Headphone Actor (7 page)

Slowly glancing over at the girl, I could faintly catch a glimpse of the girl’s face from the glow of the monitor in front of her.

She had a fair complexion and long, pretty hair. Although her eyes were rather unpleasant, she had a nice, even face, and would no doubt grow up to be a beauty.

However, with the way the light was hitting it right now, it looked very much like the face of a girl straight out of a horror movie.

I quickly started the game before I began to lose my mind.

“Ah, u-umm, as I explained earlier, it’s a shooting game with a point system! If you score a higher number of points than me, you will be presented with a fabulous prize! A-and, so, about the difficulty level of the game ….?”

“…. Normal.”

“Ah, right! Of course! My apologies! Now then~ les’sart!”

As I accidentally slurred my words at the end, the boy who was standing behind the girl snickered.

I became instantly embarrassed just hearing that.

There were various thoughts swirling around in my head, but at any rate, I focused on ending this as quickly as possible.

Setting the difficulty to “normal,” I pressed start at the title screen, and enemies began appearing in groups.

Compared to the extra mode that I had played earlier, in this mode, there were significantly fewer enemies, and a much lower number of possible points.

And, this was just a feeling I had, but compared to the extra mode, there was also an overwhelming number of pig enemies; they seemed to be this mode’s characteristic feature.

It had been one minute since the game started.

The girl’s playing style wasn’t particularly characteristic, and was generally fairly ordinary.

It was a slightly unsatisfactory fight for me, who had played the extra mode against that kind of veteran during the first round, but this was probably to be expected from a normal girl.

Although I could hear occasional cries of  “Kyah!” in a cute voice, she was playing indifferently.

Suppose she started off her days going, “Ughh, this is sooo hard, it’s so annoying~” and “Haha, guess it can’t be helped, oh well,” and then later threw away her forced smile and put on that Hannya Mask. Just thinking about it seemed easy to do.

However, with thirty second remaining on the clock, a sudden disaster occurred on my screen.

A strange bug caused both the pig enemies and the aiming crosshairs for my gun to disappear.

“H-huh …..!? Some kind of malfunction ….?”

Behind the girl, the boy was snickering, “Do your best without getting scared, Kido!”

I desperately tried to keep hitting the enemies, but without knowing where I was aiming, it was no use.

And in that time, the point difference between us was quickly reducing. I’d held back early on so that there wouldn’t be a huge difference between us, but to think that it would turn against me …!

Just as it was getting bad, the buzzer for the end of the game sounded.

Since I’d played so desperately, I didn’t know what had become of the points. I closed my eyes in prayer before the results screen showed.

If I lost here, the prize would be lost to the second customer.

It was an unavoidable situation that couldn’t have been dealt with.

As the fanfare sounded, the results screen pulled up. I opened my eyes very slowly to confirm it, and by only a meager 100 point difference, the word “WIN” was shown on my side of the points.

Sweat dripped down. To think that an error in the game would cause us to fall into this kind of pinch ….

Either way, was it possible that that stupid teacher had pulled something at this crucial part?

Just as I was thinking this, I heard the boy chuckling from beside me.

“Hahaha, looks like you lost, Kido. But it’d be wrong even if you won by cheating, right? Come on, you have to apologize to Onee-san.”

As she was told this by the boy, the girl’s expression looked like she was suppressing tears of mortification.

“ ….. I’m sorry.”

She said in a slightly shaky voice, rose from her chair and headed towards the door with quick steps.

“Wait, cheating ….? But that was an error with the game, so it wasn’t her fault at all.”

No matter how you looked at it, that phenomenon just now couldn’t have been cheating. She hadn’t hacked the computer or directly interfered, so there had been no foul play.

Even as I said this, the boy continued to grin.

“Sorry, Onee-san. You may not believe me, but earlier, that girl used a psychic ability. You’ll know if you check, but the machine’s not broken, and the game is fine, too. It should work without any problems next time, so don’t worry.”

After saying this, the boy headed after the girl, and left the room and into the hallway without looking back.

The moment the two of them exited out into the hallway, I heard Haruka scream, “Uwaaaah!” Just like how it was with me, it was probably because he hadn’t noticed the girl’s presence.

Letting go of my controller, I stared dumbfounded in the direction of the door that they had left through.

It almost felt like I’d been deceived by a fox.

A ghost girl with a psychic ability, and a boy who wouldn’t stop smiling ….

Even if I told this story to someone, I’d probably be cut off in a single stroke with, “You watch too much anime.”

Just as I expected, Haruka burst into the room and, also just as I expected, he said this,

“Was that girl here this whole time!? I didn’t even notice at all!”

“Wasn’t she ….? I mean, look ….”

I pointed at the display screen that showed the records of the close match that the girl had fought with me.

                                                                                        *

Around 12:00, after the morning passed, the school became enveloped by fragrant aromas.

Seeing as how this was the hour that food and drink-type booths like cafés and food stalls were most active, it was the most ideal time for attraction-type booths like us to take our break.

Exiting the dark Science Preparation Room, I hung up a sign that said, “On break until 1:00” on the outside of the door so that Haruka and I could go out and have lunch together.

I’d challenged about a dozen other people during the morning, and being blessed with honest, normal customers after that boy and girl, we were able to make it until noon without any further problems.

“I was really worried about how the first hour would go ….. At first, I was convinced that you only picked out weird customers to bring in.”

“Ehh!? Th-that’s not true! I just introduced the booth to whoever happened to pass by, that’s all …..”

The space spread out in front of the main entrance was crowded with food stands in the middle of setting up, filled with blue tarp and cardboard.

From yakitori to hot dogs, and French fries to yakisoba and more, all the colored signboards helped to work up an appetite.

As I walked with Haruka while looking back on the morning’s events, I spotted a lunch area to the right side of the front gate where we could sit down and eat what we’d buy.

“Ah, how about going over there for lunch? We eat in the classroom every day, so every once in a while it’s ….. hey, wait!!”

“Mn? Mmwut?”

Before I’d even noticed, Haruka was standing there with his arms full of food, and eating a fried squid in a way that made it look really delicious.

“…. Honestly, don’t you know anything about cooperating? I thought we were going to go around and take a look together ….. Anyway, when did you even buy all that!?”

“Nn, pwah! Ah, sorry, sorry, it just all looked so delicious, so I couldn’t help myself ….! Ah, Takane, I’ll give you some, too. Here, eat whatever you’d like!”

In the bag that Haruka held out, there was a large quantity of packs of things like yakisoba and okonomiyaki that seemed like they could become main dishes.

“Uu ….  That’s a pretty nice selection. Well, anyway, let’s just sit down somewhere and start eating. The seats in the back look like they’re free.”

Finding an area that seemed empty, I looked back at Haruka and said this, and saw that he was already onto his next victim, a hot dog, and nodding his head without saying anything.

The spot I’d found was right in the shade, and walking there together, we sat down. Today, we were lucky to have nice weather; the perfect day for a School Culture Festival.

It was even a little hot out, and many were wearing light clothing.

Since Haruka and I thought we’d be moving around quite a bit, we’d also come in light clothes.

The moment we sat down, Haruka cried out, “I can’t wait anymore!” and started to take the food out of the bag with an extremely happy face.

It would seem that the food he’d shown me earlier had only been a part of it; one after another, he spread out about five to six serving’s worth of food onto the table.

“F-four-dimensional bag ….?”

With so much food that it seemed impossible that it had all fit in one bag, Haruka decided to start eating from an okonomiyaki after a moment of indecision.

I was also pretty hungry, and so I picked up a sauce yakisoba and pulled it towards me.

“Alright then, time to e— …. Wait, I haven’t paid, right? How much was this?”

I felt bad about being treated, so I pulled my wallet out of my skirt pocket.

“Ah, it’s fine, really. Actually, Sensei told me, “Eat whatever you like with this,” and gave me some money this morning. About 10,000 yen. So it’s fine!”

“10,000 yen!? That much!? Haah~ …. That teacher, even though he was so selfish when it came to the budget for the booth, he can actually be pretty generous!”

“Ah, while he was making the game, he told me he went to pachinko for a change of pace, and ended up winning a lot. He even ordered sushi take-out for dinner that day.”

The moment I heard that, my slightly increased rating of Tateyama-sensei fell back down to the lowest of lows. And at the same time, I could only see the delicious food in front of me as by-products of gambling, and fell into a very depressed mood.

“Hm? Aren’t you going to eat, Takane? If you won’t, then I’ll ….”

“I-I am! Anyway, just how much are you gonna eat!? You’re definitely gonna get fat, y’know!?”

When it came to the food stalls at the Culture Festival, it was a festival of high calorie food. Truthfully, I wanted to pig out on fried chicken, but no matter how much of a festival today was, tomorrow was just a normal day again.

It was obvious that the calories I merrily ingested today would turn into suffering for my body tomorrow.

As I was worrying about this, Haruka went through eating a hot dog, crepe, pizza stick, French fries, and chocolate-covered banana at an amazing pace. The abnormal amount was one thing, but just watching him eat all of that at once gave me heartburn.

“It’s so good, though. Ah, but no matter how much I eat, I never get fat, anyway~ I don’t bring much for lunch to school, but I always eat about this much at home.”

As I listened to this, I compared the amount that Haruka was eating to his body type and felt incredibly annoyed.

If I overate even just a little bit, my body weight would undergo a serious change; it wasn’t fair.

“Ahh~ …. I wish I could just have a body that never gets hungry and doesn’t need to eat …. And also, a body that doesn’t need to sleep, either.”

“Eh~ But that’d be boring. After all, I love eating and sleeping.”

Haruka said this as he happily took the wrapping off of a hamburger.

“…. You sure live a happy life.”

“Hm? Did you say something?”

As he asked this with ketchup on his cheek, somehow, I found it hard to hate him. Even so, I prayed silently that he would complain about gaining around ten kilograms tomorrow.

                                                                                        *  

1:30 PM.

As planned, we had resumed business for our target shooting booth, but completely unlike the morning, there was no one coming by at all.

“That’s weird. It wasn’t like this at all this morning. Could it be that there’s a bad rumor going around ….?”

I stuck my head outside the door and checked up and down the hallway. Haruka was standing in front of the classroom and waiting for customers as usual, but in the first place, there didn’t seem to be many people in the hall at all.

Just when I was starting to feel anxious, Haruka seemed to remember something and pulled out a folded print-out from his pocket.

“Oh, right, right. I’m sure this is why, Takane.”

The print-out that Haruka had pulled out was the schedule of all the classes’ booths for the day of the Culture Festival.

I’d lost mine soon after they’d been distributed, but because it was annoying to ask Haruka to show me his, I hadn’t said anything this whole time. Thanks to that, I had no idea about the other classes’ booths for today.

“Ah, ahh, okay …. So, which one’s the reason that no one’s coming?”

“It’s this one, the ‘Student Council Presentation’ that’s from 1 to 2 PM in the gym. I think everyone probably went to see that.”

In the print-out where Haruka was pointing, it was certainly written, “‘Student Council Presentation’ 1PM-2PM.” And what was more, it was the only one outlined with a thick frame and stood out a lot.

“I see. Sheesh, so the Student Council wants to stand out too, huh? Anyway, there should have just had it later, and not in the time frame that booths are open …. This probably isn’t good for any of the other classes either, right?”

I didn’t really like the strong assertiveness given off by the print-out’s design, either.

Even though we’d gone to the trouble of eating a proper lunch to prepare for the battles in the afternoon, it couldn’t be helped that no one was even coming.

“Well, after another thirty minutes, I’m sure we’ll have a lot of customers then. So until then, let’s just take the chance to relax for a while longer.”

Folding up the print-out again, Haruka opened the door I was sticking my head out of and came inside.

“Guess it can’t be helped. Ah~ I wish someone stupider would come~ I’d give it my all to be their opponent.”