Hyouka:Volume 3 Chapter 4

4 Yet Another Sleepless Night

044 - ♥10

One must not say that one is tired, as that means passing on one's responsibilities to someone else, or so I'm told. If you are feeling tired, then you should say you need to take a rest, and then continue whatever it is you're doing once you've rested enough.

That was what my kind grandmother had taught me.

No, I should not use past tense. My grandmother is still alive and well.

I never forgot this piece of advice. But I guess it's fine since I'm whispering to myself alone in my room at night. Right now, I'm feeling a bit tired.

I've entrusted Irisu-san with helping to sell the anthology copies, and I've also managed to have the Wall Newspaper Club give the Classics Club a mention in their report. So while it was not in vain, for some reason, I felt weighed down by something upon returning to the club room.

I am not the type of person to be lethargic. While I'm not exactly a sporty person, I do have an above average record when it comes to running long distances. And these two days I have been walking all over the school premises, so this was not the reason for my tiredness.

How should I say this...... I don't become this tired when taking care of my own problems, but this time, I'm feeling a bit tired just handling this all on my own. So during this Cultural Festival, I've been asking other people to help out with our problem, enlisting the help of the Executive Committee, the Wall Newspaper Club and Irisu-san.

I became extremely mindful of the "Juumoji" incident. While I'm curious as how he carries out his theft, I'm also curious as to why he does it as well. By thinking of these, my body becomes restless that I couldn't stay in one spot of stand still.

However, after taking a deep breath and thinking as the president of the Classics Club, I just couldn't view other people as objects to be used, and I couldn't treat making requests to other people as some kind of strategy to be utilized.

It's quite unimaginable, to think I could act in such an unconcerned manner.

No, I mustn't become timid. Hasn't Oreki-san been doing his best to helping out? We have yet to increase the sales of the anthology.

I must go around making more requests tomorrow. I do not dislike doing such a thing, as it's something I must do, but......

I guess I'm just feeling a little bit tired.

045 - ♦10

I had wanted to sleep earlier tonight, but I just couldn't for some reason. So I took out a book from the bookshelf, which was my other treasure, Body Talk.

As I couldn't read Ashes at Dusk since it's not with me, perhaps I may have deified it a bit. For the other that got left behind, Body Talk was actually quite interesting once I began reading it. I should be getting ready to sleep, yet right now my brain's completely invigorated.

Its genre could be classified as slapstick. The protagonist is a young man who is unable to speak due to his deafness, but is able to convey his thoughts telepathically via touching. As he is able to read other people's thoughts due to touching, he is often seen as a trouble maker. Though it discarded realism in favour of an interesting story, the troubles the protagonist encountered still made sense. To put it briefly, there were aliens and zombies. No matter how much destruction was wrecked, a short anthropomorphic cat would appear in a blank panel, signalling the end of the scene in the next page. As a result, the tempo was quite quick, which was unheard of in commercial works. It was more like a comic strip than other mangas. In the end, placing the book on my pillow, I rested on my futon and read it till the end.

By the way, this cat, a Gourdski-like gag character (http://atomrocks.edublogs.org/hyotantsugi-a-k-a-gourdski/), would often appeared in all sorts of acrobatic stances at the corner of various panels for no reason whatsoever. He was probably the author's surrogate character. Despite standing upright, it wore no clothes except for a pair of baggy boots. A puss in boots, essentially.

Despite having a silly plot with a communication discord, it had quite a deep meaning as well. All the characters, including the protagonist, were all acting in self-interest, as they're frequently seeking a favourable outcome for themselves. Yes, this is a good work. But if I were to present this to Kouchi-sempai, then I find that there were a few weak points that stood out, like the story being a bit too random, there were too many panels with nothing but plain backgrounds, there were one too many rough sketches in the panels, and the dialogue sometimes don't connect from panel to panel.

...... And so, I'm still at a loss on what to show her.

The only light came from the lamp beside my bed, with the bookshelf submerging in the flickering darkness.

Ashes at Dusk and Body Talk were two non-commercial works which I have a lot of admiration for. Of course, these were not the only books in my room, there were also commercial works which shone just as bright as those two.

There really were many people who could draw interesting works.

Before turning off the lamp, I got out of my futon and took out my own manga from my desk drawer. All I saw were nothing but tedious white drawings, I would really not want to take this out.

Well, it's not like my drawing is bad. Though the artwork was a bit inconsistent, but it's not that despairingly bad. But upon reading one to two pages......

The panels just don't make any sense, and I can no longer the dialogue that was written, neither could I feel anything from the story. I have no idea where it begins or ends, it was pretty much a harmonious read.

If I were to let someone else read this, they would probably not need sleeping pills anymore.

Yet, I'm reading it right now.

Reading my own manga, it feels more like I've ingested some stimulants rather than sleeping pills. With a somewhat unspeakable feeling, I returned the manuscript of my manga back into my desk drawer. It's no good, I shouldn't have read this to make me fall asleep. As it would staying awake would be troublesome, I decided to take some real sleeping pills and get to sleep.

046 - ♠12

After saving energy for a long while, I can more or less predict my own patterns. By saving up too much in the day, I ended up with excessive usable energy at night, which was bad for sleep. I could not sleep even this late at night, the clock has passed one o'clock and was now approaching two.

To think I don't even remember what energy was it that I've saved in bulk, though I do know I've not used up any. How ironic that during the epoch of the rosy high school life known as the Kamiyama High School Cultural Festival, I could not find an outlet to use any energy.

Waiting to fall asleep, I thought of reading a book, but right now there was only that boring paperback novel. While a boring book could at least substitute for sleeping pills, I instead opted to surf the internet. I was now searching for the official homepage for the Kamiyama High School Festival.

Clicking the link on the search engine site, I twitched at the pain remaining in my right eye.

The top page caption read "KANYA FESTIVAL NOW OPEN! ALL ARE WELCOME". An image of the stage play taking place in the Gymnasium was pasted on it.

Scrolling down the page revealed a list of the participating clubs of the day, transportation access guide, advice to visitors...... And my eyes landed on a place I did not notice two days ago - the mail order section.

It was a mail order service for all goods related to the Cultural Festival. On sale was of course stuff sold during the Cultural Festival.

The items listed include original T-shirts by the Fashion Study Club, the Literature Club anthology Kodama, and the Manga Studies Club anthology Zeamis. Is that all? If it's the Kamiyama High School Cultural Festival, then surely they have more to sell, but it seems this was all there was.

Now isn't this a bit empty for a shop? Looking further, there was a mail order form with an email address attached. The address shares the same domain name as Kamiyama High School, and the account name was "somuiinkai". Satoshi, surely the Executive Committee should have done better than this. To begin with, I've yet to seriously ask Satoshi what is it that he does in the Executive Committee.

And then there's this email address. They could have at least used an English name for it. But "somuiinkai"? ...... Then again, I've no problem with a name that's at least legible to a native-speaker like me.

All that remains to be seen in the site are links to other basic external sites, which don't reveal much information. Anyway, guess it's about time, so I switched off the computer and returned to my room. As to how to fall asleep, I'll worry about that once I crawl into my bed.