CH 45

Aah! The tea ceremony ended smoothly! Mom had given me passing marks, so it was now up to everyone else’s reactions.

I felt freed after the tea ceremony ended, so I could sleep easily. I had been worrying quite a lot recently, so I wasn’t able to get a good night’s sleep. But thanks to the tea ceremony ending smoothly, I slept soundly. The problem was today. I’d be seeing everyone’s reactions to the tea ceremony today, so I wasn’t safe yet.

Azami-chan was acting that stiffly, so it failed a little. Well, maybe she was acting stiffly because she was the main guest, not because I failed. I thought it was cute, but maybe Azami-chan herself or the people around her minded. 

The other problem was Tsubaki-chan. She was flawless at the tea ceremony as the teamaster; she probably had confidence with her tea ceremony etiquette. Maybe she was slightly unsatisfied yesterday because of that. The tea ceremony yesterday was geared towards beginners having their first tea ceremony. That was why people hoping for the real thing might’ve found it lacking.

Tsubaki-chan had been really enthusiastic from the start and she was quite good at tea ceremonies. Since she was looking forward to a proper tea ceremony, maybe the one that I held left her feeling dissatisfied. 

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But I’d be troubled if she wanted a proper tea ceremony from me. I had learned tea ceremony at the Hundred Earth Style, but it wasn’t my main focus and I hadn’t practiced it often nor spent much time on it. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was at the same level as a beginner. I couldn’t hold a propertea ceremony; that was impossible.

I did my best yesterday to keep up appearances and perform perfectly. Despite that, someone like Tsubaki-chan might’ve seen through me. I’d misread the gathering as one with only beginner children, but I wondered if Tsubaki-chan would agree…

“Oh, Satsuki-chan, greetings.”

“Qallvkdtp.”

Ebld R ldvlale vbl nzyppassx, Fyvpwjk-nbyd oyp yzalyeu vblal yp wpwyz. Mblal olal svbla pvweldvp pnyvvlale blal yde vblal, cwv bso lyazu eke Fyvpwjk-nbyd yaakhl? R asel vbl nya okvb xu casvbla yde lhlausdl kd xu qyxkzu tyvblale vs lyv calyjqypv, ps R nswzed’v yaakhl yv yd lyazkla vkxl. R’e rascyczu dlhla yaakhl lyazkla vbyd Fyvpwjk-nbyd.

R oyzjle vs xu plyv yde easrrle xu cyt. Mbl dwxcla sq pvweldvp nsxkdt kd pvyavle kdnalypkdt pbsavzu yqvla. Ohlausdl tallvle lynb svbla, cwv ds sdl tallvle xl yp wpwyz. Mbl awxswap bye ekle esod iwkvl y ckv, cwv vblu olal pvkzz fwpv oyvnbkdt xl qasx yqya.

Elzz… vblu olal eskdt vbl pyxl clqsal vbl awxswap pvyavle, ps usw nswze pyu vbyv xu pkvwyvksd bye fwpv alvwadle vs dsaxyz. R eked’v vbkdj vbyv vblu eked’v clzklhl vbl awxswap; kdpvlye, R vbswtbv vbyv pkdnl vblu nswzed’v prswv vbl pyxl vsrknp sq nsdhlapyvksd shla yde shla ytykd, vblu fwpv pvsrrle vyzjkdt ycswv kv. Rd vbl lde, vbl pkvwyvksd byed’v nbydtle qsa vbl clvvla, R twlpp.

“Ysadkdt!”

“Qsse xsadkdt, Ggyxk-pyxy.”

“Ggyxk-pyxy, tallvkdtp.”

“Ggyxk-nbyd, xsadkdt.”

As I was thinking that, Azami-chan energetically threw open the door and entered the classroom. She greeted everyone and people inside the classroom returned her greetings. No… I always said this, but I definitely wasn’t jealous, you know? Definitely not, okay?

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“Good morning, Sakuya-sama!”

“Greetings, Azami-chan.”

Azami-chan walked in front of me. It had become routine lately for her to greet me. She was subdued sometimes, but she was super energetic today as if she didn’t really mind yesterday’s failure. Actually, she was too energetic. Maybe something good had happened?

“Azami-chan, you are in quite a good mood today, yes? Has something good happened?”

“Yes! I feel like I have eaten three servings of rice1 just from watching your beautiful figure, Sakuya-sama!”

“…huh?”

“Ah…”

Eaten three servings of rice? I felt like Azami-chan just said something like that… Did I mishear?

No way… a lady born and raised in an upper-class family like Azami-chan wouldn’t use an expression like that. I probably misheard.

“I-I must prepare for class, so excuse me! Bye!”

“Oh…”

Azami-chan returned to her own seat without giving me time to say anything. I didn’t necessarily have anything so urgent that I needed to stop to talk to her right now,  and she already mentioned why she was leaving, so I didn’t have any reason to stop her. I could talk to her again at break time or lunch anyway. Maybe I could indirectly ask everyone about yesterday at lunch…

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～～～～～～～

Everyone gathered at lunch… I was planning to bring up yesterday, but I didn’t even have to speak up. That was because everyone started talking about yesterday’s tea ceremony after we finished eating.

“Yesterday’s tea ceremony was absolutely splendid!”

“Th-Thank you very much?”

The first one who spoke was Tsubaki-chan. My expectation, or rather the most likely possibility, was that Tsubaki-chan would be dissatisfied with yesterday’s tea ceremony, but… Maybe I had to take this into consideration.

She was the most enthusiastic from the beginning about a tea ceremony and flawlessly performed the role of teamaster. Maybe Tsubaki-chan felt like a teacher warmly protecting her students as she watched them try and fail over and over again.

“Perhaps there was something not to your satisfaction, Tsubaki-chan…”

“No! There was nothing like that! It was an absolutely stunning tea ceremony! Please, please come to my house next!”

Tsubaki-chan cut me off, stood up, tightly grasped my hands… and strongly said that. But please forgive me. I was really bad with etiquette and tea ceremonies… I really understood how Azami-chan and Akane-chan felt… I was fed up.

“If the opportunity presents itself, I shall think about it…”

I politely declined Tsubaki-chan’s invitation. I couldn’t bear just thinking about doing something like that again. Not like I could stop doing it for the rest of my life, but…

No… wait?

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That was true. If I was planning to live as a lady from now on, I couldn’t avoid doing things like this. I had to do it again sometime, somewhere. It’d be a lot worse if I embarrassed myself then… Wasn’t it better to get used to things like this with everyone else while we still didn’t know what we were doing?

“Sakuya-sama, you looked… absolutely beautiful…”

“Definitely… you were like a teacher showing us what to do…”

As I was thinking, Azami-chan said something like that. Then, everyone started extolling me.

Uwaaaah! Please stop~~! They were absolutely laughing at me! They sounded like supportive young ladies, but they were definitely being sarcastic! I didn’t think that those kids were thinking that far ahead. They pretended to support me, but they were actually looking down on me!

Mom and Master only got mad at me. They always said that something was completely inadequate. This tea ceremony was geared towards beginners, so even beginners could somehow keep up appearances. However, my etiquette wouldn’t fly in a real tea ceremony. It’d be super embarrassing if they praised me that highly for something like that!

“Sakuya-chan, it went very well!”

“Th-Thank you…”

Kawabata Yuzuriha-chan said that with a carefree smile… Kuh! I found that smile of hers scary.

Yuzuriha-chan was relatively friendly with me even before, or rather, she was the unreserved type. She was the girl who always called Azami-chan “Azami-chan”. Since she was that unreserved with the faction leader, she obviously wouldn’t have any such boundaries with me.

She was very friendly and easy to talk to, but her carefree smile could become a weapon at times. Both Azami-chan and I made small mistakes easily and we were the type to get embarrassed when making those mistakes in front of others. But Yuzuriha-chan was the type to say something at those times without restraint or concern.

Maybe she meant nothing bad at all, but I could still somewhat bear it as the person she was talking about. But I couldn’t complain about Yuzuriha-chan either, right? It was my own fault for making the mistake, so Yuzuriha-chan couldn’t be blamed for immediately hounding me down. And she was talking with such an innocent, carefree smile on her face, so Azami-chan couldn’t get mad either.

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“That is true… I would like to participate in more gatherings like that. I do not have much confidence with the real thing, so… I am grateful for your consideration, Sakuya-sama.”

“If you are contented, then I am happy.”

The person who just spoke was the shy Mushanokouji Renge-chan. She always seemed a step farther away than the always reserved and polite Tsubaki-chan. Tsubaki-chan was always polite, but I felt like I had gotten her to open up a little. Renge-chan was still a little distant or something, though…

There were five people in Azami-chan’s group: Azami-chan, Akane-chan, Tsubaki-chan, Yuzuriha-chan, and Renge-chan. There were other girls who obeyed Azami-chan, but those five girls were always together.

In the game “Love Flowers”, those five people were Lady Sakuya’s followers. With Satsuki-chan included, there were six. Satsuki-chan was Lady Sakuya’s close friend, but also supported her behind the scenes, or rather, was a spy… She was like that as well, but that aspect of her wasn’t clearly portrayed in the game.

I thought that I had gotten pretty close to Azami-chan’s group, but I was still distant from Akane-chan and Renge-chan… Compared to them, I felt that I had become instantly friendlier with Tsubaki-chan. Or rather, closer… Tsubaki-chan was sitting beside me for some reason.

The usual seating arrangement was Azami-chan and I on one side with the other four sitting across from us. Today, though, Azami-chan and Tsubaki-chan were sitting beside me. Additionally, I could feel stares. I really felt their gazes. It was very hard to move…

Speaking of… what about Satsuki-chan… Though this much time had passed, I didn’t feel like my relationship with Satsuki-chan had developed that much. Was that really okay?

The game “Blooming Flowers in Love” hadn’t declared the beginning of Lady Sakuya’s and Satsuki-chan’s romance. Instead, they portrayed both of them as trusted friends. The setting book, developer interviews, and other sources hadn’t depicted how they both met or how they’d become closer.

Well, I knew it’d happened at some point, but… it was explicitly stated that all of Lady Sakuya’s close aides had known her since Touka Academy Elementary. That was why I could infer that that was also the case with Satsuki-chan. But I didn’t know when or how they all met. It just said that they had known her since Touka Academy.

For the developers, Lady Sakuya was just one of many characters who was nothing more than an all-bark-and-no-bite antagonist. They probably wouldn’t need to carefully think about the events that happened in half her lifetime. There was a possibility they just made her with the thought of “Villainesses act like this, right?”.

But… This was reality, and these people weren’t characters that appeared in a game. There wasn’t a program that’d move according to scenarios like in the game; instead, these were flesh-and-blood humans living out their daily lives.

Was this really okay?

The game always held the answers in the scenarios. Once they entered high school, those six people would appear as Lady Sakuya’s followers and close aides. But in this world that had become reality?

The future would change depending on the actions I did and the choices I took. My mom was clearly a different person from Lady Sakuya’s mother in the game. With all the disputes that occured, my reputation was different from Lady Sakuya’s. Because I’d made choices that clearly deviated from the “Love Flowers” scenarios, the world had changed in response.

Then… if I didn’t do anything, I might eternally remain distant from Satsuki-chan. It was foolish to cling to the basis that the game said that we’d become friends.

If… If by any chance… If I was forever distant from Satsuki-chan…

“——gh!”

No! I absolutely hated that! There wasn’t a Lady Sakuya without Satsuki-chan beside her!

Maybe I was a little too absentminded. I was pretty close with Azami-chan’s group, but I had neglected Satsuki-chan too much. I finally realised that.

I wanted to… I wanted to somehow become closer to her. I couldn’t have this relationship where we just saw each other and exchanged greetings!

I would absolutely… absolutely make Satsuki-chan…