- Ryu -

After introducing ourselves, my classmates, Rihona, and I took a seat to discuss our strategy to beat the club's president.

The girl, Kamihoriuchi Rumi, played with a lock of her dark red hair as she flipped through a notebook. After a while, she stopped on a certain page and pushed the notebook toward us.

"This is all we have on him."

Decklists, playstyle, personality traits, even dietary habits... Those pages contained lots of information, either useful or superfluous, about this club's president, Fukuda Hiroshi.
Rihona read through all of them, then she took several photos with her phone.

"May I ask something?" Nakajima raised her hand. "What's stopping you from creating a new club without him?"
Kamihoriuchi crossed her legs. "That's the deal we made with the student council. You see, this is not the first time someone tried to kick him out."

I had heard of this before. Someone challenged Fukuda to a match, with the condition that if he won, the dissidents wouldn't be able to form another TCG-related club until the current club president quit. With the student council president, Mishima Kouji, as a witness, both parties agreed to those conditions. Needless to say, that brave challenger failed to defeat Fukuda.

"I see," said Nakajima, rubbing her chin, "and who was the idiot who agreed to that condition?"
"I believe it was Sakuragi Takehito."
I couldn't help but chortle. "Pfft, no wonder he left along with the rest of the audience. That guy..."

Kamihoriuchi cleared her throat. "Anyway, I would like to see your skill firsthand."
"Is it really necessary? I'm sure Michiru will mop the floor with him," Nakajima said.
Rihona tilted her head. "I thought you haven't seen her play yet."
"Is that true? Then why did you-"
"Because I trust her, of course. And, I want to be there next time she defeats someone while looking all cool and stuff."
Miyazawa looked at her, a faint smile showing on her face.
"Please wait a second," Kamihoriuchi left her seat and walked to the door. She opened it and found, a girl with black hair and a blue streak, struggling to keep her balance.

The girl managed to hold onto the door frame and looked up at Kamihoriuchi. "Hi there."
"Did you need something?"
"Eh? No, I was just, uh, passing."
"No, I'm sure you were standing there the whole time. I can tell."
"Ugh, a gift?"
"Yeah."

The girl let out a sigh. "You got me. The truth is, I..."
She trailed off, then her face froze.
"Hey, t-tell me I'm not imagining things. Is that a...?"
She pointed to a corner and everyone turned around to see just what had shocked her. Everyone but me.

Come on, people. She is clearly trying to run away.

Just as she prepared to make a run for it, our eyes met. She stared at me with those green eyes of hers, as if I had just done some impossible feat.

"Why didn't you turn around?"
"Why would I?"

She groaned and ran away. I could have gone after her, but I had no real reason to do so.
At that moment, the others stopped staring at the corner.

"What was that?"
"She got away!"
Miyazawa and Nakajima looked at each other. "That was... a gift, wasn't it?"
"Uh-huh. A weak one, though."
Kamihoriuchi fixed her gaze on me. "Are you impervious to gifts or something?"
"Yeah."
"No wonder I couldn't feel your presence."
"Feel my presence? Ahh, is that why you knew that girl was there?"
"That's right."
"I see. Well, we gotta get going, right?" I said, turning to Rihona.
"Eh? That's right! Um, Miyazawa, I'll message you later, okay?"

We left our classmates with the TCG club. After this little detour, we finally left school and headed to the bookstore.

After walking between several shelves, we reached the light novel section.

"Here it is," Rihona said, picking a book from the pile. It looked just like the one Kowasugi was reading this morning. "Should I get the rest while I am at it?"
While Rihona picked up more books, my eyes darted back and forth. I could count with my hands the light novels whose covers didn't feature a cute girl standing on a simple background.
"Barely anything gets a full adaptation these days, so why not give light novels a try? You can't just live your life consuming unfinished stories."

I do read manga, though, so it's not like I exclusively consume advertisements without a real conclusion.

"Yes, mom. Hey, but what about the novels that get canned?"
Rihona"s cheeks flushed. "D-Don't call me that... I don't want to be your mom!"
"Understood, ma'am. Sorry for being such an ugly, undesirable kid," I said with a bow.
"No, that's not what I meant."
"Pfft, ha ha ha."

As my friend pouted, I noticed someone watching us. She was jotting something down on a notepad while holding several books under her arm.
Black hair that reached her shoulders, and a single streak dyed light blue. Those features were still fresh on my mind, so I didn't have trouble recognizing her.

"You are the girl from before."
"Eh?"

A book slipped from her grasp. I picked it up for her and managed to read a single word from the cover.

"Lyrics?"
"Y-Yeah, is there a problem with that?"
"No, not at all."
"Now tell me, why didn't my gift work on you? It is already useless as is, and now I find out it doesn't always work."

She proceeded to explain her gift, even though I didn't recall asking. Her gift allowed her to make her target focus for a couple of seconds on whatever she wanted. But it wasn't very strong, so at best It could be used for things like causing a brief distraction to slip away.

"Well, my gift is to be unaffected by other gifts, so you were out of luck. Now is my turn to ask, why were you eavesdropping on us? Twice, even."
"That is..."
Rihona approached us, carrying several books in her arms. She looked at the girl. "Oh, you are the one from before."
"Listen, I was just looking for inspiration, okay? I want to try writing songs of my own, so when I heard about what was happening in the card game club, I checked it out, since it seemed interesting. Oh, by the way, meeting you two here was just a coincidence, but when I saw you two getting along, I..."
"I see. You want to write songs."
"Yes. I have uploaded several covers to the web already, but I thought it was about time to 'expand my horizons', as they say."
"Uploading covers?" Rihona said, "just like that singer you follow, Ryu. What was she called? Orbital 7?"
"No, no. She is-"
"Sorry, senpai, but I gotta go. I apologize for troubling you, I'll reflect on my actions and all that jazz. Excuse me."

She bowed and left. Unfortunately for her, there were several people lined up near the cash register, so she would be stuck waiting for a while.

"Uh... We should get going, too," Rihona said.
"Sure. Let me carry that for you."
"Thank you."

We got in line. That girl glanced in our direction a couple of times until her turn to pay arrived. Once she was done with that, she left in a hurry.
After paying for the books she picked up, Rihona handed some of them to me.
I reached for my wallet. "Let me pay you back."
"It's fine. Treat them as a present," Rihona smiled. "Make sure to read them, okay?"
"Yes, mom."
"I-I told you already, don't call me that!"

Later that day, Rihona send me the pictures she took of Kamihoriuchi's notes. I was going to analyze them and help her come up with strategies to beat Fukuda. To get in the mood for that, I put on some music. To be precise, it was a cover of "Bright Ignition", one of the many opening themes associated with the Alter Fortuna anime series, by none other than Orbeat:71.

That's weird. I have listened to this one several times before, but today, it feels like... if I had heard this voice somewhere else.