The moment had finally arrived much sooner than Hakuta had anticipated, but it didn’t make him any less ready for it either. Though it was only half the equation and Iruka certainly was not prepared to see him at all.

Their eyes met for a single, fleeting moment. But to him it was as if time froze for an eternity as he believed would be the time where he knew what he’d say. It was funny that leading up until now, the boy had been dreading what would come of this meeting.

Unfortunately she felt the complete opposite compared to him. When Iruka saw him, her bodily instincts took over and in a flash the girl ran away as fast as she could in a yukata away from him and her family.

“Eh!?” Her father was most shocked of all to see this turn of events transpire as his daughter practically disappeared in front of his very own eyes. “I-Iruka where are you going?”

“Somehow I expected that.” Even though he was disappointed, Hakuta couldn’t help but not be surprised by her actions. Still, he approached Omihiro to formulate a plan, even though he already knew what was going to be done.

“Hmm, didn’t think she’s react like that.” The older man said as they got near. “Sorry about that, just figured she’d at least say something to me first.” He believed his daughter would simply warn him about Hakuta, then tug on his arm meekly telling him they should change their path to not run into him. Of course, he would tell her this was actually a set up and encourage her to talk to the boy.

“It’s okay.” He assured him. “It’s not like it’ll be impossible to find her or anything.”

“Honey, what’s going on?” Iruka’s mom asked, more confused about this turn of events than anything else. “I know Iruka’s been upset lately, but what do these people have to do with this?”

“You… Didn’t tell her?” Hakuta didn’t know much about how adults handled things, but he assumed a husband would tell his wife if he had a plan revolving around their daughter.

“I… Was hoping to make it a surprise.” He nervously answered, rubbing the back of his head as if this was a just a casual mistake. “Plus I knew she’d not allow it if she knew…”

“I can see why.” Ninka commented, knowing their situation got all messed up. This being despite the fact that she and the rest of the girls were onboard with it from the start. “So what do you want to do now, Hakuta?”

“You don’t have to worry about me.” He explained the plan he had in mind. “You should just all go back and find the others. This is still a festival after all.” The boy felt bad if anyone had to ruin their fun here just because of him. This was mostly his own fault, he realized, and should be the only one taking the consequences. “Don’t worry about Iruka either, I’ll make sure she gets back to everyone in no time.”

“Sure can do.” Omihiro gave him a salute in affirmation. “I trust you, so I’m sure you’ll take care of everything.”

“I still don’t get what’s going on here.” Her mother wasn’t as confident. “I’m taking it you’re the boy she keep talking about, but she never really told me what happened.” It was a bit strange for him to see such a cautious woman. Partially due to him only ever interacting with girls who were much more outgoing, but also that this made him question on just how she was married to Omihiro of all people.

“I’ll just give you all the details on our way back.” Not wanting to delay him any further, Ninka pushed the couple along so he could be left alone. “We’ll see you later, Hakuta.”

With this, the boy found himself all on his own once more. He was tasked with chasing around for Iruka through this crowd where everyone was dressed up formally for the occasion, himself included. Not the type of clothes he would say was good for running about, but not the worst either.

And so he began his search for her. As he walked, his head turning back and forth trying to catch of glimpse of her, he was reminded of the gaming tournament. At that time, he had done something similar with the masked gamer, who he would later learn was Ino.

If he had a nickle for every time he had to chase a girl through a mass gathering of fun, he’d have two. Which wasn’t much, but odd that it had occurred twice to him by now. Hakuta hoped it wouldn’t become a habit for him, which out of context sounded much worse than it actually way.

“Hmm… Where is she?” He asked himself out loud as he stopped for a moment to try and figure it out. Just wandering around aimlessly wouldn’t help him find her. If anything, he’d probably spend all night in futility doing this. So he needed a new strategy.

The boy looked at his phone for inspiration. As much as he would’ve liked to call her on her phone to try and get it to ring, it would only work once when, assuming she hadn’t already silenced it, she would then turn off her phone. Then he realized one thing about a social media app they both shared in order to connect with each other online. There was a special feature which came with her phone which allowed him to see her location.

Hakuta wasn’t personally a fan of this himself, so he had disabled it. He had been telling Shiuka to keep it off for her own safety, but she never listened to him. The boy never knew what the point of revealing ones location to a bunch of stranger would be, but perhaps it was more useful for gyarus who were always going around and hanging out. It would certainly help them find each other using it so they’d waste less time wandering stores in search of friends.

Either way, it seemed Iruka was definitely one of the girls who left this on by default. While he’d normally scold her for it, this time it came in handy as he zoomed in on the map to get a surprisingly pinpoint location of where she, or rather, her phone was.

He walked along where he saw her marker on the map by basing what he saw on the phone to what was around him in reality. From the looks of it, she had gotten off the main grounds of the festival, but still hung around the outskirts.

It seemed to be the river which flowed adjacent to most of the land around them. Only that one needed to cross one pedestrian bridge to get to the proper side she had placed herself on.

Hakuta didn’t need to spend long to find himself right next to where the marker said she was. He put down his phone and was quickly able to spot her, sitting on an embankment overseeing the river. She had been sitting there all by her lonesome, throwing out a few rocks to skip them along the water’s surface. “Iruka?” He spoke up, revealing his presence to her.

“Ahh!” This had the understandable reaction of her getting frightened by his sudden appearance. She nearly leaped into the water just from the feat alone. “H-Hakuta? How did you find me?”

“You should probably turn this off in the future.” He showed his phone, revealing what he used to find her. Though Hakuta was more than glad to be able to use this for the occasion, he’d rather not have to make a habit out of it.

“Aww…” Despite being in a more depressed state, Iruka still maintained her usual naive and somewhat dumb nature. “You really did catch me.”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long while now.” He answered, pointing to the read, but not replied messages on his phone. “I know you’ve been sad about everything with Masahito, but that’s why I wanted to talk to you. There’s really no reason to be upset if it has anything to do with me.”

“But you don’t really understand.” She returned to her original sitting position and tossed another rock. “Ever since I saw him, I’ve done a lot of thinking. Though maybe not as much as when I’m doing a test.” Knowing her, Hakuta was confident this was easily the most thinking she had ever subjected herself to. This girl never thought during tests.

“What have you been thinking about?” He sat down besides her, taking a rock of his own to attempt to skip a rock as she had been doing. Unlike her, his rocks simply hit the water and sunk in with a big plop rather than a skip.

“I’ve just been thinking about when I used to be friends with him.” She answered. “I know that I told you that him being friends with someone else… That it was the reason he changed… But that was a lie.”