Chapter 46: Summer Festival! Fireworks! And, Beauties in Yukata!
The fun summer vacation was finally drawing to a close.
Kazuma had finished all his assignments and was now lazing around, sprawled on his bed.
With nothing particular to do, Kazuma browsed SNS, searching for any interesting news, when he learned that a festival was being held nearby. Looking into it further, it seemed there would also be fireworks, so Kazuma decided to invite his friends.
However, unfortunately, his usual group already had plans.
Akatsuki and Taichi were going to the festival with friends from middle school, and Kosuke was going with a friend from a different class.
Kazuma was left all alone and lonely. He could have just gone by himself like everyone else, but sadly, Kazuma had almost no friends. Having grown up in an orphanage, he hadn’t been able to make close friends during elementary and middle school.
He had been enthusiastic about high school, but on the day of the entrance ceremony, he unfortunately got into a traffic accident. At that time, he was summoned to another world to defeat the Demon Lord. It had been a turbulent life.
Thanks to that, his enrollment was delayed, and he couldn’t quite fit in with his class. Thanks to Akatsuki and the others reaching out to him, he could now hold a decent conversation, but they weren’t close enough to hang out on holidays.
“Aahhh~. Guess I’ll spend the end of summer vacation all alone in the dorm~”
Casually tossing his phone aside, Kazuma looked up at the ceiling. He felt no motivation to do anything and was about to close his eyes and drift off into a lazy sleep when his phone suddenly rang.
Noticing the ringtone, Kazuma picked up the phone he had tossed aside, a small flicker of hope in his heart as he wondered who was calling.
“Huh? Makimura-san?”
Displayed on the screen was Makimura Kaede from the Combat Course. Although they had exchanged contact information, she was someone he never thought would actually contact him.
A bewildered Kazuma frowned, staring at the screen. He debated whether to answer or not, but thinking that a girl had actually called him, he indulged in such worldly thoughts and answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“Yahho~”
“It’s rare to get a call from you, Makimura-san. What’s up?”
“Yeah. You might already know, but there’s a festival today, so I was wondering if you’d like to go together.”
“Ah~, could this be an invitation for a date?”
Kaede responded coldly to Kazuma, who was getting carried away.
“No way. I’m inviting other people too.”
“Ah, yes. I’m sorry.”
“So, are you coming?”
“I’d love to, please.”
“Mm, okay. Then, let’s meet in front of the station at 6 PM.”
“Gotcha.”
“Alright, see you then~”
The call ended with a click. Kazuma remained dazed for a while, listening to the silence. Having been invited to the festival by someone completely unexpected, Kazuma indulged in a silly fantasy. Perhaps he would be the only guy there.
Kazuma, who had been thinking such foolish things, later regretted not asking for more details.
◇◇◇◇
6 PM. As Makimura-san had told him, Kazuma headed to the front of the station, where he found Kaede and Megumi dressed in yukatas. And beside them were fellow Combat Course male students, Hayami Shunsuke and Gouda Tsuyoshi.
Kazuma knew both of them well. The man who had been his enemy in the first combat training, and the man who had been his ally. Both had pleasant personalities and were decent people who didn’t look down on the Support Course.
“Hm, you’re here.”
Tsuyoshi, who seemed to have been meditating with his eyes closed, noticed Kazuma and turned his face towards him. With that one word, the others also became aware of Kazuma’s presence.
“Yo~ssu, Kazuma. Long time no see.”
“Ui ui~, long time no see~. How’ve you been?”
“Yeah, I’m full of energy.”
Kazuma responded to Shunsuke’s lighthearted banter with similar energy.
True to his words, Shunsuke seemed to have had a blast during summer vacation; he was tanned and quite dark.
“Ooh~, you look just like it.”
“Hahaha, well, yeah. By the way, Kazuma, you’re dressed pretty normally.”
“Well, yeah, ’cause I didn’t expect guys to be wearing yukatas too!”
Shunsuke, who had his arm around Kazuma’s shoulder, was wearing a jinbei, and Tsuyoshi was even in a yukata. Combined with his personal aura, he had a strange allure. In short, he looked mature.
Compared to those two, Kazuma was in a very ordinary T-shirt and jeans. If anything, outfits like Kazuma’s were more common, but among the current members, he felt a little out of place.
“It’s not like we planned it, y’know? I just thought this would be better.”
“Ah, that’s right. Neither Hayami nor I planned this. We just thought, when it comes to festivals, it’s gotta be yukatas.”
“I see…”
Kazuma nodded at their opinions.
For now, the guys were fine as they were, so Kazuma headed towards Kaede, who had invited him.
“Yo!”
“You’re plain.”
“No, those two are just special! Look around! Very few guys are wearing yukatas or jinbeis!”
Despite just offering a greeting, Kazuma was met with a light complaint and desperately refuted Kaede’s opinion.
“Ahaha. Well, Kaede-chan. Satsuki-kun is right, it’s rare for guys to wear yukatas~”
“See! Kizaki-san says so too, so I’m not in the wrong!”
“I didn’t say a single word about it being bad, though?”
Indeed, Kaede might have grumbled a little, but she hadn’t said anything about it being bad. It was Kazuma who had misinterpreted it.
“Ah…”
“Ahahahaha. True, Makimura didn’t say a single word like ‘lame’ or anything bad.”
“Oh… Miyazono-san.”
Miyazono, who was quite comfortable around Kazuma despite him being of the opposite sex, casually slung an arm around his shoulder. While Kaede and Megumi were in yukatas, Miyazono, like Kazuma, was in casual clothes. However, hers were a bit revealing: short shorts and an oversized T-shirt.
All three girls were beautiful, drawing gazes from the surrounding men, but Miyazono was likely attracting the most. Men were fixated on her beautiful legs.
“Anyway, since everyone’s here, shall we go?”
“Is this everyone?”
The girls were the usual members, but Kaori was unusually absent. Puzzled by this, Kazuma asked Kaede.
“Yeah. Natsume is with her boyfriend–”
“That’s not right. He’s not her boyfriend. Kaede-chan. Kaori-chan isn’t dating him yet.”
“But they’re going alone together, just the two of them, so they’re practically a couple.”
“If you put it that way, maybe, but she hasn’t confessed yet.”
“Err…?”
Megumi denied Kaede’s claim that Kaori was at the festival with her boyfriend.
However, listening to their conversation, it seemed Kaede wasn’t entirely wrong. Kazuma tilted his head, wondering what was going on.
“Ah, um… It’s better not to talk about this, but since Kaede-chan already said it, I’ll tell you. Kaori-chan has someone she likes. And right now, she’s at the festival with that person, so try not to talk to her if possible.”
“Ah, yes. Understood.”
Megumi answered Kazuma’s unspoken question. Just as she explained, Kaori had a man she was head-over-heels for. The reason she wasn’t here today was because she was attending the festival with him.
Naturally, if he were to interfere, his life wouldn’t be guaranteed. He wanted to think it was a joke, but the other party was a Body Enhancement Gifted from the Combat Course. He’d probably be sent to his maker by Kaori’s roundhouse kick before he could die from being kicked by a horse.
And so, Kazuma decided that if he happened to encounter Kaori at the festival venue, he would try his best not to speak to her.
After that, Kazuma and the others moved to the festival venue and charged at the tightly packed food stalls.
First, the classics: choco-bananas, apple candy, cotton candy, and so on. The guys watched from behind as the girls made their purchases, acting as luggage carriers and pick-up artist deterrents.
Somehow, with the refreshingly handsome Shunsuke, the cool and manly Tsuyoshi, and Kazuma, who believed himself to be at least above average, no men looking to pick up girls approached them. However, Shunsuke and Tsuyoshi were being approached by women.
Kazuma gritted his teeth, a mix of sadness and anger welling up at the disparity. It wasn’t that Kazuma’s face was bad, but the other two stood out. Their faces, of course, but also their jinbei and yukata attire. It was probably natural for them to attract interest.
“I should’ve worn a yukata too…”
“What’s wrong all of a sudden, Kazuma?”
“It’s nothing, Shunsuke. Just lamenting the transience of the world.”
“Oh? That actually makes me curious.”
“No, why? Kazuma’s probably just saying whatever, Tsuyoshi.”
“Hm, is that so?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I see…”
“Why do you look so disappointed, man! Hahahaha!”
Kazuma didn’t know what was so funny, but Tsuyoshi’s reaction must have struck Shunsuke’s funny bone. Shunsuke burst out laughing. Kazuma and Tsuyoshi both tilted their heads, wondering what on earth could have been so amusing.
“Alright, next let’s try the shooting gallery!”
“Ooh~”
“Sounds good!”
When you think of festivals, you think of shooting galleries and goldfish scooping. The girls were all for it.
“First, shouldn’t we do something about this?” one of the guys said, gesturing to the food.
“Yeah. This is seriously too much,” another agreed.
“I’m hungry…” a third mumbled.
While the girls had been moderately snacking, the guys were stuck carrying bags. They hadn’t eaten anything, and their hands were full of the large amounts of yakisoba and takoyaki that had been bought.
“That’s true,” one of the girls said. “Let’s find a place to eat first.”
“Besides, we still have time until the fireworks,” another added.
“But is there even a place where we can eat comfortably?”
Looking at the boys’ luggage, Kaede, Megumi, and Miyazono-san discussed amongst themselves. It was all well and good that they’d decided to grab a bite first, but just as Miyazono-san said, there wasn’t really a place where they could eat in peace.
“Anywhere around here is fine, right? The benches are… ah, they’re all taken, so we’ll have to sit on the ground, though.”
In the direction Shunsuke pointed as he spoke, there were people sitting on the ground, eating food they’d bought from the stalls.
“Well, I brought a sheet, just in case. We’re going to watch the fireworks today too, right? So, I figured it would be necessary.”
It was Takeshi, the considerate guy. He handed the food he was holding to Kazuma and then took out a folded blue tarpaulin from his pocket.
“””Ooh~!”””
The girls’ opinion of him rose. In contrast, Kazuma was grumbling to himself.
“(H-Hey, if I could just use my Dimensional Storage (Item Box), I could do that much too!)”
How pathetic. For a Hero who had defeated a Demon Lord in another world, he was quite narrow-minded.
After that, the group moved to the fireworks venue and successfully secured a spot. Fortunately, there was still some time before the fireworks, so there weren’t many people.
Leaving Kazuma and Shunsuke behind, the rest of the group returned to the festival grounds. It seemed that playing took precedence over eating for them.
“Hey, Kazuma.”
“Hm?”
Shunsuke, who was drinking cider, spoke to Kazuma, who was eating yakisoba and takoyaki.
“You and Miyazono-san are pretty close, but what do you think of her?”
“Eh? Hmm, like a bad influence friend, I guess.”
“Hoh. You don’t get flustered when you’re that close to her?”
“I do, but I don’t think she feels anything like that, you know?”
“Ah, yeah, I get that feeling too. By the way, Kazuma, do you know Miyazono-san’s first name?”
“Come to think of it, I’ve never asked.”
“Kukuku, you’ll probably laugh when you hear it.”
“There’s no way I’d laugh at someone’s name. Unless it’s super flashy or something.”
“It’s not flashy, but… how do I put it? The feeling that it doesn’t suit her is incredible. Besides, it seems she doesn’t really want people to call her by it either.”
“Huh…”
Kazuma stuffed his cheeks with grilled squid, looking indifferent. As Kazuma ate the grilled squid, munching like a hamster, Shunsuke stood up.
“What’s up?”
“Sorry. I’m gonna go to the toilet for a bit.”
“Okay.”
And so, Kazuma was left alone. With nothing else to do, he silently continued eating.
Just then, Miyazono-san returned. Seeing Miyazono-san come back alone, Kazuma asked her what was up.
“Oh, you’re alone?”
“Yeah. I got hungry.”
Saying that, Miyazono-san sat down next to Kazuma. She picked up the yakisoba that was on the sheet and started eating.
“By the way, what happened to Hayami?”
“Toilet.”
“Oh, okay.”
The conversation died, and the two of them just ate in silence.
However, perhaps unable to bear the silence, Miyazono-san spoke to Kazuma.
“Hey, Satsuki, aren’t you going to go play? I’m here, so you can go if you want, you know?”
“Hmm… I’m not really interested in shooting galleries, goldfish scooping, or lotteries.”
“Really? They’re surprisingly fun if you try them.”
“Well, I like having fun with everyone, but doing it alone is boring.”
“Ah, so you’re that type.”
“Exactly. Oh, by the way, changing the subject, Miyazono-san, what’s your first name?”
“Why are you suddenly asking me that?”
Kazuma, feeling the temperature drop ever so slightly, made an excuse.
“Shunsuke asked me earlier if I knew your first name, Miyazono-san. And when I said I didn’t, he told me I should ask you…”
“Tch, that guy, saying unnecessary things.”
“So, will you tell me?”
“Well, I guess you’ll find out eventually anyway, so it’s fine, but… don’t laugh, okay?”
“I won’t laugh… probably.”
“What do you mean, ‘probably,’ you bastard!”
“Uwoaaaaaaaaaah! I’m against violence!!”
Kazuma desperately resisted the sudden cobra twist.
“Listen up! And remember it well. My name is Alice. Miyazono Alice!”
“Ugyiiiiiiii! I remember! I remember, so let me go~!”
Indeed, just as Shunsuke had said, it was a name he couldn’t imagine from her usual image, so Kazuma almost laughed, but Alice’s grip tightened, and all he could do was scream.
“Ughh…”
Kazuma was groaning, down on the sheet.
“What happened? To him.”
“Well, a few things happened.”
Shunsuke, having returned from the toilet, asked Alice about Kazuma, who was groaning and down, but she evaded the question.
Shunsuke guessed what had happened from Alice’s tone, approached the downed Kazuma, and gently consoled him.
“Don’t mind, Kazuma.”
“This is your fault, you idiot…”
After that, Kaede, Megumi, and Takeshi returned, and they all looked up at the fireworks together.