Chapter 15: Chapter 15

Jin’s POV
   When Jin went to school on the next morning, he met Yoshii at the shoe locker.

   “Hey, Yoshii. Thanks for helping me out yesterday. And sorry for bailing out on you like day.” he first thanks then apologizes to the pretty boy.

   “Don’t worry about it. I could tell that you just wanted to flee from there as soon as possible.”

   “Still, I should have told you about it. By the way, how did it end? Did you ended up going to her house for real?”

   “Nope. Her daughter got missing again, and we had to search for her. By the time we did find her, the mother was so stressed out she has forgotten about the invitation.”

   Jin does his best to not show any reaction at that. He did, after all, saw the little girl running away.

   “I see.” is all he said.

   “Well, enough about that. Let’s head to class before the bell rings. We still need to discuss about our plan for Cultural Festival.” Yoshii tells him.

   A pause.

   “Even though it’s not really going anywhere.” he ends looking a bit guilty.

   Again, Jin tries his best to remain a poker face. He’s actually grateful to Yoshii for causing a rift between the two genders in their class. But the pretty boy doesn’t need to know that.

   “Do you think I could help in any way?” he asks Jin all of a sudden.

   “Um, even if you ask me that…”

   It was then when Wakaba and Estyshana arrives at the shoe locker as well.

   “Good morning, Minase-kun and Yoshii-kun.” Wakaba says to them.

   “Morning Jin. Good morning Yoshii-kun.” Estyshana says next.

   “Good morning, Wakaba-san, Esty-san.”

   “Morning, you two.”

   “I think this is the first time I ever saw the two of you together. What were you talking about?” Wakaba asks them curiously.

   Yoshii told her. After he was done, Estyshana lets out a giggle.

   “Oh, Yoshii-kun. Jin is the last person you should ask when it comes to those kind of things. I mean, can someone who’s socially awkward like him ever able to help you with group stuff?” she tells Yoshii.

   “Well, sorry for being socially awkward.” Jin mutters.

   “Let’s try to discuss it while we head to our classroom then.” Wakaba tells them.

   “By the way, where’s Watanabe?” Jin asks.

   “Anri had to come here early since she had some business to attend to at the newspaper club.”

   “I see. Then it’s just us.”

   On their way to their classroom, Wakaba told Yoshii about what they discussed yesterday.

   “Yeah, I think that I shouldn’t take any important job. It’s the only way that the other boys could show off their cool side to the girls.” he agrees.

   “We’re sorry for making you give away your spotlight.” Wakaba says to him apologetically.

   He shakes his head. “Don’t be. The only reason I tried to stood out as much as I can was because it was expected from me. Now that it’s hindering the unity of the class, I should back off.”

   “Even if you say that, can you even stop them from fighting each other?” Estyshana asks.

   “...I can’t think of any good ideas.” Yoshii confesses.

   “I, for one, thinks that you should be the one to rally them up, though. After all, you were the reason they started fighting.” Jin tells him.

   “But, how do I do it?”

   “I don’t know. Think up of a really grandiose speech and get all of them to work together?”

   “What kind of speech should I make, then?”

   “I have no idea. Like Von Mantus said, you shouldn’t ask me of all people. You could ask Watanabe instead.” Jin suggests.

   “I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Anri is very good at writing speeches, but she tends to write really long ones that takes forever to finish.” Wakaba tells Yoshii.

   “I could write one for you if you want.” Estyshana volunteers.

   “Have you even wrote a speech before?” Wakaba asks her.

   “Of course! In fact, I’ve written lots before.”

   “Just so you know, making a speech to rally up an army of demons are different with rallying up some humans.” Jin reminds her by using telepathy.

   “Bah, I bet they’re motivated by the same thing: fame and the opposite gender.”

   “...That’s, surprisingly accurate.” Jin admits grudgingly.

   “See, I told you I know what I’m doing!”

   “Thanks for your offer, Esty-san. However, I think I need to do this myself.” Yoshii declines. “I still need some follow-up from Wakaba, though.”

   “Don’t worry. I’ll definitely help you out.” Wakaba assures him.

   When homeroom starts, their teacher Takusu comes in as usual. Her face is a bit ashen. She’s probably feeling helpless for not being able to do something a out the tense atmosphere of the class she’s in charge. Wakaba and her vice-representative Uchiyama Urara stand up and go to the blackboard as usual to get the discussion started. Unlike the previous times, however, Yoshii gets up as well.

   “I have something that I need to tell all of you.” he begins a bit hesitantly.

   Jin looks around. Pretty much all the girls are starry-eyed as their prince is about to talk, while almost all the boys are glaring at him with resentment.

   “Whatever that we’ll be doing for the cultural Festival, I’m going to be a background crew.” he announces.

   Ah, so he decided to take Jin’s advise.

   This announcement of his caused a major uproar, with the girls looking like it’s the end of the world.

   “I realized that the reason everyone aren’t working together in harmony is because of me. As such, I decide to take up a humble position so that everyone else can get to shine. So please, let’s all cooperate and make this work.” he continues.

   He ends the speech by bowing really low at his classmates.

   “He’s right. Cultural Festival isn’t just about one person. I hate to be blunt, but most of you girls were too fixated on letting Yoshii-kun take all the spotlight. He’s not the only boy in our class, you know.” Wakaba chides the girls.

   Some girls actually hanged their head in shame.

   “I guess we were being very inconsiderate.” one of them admits.

   “True. We wouldn’t be happy too if all the boys were just focused on a single girl.”

   “Now that there’s no chance for Yoshii-kun to take away the spotlight, will you boys participate in the discussion and helping out?” Wakaba asks the boys.

   “Well, sure. If we get to act cool too.”

   Lots of murmurs of agreement are heard.

   “That’s let’s do this! Let’s make an everlasting memory during this Cultural Festival!” Yoshii declares.

   “Yeah, let’s do this!”

   “We won’t lose to the other classes!”

   And suddenly, the entire class is united again. With his job done, Yoshii goes back to his seat.

   “Yup. As I thought, Yoshii’s more like a Hero than you are.” Estyshana says to Jin through her mind.

   “A cardboard Hero, you mean.” Jin grunts.

   “Oh my, are you being jealous?” she mocks condescendingly.

   “As if.”

   With pointless things out of the way, the class could finally begin its discussion. First, Wakaba told the class about the things other class is doing. This is to prevent their ideas from clashing. The source of the information is, of course, Watanabe.

   “So a haunted mansion is already taken? Bummer.”

   “Well, duh. It’s pretty much a staple for Cultural Festivals.”

   “And six classes are doing cafes. That’s so many!”

   Jin isn’t taking part in this at all. He couldn’t care less and just wants this to be over.

   “Say, Esty-san. Don’t you have any good ideas?”

   “Huh?”

   The sudden question surprised the demon.

   “Yeah! I’m sure that Romania has something interesting there!”

   “Do you even know where that is?”

   “Nope, but it sounds mysterious, right?”

   “Um, I-I am not sure whether our culture has anything interesting.” Estyshana tells them.

   “Oh, don’t say that. At least tell us a thing or two.”

   “Quick! I need something here! Anything!” she pleads Jin through telepathy.

   “Let’s see, how about mud-wrestling, fire dance, yodeling, and water yoga?”

   “Um, we do mud-wrestling and a bit of fire dance. Sometimes we are in mood for yodeling and even water yoga.” Estyshana quickly recites those ideas out loud.

   “...Wow. Romania must be a pretty multi-cultured place.”

   Estyshana gasps loudly as if finally realizing that she just blurted out absolute absurdities.

   “What the Demon are these crazy ideas?” she demands from Jin.

   “Hey, you’re the one who asked. At least I thought up ideas based on the Four Elements.”

   “Who cares?”

   The discussion went on as usual with no one coming up with anything remotely decent. Jin expects this is partly due to the fact that they were two days late in beginning their discussion when every other class has already begun their preparation. Some of the students in this class got so desperate they even tried to search for ideas in the internet, but to no avail. All the noise they make while they’re discussing is starting to get on Jin’s nerves.

   “Suggest them to do a dessert cafe.” Jin tells Estyshana without using his mouth.

   “Where did that came from?”

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   “Just do it.”

   “Um, alright.”

   She made sure to get everyone’s attention before speaking.

   “What if we do a dessert cafe?” she suggests.

   “A dessert cafe? Weren’t there already too many classes that do cafes?”

   “To be fair, all of them are doing the normal cafe with teas, cakes and overpriced food. None of them are serving desserts.” Watanabe adds in some additional information.

   “Then, I guess it could work?”

   “Hey, it definitely could! Heck, my family owns a Japanese Sweets shop! I can think up of something, or ask my family for help.”

   “Hey, Satou. I guess our experiences for working as waiters are finally paying off, huh?”

   “You bet, Kimura. Say Kawayama-san, you work as a waitress too, right?”

   “Yup, I’m more than happy to help out.”

   “Hey Tsukamoto, your brother-in-law’s a manager at a flour factory, right? Think you can ask him to get us some deal?”

   “Hold on, I’m asking him right now.”

   And it’s decided. Seriously, why didn’t anyone else thought about doing this? At least half of the students in this class are working at the service industry, while a few came from family that makes sweets and desserts.

   “Thank you so much for your idea, Esty! We’re finally starting to go somewhere!” Wakaba tells Esty gratefully.

   “Nice one, Esty-san!”

   “Actually, the idea was-”

   “Don’t say one word about me.” Jin warns Estyshana.

   “But-”

   “How are we ever going to explain that we communicated with each other without talking?”

   Estyshana kept quiet after hearing that.

   Next is the distribution of workload. Once school’s over, the whole class has divided themselves into five groups: serving crews, kitchen crews, those that design the uniform that serving crews wear, the ones who calculate the budgets for costs, and the ones who look for suppliers once the menu has been decided. Jin volunteers to be in the kitchen crew since that’s the only thing he’s confident in. Along with him are Wakaba, Yoshii, and a few other classmates. Estyshana and Watanabe are part of the serving crew.

   “So, what should we make?” Wakaba asks.

   “We could make Western desserts like pancakes and waffles. They’re easy to make.”

   “Japanese Sweets are good too.”

   Again, Jin chose not to participate. It’s not that he has zero idea. Rather, he figured that his idea won’t be accepted by most of them since they still hate his guts. Best to keep quiet.

   In the end, they decide to do a bit of both. They list down the ingredients to make some prototypes so that everyone in the class can test taste.

   “So, who wants to volunteer to go out and buy ingredients?” Wakaba asks.

   Jin raises up his hand at once.

   “I’ll go.”

   “Oh, thank you Minase-kun. Now to look for someone to go with you-”

   “It’s fine. I’ll go by myself.” Jin interrupts.

   “But he need lots of things. There’s no way one person could carry all of them.”

   “Don’t worry. I’ll get a cardboard box. Or I’ll just convince the employees to loan me a trolley.”

   “...Well, if you insist so much. Please remember to keep the receipt so that the budgeting team can calculate the costs.”

   “Got it.”

   Jin gets up and leaves the classroom without any delay. He has always dreaded things which involves group works like Cultural Festivals and study camps. After all, he has to work together with people he has never talked with. And that’s before he was hated by pretty much the entire class. Just as he could finally breath normally, he hears some footsteps behind him.

   “Wait up, Jin!” he hears Estyshana’s voice.

   Jin groans. So much for finally able to breath normally. He turns around to look at her.

   “What do you want, Von Mantus?” he asks.

   “You’re going shopping, right? I want to go with you.”

   “Why? Aren’t you part of the service crew? There’s no need to follow me, right?”

   “The thing is, I was told that the service crew don’t really have things to do until the day of the festival itself. So we’re expected to help out other group.”

   “And you decided to ‘help’ me.”

   “Yup!”

   He groans again while keeps on walking. There’s just no stopping the demon once she made up her mind. Once they left the school ground, Jin hears Estyshana lets out a small sigh of relief.

   “You know, you don’t have to put on a facade if that’s not really who you are.” he tells her without looking at her.

   “Easy for you to say. For some reason, a lot of them thought I’m some kind of, what was the word, ojou-sama? As such, I kept thinking that I have to act like one.” she says gloomily.

   Jin rolls his eyes. Both Estyshana and Yoshii are exactly the same. Heavens know why they would rather get suffocated by expectations and hide their true selves. Then again, what does he know? He was never expected to be successful in life by his own family members, and people of Ifezan were so afraid of him they would rather do without him.

   “You act your normal self around me and Wakaba, right? Just do the same thing.” he suggests.

   “Like I said, it’s not that easy.”

   “Well, it’s your problem. Not mine.”

   “By the way, what are you buying?” she asks in an attempt to change the subject.

   Jin hands over the list written by Wakaba to Estyshana. She took a while to read it.

   “... Why do you need this many things? It’s going to take forever to get them all!” she complains.

   “It’s can’t be helped. We’re making several types of desserts, so this much is expected. I’m just glad that they’re keeping things simple.”

   “Based on the ingredients though, you’re not making apple pie, are you?”

   “Of course not. Do you know how difficult it is to make large batches of those? We won’t have that much time, and we’ll have a very hard time at keeping them fresh.”

   “Bummer.”

   Eventually, they reach the busy part of the city where there are lots of pedestrians walking and lots of vehicles driving by. It was then when Jin realizes that something is weird. There are way too many tourists.

   The reason Jin find this weird is that it’s nowhere near holiday season right now. Even so, he sees lots of Chinese, Koreans, Whites, African Americans, Middle Easterners and some other foreigners that he couldn’t identify. Some are busy taking pictures. Some are just walking down the street, some are having their meals at eateries. Some are just enjoying the view.

   “What’s wrong?” Estyshana asks curiously.

   “It’s nothing, really. I don’t remember seeing this many tourists while I was passing by here yesterday, that’s all.” he mutters.

   “What are tourists?”

   “Hmm, how do I explain this? Well, some humans go to other countries to take a vacation and relax. These are what you call you call tourists.” he tries to explain it as briefly as possible.

   She looks around all wide-eyed.

   “Where? I don’t see any humans different from you.”

   “...Are you serious? There! A whole group just passed by us! See? Those are clearly different than your regular Japanese that you see pretty much all the time.”

   She looks back and tilts her head left and right. She then stares at Jin for quite a while. Then she looks at the group of blonde Westerners again.

   “I get it! They’re much taller than you!” she concludes proudly.

   “Well, there’s that too. The most obvious clues are they have blonde hairs and eyes that are not brown, though. Clues anyone with eyes could grasp.”

   “Hey, don’t blame me! All you humans look the same!”

   “I can understand that logic if you have to compare Asians with other Asians, but we’re talking about comparing Asians and Westerners you know?”

   She stares at the group some more.

   “...Nope, I still can’t tell.”

   “Ah, forget it. Let’s just get our errand done.”

   As they pass by more and more tourists, Jin realizes something else about them. All these tourists are looking around as if they’re looking for someone or something. They’re doing it in a very subtle way. They’re so good at acting even Jin had a hard time noticing it. It’s confirmed. All of them are spies sent by their respective countries. They’re probably here to get information on Jin without alerting the local authorities. No big deal. Jin could easily hide his identity from them.

   They managed to get everything they need at the supermarket. All the things they got are kind of bulky, so Jin asked one of the employees so that they could borrow one of their trolley.

   “Please return it as soon as possible.” he tells Jin.

   “Understood. Thank you very much.”

   With that, they don’t have to carry all those stuff all by themselves.

   “So, now we have to get all these back to the school, and you’ll start making things with them, right?” Estyshana asks after they left the supermarket.

   “Yup. Hmm, maybe I should have got something while I was there. Oh right, my fridge is still full from my trip last night.”

   He snaps his fingers as he thought of what to eat for dinner tonight.

   “I think I’ll be having teriyaki chicken and rice.” he declares.

   “That, came out of nowhere.”

   “Sorry. I have a habit of doing this sometimes.”

   While Jin is pushing the trolley with Estyshana right behind him, he notices two teens heading his way. One is a boy, and the other is a girl. Both of them are around his age.

   The boy is wearing a red hooded jacket, a pair of short camouflage pants and a pair of black sneakers. The hood on his jacket is covering most of his face, but Jin could still see some of his spiky blonde hair. His eyes are green, and his complexion is a bit tanned.

   As for the girl, she has silky dark hair just like Wakaba. Unlike Wakaba, however, she has a blue left eye and a green right eye. As for her clothing, she’s wearing a simple white one-piece dress with the skirt almost reaching her ankles. She’s also wearing light blue cardigan and a pair of brown short boots.

   They stop right in front of Jin. The boy looks at Jin and shows him a really condescending smile. Jin could already tell that the boy was one of those edgy teens who thinks that they’re better than everybody.

   “So, you’re the Hero, huh?” he asks Jin.

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