「Yuna-san, I’m really sorry. I couldn’t tell it was you because you weren’t wearing your usual Bear-san outfit…」
Noa, that definitely wasn’t something I wanted to hear. My heart broke every time someone mentioned the Bear Suit. The only one I could believe in now was Fina, so I hugged her from behind.
「Your usual Bear-san outfit is cute, but you look good in the uniform, too.」
「Yuna-neechan’s cute.」
「Yes, the uniform suits you.」
Everybody must be complimenting me to console me now… Shia might get mad, but maybe it would be best if I just changed back into my Bear Suit and live out the rest of my life as a Bear…
「Yuna-oneechan, it really does suit you, so please don’t worry about it looking weird on you.」
「It really does?」
「Yes, very much.」
Fina noticed me fidgeting and rea.s.sured me that they weren’t just trying to console me.
Well, this was somewhat my fault, too, since I was always wearing the Bear Suit. If I pulled my hood down, no one could even see my face unless they came up close. Heck, even if they walked right beside me, they wouldn’t be able to see my face because of the hood. Because of the Bear Hood, the girls didn’t get to see my face that often, so them not recognizing me in an unexpected outfit couldn’t be helped, right?
Still, if the girls couldn’t recognize me, then the people who didn’t know me shouldn’t realize I was the same person as the Bear who had appeared yesterday, either.
Yeah, there was no way people could recognize me as long as I put on a disguise (regular clothes), and for the school festival, that was actually perfect.
Anyway, I shouldn’t let the girls worry about me. I had to change the mood.
「I got mad as a joke, so you don’t have to take it so seriously.」
I said with a smile, and the girls immediately looked relieved. It wasn’t the girls’ fault. It was all because G.o.d had given me this overpowered Bear Suit. Yeah, it was G.o.d’s fault that I had to suffer through this. All the bad things that happened to me were his fault.
「The stand sure looks like it’s doing well, huh.」
I found the chance to change the topic as I looked at the stand. They had just started, but there was already quite a number of customers lined up, waiting to receive their cotton candy.
「The people who were following us all bought some before leaving, and soon after even more people arrived.」
「Where did those people who were following us go?」
「They didn’t notice you getting dragged away by Onee-sama, and once they realized you were gone, they immediately ran off to look for you.」
It seemed like Shia had actually managed to get the stalkers off my back. Even if they returned to the stand now, they shouldn’t recognize me in the uniform. Like this, I shouldn’t cause problems for the girls I was supposed to be protecting anymore.
「Okay, how about we get going as well, then?」
I still felt a bit uncomfortable wearing the uniform, but I would have to brave it out during the festival.
「Shia, I’m going to borrow your uniform for a while, okay?」
「Why do I feel like you might try to start up some trouble while wearing it?」
What was she trying to say?
Now that I wasn’t wearing the Bear Suit, trouble shouldn’t come to me, right? Even if other people looked at me now, they should just see a normal student. I should be fine so long as none of the teachers caught me. Also, even if that happened, I could always blame it on Shia.
「Oh right, is Tilia coming today?」
I recalled her saying she would be helping out at the stand today.
「She said that she has something to do in the morning and would come as soon as she’s finished. She also promised to do something with some of her other friends, so she probably won’t be able to accompany you like yesterday.」
「Well, at least thanks to you, Yuna-san, we now have three machines to make cotton candy with, which makes things much easier for us.」
Right now, Marcus and Timor were making cotton candy, while Shia was doing some other work in the back. If more people came, she could either help manage the line or jump onto the third machine.
「Cattleya, are you going to look around the festival soon?」
「Yes, I will. It’s about time for me to take a break, but while I do want to go together with all of you, I already made plans with some of my friends.」
「You don’t have to worry about it. Yesterday, Tilia brought us to a lot of areas, so we should be fine by ourselves today.」
We left the cotton candy stand and headed off to look around the festival on our own.
「Misa, do you have anything you want to see or eat?」
I asked Misa, who was still in the midst of enjoying her cotton candy. Since it was only her, I figured the others had refused Shia’s offer. Well, they had had some yesterday, and they had eaten it before that as well. It was only possible to eat so much cotton candy, after all.
「I don’t, really. It’s fine as long as we can all go together.」
「Yuna-san, I have a suggestion, then. I want to challenge that knife throwing game again! I have to get my revenge.」
Since Misa didn’t have a place she wanted to go to, Noa quickly raised her hand and suggested a place of her own.
「What about you two?」
I decided to check with Fina and Shuri as well.
「I’m good with any place.」
「I want to try the knife throwing again.」
Shuri agreed with Noa’s suggestion while the other two didn’t really mind. I didn’t care where we went, either, so the knife throwing stand it was.
Still, in order to keep my promise to not stand out, I decided to tell them I wouldn’t partic.i.p.ate myself.
「Well, going to the knife throwing stand is fine, but Shia warned me not to stand out. Even if you can’t win a prize yourself, I won’t win one for you this time around.」
If I ended up winning the main prizes again, what would be the point of changing clothes in the first place? Also, I was wearing the academy’s uniform, so if they asked me which cla.s.s I was from, I wouldn’t be able to answer. I really had to stop standing out to avoid trouble.
Still, if the girls looked at me with those pleading eyes of theirs, I didn’t know if I could hold back. I felt like that had happened way too often yesterday.
When the girls went for it, they should only aim for the middle level prizes. As a former gamer, doing that would feel a bit weird to me, though. When I partic.i.p.ated in games, I always wanted to challenge the hardest stage.
I had to do my best to hold back and only watch this time around, or a repeat of yesterday might happen.
Once they agreed to me not partic.i.p.ating, we headed to the knife throwing stand.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of the hair pieces, but there were many couples and women around, just like yesterday.
「Noa-oneesama, did you get your hair piece from here?」
「Yes, but I want to win a bigger one today.」
Misa also looked at Fina’s and then Shuri’s hair.
「Shuri-chan, you didn’t try to get one for yourself?」
「I couldn’t win one. Yuna-neechan then got me the largest one, but it stands out a lot, so they told me I can’t wear it today.」
「Really?」
「Yes, and that’s why I’m going to try my best and get a smaller one for myself.」
Shuri declared with conviction.
For some reason, Shuri was just as motivated as Noa. I really hoped that she could at least hit one target this time around.
The three of them lined up to play the game. Wait, only three?
「Fina, aren’t you going to try?」
「No, I already have one, so I’ll wait here with you, Yuna-oneechan.」
「You could try and get a better one, though?」
「This one is good enough for me.」
Fina said and touched her hair piece lightly. Considering her upbringing, her words did make sense.
「Okay, let’s cheer on everyone else, then.」
「Okay!」
We stood closer to the stand to cheer on the three girls, and not a single person looked at me and said 「It’s a bear.」
Earlier, I had met eyes with the students running this shop, and they hadn’t noticed that I was the Bear from yesterday, either. Well, I was wearing different clothes and wasn’t with the princess, Tilia, so I actually didn’t stand out this time.
It was quite nice not having everyone stare at me for once.
「Yuna-oneechan, look, over there.」
As I was rejoicing over my new found peace, Fina pointed at where the prizes were lined up.
I looked up at where Fina was pointing, and saw that there was another hair piece even more extravagant than the one I had won yesterday.
It looked like I hadn’t taken everything from them.
「Yuna-oneechan, there’s something written below it.」
「Below it?」
I looked and there really was something.
「Prize for clearing Level Bear.」
Just what was Level Bear?
「That’s supposed to be a reference to you, isn’t it?」
It sure seemed so, but why would anyone decide to call a level ‘Bear’?
As I thought about what their reasoning behind it might be, the man in front of Noa tried to challenge this Level Bear. Next to him, a beautiful woman was cheering him on.
Maybe it was his girlfriend? Yeah, it sure looked like this guy was challenging Level Bear to show off to his girlfriend. Would he be able to do it, though?
When he said he would challenge Level Bear, one of the students went to the back, grabbed something and positioned himself on the right hand side of the end of the targeting range. Then, the student prepared himself and threw it up in the air. The challenger threw his knife at the moving object but sadly missed.
Oh, so this was a moving target challenge? It was sort of like clay shooting.
Still, wasn’t this something rather hard to do? Hitting a distant target was quite hard but possible if the knife was thrown correctly. A moving target, however…
All of the guy’s throws missed the target by a large margin. An obvious result, if I had to say.
The woman who had been cheering him on looked a bit disappointed, but that couldn’t be helped. It was a reckless challenge. Even adventurers had a hard time hitting flying monsters, so this wasn’t something the man should have been expected to achieve.
After the couple, Noa stepped up. She was gazing at the Level Bear prize. It was clearly impossible for her, so I really hoped she wouldn’t try to challenge it and waste her shot at obtaining a different hairpiece. Noa glanced at me, so I immediately began shaking my head and tried to tell her with my eyes that she couldn’t do it.
However, it seemed like my feelings didn’t reach her because Noa still told the receptionist: 「I want to challenge Level Bear.」.
This girl…
The result was obvious, and she missed all of her throws.
Meanwhile, Shuri and Misa both aimed for the closest targets, and they each got a hair piece of their own.
Noa looked frustrated while Shuri and Misa both celebrated.
「Hitting a flying target is impossible.」
Yes, it was obvious to see that the level was impossible just by looking at it.
She shouldn’t have challenged it at all.
Unlike her, Shuri and Misa aimed for something they could achieve and they were now happy with their prizes.
「Yuna-neechan, put it on for me.」
Shuri brought over the hair piece she had just won. I took it and placed it in her hair the same way I had done for Fina. They looked very alike now, especially since they were sisters.
「It’s very cute on you.」
Shuri looked really happy to receive my praise.
Misa, on the other hand, requested Noa to put on the hair piece for her. With that, all the girls now had a small hair piece of their own.
「If Yuna-oneechan wore one, too, then we would all be matching.」
「Yuna-neechan, do you wanna put on the big one you got for me?」
I politely refused Shuri’s offer. If I did that, there would be no point in changing out of my Bear Suit at all.
After, we set off to check the other programs. Some programs added a Level Bear to their prize pool, while some didn’t.
Author’s Note:
Since all the other girls were already matching with their hairpieces, I had Misa get a hair piece as well.
Next year, all the programs will probably have a Level Bear as the hardest challenge. lol