“Um, explain?” The girl asked him after his statement had caused to audience to quiet down. “Or are you just being very arrogant?”

“I’m not lying, nor am I exaggerating.” He responded. Rinse was the one more confused by his statement, how would he know about that? He wasn’t the type of person to go around looking for rumors or gossip, so someone must’ve told him that somehow. What he was talking about was still lost on her. “You can thank a friend of mine for telling me, though I won’t mention names to maintain anonymity.”

Of course that was only relevant to the girl he was talking to, since everyone else could see him on stage. Which meant they all knew that it was Otoya who spilled the beans to him. Even if it was an open secret. He was a lot more nervous now that he was speaking out loud about their conversation.

“Anyway.” He spoke up and tried to change the subject. “Does our lovely lady have any more questions?”

“I do.” She replied. “If you’re so high on the list, why still single then?” This was directed specifically towards Ishi, who sighed since he realized he walked into another trap of his own doing. “Wouldn’t girls be throwing themselves at you?”

“Because thankfully the girls here don’t just date boys only based on looks.” He answered. “The boys are kind of the same way, so I’m a little glad that my fellow classmates aren’t too superficial.” The boys also had a list of attractive girls, just like the girls. It was pretty obvious who was at the top of these days after a certain transfer student arrived.

“So then you wouldn’t care if I was a girl who was rated high, or low?” She asked.

“I wouldn’t judge you based on your looks.” The other two boys were getting a little antsy since she had started to ignore them with her questions. So now they were speaking up once more.

“Yeah, I know that we haven’t talked all that much, but you have a wonderful personality.” After they said their piece, Ishi started to laugh out loud.

“Heh, for once I agree with these two.” He said with a smile on his face. “But, not for the same reasons.” Those two made it sound like looks didn’t matter to them, which he believed to be untruthful. While there was the potential that they were being honest, there was no way of telling until they had even seen this girl. Not that their answers affected how Ishi felt. “If I did find you to be ugly, then I wouldn’t date you.”

“Really?” She responded. “That’s pretty harsh.”

“I should clarify.” He spoke again. A lot of the girls in the crowd were glaring at him for saying something that seemed to be very mean. From the way he acted during daily life, he sounded rather superficial here. “I don’t want to date someone I don’t find cute, pretty, beautiful, whatever else you want to say. We’re not talking about your personality, your question was whether I’d care if someone was considered attractive based on a list by the other boys.”

The others either misunderstood her question, or he did. To Ishi, she wanted to see if they cared about her place on the list. For him, the answer to that question was simple. “It doesn’t matter what place you have on that list. I’ll be the judge of whether or not you’re a pretty girl. I’m not going to let the opinions of others affect how I feel.” His words resonated among the fairgrounds as the crowd fell silent. He was done with his speech, and more importantly, done with this game. “Are we finished here yet? I’d like to get going soon.”

“That’s everything I need.” She said. Her decision was made.

R-really?” Otoya was a little shocked that he needed to recollect himself to continue his act. “I mean, of course.” He got control back of his mic and returned to his game show host persona. “Then mystery girl, who will you chose?” Everyone leaned in to hear her answer as she stood up from her seat.

“I’m choosing the third contestant.”

“What?” The other contestants said.

“What?” Otoya and the audience was just as surprised as them.

“Wait, what?” Ishi was the one most shocked out of all of them. He was certain that she wasn’t going to pick him. Why would someone want him after everything he said? The boy even said he didn’t want to be on stage, why would she pick someone that was apathetic about the whole deal?

“Personally, I wasn’t into the whole thing here.” She said, then took off her headset. “But, you seem decent…” Her voice, her real voice came out. That was when he realized just who this girl was. She also came to the bitter realization of who he was when she poked her head from the around the wall set up to prevent them from seeing each other.

“K-Kamagata?” It was Chinae who was the mystery girl chosen by the students. Similar to him, they had picked her because she was a girl that was a loner. Apparently no one took this selection process very serious among the third years, since they thought it’d be funny if people like him and her were on stage. Unfortunately for the boys, they were hoping she’d turning into a shy stumbling mess on stage. That girl was a lot more versed to being in front of so many people than they were expecting.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” She said the moment she laid eyes on him.

“And there you have it folks.” Otoya didn’t miss a beat once he regained his composure. “Looks like our two lovebirds for this event are Ishi Hirose and Chinae Kamagata. Let’s give it up for them.” The audience cheered as their looked to one another.

“We’re not doing the date, right?” He asked.

“Nope.” Was the response she had, which both were in agreement for.

“Ishi, how was it?” Once that game was over with, they were reunited with Youna and Rinse. “It looked really scary with all those people watching you.”

“Eh, it was pretty bad.” He responded. “Mostly because I didn’t want to win.”

“It’s fine. Not like we’re going to go on an actual date or anything.” Chinae looked away from him and pouted. She couldn’t believe that’s who she chose. Going into this game show, she was expecting a bunch of boys like the first two that she wouldn’t care about picking and dumping. With him, she was fine with dumping him, but she really was cool with the personality behind the veil. “If I knew it was you, then I definitely wouldn’t have chosen you.”

Meanwhile, Rinse looked at the girl. This was the sister of one of her coworkers. Something that was really hard to believe given their personalities. She wondered what Chiana would think when she learned that her sister almost had a chance to date Ishi. They both knew him, so would she be okay with it?

“Well, see you girls later.” He said, already walking away from the group.

“H-hey, you really don’t want to explore the culture festival with us?” Rinse tried to stop him to no avail.

“You can do whatever you want to do.” He responded, not stopping his walk. “I’m going to do whatever I want to do.” That latter point was kind of untrue, since what he really want to do right now was go home. Unfortunately he was forced to be here for the entire day, especially given his role for the talent show later tonight.

“C-can you tell us what you’re going to do?” Youna asked.

“If I tell you, then you’ll just end up following me.” He knew what their plan was, so he was going to leave no room for error. After being forced into that game show, he really wanted a break from people. “Don’t worry, you’ll all see me during the talent show anyway. So just give me this one thing today, please?” He put his hands together to basically beg.

“Fine, I’ll leave you alone until then.” Rinse relented. She already got enough of what she was looking for from him thanks to the game show. That being that pretty much nothing fazed this boy, it only just tired him out.

“Okay…” Youna also accepted this fate. “But, I want to be able to spend some time with you… After the talent show… A-a-alon… I just want to hang out.” Her words sputtered out towards the end of her sentence. The more she heard herself speak to him like that only served to make the girl more conscious of what she was saying.

“Sure, we’ll see what happens after the show.” He told her. It would be getting kind of late after the talent show, so he figured that the bonfire was the only option. “And I guess…” Ishi was about to address Chinae, but there was one problem with that.

“She’s gone.” Said Rinse. Since that girl didn’t care about any of them, she had already made her leave without saying goodbye. “Well Youna, let’s go see what other stands people have out here.” The pair left, leaving him to be all on his own.

“Great.” He said to himself and went on his merry way. Surely the rest of the day was going to go his way. Nothing was going to bother him since his life totally wanted to give him some type of joy.

Right?