Maria-sama ga Miteru Volume 19 Chapter 4

"Ogasawara Sachiko-san? Yeah, she returned the book a long time ago."

Down another branch of the forked road, behind the Loan Counter of the Library's reading room, she laughed.

"Ah. Thirty minutes ago huh ... Sorry, I don't remember exactly how long."

Which one was which she did not know. One of the two was the "Secretly saw another person's Onee-sama girl" , and the other was the "Threw the Rosary back girl". Even when the two were in front of her, she could not believe that they had had such violent pasts.

"When was the book returned?"

Minako-sama bent down onto the counter and asked once more.

"Because there was a bit of confusion, I couldn't deal with it right after it was dropped off. But the book was handed in, and I sorted it all out and input it into the computer soon after."

The Library staffer looked over her shoulder. While at her work post, behind a pile of books, she had fortuitously spied the back cover of the book that Sachiko-sama had been reading.

"... Well, she came."

Onee-sama doggedly fulfilled her first objective. Now she was expected to return to the Rose Mansion.

"Did you see Sachiko-san leave the reading room?"

She shook her head and said "No".

"Oh yes. You were confused. So you couldn't have noticed every person who had come and gone, right?"

"Probably. After that, she did not come back to borrow a book."

Thank you, Minako-sama said, and bowed towards the counter. Then she turned towards Yumi.

"Sachiko-san had come only to return the book."

"Huh."

Yumi nodded without much thought. Doing so at this point made Yumi look suspicious. What with her having said "I'm off to the library!".

"Because she came quite a while ago, it has probably been reshelved but, let's at least try to look for it in the reading room."

After hearing Minako-sama's plan, the two split up and would meet again in the middle of the room. It would be a good use of time while searching the wide reading room.

"The building will close in ten minutes."

After hearing the Library Staffer's announcement, Yumi checked her watch, and began walking along the wall. As she was walking, she began diligently inspecting the cracks between the books on the various bookshelves.

After an unknown time had pa.s.sed, Yumi discovered those two again in an unsuspecting corner of the room.

Hugging the side of a bookshelf, Yumi saw the cuddled two reading a pamphlet with one picture spanning the current two pages. If things would have been different, Yumi would have wanted to watch from a distance but, now was not the time for that sort of thing. Yumi mentally apologized to them as she silently crept up behind the two Rosa Gigantea sisters and began to bother them.

"Excuse me, s.h.i.+mako-san."

"Oh, Yumi-san."

"I apologize in advance, Yumi-sama."

"Ah, no no, thank you."

When Noriko had dipped her head towards Yumi, she dipped it down in return at Noriko. Dozing was a problem when the library was about to close.

"By the way, how long have you two been in here?"

"We came here right after we left the Rose Mansion. About how long it's been, it's been an hour it seems."

s.h.i.+mako-san made a shocked face as she looked at her watch. It's as if the book had been some entrancing ghost.

Well anyway, they had been in the library for a long time, so maybe they knew in what direction Sachiko-sama had gone. As soon as it seemed that Yumi had started to talk, s.h.i.+mako-san looked as if she were expecting a depressing question.

"Were you together with Sachiko-sama?"

"Uh...."

In her mad hope, Yumi had crumpled her skirt. s.h.i.+mako-san quickly helped her fix it, so she would not have to put her b.u.t.t on the floor.

"W... what's wrong? Did I say something wrong?"

"No. Nothing wrong."

Much time had pa.s.sed from when she had dropped Sachiko-sama's letter to the time that Sachiko-sama had come to return the book, so she explained her look of worry.

"Could it have been Touko?"

Noriko who had been silent and had only been listening up to now, quietly spoke.

"Earlier, I unexpectedly met up with Touko at the entrance to the reading room, and I told her that you were still in cla.s.s after school. After that, she started exiting the room and looked back at me when she ran into Rosa Chinensis. They had gone on together into the Milk Hall. It could have been Touko."

"No, that's not what happened."

At that time, rather than drinking strawberry milk with Sachiko-sama in the Milk Hall, Touko-chan had drunk black tea with Yumi at the Rose Mansion.

"Let's search together."

s.h.i.+mako closed the pamphlet, and Noriko-chan nodded.

"Well, it's not that big of a thing."

"But the truth is, you don't know where she went?"

No, it wasn't that Yumi did not know where Sachiko-sama had gone, but it was that something had not been found.

"Perhaps she had unexpectedly returned to the Rosa Mansion."

"Wouldn't that have been nice."

"But, you two had, with the book --"

"We had been reading books for a while, but we had seen Sachiko-sama before we started reading."

What could she do? Making a big deal about being able to find Sachiko-sama, it would be best to just fix up the situation.

"Noriko, would you return that pamphlet please."

"Sure."

When Noriko returned the pamphlet into the bookshelf, Yumi suddenly spied the t.i.tle.

"Sakura Folk Tales?"

"Yeah. If you read Sakuratei, you would find it real interesting. Because the two are part of the same story, this pamphlet isn't very long. I had heard about it from someone in second-year Sakura cla.s.s, and so I asked her about how she had gotten the book. She told me that she had won it as a gift in a lottery, but that, if I wanted to read it, I could probably find it at the library. So then I and Noriko came here to try to find it."

Because Yumi had looked over Sakuratei once before, she understood. It resembled that book, but it was different.

"Oh yeah. That book is from this year, isn't it?"

s.h.i.+mako stroked the bookshelf that the pamphlet had been returned to while laughing. The books arranged on the shelf sometimes differed in size or the depth of color on them, but all of them were pamphlets with pink back covers.

"All of these books were written about the 'Sakura cla.s.s's history?" Yumi was quite interested.

Yes, probably.

"Which page?"