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Would like to remind you of Mats...o...b..shou who I first introduced to you in . He’s written a number of famous poems on cicadas, for example:
yagate shinu
keshiki wa miezu
semi no koe
The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.
~ translated by William George Aston
shizukasa ya
iwa ni shimiiru
semi no koe
Such stillness――
The cries of the cicadas
Sink into the rocks.
~ translated by Donald Keen
Hi guys! Final note before we get into the chapter, just a heads up to anybody who used to follow our that Komorebi bugged me into getting things running again, so expect fortnightly releases.
came out about a week ago, and translations/redrawing/cleaning is complete for Chapter 13, so expect it soon.
I suppose you have to thank for all this.
It was a bit of a waste that the firefly only had the lifespan of a week. I couldn’t bring myself to have it spend the rest of its life in a cage so I decided to let it out in the Suiran Forest. To be honest I had actually wanted to show it to Mao-chan. Ah well, I was sure there would be another opportunity.
Anyhow, that was how I found myself at school during the summer holiday. I opened the cage and I thought it was going to fly away, but it just landed on a nearby bit of gra.s.s and stopped moving.
…Don’t tell it was it dying already!?
I picked up a stick and poked at it only for it to fly off and land on another blade of gra.s.s. Apparently it wasn’t dying, it was just taking a rest. Die well, firefly!
I left the forest after cheering it on in my heart.
Places with vegetation really were cooler, it seems. The moment I left the forest I was a.s.saulted by a wave of heat. Shielded from the glare by my parasol I lightly jogged for the school building. Those athletics clubs members really impressed me with how they trained in this heat. I hoped they watched out for heat stroke.
After entering the school I was cooling down in the hallway when Cla.s.s Rep and Iwamuro-kun came along.
“Oh? Kisshouin-san, you’re here today?” Cla.s.s Rep asked.
“I had an errand. Are the two of you here for the remedial?”
“Mhm.”
The school ran remedial cla.s.ses for those who were interested. Unlike my time in middle school where I was going because of my grades dropping, these remedials were special cla.s.ses for those willing to study more.
“I recall that you said Honda-san would be taking them as well?” I asked quietly.
After checking that n.o.body was around, Cla.s.s Rep happily affirmed nodded.
“We’re even in the same cla.s.s. Since Iwamuro-kun is in the cla.s.s cla.s.s too, together with Nonose-san, the four of us are studying together.”
“My.”
It looks like the remedials are working out for you after all, Cla.s.s Rep. Aren’t you making a lot of progress this summer?
“They came over and commented that the two of us seemed close with you, Kisshouin-san. Somehow it all feels like it’s thanks to you.”
Ohh? Thanks to me, is it? I didn’t actually do anything though.
“If I was of at least some help to you, then I am glad.”
“You’re my Love Guru. And Iwamuro-kun as well. The two of us get along strangely well. Right, Iwamuro-kun?”
“Guess we do.”
“I see,” I said, “I had always thought you two would.”
At first glance, Iwamuro-kun and Cla.s.s Rep didn’t seem to have any similarities at all, but in truth the two were both members of the Maidens Society.
At that moment, something flew in through the window and hit me in the back of the head.
“Oww!”
Eh!? What!? Did somebody throw a rock at me!? But I could feel something on my head.
Suddenly a piercing noise like an alarm clock came from the left side of my head. Eh!? This sound was…! Don’t tell me!
“Kisshouin-san, there’s a cicada on your head!”
“Aaaaah!”
I knew it!
I knew it! Gross! Scary! Noisy!
The noisy cicada on the side of my head continued to “sing”. I didn’t want to touch it, just from the size alone! Dragonflies might be one thing but not cicadas!
Having lost his cool as well, Cla.s.s Rep reached out for my head but he stopped when the cicada threatened him with its wings. I was frantically shaking my head left and right as well but it wouldn’t let go. In fact I caught a glimpse of it during the process, which just gave me gooseb.u.mps. Gross! Scary! Noisy! Gyaaaah!
By now I had completely lost my mind and only cared about getting rid of it. I was shaking my head back and forth like a half-crazed rock star. Leggooo!
“Please hold still for a bit!” said Iwamuro-kun before adding, “Sorry if this hurts.”
Tall as he was, he reached around me and smacked the cicada off my head with the back of his hand!
“You did it, Iwamuro-kun! Kisshouin-san, it’s gone!”
“…Ueeh!?”
I was dizzy from all the shaking but I caught sight of the cicada on the ground, lying on its back.
Maybe the smack had rendered it unconscious or something, but after laying still for a while longer it go up and flew out the window.
“Are you okay, Kisshouin-san?” asked Iwamuro-kun.
“You don’t look well. Shall we go to the nurse’s office?” asked Cla.s.s Rep.
“Thank you, you two. Sorry for panicking and scaring you…”
The cicada had scared me so much that I had been screaming without thinking. I’ll never be good enough to understand how Bashou-sensei can find that noise poetic… Aah, that really scared me.
“Ah! Kisshouin-san, there’s a broken cicada leg in your…”
Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaahgh!
After the nightmare with the cicada I immediately booked a shampoo at my hair salon for right after. I didn’t explain to them why. I just asked them to give my hair a thorough washing.
After Iwamuro-kun and Cla.s.s Rep got rid of the leg for me I had them make sure nothing else was weird about my hair, and asked them to keep the whole thing a secret.
“In Southern France they say that a cicada is good luck. I bet something great is going to happen!” they said to cheer me up. Do you really think so?
Then while Cla.s.s Rep continued checking my hair, Iwamuro-kun said,
“If you find a reversed curl, there might be good luck for your too,” causing Cla.s.s Rep to search more fervently.
Apparently he even found one. Good for him…
A few days later I visited Sakura-chan’s house for the first time in a while. Since it was summer I brought her ice cream from a chocolate chain famous around the world. The strawberry flavour was rich and delicious! And the chocolate chips inside were great too!
The two of us were hanging in her room and just enjoying our ice cream as we told each other about how we were doing.
“Is Akizawa-kun not here today? Oh, club activities?”
“Yeah. Training camp, and practice matches, he’s just been really busy. And he’s got a summer cla.s.s at cram school too. Even though it’s summer break I don’t have much time with him.”
“I see~”
“And speaking of Track Club! Hey, do you know that 1st year who became the manager for the club?”
“Eh? Nope. I didn’t even know our track club even had a manager.”
“You do. You need to pay attention to that girl for me. Managers have ulterior motives. They always do.”
“Uwah, what the heck is this bias.”
“Think about it. At an all-girls school like mine none of the athletics clubs have managers. At Suiran the Track Club for both the boys and the girls shares the same Manager position, but pretty much all the girls who take it act as the Manager for the boys’ athletics clubs. n.o.body’s even heard of a girl doing it because she just loves the sport. I need to go cheer for Tak.u.mi at their next meet to stop this girl. I can’t wait for the next School Festival.”
“Ah well, give it your all~”
Sakura-chan’s Akizawa-kun-defences were rock solid as always.
“You don’t seem to care at all. Well, whatever. How about you, Reika? Anything happen recently?”
“Hmm~ Not really? Oh, I guess Maihama-san picked a few fights with me.”
“Maihama? Did she do something to you?”
“Not really. At worst she badmouthed me a little, or started a row with me. For some reason she sees me a rival for Suiran’s Emperor.”
“Oh. Speaking of which, a little while ago I happened to overhear her talking about some girls at Suiran being eyesores and loitering around the Emperor. Don’t tell me she was talking about you?”
“Huh? I don’t recall ever loitering around the Emperor, but…”
But that probably was me she was talking about. I mean, considering the way she glared at me…
“So what’s this about Maihama-san being the Queen of Yurinomiya?”
“She just pretends to be one. She doesn’t have the ability.”
“I see~”
“Are you really okay, though? If she gets too bad I’ll help.”
“Thanks, Sakura-chan. But it’s totally fine. I mean, sorry to her, but I’ve never found her scary. Like at all. I do find her annoying though.”
“That’s fine then.”
But Maihama-san, huh~ Kaburagi doesn’t seem to be interested at all, but I guess he can’t reject her too harshly thanks to Yurie-sama. Whatever happened to Yurie-sama. She wasn’t there at the firefly-catching party, and I never heard anything about her.
I wondered how things between her and Kaburagi turned out. Was Kaburagi over it yet?
He hadn’t made any progress with Wakaba-chan yet. He wasn’t going to have one more relapse into Yurie-sama was he? But then Yurie-sama was slated to go to America after she graduated from university. Hmmm…
Ah well, not like other people’s romances were anything to do with me… Tomorrow I needed to go to the library again. Sometimes I’d sit next to him and have delusions in my mind about being a high schooler couple.
This summer I had, without even realising, become a fine stalker in the making.
“I was shaking my head back and forth like a half-crazed rock star.”
was literally,
“I was shaking my head back and forth like I was performing the Renjishi.”
The Renjishi is a kabuki ‘lion dance’.
“Since it was summer I brought her ice cream from a chocolate chain famous around the world. The strawberry flavour was rich and delicious! And the chocolate chips inside were great too!”
I figure it was inspired by this.