CH. 39 - The Club Festival

The next day at school, Chizuru is walking down the hall towards the club room when Lucy approaches her, an anxious look on her face.

“Chizu, can I talk to you for a second?” Lucy asks timidly.

“Of course! What’s up?” She asks with a smile.

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

Birds fly out of a tree in the courtyard from Chizuru’s yelling. Lucy covers her ears with a distraught look before shushing her.

“Shhh! Keep it down, I really don’t want anyone else to know!”

“Lucy, you rejected him?? I know you said you didn’t like him and stuff but we both know that’s not true! Is this because of Shiori?” Chizuru asks with an upset look.

“No, no! It’s not that. I just… I’m scared… We’ve been friends for so long and he’s so perfect, of course I like him but… what if it doesn’t work out? I don’t want to lose him…” Lucy says with a worried and confused look on her face.

“Lucy…” Chizuru gives Lucy a sympathetic look while Lucy struggles with her thoughts about what happened when Haru approaches them.

“There you guys are! C’mon, we gotta get started.” He hurries them along and they follow.

In the room, everyone else waits. Lucy and Chizuru take a seat, but as they do, Lucy makes eye contact with Ryuji, who smiles at her. She blushes and looks away with an upset look. Ryuji’s smile goes away, and he too gets a slightly sad look. 

“Okay everyone! As the founders of this club, Hikigaya and I are in charge. We will decide positions later, but for now, let’s focus on what our club is going to look like. The festival is only two days away! So, any suggestions?” Shiori asks enthusiastically.

“So we’re trying to, like, figure out our club theme?” Haru asks.

“Yeah, like if it should be colorful and energetic or office sharp. That kind of stuff.” Chizuru answers.

“Ohhh I see, I see… We should make it superhero themed!” Haru says excitedly. Hikigaya and Shiori get shivers up their spines when they hear this. They both look at each other with distraught looks before looking back at him.

“No, I don’t think that’d be such a good idea…” Hikigaya says gently. Haru pouts a bit in his chair.

“Oh, I know! Let’s make it Gothic themed! All dark with old Victorian style designs.” Chizuru says happily. Everyone looks at her with surprised looks. “What? I like the look.” She says, smiling while sitting back in her chair. Shiori pulls out a piece of chalk and writes down ‘Gothic’ on the rollout board she has behind her.

“Okay, does everyone agree, or do we have some disputes?”

“I think we need more butterflies and rainbows.” Hisana says while dazing off, hardly paying attention. Shiori sweats a little.

“Okay… More rainbows and butterflies, got it.” She writes that down next to the other idea.

“Oh, we should make it like an industrial factory. Like a crafting workshop.” Sugawara says.

“Speaking of shops, I think a vendor shop would be cool. Like a place you buy items from in videogames.” Kitaro adds.

“A shop sounds fun, but I think one that specializes in food. I can help with supplying the food.” Ryuji says.

“Yeah, but we’re not a cooking club, we’re a helpers club.” Lucy points out. He looks at her surprised as she quickly looks down, away from his eyes, still nervous about turning him down. He smiles a bit before looking away.

“I guess she is right, but a bakery look might not hurt.” Ryuji says.

They continue to talk amongst themselves, each throwing out new ideas without agreeing on a single one. As the chalkboard gets more and more full, the less and less the group agrees on one single theme.

Eventually, the day came to an end and despite the couple hours they spent in the club room brainstorming ideas for a theme for their club, they were not able to make a single decision.

The Next Day…

“Ugh… I can’t believe we wasted the entire day yesterday and didn’t even pick a theme…” Shiori lays her head on the desk with her hand on top of her as she groans.

“Hey, it’s okay Shiori. It’s not a big deal, we’ll just figure it out today.” Hikigaya says, trying to assure her. She lifts her head up sharply at his response.

“Not a big deal?! The festival is tomorrow! We have to start working on the club room design and we don’t even know where to start!” She says, frustrated.

“Well, I think they got that covered.” Hikigaya says with a soft smile. He looks behind him as Shiori does the same to see Hisana scribbling down on a piece of paper before lifting it in the air to reveal a poorly drawn picture of a superhero with a colorful cape. The others cheer, supporting her artistic vision. Sugawara then grabs a large sheet of board paper before cutting it and asking Haru to bring him some colored pencils. Even Ryuji begins doing the same next to him. Shiori has a look of surprise before Hikigaya looks back at her. 

“Let’s just trust their creative process. Maybe it'll look better than anything we could’ve thought of.” Hikigaya says, giving her a soft smile before she smiles back. 

“Okay.”

They work for many hours on different parts of the club room until they have everything ready to go for tomorrow.

Now, onto the Club Festival.

It is the day of the festival. While the first years go about their day like any other, the new second years and above who run clubs are all getting ready and finishing any last-minute preparations. Shiori lays with her head on the desk and is even more gloomy than yesterday.

“Why did I listen to you..?” She groans.

“Are they artists? No. But at least it looks fun.” Hikigaya answers back, looking up at the room.

“Fun?! It looks ridiculous!” She shoots her head up and looks around to see the desks arranged in a ‘U’ shape around a single chair in the middle of the room. Three chairs are placed at each side of the desks opposite of the chair in the middle.

The desks on the left have a banner on them labeled ‘The Softies’ with colorful, happy pictures on it. The desks on the right have a banner on them labeled ‘The Crafties’ with creative and technical pictures on it. And finally, the desks in the middle have a banner on them labeled ‘The Hard Boiled’ with ‘-ies’ scribbled onto the end of it with poorly drawn pictures of eggs, sunglasses and a tie on the banner.

There are mismatched color streamers along the roof, and the entrance to the room is surrounded by a large sign made of three different parts, each with a different theme on them. ‘The’, ‘Helpers’, and ‘Club’ are themed in metal works, then Temples & Tyrants, and then a bakery sign. There are pictures of baked goods, bottles of potions, and butterflies taped to the outside walls. Overall, there is no theme and everything looks like a mess in Shiori’s eyes. She pouts and slams her head back onto the table as Hikigaya hums to himself, rubbing his chin.

“Maybe it needs more streamers.” He says.

“Next time, I’m picking the theme.” She mumbles from the desk. Hikigaya giggles at her as the others start to make their way in. Ryuji walks in holding a tray of cookies with Lucy following behind with another.

“Hey, thanks Ryuji! Sorry it was so last minute. Figured we could hand those out to anyone who brings a problem for us to solve.” Hikigaya says with a smile.

“No worries. Cookies are super easy.”

They put them down on the counter behind the ‘Crafties’ desk. When Lucy puts down her tray, Ryuji turns and smiles at her softly.

“Thanks for the help.”

She gets embarrassed and awkward.

“Y-yeah… Don’t worry about it, that’s what friends are for, right?” She laughs nervously as he smiles and walks past her. She then face palms herself. Shiori lifts her head and sighs.

“Alright. Make sure everything is in its place and get to your positions. The festival will start any minute now!”

They all get determined, cheerful looks and do just that. After a moment of dashing around, doing all final touches, they take their seats. Haru, Chizuru and Hisana at the Softies. Ryuji, Sugawara and Hikigaya at the Crafties and Shiori, Lucy and Kitaro at the Hard Boiled. 

“Get ready…” Shiori says. The bell then rings, announcing the start of the festival. “Here they come…”

The sound of many excited feet stepping their way to the Club Hall trying to restrain themselves gets louder and louder with every passing moment.

“We have to be ready to solve any problem!” Shiori says enthusiastically. They get excited, determined looks as the students enter the hall. One by one, they walk past their club without even a single look inside. After a short period of time, they start to realize that no one is even noticing their club.

“Do you think they can’t see our sign?” Chizuru asks innocently.

“Oh no, you can see that thing from a mile away.” Haru answers.

“Maybe we need someone out there advertising.” Ryuji offers.

“Good idea. Shiori, you’re up.” Hikigaya says before she can process.

“What? Why me?”

“Cause you’re the most passionate person here. Go show your passion!” Hikigaya says with a playful smirk. Shiori pauses for a moment but understands and heads out timidly. The others watch as she tries to get attention to the club, but no one takes the bait.

After more time passes, Kitaro has begun to play games on his phone and Shiori has begun to lose her patience. She starts getting more in the students’ faces and growling at anyone looking at her weird when she desperately tries to get someone, anyone, into the club.

“Should we maybe switch to someone less… aggressive?” Sugawara says, sweating a bit with an uncertain look.

“No no, it’s way funnier this way.” Hikigaya says as he enjoys watching Shiori get irritated.

After even more time and as most of the members have already begun to check out, Ryuji writing his recipes, Sugawara writing ideas into a book and so on, Shiori gives up and heads back into the room.

“Oh, it’s hopeless… No one even knows we exist…” She mopes into the classroom, but right as she steps into the center of the room, someone pokes their head in.

“Um, excuse me?”

Shiori snaps around with a big smile on her face.

“Yes?! How can we help you?!”

The student, who is wearing big glasses and dressed in more generically nerdy attire, looks around as if confused. 

“Is this the-”

“The Helpers Club?! Why yes it is! Where any and all of your problems can be solved or your money back guaranteed!” Shiori says desperately.

“We’re not charging them anything.” Lucy says with a sweat drop. Shiori stands proudly while using the chair in the middle of the room as a pedestal. The student looks as if found his answer.

“Oh! The Helpers Club!”

Shiori looks very excited and anticipating his problem.

“Sorry, I’m looking for the Sellers Club. I must’ve misread the sign. Guehuehue!” He adjusts his glasses while laughing before stepping out of the room and leaving. Shiori just stands there for a moment in disbelief, frozen like a statue. Chizuru steps up to her and pats her on the shoulder. 

“There, there. It’s okay, come on, let’s sit down.” She guides Shiori back to her seat. They sit in the clubroom for a while doing their own things when Shiori stands up and sighs.

“Whatever. Come on, let’s just take it down. Maybe there’s enough time to go check out the rest of the festival. No one’s gonna show up anyway…”

The others look at each other, a little sad for Shiori, but get up and follow her as she begins taking down the banners and streamers.

After a minute of doing this, there is a soft knock at the door. They look over to see a girl with long black hair and bangs that cover her eyes in gothic makeup and accessories standing in their doorway. 

“Um, excuse me? Is this the Helpers Club?” She asks.

“Who’s asking?” Kitaro asks casually.

“Well, I found this poster on the wall and it says you would help solve my problem.” She says shyly as she pulls out a folded poster from her skirt pocket. She opens it up to show them and reveals their poster.

“Of course we’ll help you! See? I told you the posters would be a good idea!” Chizuru says happily as she elbows Lucy a bit, who smiles in response.

“I mean, yeah, but we only made like five of them to put all over the school boards. With the amount of other posters up, what are the chances she’d actually find one?” Lucy says, pleasantly surprised by this. Suiyoubi smiles as she steps into the room. Everyone stops cleaning up and heads back to their seats as she sits in the chair in front of their desks. As Hikigaya sits down at his desk, he looks across at Shiori and gives her a smile. She gives an excited one in return, causing him to blush a little.

Suddenly, the room goes dark. A spotlight appears over Suiyoubi. She looks around in the darkness for a moment before another light appears over the Hard Boiled table, illuminating all three of them. They stare at her with their hands together in front of their mouths as if judging her. 

“State your name.” Lucy says.

“Oh, my name is Suiyoubi, but you can call me Sui if you like, or whatever else, I don’t mind.” She answers with a giggly tone. Then, another light appears over the Crafties table.

“State your purpose.” Sugawara says.

“Well, I have this problem that I could use some help with. You see, I’ve lost my teddy bear. I’ve been looking for him for the past few days, but I can’t find him anywhere! He’s very important to me, I can’t lose him! So please help me find my teddy bear!”

The others give her intense looks and look at each other, as if debating whether to take the case or not. Hikigaya looks at Sugawara, who nods in response.

“The Softies will decide if we should take your case or not.” Sugawara says.

Then, a light appears over them revealing Hisana, who is happily rocking back and forth, and Haru, who appears to not have been paying attention as he looks back suddenly and sweats a bit. Chizuru smiles at Suiyoubi.

“We all agree. Right, guys?” She looks at Haru and Hisana. They look at her, confused a bit for a moment, before smiling.

“Well, of course!” Hisana says.

“Yeah, we agree.” Haru smiles. Chizuru looks back at her.

“We’re taking your case!” Chizuru says happily. Suiyoubi smiles widely.

“Really?? Oh, thank you all so much! Here’s my number! I look forward to finding my teddy bear!” She hands a small piece of paper to Shiori excitedly before heading out of the room. Shiori looks at it, then at the others.

“Well guys, it looks like we got our first problem to solve.”

“Yeah, finding some boring teddy bear.” Kitaro says, leaning on his hand, obviously disappointed by the case.

“Oh, come on, man! Any adventure is a good one!” Haru says, getting up and wrapping his arm around Kitaro.  

“Yeah, but we still only got lucky to get a problem at all. We’ll still close up early for the day.” Hikigaya says.

“Cool cause I really wanted to see that cat maid cafe I heard about. Think of all the cute people in cat maid outfits.” Kitaro says, elbowing Haru, trying to get him to agree. Haru gets a look as if thinking about it.

“Cat maid outfit…” He imagines Sugawara blushing and embarrassed in the outfit and starts drooling with a dumb smile on his face. Sugawara sees him drooling and blushing over the thought but gets upset and pouty thinking he’s thinking of other people in those outfits. Haru gets punched in the background by Sugawara as the others finish up cleaning the room. They get their things and close up the room before heading out.

“See you later guys!” Haru cheers.

“Same time tomorrow?” Lucy asks.

“Cat maids here I come!” Kitaro says excitedly. Hisana bonks him on the head as he says that. Shiori and Hikigaya walk down the hall for a moment before Shiori realizes she doesn’t have her bag with her.

“Damnit, I think I left my bag in the room. I’ll be right back.”

“You know we’re not supposed to leave each other.” Hikigaya says.

“I know, I know, I’ll only be a second!” She says, jogging back to the room. Hikigaya rolls his eyes as he leans against the wall. Shiori enters the room and goes to her seat. She sees her bag hanging off the side of it and gets a smile of relief, grabbing it.

“There you are.”

“Wow, you and your little ‘friends’ actually made a club. How cute.”

Shiori is surprised by the voice for a moment before turning around to see Amy standing in the doorway.

“What do you want?” Shiori asks, glaring at her a bit.

“Oh nothing. Just looking around, I suppose. Must’ve been hard finding anybody to come to this pathetic Helpers Club, huh? I’m sure some posters would’ve helped.” She pulls out three of the posters they made for the club, all wrinkled and crushed. She tosses them at Shiori’s feet. “Whoops. I guess I took them all down.” She giggles to herself as Shiori gives her a mean look.

“Why would you do that? I don’t care what your problem is with me, leave my friends out of it!”

“Oh, but why? After what you did to me, I lost many of my friends. So why shouldn’t I return the favor?”

“I don’t even know what I did to you.”

“You don’t? You don’t remember how you humiliated me that day? How I became a laughingstock because of what you did to me?” Amy has an irritated look as she stomps her foot forward and points an aggressive finger at her. Shiori stares intensely at her. Amy takes a breath and straightens back up. “It doesn’t matter. I am just as popular now as I was before what you did to me and soon enough, I’ll make you a laughingstock, too.” She turns to walk out of the room, but she stops right before leaving and looks at Shiori with a mean grin. “By the way, your eye? It’s so creepy. Freak.”

Shiori is taken aback by the comment as Amy smirks and walks away. Shiori stands in the room silently, unsure of what to do next.

Shiori closes the door behind her as she leaves, hanging her bangs over her eyes. She walks back to Hikigaya as he looks back at her.

“Took you long enough. Did you lose it?” Hikigaya asks playfully. She nods in response but doesn’t look at him. He notices her sudden change in demeanor. “You okay?” She nods again before walking in front of him. He stands there for a moment before following her. 

Later that day, with the festival over and the first years out of class, a boy walks down the Club Hall while the clubs clean up. He looks around as if searching for something until he comes across a board with different club posters, announcements, and school advertisements on it. He stops and looks at it.

After a moment, he moves a poster out of the way to reveal the last Helpers Club poster. He takes it off of the board and looks at it. It has the name of their club at the top in a colorful, fun design with a few words describing what they do and information like that, followed by a group photo of everyone under it. He looks closer at the photo, specifically at Shiori. He smiles to himself before putting the poster in his bag and continuing down the hall in a much less rushed pace than before.  

On their way home, Ryuji carries one tray of cookies he made earlier as Lucy follows him. She looks a little worried and keeps more distance between them than usual as Ryuji walks casually.

‘What am I doing? Why am I so worried about this? He’s obviously fine and wants to still be around me…’ She thinks. “Sorry you didn’t really get to give out your cookies, Ryuji…” Lucy says hesitantly.

“It’s okay. At least the others got to have them. Now I don’t have to return with so many.”

He thinks back to them at school and everyone takes a couple while Haru and Hisana take a bunch. She laughs about it a little as Ryuji looks at her and smiles. She notices and blushes, looking away, embarrassed. 

“Want to hangout tonight? We could eat these cookies and play games. Have you kick my butt like you always do.” Ryuji offers casually. She looks up a bit, excited.

 “That sounds fun.. Maybe I’ll go easy on you to give you a chance?” Lucy says back, timidly excited.

“Doubt it.” Ryuji says. She laughs as Ryuji smiles a bit.

‘Maybe… things will be okay.’ Lucy thinks softly. She smiles warmly as she walks closer to him and rubs her shoulder against his. He is surprised for a moment but smiles, seeing her smiling while looking ahead.