She is Reading My Thoughts Again Today - Chapter 38
Poster Day
While we are on the stairs near the library, she asks me a question.
“What is the library committee job for the festival preparation?”
“You don’t know? I haven’t told you before?”
I thought she already knew it because she came along with me naturally.
“No, you haven’t told me before.”
“I’m surprised you followed me despite you don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, well…”
She looks at me and rolls her eyes as I’m opening the library door. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be in the classroom. I feel the same way so I have no right to say anything about it.
“We’re going to put up posters about our favourite books around the school. So now we’re going to decorate it first.”
We sat down facing each other, put our stationary between us and there’s a piece of cardboard for the poster at the centre of it. She is absorbed into her origami and she is cutting them into various shapes.
“Can I use them as well?”
“Go ahead.”
She handed me a piece of origami that had probably been used and folded a several times. Then she made a yellow origami star.
“Are you going to use these for the decoration?”
“It is recommended to decorate the poster, but it’s not mandatory.”
The bright expression on her face turns into a dubious stare. It’s as if she is trying to ask why don’t I just use it for the poster decoration.
“So, what are you trying to say?”
“Do you think I can decorate the poster?”
“Then, how will you decorate it Hokuto-san?”
“I won’t.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll just write some introduction, some headline-ish thing and that will be it.”
“I’ll do it then.”
With a strong declaration, she snatched the poster off my hand and put it on the table.
“Really?”
“You don’t want me to decorate it?”
She’s already holding a pair of scissors. If I say I don’t want to, will she stop decorating it? No, she probably doesn’t have any intention of stopping.
“It’s a huge help for me, but are you okay with it?”
“Of course, is there anything I should be careful with?”
“You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t cover the introduction of the book. I’m sorry, I have no skills at decorating, I’ll leave it all up to you.”
“I can’t say I’ve done this before, but I’ll do my best.”
She cuts the origami carefully into various star and heart shapes. The way she pastes the paper is very careful and precise. I feel bad if I read a book while she is working on it, so I just sit there and stare at her.
“Strange. Hokuto-san, you must’ve seen my devastating painting, but you still entrusted me with something like this.”
Her words reminded me of the ‘door’ painting of hers. Just imagining it sent chills down my spine.
“…I forgot about it.”
How could I have forgotten something that devastating?
“I thought so as well. Well, I just started decorating it, I can stop if you want, but what should we do with it?”
If she stops decorating it, then it’ll just be a plain, boring poster. It doesn’t look good at all, but it’s not likely to be seen by people after all. But this time she said she would do it herself, I think she is confident that she can decorate it nicely this time. She must be.
“…if it starts to look bad, stop decorating it.”
I thought it’s a very risky decision, but we went on with it. After a while, a not-so-great but good-looking poster is made.
“How is it?”
“It looks very good, thanks. I couldn’t have done it myself.”
“That’s great then.”
“Really, but…”
I almost said ‘Can’t you spend a little more time on this part?’ aloud, but I stopped myself. She is doing it for me, she is helping me. I shouldn’t say something like that.
“I don’t want to go back to the classroom.”
“Yeah, me too.”
The preparation for the festival is in its final stages. All that’s left to do is rehearsal and final adjustments for the show. In the early stages of the preparation, we’ve been able to get away from the classroom by working on props as much as possible, but people like us who won’t perform on stage no longer have anything to do. Luckily, there was still the library committee work to do, so we used that as an excuse to get away from the classroom.
“We don’t have to go back to the classroom if you don’t want to.”
She touches my hand which is out on the desk. She touches me gently, very gently. I wonder if the devil tempts people with this kind of voice.
“Can I tell you something again?”
“No, no. Let’s just go back.”
“Where?”
“Classroom.”
She smiled mischievously, as if trying to say ‘I knew you would say that.’