to make sense of the Italian word she’s looking at, she is able to read the Japanese script at the bottom however.

“Beware?” she mutters.

“Uwa, sounds ominous.” Ume says. Turning to Charl she adds, “Why don’t you start to build a sentence around it? Since you’re to the right of me.”

“Okay, I guess a noun card would be best here?” Charl pulls a green card and places it on the table to the right of Ume’s yellow. “This says, [You].”

Relieved that he got a card that didn't challenge him, he lets himself relax.

Next is Emilia. She grabs a blue action card at first, and seeing that it doesn’t fit anywhere, she then grabs another yellow card and places it in its correct spot on the table.

[Have been]

Despite Emilia’s inability to have a proper conversation, she is still someone who has learned a new language, and can understand when and where a ‘linking verb’ is applicable. She doesn’t say anything, and simply leans back in her seat and awaits Mariko’s next move.

Mariko has also learned a new language in her life, but it was because she grew up with parents that spoke to her in Japanese and English as a child--- she is by no means an expert at English grammar despite being fluent. So for her, deciding which card to choose comes as a bit of a struggle.

Fumbling a few cards in her hands and looking through it, the delay in finding a fitting word flusters her.

She can’t help but feel like the waiting gazes of the others are actually dangerous weapons being pointed directly at her. The heat eminating from the red laser beams aimed and dancing across her face makes her sweat nervously.

“Ehh-- Uaaah..!”

She makes a rash decision and throws down a blue card.

Ume reads what’s written on the card and says the word aloud.

[Followed]

Charl shrieks. “Why did you choose that one, Mariko??”

“I’m sorry! I panicked!”

“There’s nothing wrong with what she picked.” Ume says while neatly arranging everything in order. “Although it’s kinda spooky, it fits.”

The cards all together reads,

[Beware you have been followed]

“Charl, why don’t you try translating this to English?”

He is unable to believe that this sentence, of all sentences possible in multiple different languages, is the one presented to him now. Considering the topic of conversation before this whole thing started, the odds are astronomical.

Because of this, Charl struggles mightily to say, “B’wayer, yu hev bn foolowed…”

Ume looks at Mariko and asks, “How was that?”

Mariko continues to sweat in discomfort, she’s really regretting throwing down the card that brought about this hidden confession. “I-It was about as good as it sounded.”

A.K.A, not good.

“Okay your turn to say it, Emi-chan.”

“In Italian?”

“Yeah, I’ll copy you!”

“Attenzione, sei stato seguito.”

Emilia said that so fast that Ume couldn’t catch any of it.

She tries her best anyways, “Attentsioone, sei sato segitou.”

“That was decent, you should be proud.”

“Hell yeah!” Ume clenches her fist and celebrates.

“So that means it’s my turn now?” Mariko asks queasily, the faith in herself to properly complete this task was lost the moment she created that sentence.

“Yeah, give it your best shot!”

Mariko feels like a phantom’s hand is squeezing at her heart and it’s making it hard to breathe. The thought of speaking French is not what's making her feel this way however, she looks from the happy face of Ume to the dour face of Charl. His hands are clasped onto his cheeks as though he were trapped in an Edvard Munch painting. He is fully aware of her internal lament, and he understands that saying it out loud would be akin to an admission of guilt.

How she delivers these words has the potential to let the cat entirely out of the bag.

Shifting her gaze to Ume, she struggles to say, “K-Kimura-san…”

Ume couldn’t look more innocent than right now, blissfully unaware of the secret Charl has shackled her with.

“Beware, you have been followed..!”

The cat has just been vicuously flung from the bag with hurricane force.

“You’re supposed to say that in French!” Ume replies.

“No seriously, Charl was following you when you were with Akihiro last week!”

“...Eh?”

Charl throws his head onto the table in devastation, that whole ordeal was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.

With his face pressed into the table, his muffled voice says, “I’m sorry Kimura-san, I must shamefully admit that I was watching you and Akihiro-kun while you were out on Saturday. The opportunity to watch two Japanese childhood friends on a date was too good to pass up."

Ume is taken aback, for very obvious reasons. “Wait, wait wait wait. What exactly did you see?”

Lifting himself up, he looks her square in the eyes and answers, “I watched up to this point.”

He pulls out his manga and flips to the last page. In it are his two characters laying on the ground seductively, looking into each other’s eyes tenderly in that classic shoujo-drawn fashion. Tani’s character is much larger than Ume’s, his long arms completely encapsulating the flushed faced girl who seems to sink into his frame while on top of him.

Although it certainly looks nothing like their actual incident, the beautifully drawn image does enough to explode the missile of a revelation that just landed on her head.

Ume is completely engulfed within the blast.

She clasps her face with her hands and squeals, “Uwaaaa!! Are you trying to kill me!? Why!?”

“I'm sorry for spying, I truly am, but look what came of it. My manga has never looked better becsuse of you.”

“I'm more worried about how I’m supposed to live with everyone knowing about this!”

“If there's any consolation, when you two ran off after he fell from the slide I ended up losing sight of you both. If anything else happened afterwards I could only speculate, this is all the content I've got.”

His admission means that he didn’t see their embrace at the end of the date, and that actually does make her feel better. She couldn’t imagine what kind of scene he’d conjure up out of that moment within his rosy mangaka head.

“By everyone,” Emilia asks, raising her hand in the air to broadcast her presence. “You mean just me? I’m the last one to find out.”

“Uwa Emi-chan~, please don’t judge me! I’m innocent I tell you!”

“Judge you? This is further proof that I am in good hands. Tani and Kimura-senpai really are the best for the job of teaching me how to make friends.”

“That’s what you’re taking out of this??”

“I can’t even imagine having the ability to straddle someone.”

“Uwaah don’t say 'straddle', for the love of mercy!!”

“I’m sorry, 'straddle' might be the wrong word.” Emilia looks at the drawing and analyzes it. “Maybe ‘lay on' is better.”

“L-L-Laid!?!? Kyaah!”

Ume is set ablaze, the flames encompassing her send a wave of heat throughout the room.

Emilia winces from it and says, “I didn't say 'laid'. That's not the word I'm looking for either...”

Ume puts her hands over Emilia’s mouth and shouts, “No more words, please!”

“Hey hey,” Mariko says, with the weight of the secret lifted off of her shoulders she’s able to bounce in her chair with winsome enthusiasm. “Does this mean you and Akihiro are dating?”

“We’re not!”

“Instant response!?” she jumps back in shock.

“Listen guys, Tani and I have been friends for a really long time, I was just happy that I got to hangout with him again after so long. Friends can touch each other right??”

Ume looks at them with a face begging for validation.

What she receives in return is the opposite; they send her suspiciously long glares. The way she decided to phrase that naturally sounds extra naughty.

“L-Look I’ll prove it!” Ume snatches Emilia’s tiny shoulders and pulls her into an embrace. “See??”

Emilia goes bright red, but a flat smile pushes her lips up like a cat being pet and she allows herself to melt into Ume’s arms.

Mariko and Charl are not impressed.

“Girlfriends don’t count, Kimura-san. Ya wouldn’t dare do that to Charl.”

“Of course I would. There is no difference between girlfriends and guy friends, we’re not living in the 20th century you know? It’s high time we buck gender roles already!”

“Whoah, are you secretly an American?? Wait, where even am I right now? That’s a wild thing to say!”

Ume puffs with pride and squeezes Emilia a little tighter.

"Okay, how about you prove it and try with me?” Charl asks, rising from his seat to step in between the two.

"Uhhm..."

He opens up his long arms and invites her in.

“Come.”

Ume is experiencing the Tani treatment firsthand, and although Charl has the looks of a charming European prince from an old Disney film, in this moment, Ume views him as a giant stork with its wings outstretched and beak wide open ready to devour her.

She freezes, and squeezes Emilia even tighter than before.

The little Italian girl’s cat-like grin quickly twists as the color of her oxygen deprived face shifts into a shade of purple.

“What’s wrong?” Charl asks as he takes a tantalizing step closer. “Perhaps there is a difference between girl and guy friends after all?”

Internally, Ume has to acknowledge how good Charl is at antagonizing her; she regrets her earlier boasting and broadcasts her shame like a bad poker player that has just been caught in a bluff that will bankrupt her.

“A-Alright forget it!” she relents, and with it her grip is mercifully slackened to the point that Emilia can slink away with her life. “They are different, but you guys need to understand that it’s also different between me and Tani.”

“I figured as much.” he replies with a shrug.

“Also!” Ume points at Charl and changes the subject. “No more following us around! I’ll excuse it this one time only. If it happens again I’ll be properly upset!”

He bows intently and says, “I promise you this will never happen again.”

“Okay, good.” Ume says with a relieved sigh.

Lifting his head back up, he sends her a wink and a sparkling smile. “You’ve already given me everything I could have ever wanted. I can now shift my focus back to Anita and Akihiro-kun. She’s the last one I need to see in action before I can really start writing...”

Ume tilts her head confused. “What do you mean... Anita-san?”

Before Charl can reply, the clubroom door suddenly slings open in a wooden bang.

“Yo hooo!”

In comes Shirai-sensei, snatching up all the latent energy already present in the room and blasting it forth with enough force that it almost blows the four club members off their feet.

Upon seeing the missing student she came in for, she holds her chin and asks, “Oh my, Akihiro-kun isn’t here?”

“N-No he’s walking Anita to her car.” Ume answers, holding her chest to quell her rapidly beating heart.

“That’s too bad, I must have just barely missed him on my way here.”

“Would you like to leave a message for us to give him?” Charl asks.

“Oh, no need.” Shirai plops herself onto an empty chair and smiles. “I’ll tell him when he comes back.”

The room goes silent, and everyone shifts their gazes awkwardly other than Shirai, who sits there smiling as though she were impervious to the fact that she has taken on the human form of an interruption monster.

“....”

The seconds drag on.

“....”

Mariko squirms.

“....”

Emilia goes catatonic.

“....”

Ume scratches her cheek.

“....”

Charl begins to impulsively flip through his manga manuscript.

The sound of him doing so adds to the static atmosphere until he lands on a page and taps his finger on it. As if being reminded of something long since forgotten, he is able to speak up excitedly,

“Shirai-sensei.”

“Hmm?” Her pinkish hair slides over the front of her ear when she replies with a lovely cant of her head.

“Are you perhaps here to talk to Akihiro-kun about something important?”

Shirai’s eyebrows rise for a moment, but she composes herself and uses her hand to push the strand of hair back and tuck it behind her ear. “Every time I talk to Akihiro-kun is important to me.”

Charl’s next heartbeat is thunderous.

He’s certain that he is reading her expression in a way that confirms the very page of his manga that he has opened in front of him. He uses his eyes to double check, bouncing off the drawing of the teacher that serves as a love interest to his MC and onto the actual teacher sitting gorgeously on the other side of the U shaped table. The others might not see it, they might not even deign to feel it, but he can.

The realization keeps his silent gaze locked onto Shirai Keiko.

“But this time,” she says, putting her hands on the table and gesturing towards everyone present. “It’s important to the rest of you club members too.”

This prompts Ume to ask, “This has to do with the Languages Club?”

“Sure does. You see, I just left Principal Togashi’s office, and he proposed something that could be quite the experience for all of you.”

The rest of the class has no idea about the depth of Tani and Togashi’s rivalry, so to them this surprising news doesn't seem threatening at all.

“Experience?” Mariko asks, curiosity has straightened up her posture.

“That’s right!” Shirai says, pressing her hands together in front of her. “Ever heard of the Gogatsusai festival?”

All of them have heard of it. The world famous Tokyo University has put on this festival every year since 1923. Open to the public, it is a huge event that draws in hundreds of thousands of people during the months of May and June.

“What of it?”

“Well,” Shirai says, the smile never wavering from her face. “Kokusai high has been assigned a booth for one weekend of this year’s festivities, and Principal Togashi has chosen the Languages club to be there to act as our school’s representatives! We all get to work the festival together!”

"!!"

"Whoah, no kidding!?"

"That's cool!"

"...Wow..."

And just what will they be tasked with as representatives of Kokusai?

Not important.

The excitement of being a part of such a big and famous festival does more than enough to sap away any apprehension on the matter.

In due time, their genius club leader will be the one who has to figure that out...

To be continued!