VOLUME 4

Chapter 2: Part 4

So, like that, the school festival began and I began walking around along with Haruna.

For now, I made sure to warn Haruna for the third time that she shouldn’t show any emotions, but Haruna didn’t want to. It was natural for someone who didn’t really care about what happened to the people around her.

“You can’t even do that but you want to be the strongest masou shoujo?”

My random challenge seemed to strike a nerve, and Haruna then promised me she would stay calm.

Well then, it’s time to go around the school with this girl dressed in gauntlets and plate armor and sporting an ahoge.

As expected, there were a lot of cla.s.ses doing cafés or haunted houses.

We went into a few cosplay cafés and slightly strange haunted houses together. You know, I’m probably one of the first zombies who’s gone into a haunted house.

I mean, there’s no way a zombie would be scared of ghosts or anything like that.

It was getting dark, so we headed out into the school courtyard, and there we saw stands lined up like it was some kind of festival. There was a water balloon fis.h.i.+ng game, j.a.panese sponge cake, grilled squid, grilled octopus, grilled noodles… ah, that one was the same as the stuff our cla.s.s was doing.

In any case, this festive atmosphere almost made you want to go put on a kimono.

Within those booths, the one that seemed to really attract Haruna’s attention was the Comedy Club’s “Beat the Fool Hotdog Stand.”

Taking a closer look, I saw the words “No Tsukkomi, No Service!” (1) written on their sign. I see, so that was their system.

Someone as proud as Haruna was easy to hook with challenges like that.

“Welcome. How about some French fries?”

The stand worker quickly recommended the French fries to us, but there were no French fries on the menu.

In fact, what was on the menu was… Haircut 3000 yen, Perm 5000 yen, Shampoo 180000 yen. They had even set it up so that you could yell at them over their prices.

Well then, how exactly was Haruna going to respond in this case?

She wrote a few words on her memo pad, and showed the pad to the shop tender while pointing to “Perm 5000 yen.”

Tonkotsu ramen please. (2)

She responded to stupidity with more stupidity!

The Comedy Club faltered at this unexpected turn of events.

“I see I see I see I see… this soy sauce ramen, yes? Here you go… hey wait just a second!”

It seemed that our school’s Comedy Club wasn’t really that good when on the retorting side. Could it be that because of that, they made this shop so they could steal other people’s retorts?

Haruna wrote some more words on her memo pad.

Please sell me some tonkotsu ramen.

The idiot took one step forwards. She pressed the Comedy Club down like a rook In shogi getting promoted.

“No, umm… this is a hot dog stand…”

“That was a normal response! Don’t give up, Comedy Club!”

“Well, we never thought… that someone would come at us from this angle.”

Haruna flipped a page on her memo pad without even writing anything.

Give me some authentic-style tonkotsu ramen please.

“She raised the ramen stakes now!”

And to think she had written that in advance!

After I was the one who decided to retort, the Comedy Club seemed to admit defeat and just silently pa.s.sed a hot dog to Haruna.

“Your total is… actually, it’s fine.”

That was an admission of utter defeat.

What kind of Comedy Club is so afraid of someone acting stupid that they can’t act stupid back?

Haruna shook her head in resignation and flipped another page on her memo pad.

Maybe they should just become the Quiz Show Research Club or something. Like Oda n.o.bunaga or something. (3)

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that Oda n.o.bunaga liked quiz shows!

The Comedy Club just stood there as if they had just been stricken by lightning.

To think she had even prepared those parting shots in advance. As expected from a genius… it was impossible for a mere mortal like me to guess what this idiot girl would do next.

“Thank you very much for your business!”

Like that, Haruna received three hot dogs as her spoils of war.

And just in case you were wondering, she didn’t give me a single one of them.

The minute Haruna began to happily bite into her hot dogs, the wind began to blow stronger.

I saw the skirt of a girl walking in front of us flutter upwards. Maybe it was just a guy thing or some kind of animal instinct, but I stopped right where I was and crouched down.

And then…

The “No Tsukkomi, No Service!” sign smacked me right in the back of the head.

… Thinking guilty thoughts was not a good thing.

Was what just happened also because Haruna was feeling happy?

Haruna also seemed to think that was the case. She showed me a rare look of remorse.

“As I thought, white panties are the best panties.”

When I changed the topic to the panties I hadn’t even seen, Haruna whammed me on the tailbone with the “No Tsukkomi, No Service!” sign and quickly tossed me a memo.

You pervert! Full ero throttle!

Good. Seeing you energetic like this is what I want.

“Sounds almost like a new slang term there.”

I said that and showed Haruna a smile.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) This is in reference to a cla.s.sic form of j.a.panese comedy, where the fool (boke) says stupid things and is retorted to by the sane person (tsukkomi).

(2) Tonkotsu = pork bone soup.

(3) Unifier of j.a.pan in the late 1500s.