Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume29 Chapter2 4

Conversation Stories. Part 4.

"And so."

Inside the Rose Mansion, Shimako-san smiled.

"You were forced to accede, Yumi-san."

"… Pretty much."

Seated in her chair, Yumi slumped her shoulders. She had felt under pressure just dealing with Minako-sama, but there was no way she could handle a tag-team of Minako-sama and Mami-san. You could say her defeat was sealed the moment she could no longer picture herself winning.

"But that's fine, don't you think?"

"Huh? Really?"

"Yeah."

Easy for her to say, it was someone else's problem. Even so, Shimako-san had become incredibly positive since she started her second-year, so she would probably still say it was fine if she were the one in this position.

"You don't want the article to be too small, people won't check every little corner."

Were Noriko-chan's words, as she brought over some warm tea.

"I see. That's one reason."

Yumi started to share the same opinion as the two soeurs. Currently, the only people in the Rose Mansion were Yumi and the White Rose Sisters, so it was a majority opinion.

"By the way, what happened to Yoshino-san?"

When Yumi entered the second floor room, there was a half-filled tea cup at the seat facing Shimako-san. It had probably been Yoshino-san's. Yumi had last seen Yoshino-san leaving their classroom, saying "I'll go ahead of you," before Yumi set off for the clubhouse. Yoshino-san hadn't said where she was going, but the Rose Mansion was the obvious assumption. Yoshino-san wouldn't have said, "I'll go ahead of you," if she was going to the martial arts building for club activities.

"Well, about that. Tanuma Chisato-san came to visit, and they both left together."

"Speaking of Tanuma Chisato-san – "

From memory, she had been Yoshino-san's partner for their date on Sunday.

"Yeah, it seems like they were going to talk about their report. After all, when you put something in the newspaper, a lot of people will see it. So they were probably going to discuss whether what was written so far was okay, or if some parts should be omitted."

Since she said this, did that mean that there were some parts of Shimako-san's date that wouldn't be in their report? Hmm, what was it? The name of Shimako-san's partner. The name 'Ami' sounded familiar.

"Will you be okay, onee-sama? You haven't talked to Ami-san about your report."

Noriko-chan said, sounding a bit sulky. That's right, it was Ami-san. Igawa Ami-san, to be precise.

"I'll be fine."

Shimako-san smiled sweetly. Apparently not noticing the hint of jealousy from Noriko-chan. Really, she could be quite dense.

"Why do you think that?"

Yumi thought it was cute of Noriko-chan, the way she was pecking away at Shimako-san – although she would never say that. She was subconsciously glad to see Noriko-chan, who always acted mature beyond her years, displaying some of the jealousy that more befitted someone her age.

"Because Ami-san has someone else she can talk to about it."

"Someone else? Who?"

Yumi leaned forwards, unable to ignore such a statement.

"That answer will be in the Valentine's Date edition of the Lillian Kawaraban."

"Oooh. How about a preview?"

Yumi thought it was cruel of Shimako-san to say that much but no more, conveniently overlooking the fact that she hadn't said anything to her classmates earlier today.

"Teeheehee. It'll be interesting."

"Then I'll look forward to reading it."

Not even Noriko-chan could keep asking her directly. The power of Shimako-san's laugh was incredible.

"… Shall we get to work?"

Yumi stood up, trying to make up for the time lost by her late arrival. As she walked over to the corner of the room where the papers were stacked up, Noriko-chan called out to her:

"There's no work to do though."

Yumi couldn't believe her ears. She didn't have to look at a calendar to know they had a lot of preparation work to do for the third-years' send-off party. Every day, the documents they had to go through kept piling up. Decisions they had to make. On top of that, there was the farewell party for the Roses, so there was surely a pile of work they had to do.

"More accurately, there's no work that we can do right now."

Shimako-san explained, looking at her notebook.

"We can't decide what should be displayed in the auditorium lobby because we don't have the completed questionnaires from all of the groups who wanted to participate. Same for the order of events. The due-date for both of those is tomorrow. And it looks like we'll have to have a meeting to go over the flowers and other things we have to buy after all."

"I see. And since I wasn't here until just now, and Yoshino-san isn't here currently, it's decided that we can't decide."

Rei-sama and Sachiko-sama retired about the time the elections for the next term were concluded, so they were no longer attending Yamayurikai meetings either.

"It's no good if we decide with only two of us here, right?"

Shimako-san smiled.

That's right. Now that they were almost third-years, the Red Rose family had a new member. Which brought the total up to five people, making it somewhat more respectable.

"By the way, did Touko have club activities?"

Remembering, Yumi asked Noriko-chan, Touko's classmate.

"Yeah. She made a brief appearance here, helping out with the cleaning, before heading off. She said to give her regards to you, Yumi-sama."

"Ah. The third-years' send-off is coming up soon, isn't it."

Yumi had heard that the drama club, which Touko was a member of, was splitting into groups and performing multiple plays. All the clubs participating in the third-years' send-off party were busy practicing. As usual, that statement went double for Touko.

In spite of this, she'd already completed her report on the date and submitted it to the newspaper club, which was quite impressive. It was only barely noticeable, but Touko really did have a very serious and methodical nature. At any rate, it was something to be admired and thankful for.

"I heard she was doing a scene with the club president. What kind of practice could they be getting up to?"

Noriko-chan whispered.

"Why?"

"It looks like she's been having club activities before school and during the lunch break, but Touko, her arms and legs… how do I put this ... they're covered in wounds."

"Wounds?"

"Yeah. Individually, none of them are that big of a deal."

Sounds like they were light grazes, or bruises like you'd see on a peach if you press down too hard. While they might be small individually, it was still worrying if there were lots of them.

"I met her today and didn't notice anything."

"You'd never know it when she's wearing her school uniform."

Apparently Noriko-chan witnessed this when they were changing into their sports tracksuits. Which meant that only her classmates would know.

"What did Touko say?"

"She said it was no big deal, and not to worry about it. She seemed focused on the play, but didn't want to talk about their rehearsals. I'm not an actress so I might not understand, but I prefer to have a clear distinction between reality and fiction."

Noriko-chan tried to explain by using a convoluted example of painting in one color right next to a still-wet area of paint in a different color, causing the two colors to mix together disagreeably.

"That didn't happen when she was playing Amy, though."

Touko played Amy in the drama club's production of Little Women during this year's school festival. Perhaps her preparations were different this time around. Needless to say, on the same day that she performed in "Little Women" for the drama club, Touko also appeared onstage in the Yamayurikai play. But, perhaps due to a memory lapse, Noriko-chan wasn't counting Touko's role as Minister of the Right in "Torikaebaya Monogatari."

"Since Touko said not to worry about it, let's just keep quiet about it for now. I'll discreetly try to find out what's going on."

Yoshino-san returned a short while later.

"I'm baaack. Ahh."

Yoshino-san sat down in her seat, then flopped down onto the table.

"Working hard?"

"I'm exhausted. It'd take all day to go through everywhere we went and everything we did. The report's supposed to be the date winner's responsibility, right? So why did I have to be there while she thought about it? Chisato-san wrote one last year as well, so she should be good at it by now."

Caught up in her own complaints, it took Yoshino-san a while to notice.

"Oh, Yumi-san's joined us."

Yoshino-san energetically got up and made her way over to Yumi, as though to make sure she hadn't been mistaken.

"I heard this from Chisato-san, but apparently there's a strange rumor doing the rounds."

Yumi looked surprised when Yoshino-san pointed a finger at her.

"Me?"

It was probably about Touko. Yumi had accepted that there would probably be all kinds of rumors until the Lillian Kawaraban extra came out.

"Nope, not you, but your onee-sama."

"Sachiko-sama?"

That was unexpected. Yumi couldn't even imagine what the rumor could be about.

"Hey. Sachiko-sama's going to Lillian's Women's University, isn't she?"

"That's right."

"And with priority entrance, they look at your high-school results so you don't have to take an exam."

"Yeah?"

That's why it's called priority entrance.

"So then, why is she frantically studying?"

"Studying!?"

"It's like she's obsessed with it – apparently she's studying something during recess and self-study periods."

People study every day. For someone to start studying to meet some goal, that in itself isn't that strange.

However, you had to wonder when that person was Sachiko-sama.

"Was that something that Chisato-san saw directly?"

Yumi was completely unable to accept it. All she could think was, 'No way.'

She knew her onee-sama was the type of person that never needed to study, either for mid-terms or for the end of semester examinations.

"Who knows? She said it was a rumor, so it was probably just something she heard."

Yoshino-san said it could have been something like someone in Chisato-san's class had an onee-sama in Sachiko-sama's class. She didn't seem to know who started the rumor.

Still, no matter where the rumor came from, there was probably one way of settling this.

"Next time I see my onee-sama, I'll ask her about it indirectly."

"I think that will be fine."

Shimako-san agreed. Rumors were rumors, they shouldn't be taken as truth. Even if the rumor itself was only that Sachiko-sama was studying, it's possible it could be embellished into something preposterous.

"There will probably be a few people troubling us with questions about this. Having said that, it's not something so huge that it will cause people to go out of their way to ask about it. So let's leave this up to Yumi-san, as she is Sachiko-sama's petit soeur."

Yoshino-san and Noriko-chan agreed to Shimako-san's proposal. Therefore.

"Very well, your humble servant accepts this responsibility."

Yumi thumped her chest. Unfortunately, she thumped a bit too hard, and ended up having a coughing fit.

(So that means.)

Yumi wouldn't have to carefully watch over just her petit soeur, but also her onee-sama.

A succession of worrying things had arisen since her arrival here.