Maria-sama ga Miteru Volume 26 Chapter 7

Early February, after school.

Yumi, s.h.i.+mako-san, and Yos.h.i.+no-san were about to take a stroll around the school grounds together. The three treasure "hiders" for the Valentine's Day treasure hunt were doing the homework that Mami-san from the Newspaper Club had a.s.signed to them a couple of days earlier.

"By the next meeting, you each need to decide roughly where you want to hide your card."

It had been set as individual homework, but they had all exchanged glances when they heard this.

If they all showed up at the next meeting having individually selected a spot, that didn't necessarily mean it would all be settled quickly. For instance, what if they all decided that the first floor of the Rose Mansion would be a good hiding spot? There's no way they'd have a treasure hunt with all the treasure concentrated in such a small area.

So they decided to do the homework as a group a.s.signment. Basically, this was a strategy meeting.

They started by a.s.sembling in the Rose Mansion, spreading out a map of the school, and gathering around it. Three mechanical pencils — Rosa Gigantea, Rosa Foetida en bouton and Rosa Chinensis en bouton.

"Well, let's head out."

The trio set off from the Rose Mansion. Despite the cold February weather, they didn't need coats.

Because they were about to take a stroll around the map.

"First of all, does anyone have anywhere that they really want to hide their card?" Yos.h.i.+no-san asked. They'd just left the Rose Mansion but were milling around, unsure of where to attack first. "If so, we can decide on that spot first and it'll make it easier to think about the other cards. I think they should all be hidden in different locations and in different ways, as much as possible."

"That's true," s.h.i.+mako-san agreed, and Yumi nodded too. Since the purpose of the strategy meeting was to avoid having too high a concentration of cards in any one area, that was a fundamental principle.

"Yeah, but there's nowhere I'm dead set on just yet."

So, for now, they had a look around the courtyard which served as the starting line. Yumi thought that they would come up with ideas as they surveyed the various locations.

"How about you, s.h.i.+mako-san? Last year, you came up with the committee notice board pretty quickly, didn't you?"

s.h.i.+mako-san was the only veteran, having done this last year, so they were trying to draw upon her experiences. In other words, a plan to draw inspiration from history.

"Yes, it was relatively easy. Sachiko-sama told me she immediately thought of the old greenhouse too," s.h.i.+mako-san answered, raising her gaze slightly.

"And Rei-chan?" Yos.h.i.+no-san asked without a moment's delay. Their relations.h.i.+p was so close that she could have read this from Rei-sama's diary, but apparently the opportunity hadn't arisen for them to discuss the matter.

"She was initially thinking about hiding it in the martial arts building, but she said there weren't any good hiding places there."

"I see. The dojo is fairly empty and entering the changing or equipment rooms would be pretty intimidating for someone that isn't a member of a martial arts club."

Yumi had thought that they were loitering around inside the courtyard together, but Yos.h.i.+no-san had dashed off alone and was surveying the interior of the martial arts building.

"Ah, sorry." Realizing that she'd lost the other two, Yos.h.i.+no-san took out an old, surplus printout (the Yamayurikai regularly reused these as notepaper) which she'd used earlier and drew a quick sketch of the martial arts building on the back. The map they were seated around did have the martial arts building, but all it showed was the top-down view of the building's shape.

"Oh . . . so that's what it looks like inside. I see."

The martial arts building was a difficult place for students not studying martial arts to step foot in. Yumi had been coming to this academy for thirteen years now and had been inside it a grand total of two or three times. It was probably even less familiar to s.h.i.+mako-san, who had entered into Lillian's Girls Academy in middle school. But looking at Yos.h.i.+no-san's rough sketch seemed to stir up some memories of last year's planning meeting within her.

"I seem to recall Rei-sama briefly considered hiding it beneath the Judo Club's tatami mats. Wouldn't it be hard to find if it were hidden there?"

"Yeah, probably."

"I think she rejected it because she didn't want the treasure hunt to come down to that sort of manual labor, which was quite kind of her."

"Hmm."

That indifferent response from Yos.h.i.+no-san showed that she didn't consider that kind Rei-sama had rejected the notion of manual labor out of concern for her.

(She's not considering it, huh.)

Last year, after looking through the books on cooking and knitting in the library, Yos.h.i.+no-san had gone to the martial arts building and partic.i.p.ated in upending the tatami mats. If she'd understood Rei-sama's heart, she obviously wouldn't have taken part in such a pointless endeavor.

"And, lastly, the martial arts building and the old greenhouse were too close together, so she decided to hide it in a different location," s.h.i.+mako-san said.

"So, the library? I guess it's a safe distance away."

Yos.h.i.+no-san drew a triangle connecting the three points on the map. Technically, the committee notice board wasn't on the first floor, so it would be on a different map, but she used the spot it would be if it was on the first floor. "I don't have anything definite in mind, but I've got an idea of what I want from my hiding spot," Yos.h.i.+no-san said, tracing along the triangle.

"What's that?"

"I want to astonish everyone. I want them to be annoyed."

"Huh?"

"Because I was incredibly annoyed when I partic.i.p.ated last year."

Yos.h.i.+no-san had a bit of a history here: not only had she struck out on all the places she looked last year, but someone from the group that had been following her around had found the yellow card and won the half-day date with Rei-sama. Despite her valiant struggle to eventually arrive at more or less the correct location — the library books — she'd seen the card slip away from her grasp. Even though a year had pa.s.sed, the memories of it were still enough to make Yos.h.i.+no-san grind her teeth in frustration.

"While I had the experience of hiding a card last year, you and Yumi-san had the experience of searching for them. I'm sure that different perspective will help with thinking up hiding places."

As s.h.i.+mako-san said, it was good that they were bringing these different perspectives together. As the saying goes, if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

"So, if you want to annoy people, how would you do it?" Yumi asked, and Yos.h.i.+no-san shrugged her shoulders.

"Like I said, I don't have anything definite in mind. That's still to come." Yos.h.i.+no-san waved the question away. Then s.h.i.+mako-san clasped her hands together, as though she'd just had an idea.

"I've got a 'feeling' I'm going for too."

"Oh, what's that?"

The other two leaned in and inquired. But the answer that s.h.i.+mako-san met them with was –

"I want it to be fun."

– That.

"Huh?"

"I don't want it to be just a treasure hunt, but, how can I put this . . . I want it to feel more like a video game."

"In what way?"

They surrounded s.h.i.+mako-san and urged her on, similar to what Yumi and her brother did to their father when he brought home souvenirs.

"Like Yos.h.i.+no-san, I haven't thought about that yet."

"Oh, okay."

Even though she'd started out by saying it was only a feeling, it was a bit disappointing to hear that the answer would be delayed.

"How about you, Yumi-san?"

"Me?"

Now that the ball was in her court, Yumi considered the topic once more. The other two were the same, in that they didn't know the exact location they wanted, but they had an inkling of an idea.

"I suppose I'd want to go with a 'close to the Yamayurikai' theme."

"What's that mean? Can you explain it a bit more clearly? Like, close in what way?"

"I'm still thinking about that."

The trio folded their arms and sank into silence.

They hadn't thought it would be easy to decide, but instead it looked like it would be quite difficult.

At any rate, nothing progressed during the silence.

In accordance with their plan to come up with new ideas by looking at the past (a renaming of their plan to draw inspiration from history), they decided to start by looking at last year's hiding places — the committee meeting board, the old greenhouse, and the library — and their surrounds.

"Still, putting it in the same place two years in a row . . ." s.h.i.+mako-san smiled as she placed down her rough sketch of the school building's second floor. After tracing over the staff room and adjacent corridor, she finished her sentence with, "Wouldn't work," just as she reached the committee meeting board.

"Well, it was the first place we thought of, so don't you think it'll be the first place everyone checks? This week's Lillian Kawaraban is doing a retrospective of last year's event, so even the second-years that had forgotten about it and the first-years that weren't here for it would go and check those places. Like how criminals always return to the scene of a crime," Yos.h.i.+no-san said, although her example seemed a bit off. Or maybe it was fitting, if they themselves were considered to be the criminals, since right now they were revisiting the previous locations.

"The board's only about this big. It doesn't take long to look over it," Yos.h.i.+no-san said while holding up her hands, indicating the size of the board. "So it wouldn't set them back too long to go and check it right at the start. And if they did find it, it'd be like winning the lottery."

"That's true."

So even if they did want to do a double bluff by hiding one in the same place as last year, it wouldn't be on the committee board. With that, the trio decided to move on to the library.

"If we're going to hide one in there, it'd have to be in the reading room."

The library had numerous other rooms, including meeting rooms and archives, but considering the procedures involved in booking these, or the possibility of damage to old books, it made sense to limit the scope of the treasure hunt to the main room. Plus it would be the most familiar location to the majority of students.

"Are you considering the reading room, Yos.h.i.+no-san?"

"I wasn't, but it would have an abundance of hiding places."

Yos.h.i.+no-san tidied away the sketch of the school building's second floor and moved the sketch of the library reading room to the center of the table. The plan for the actual event was to draw up a simple map showing the boundaries of the treasure hunt, but for their strategy meeting they wanted to know as much about the areas as possible, so they'd drawn up detailed interior maps ahead of time.

"Last year, Rei-chan hid her card in the non-borrowing section, didn't she? So that n.o.body could borrow it before the event, right?"

"Yes," s.h.i.+mako-san said, and nodded in confirmation.

"But what if it was hidden right before the event? Then it wouldn't have to be in the non-borrowing section."

"That won't work."

"Why not? We could get someone else to hide it if you're worried about how conspicuous we would be walking around right before the event."

Yos.h.i.+no-san then suggested they could ask the first-year Newspaper Club members to do this, as they were event staff that could be seen in the reading room without immediately being connected to the cards.

"Of course, we could ask someone else to hide the card for us. But it's not that. Even during the event, there's the risk that someone could borrow the book that it's hidden in — unless we ask the library to close the lending desk that afternoon."

It looked like these sorts of things had been considered last year, when Rei-sama had decided to hide her card in the library. They wanted to avoid a situation where someone unwittingly borrowed the book during the treasure hunt, or the confusion that would arise if the student on the lending desk discovered the card during the borrowing procedure.

"Ah, I see." Yos.h.i.+no-san accepted this explanation, "So we can't hide it in one of the borrowable books. Even though there's so many of them."

"But it could be hidden in between two books — we don't have to hide it between the pages of a book, like Rei-sama did."

"Right."

Yos.h.i.+no-san shot up out of her chair. It looked as though she'd had a flash of inspiration during s.h.i.+mako-san's advice.

"What is it?"

"I just had a great idea."

As expected.

"How about hiding a tree in a forest?"

"Okay, and?"

The kanji for forest (森) was made from the kanji for tree (木) repeated three times. Given that . . .

"Is there a triple-card place?"

"Stupid. That's not what I'm talking about. In the library, there's drawers with lots of cards, right? They're about the size of a student ID card, with a hole in the bottom, and made out of thick cardboard, with the book name and those strange category identifiers."

"Ah, the card catalogs," s.h.i.+mako-san informed them.

Nowadays the catalogs and loan tracking were all on the computer, so they weren't all that familiar with it, but in the past it was apparently what people used to look up books.

"How knowledgeable of you, s.h.i.+mako-san."

"I spent some time as a library a.s.sistant in middle school."

Incidentally, the Lillian's middle-school and high-school shared the same library reading room.

"The card catalogs, huh. It could be an interesting place to use, but . . ."

Yos.h.i.+no-san raised an eyebrow slightly at s.h.i.+mako-san's musings. "But?"

"I'm not sure they're the right size." s.h.i.+mako-san stood up and walked over to a pile of doc.u.ments, saying, "I think we have one here."

"Ah, a blue card."

"Right. This one is a sample they made last year."

It was only a year ago, but it still felt kind of nostalgic. Last year's head of the newspaper club and editor-in-chief of the Lillian Kawaraban, Tsukiyama Minako-sama, had held this aloft as she explained the rules. Not only was she Mami-san's onee-sama, she was still active in the Newspaper Club.

"See, it's pretty big."

This was probably Yos.h.i.+no-san's first time seeing one up close, as she took it in her hands and said, "Hmm."

"Right. Although it probably doesn't seem that big from a distance."

Incidentally, Yumi wasn't all that surprised. She had been there when Sachiko-sama's red card had been retrieved after last year's event. So her reaction was along the lines of, "Yep, that's about the size I remember." Folded in half, it was about the size of a paperback novel.

"Then that won't work, no matter how you look at it."

It didn't matter that the card wasn't exactly the same size as the catalog cards, but if it couldn't fit in the catalog drawer then they couldn't use that as a hiding place. And it probably went without saying that they couldn't fold the card in half again to make it fit.

"We could change the size of the treasure hunt cards," s.h.i.+mako-san offered, but Yos.h.i.+no-san flatly rejected this.

"No. There's no way we can do that."

"Why not?"

Why was she so concerned about this?

"Choosing the size of the card to fit the hiding place is absurd, it's putting the cart before the horse. Do you really want to adopt that sort of backwards thinking?"

"I guess not."

Yumi had been thinking, "What's the harm in changing the size of the card?" Wasn't that adapting to the conditions at hand? Would they still be using the same size card decades in the future? Although this was only the second treasure hunt, and they didn't even know if it would be held again next year. Like, even that Robocon that they usually showed on TV over the end-of-year break had a different theme every year. Wouldn't they be better off thinking about it in that light?

"We'll use the same conditions as Rei-chan. I don't want to lose."

"You don't want to lose? To last year's members?"

Yos.h.i.+no-san would occasionally exhibit some bizarre fixations.

"Retreat is a coward's act," she said, with the face of a samurai.

Putting the library reading room on hold, they surveyed the old greenhouse. The final mission in their "rehas.h.i.+ng the past" campaign.

"They'll come here too."

Yos.h.i.+no-san didn't explicitly state who, but she obviously meant the partic.i.p.ants.

"Yeah, I'm a bit worried about that."

Yumi gave voice to her thoughts.

"Why?"

The other two turned towards her.

"Last year, the red card was buried beneath the Rosa chinensis plant, right? Going on the theory that the partic.i.p.ants will first check the committee noticeboard and the library reading room, then it makes sense that they'll come here too, but. . . ."

Yumi was thinking that it would be a bit worse for this place than the other two.

"I see. We were fortunate last year that not many students thought the card might be buried in the soil, but that won't be the case this year, will it?"

Because of what happened last year, it wouldn't be considered unthinkable this year. So there would probably be a number of students looking to dig up the ground in the old greenhouse.

"Yeah, and that worries me."

It would put a strain on even the hardiest plant to have waves of people digging up and refilling the soil around its roots.

"Then how about we make the old greenhouse out of bounds?"

Yos.h.i.+no-san frowned slightly.

"That seems like a bit of a cop-out. To put it in Yos.h.i.+no-san's words, that would be one way of running away."

When Yumi said this, Yos.h.i.+no-san's eyes suddenly sparkled and she almost bounded over to grab Yumi's hand.

"Such a great friend. You really understand me."

But their other great friend wasn't swayed by this beautiful display of friends.h.i.+p, instead she honestly voiced her concerns.

"But the soil will definitely be dug up if it's included in the treasure hunt. I don't think we should sacrifice the plants in there for the sake of the event."

Environmental care committee members were naturally quite sensitive to the destruction of the environment.

"So we could print warnings in the Lillian Kawaraban. Telling people not to dig up the ground. We could even put it on the entry form."

However –

"People won't read it."

Yos.h.i.+no-san was insistent, but s.h.i.+mako-san wasn't about to concede either.

"And even if they do read it, they'll forget all about it as soon as the event starts. As for warning signs, they don't have much effect when they're not right at the spot, so—"

They were all struck by the same thought simultaneously.

"Right at the spot!"

Indeed, right at the spot.

"So it should be okay if we put warning signs right next to the plants."

Warnings that don't have much effect when they're not right at the spot should work when they were right at the spot. Bravo. Correct answer. Well done.

"It's not just Rosa chinensis, the old greenhouse probably has Rosa foetida and Rosa gigantea bushes too."

Yos.h.i.+no-san wrote a note on the side of the previous map of the martial arts room. "Warning signs at the three riskiest spots in the old greenhouse."

"Besides the greenhouse, there's other dangerous spots where we should leave warning messages too."

"Dangerous? Like the incinerator?"

"There's also the pond near the statue of Maria-sama at the fork in the path."

The pond would be iced over at this time of year, but s.h.i.+mako-san was worried about people taking it too lightly. Although if it wasn't iced over, people might think the treasure was hidden in the water. The pond wasn't really deep enough to drown in, but it was still dangerous.

"There's probably other places we want to rule in or out that are too small to put on the map too."

The ideas came one after the other as they picked up steam. It hadn't been much of a concern when she'd been a partic.i.p.ant, but as an organizer the safety of the students was the number one concern, even to the point of over-protectiveness.

"But doesn't it seem kind of lame if all the notices are just saying, 'Don't go here.'"

As an experiment, they drew small circles on the map where they would put the warning signs, and the map was awash with circles. Deeming this to be excessive, they reviewed the locations and reduced the warnings to about a third of what they had previously.

"What if we sprinkled in some hints to the cards' locations too?" s.h.i.+mako-san suggested.

"Hints?"

"It might encourage people to read them carefully if there are some hints in there."

Hearing this, Yos.h.i.+no-san said, "Hmm. I see. A carrot-and-stick approach."

"That wasn't quite how I was thinking about it, but I suppose it's similar."

For instance, if there were some students that were all fired up about digging for treasure, then the signs saying "No Digging Allowed" would kill their enthusiasm. Finding a hint might stop these dejected girls from giving up. It would be a reward instead. So the hint would be the "spoonful of sugar."

"Alright. Since you came up with the idea, they can be hints to the location of your card."

"Huh?"

Yos.h.i.+no-san ignored s.h.i.+mako-san's surprise and wrote a note, "White card hints." Yumi also sat there dumbfounded as Yos.h.i.+no-san simply said, "I told you the theme of my card, right?"

"You want to astonish everyone. You want them to be annoyed."

"Exactly. And if some hints led to my card being found easily, that would just annoy me instead. Or, what? I could put out fake hints, but I don't think that would be okay."

"No, we couldn't do that."

s.h.i.+mako-san and her strong sense of justice put a stop to that. Fake hints were completely out of the question.

"Then it's decided. How about you, Yumi-san?"

"I'll . . ."

Yumi was stumped. She couldn't picture what the hints would look like even if she wanted to have them.

". . . think about it once I've decided on my hiding spot."

If she came up with a place that would be really hard to find then she'd have some hints, but if she came up with an easy location then she wouldn't.

"Okay. That's fine."

At any rate, picking a location came first. Even though they'd taken a stroll around these outspread maps, no one had settled on their hiding spot just yet.