Chapter 4:

B0707 - Tanabata

This Boredom of Mine

???: [Welcome back, everyone to another episode of Tales from the Institute. This is Five, FiveXFive!]

Exclaiming rather excitedly is the voice emanating from the smartphone I am holding.

Five: [On today's special day of July the seventh, we will be following our homeroom teacher, Ms. September!]

Slowly manoeuvring the camera stabiliser, I adjusted it so that the small frame of a lady came to focus.

Five: [Confident when teaching, shy when not, what does the homeroom teacher of class EI7 do when she is not with her students? Let us find out!]

Ms. September did not stay stationary for long.

As soon as Five finished his sentence, she was already on the move.

Five: [Behind the camera today is Ko, fellow classmate of EI7. Everybody, please say hi to him!]

A professional cameraman requires no recognition.

I merely focus on capturing our subject today.

Five: [Thanks for the warm responses, guys. You might not see him but Ko has this stupid grin plastered across his face right now~]

No, I don't!

Calm down now.

A cameraman's professionalism comes through his work.

I will present to all of you the best and most interesting angles of this school!

Five: [Don't forget to leave a like and subscribe! It would mean the world to me as we show you more never-seen-before parts of the school!]

The LALAS segment, he never forgets it when he is doing his introduction.

Often, he would insist others to add it in as well when they are introducing him.

An occupational habit that is hardly going away and at the same time, only understandable by those from the new generations familiar with the video sharing platform.

???: [Oh, Ko and Five, eh? Weekly uploads?]

Creeping up from behind us is a girl's voice.

Slowly, I panned the camera around to face a young girl in, not jet black, but a brown trench coat loosely draped across her shoulders.

Five: [Oh, it's you, Noa.]

Noa: [Don't just "Oh, it's you" me on camera! Your videos with any of us girls in it do significantly better than others!]

Five: [That's why we are tailing Ms. Sept… aaand she's gone. How are you gonna repay our lost content, you trench-coat-wearing Chuunibyou?!]

Noa: [Trench coats are cool, you take that back!]

Captured on camera was the young girl's burning rage, enough to break through the dimension barrier and punch through Five's smug face through the screen.

The trench-coat-wearing girl wasn't wrong, however. Five's videos and streams are at least 2.5 times more well-received with more likes, views and subscribers-subscribed-per-video.

I tried to catch her attention with my free hand off-screen and made a circular gesture with my index finger.

She caught on immediately and did a 360 degrees twirl in front of the camera, ending off with a flamboyant pose.

Five: [Fine, she can stay, I guess… Everybody, this is Noa, Tentai Noa, fellow classmate of EI7, yeaah.]

Cheering as unenthusiastically as he could possibly convey through the screen, he introduced Noa half-, no, maybe even one-twenty-fifth-heartedly.

Noa: [You forgot the most important part:]

With a snap of the finger and a twirl towards the opposite direction a moment ago, she posed yet again, pointing her finger straight to the camera at Five and each and every one of the viewers.

Noa: [Tentai Noa, detective extraordinaire. At your service.]

She put a hand over her head to gesture a hat tip, even though she is not wearing any sort of headdress.

Five: [Yes, yes, we can tell, you are a trench-coat-wearing Chuunibyou, moving on…]

Noa: [Hey!]

Five: [How are we going to locate Ms. Sept, oh great detective?]

Mustering every ounce of sarcasm, Five asked.

Five: [Fine, but you might want to cut this out for the actual video. The search process tends to be quite tedious and boring.]

She took out a small notebook and pen from her trench coat's inner pocket and started noting down something.

Noa: [Ms. Sept, height 1.67m i.e. 65.748 inches. Taking into account that the adult female stride length is their height in inches multiplied by 0.413, Ms. Sept's stride length would then be 27.154 inches or 0.69m.]

Initially, she was noting within her notebook. Then her movements gradually escaped her small notebook and into the surroundings as if she was writing mid-air.

Noa: [Five, time. From my brief glimpse one minute and thirty-six seconds ago, she made 20 strides before disappearing from the corner at the sixteenth-second mark, which means she takes an average of 1.25 strides per second and thus 0.8625m per second.]

As if she had reached a conclusion, she quickly flipped through her notebook to a prior page and halted on one which seemed to contain the map of the area around us.

Noa: [Five, I need the time!]

Five: [Ah, um… disappeared a good two minutes ago! Why did you even ask me, don't you remember it?]

Forgetting his basic sentence structure, Five focused on delivering his answer in the most efficient way he could.

Noa: [Let's give and take and say that the area of search is five minutes from her moment of disappearance. Which means our area of search is this circle with radius 258.75m and counting.]

She drew an almost-perfect circle on her map with the centre being the corner where we lost sight of Ms. September.

Noa: [From her direction of travel within this area, there is only one place she could be going.]

Noa bolted off in one direction without hesitation. I followed suit with Five while continuing to film.

We stopped in front of a closing "lift" door, barely able to see the faint outline of Ms. September's usual dress before the "lift" doors were closed shut.

Noa: [So close!]

Spamming the "lift" button, we called the next "lift" and continued our chase.

We didn't even wait for the "lift" doors to open fully before rushing inside and spamming the close-door button.

Noa picked up the bright red turn dial phone in the middle and dialled "7".

Unlike conventional lifts, the "lift" in the Edward Institute does not have any buttons to be pressed to help one get to the level one wants.

Instead, one must talk to the "lift" via this phone to get anywhere.

Noa: ["Lift" dude, "lift" buddy, "lift" pal, oh great Mr. "lift" sir! We have but a small humble favour to ask, would you please grace us with your wise words?]

"Oh Great Mr. "Lift" Sir": [You are flattering me to get what you want and I have to say, I don't dislike that. The place you want to be is right past these doors.]

The "lift" doors opened again, this time revealing a sea of emerald green.

A gentle breeze blew by, rustling the leaves about into a lovely melody.

Their trunks joined in the chorus due to the friction between joints, forming a symphony of nature that is open for all to enjoy.

Across the vast mountains and deep valleys as far as the eyes can see, rows of green waves flowed from one to another like the ocean blue.

Noa: ["Lift" is right, the dirt around showed signs of someone recently walking by. She must have gone this way.]

Breaking us away from the immersion of the bamboo forest was Noa, rushing off yet again for a faint trail that can be hardly seen without a keen eye.

Zipping through the dense bamboo forest wasn't an unpleasant experience.

The air here was lighter compared to that of the city and one could feel a sense of rejuvenation flowing through one's veins and arteries.

Unable to stop to admire the unique atmosphere, we instead stop in front of a sole decapitated bamboo plant amongst a forest of upright-growing bamboos.

Five: [Wait, can she do that? Aren't bamboos known for being hard?]

The first thing Five opened his mouth in a while was to ask a simple question.

Noa: [Really, our teacher cutting bamboo is what got you questioning?! Not the comet that fell from nowhere to Isekai the whole class, not the frequent appearance of hazmat personnel roaming the school grounds, but bamboo cutting?!]

Five: [If you put it like that, anything would sound dumb.]

While she continued to bombard Five, she slid her finger along the cut bamboo.

Noa: [Clean cut, a very clean cut indeed…]

She picked up a leaf and crushed it in her hands, before throwing the remnants on the floor.

Noa: [This way.]

We ran a little bit further into a small tool shed in the middle of the bamboo forest.

When we opened the door, what greeted us was not the metallic smell of tools and rust.

Instead, it is the familiar sight of a lone red dial phone functioning seemingly without connected to anything at all.

Noa picked up the phone and dialled "7".

Noa: ["Lift", bring us back to Edward Institute, my thanks and gratitude.]

"Lift": [Really? You don't want me to take you to where your teacher is directly?]

Noa: [Don't give me the answers. Plus, I have an inkling of what needs to be done.]

Five: ["What needs to be done", not "where she is now"?]

Noa: [Of course!]

A smug and mischievous smile across her face, she stepped out of the "lift" doors.

~~~

Five: [You sure this is what she wants? You mobilised the whole class and everything, it would be embarrassing if we are way off the mark, great detective~]

Hiding within the bushes of the school garden was us three.

From our angle, we had a clear view of a certain new instalment of the garden: A single fresh bamboo plant, recently transplanted away from its fellow brethren.

We followed the trails of fallen leaves and dirt marks leading from the "lift" to the garden and found its final resting ground, but Ms September was nowhere inside.

Noa took a closer look and inspected the plant back then.

Upon discovering a piece of rectangular paper tied to one of its branches, she instantly knew what needs to be done as if a light bulb lit up above her head and began to drag Five and I back to the classroom.

Noa: [I didn't do much, honestly. I just told Mimi and Shiro and they just took it from there…]

The bamboo plant in question is no longer just decorated with one piece of paper, but now with an addition of 25 more, each of different colours and written by every member of the class of EI7.

Five: [The conclusion that our great detective has arrived at is that Ms. Sept was preparing for a certain Japanese festival of Tanabata.]

July the seventh of the Lunisolar Calendar,

The day when Orihime and Hikoboshi meet,

The day when the stars of Vega and Altair are at their closet,

The day when those who celebrate it practice the customs of writing down their wishes onto a piece of rectangular paper, or Tanzaku, and tying them to a bamboo plant.

Some say that it is the Valentine's Day of the East but personally, it feels more like a day of promise.

Five: [Nonetheless, the footage we have obtained so far is pretty nice! I foresee a montage session for the setup topped off with a climax when Ms. Sept discovers the end result!]

Just when he had finished his sentence, the door leading to the garden opened and in came Ms. September.

Or so we thought, for the figure that came in was dressed in a light pink Yukata the likes of blossoming sakura of Spring, tied by a crimson Obi or cloth belt around her narrow waist.

The Ms. September that we knew would normally braid her hair up nicely to one side, but this time around, she had opted to tie it all up in a high-cut ball pinned by an ornate hairpin.

The clear and distinct sounds of her Geta or Japanese wooden slippers stopped short the moment she laid her eyes on the myriad of colours added to the bamboo plant she (illegally?) brought back.

Just for a moment, she stopped and we were left wondering what could be running through her head but immediately after, she broke into a jog for the bamboo plant beautifully decorated by the class.

She looked long and hard at every piece of paper as if trying to memorise or internalise them into her subconscious, before taking a seat on the bench beside the plant.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the angle of the bush we have chosen to hide in has prevented us from catching a glimpse of her countenance as she read each Tanzaku slips back-facing us.

We could only capture the image of her seated back staring forlornly at the illuminating summer night sky.

A gentle breeze blows by, rustling the bamboo leaves and the Tanzaku slips on the branches.

The world holds its breath as if trying to lengthen this moment of tranquillity created by man and non-man-made elements.

I took it upon myself to stop filming.

Five: [Ko, cameraman!? Why have you stopped filming?]

Noa: [You dense or what?! We are leaving. Ko, you did the right thing.]

Both Five and Noa might have been whispering to one another but the contents of their conversation might as well be shouted into each others' ears.

Five: [But the climax…]

Noa: [We have enough footage already.]

Ko: [Quite a bit to edit as well, so if you want the video to go up on time today…]

Noa and I began to leave our hiding bush with a three-quarter convinced Five, making special efforts to exit the garden as quietly as possible so as to not disturb the scenery the world has so intricately crafted.

~~~

The gentle breeze continues to blow by.

Ms. September: [The kids are really smart these days…]

Her loose Yukata swayed against the wind.

Ms. September: [You really can't hide anything from them…]

One Tanzaku slip was blown off from the bamboo plant.

Ms. September: [Oop, careful there.]

A tail began to spring from behind and caught the falling Tanzaku slip midair.

She brought her tail in front of her as she picked up the slip of paper in her hands.

Ms. September: [Oh, it's Ko's. What did he wish for…?]

Her words echoed and became lost to the stars.

Ms. September: [Wouldn't you say, Mai?]