Vol 2 CHAPTER 18: Summer Festival Scramble ②【Volume 2: With the Footsteps of Ruin Echoing, I Come Crawling for You 【NTR Execution Arc】】

Kotofuki, me, and our classmates moved through the night stalls together, enjoying the festival as we went.

Everyone did their own thing—spotting stalls that caught their eye, buying food to snack on—while still staying loosely grouped so we didn’t fully scatter.

Altogether, it wasn’t even ten people.

“You said you were going to invite a bunch of people, so I thought there’d be way more… but it didn’t really gather that much, huh?”

“It’s the opposite, Kotofuki. Too many showed up.”

“What do you mean?”

I explained it to Kotofuki as she made a puzzled face.

I’d tossed the idea of going to the summer festival into the class group chat, but in the end, so many people gathered that I couldn’t even keep track of who was actually there.

All I wanted was an excuse to invite Kotofuki, so I’d been pretty casual about it—then everyone else got way more fired up than I expected, and I was the one who ended up thrown off.

“Friends of friends of friends… honestly, this totally incomprehensible crowd came rushing in, so we were like, yeah, there’s no way we can move as one big group.

So we settled on: free participation, free movement, free dispersal. Basically—form whatever group you want and have fun. So at this point, the festival grounds are crawling with students from our school.”

“Huh… that’s kind of crazy.”

I couldn’t help nodding, genuinely impressed by what she said. Seems I underestimated the sheer obsession students have with finding any excuse to do a “youth event.”

“So, Kotofuki, if you spot friends from your class or anything, feel free to go say hi. Don’t worry about us, okay?”

By the way, the classmates around me and Kotofuki right now were the ones who, when I said, “Kotofuki’s coming,” immediately declared they wanted to hang out with her. So there were a lot of girls who already knew her.

When I told her that, Kotofuki worked her mouth a little and looked around at the friends nearby. She seemed happy to realize she had enough pull that people would actually wait to hang out with her. And then, just like that, she went over to a girl who was staring longingly at a stall selling sausages.

“Yeah, Kotofuki really is popular…”

Her reputation at school is excellent.

She’s got that straightforward, no-nonsense personality—no front, no back—and that alone is more than enough to earn people’s trust. Those strong, steady eyes of hers even seem to draw something close to admiration from people with the opposite temperament. And above all, she’s a good person.

The highest good is like water.

Naturally, the people who gather around her tend to be similarly inclined, and her circle is refreshingly healthy.

The one flaw is that she’s so honest she doesn’t really know how to doubt people, so she tends to believe what she’s told and take losses in real life.

But even that could be called part of her charm.

—Which is exactly why someone like me ended up setting my sights on her, huh.

That thought flashed through my head, and I ended up feeling sorry for her.

Come to think of it, I’d heard her meeting with Ichinose-senpai also involved some half-scam-like setup, and apparently she’s the type that gets liked by guys who sneak around behind the scenes—like me, like Ichinose-senpai.

Yeah. She’s seriously pitiful.

—Not that I’m going to ease up because of it.

Reaffirming my resolve, I called out to grab Kotofuki’s attention.

I held up her favorite and shouted it at her.

“Kotofuki! I’m buying yakisoba, so come eat some!”

“Ah—yeah! I want it! The benishoga part!!”

——

After that, we kept clearing stall after stall, walking along the shrine approach.

Sometimes we devoured fried potatoes, sometimes we tried lottery pulls, sometimes we joined a ramune chugging contest. Someone said they wanted to try yo-yo fishing, so we all competed, too. Thanks to that, by the time we left the stalls, we’d become a loud, chaotic student pack. But nobody was going to scold us for it.

Because today is a festival.

“Ahh, we should go watch the fireworks soon—”

Someone made that suggestion.

Fireworks time was closing in.

The classmates started heading toward a viewing space set up on a slightly higher spot. The plan was to chat there while we waited for the fireworks.

“Ah… yeah.”

In my field of view, I saw Kotofuki hesitate, just slightly.

Seeing that, I got it.

“Ah—sorry. There’s something I want to talk to Kotofuki about, so could you guys go on ahead?”

When I said that, a bunch of people shot me suspicious looks.

But some of the classmates understood that Kotofuki and I are “exes,” so they probably read between the lines. Without saying anything, they went on ahead.

And once we were alone in the middle of the walkway, I turned back to Kotofuki—who looked tense from the sudden invite.

“Um… what did you want to talk about?”

“Hm? Oh, it’s nothing serious.”

Saying that, I pulled my wallet from my pocket and handed her the bandage I’d kept inside it.

“Huh… this is…?”

“Your geta straps are rubbing and it hurts, right? You should put this on.”

At my words, Kotofuki’s eyes went wide in surprise—like she couldn’t believe it. Then we moved off to the side of the walkway, to a spot with a small bench meant for sitting.

“Th-thank you… Kudo-kun. How did you notice?”

“Yeah, I figured something was up when you were walking kind of weird. I was like, oh, yeah—you got hit by that. Just clicked.”

When you wear geta or setta with straps, you always hear you should break them in first. I’ve had plenty of experience with shoe rub myself—this stuff is painful and annoying. At the very least, you’d hesitate to climb up to that higher spot like this.

“Ah.”

“Hm? What is it?”

I was planning to wait while she slowly put the bandage on, but she just kept hesitating, like she couldn’t bring herself to crouch down. I wondered if there was some problem—then I immediately understood.

“Ah—sorry. You’re in a yukata.”

She’d probably been dressed properly, so bending down and reaching her foot was tough. And if you’re going to put a bandage at the base of your toes, you have to spread your legs a little—she probably didn’t want the hem of her yukata to flip up and come undone.

I took the bandage from her and crouched by her feet.

Then I carefully applied it to the base of her big toe, which had turned red from the rubbing.

Seeing how neatly it turned out, I muttered to myself.

“Yep. Perfect.”

“…Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I took her thanks and answered with a grin.

And her face had flushed—just a little.

Oh. That went over well.

Nice one, me.

“Think you can walk?”

“Y-Yeah.”