And so, the four of us entered the horror-themed escape room.
After taking off our blindfolds, we stepped into the room. It was still damp, grim, and eerie inside.
Hayasaka seemed fine now, probably because she had screamed her lungs out yesterday.
The problem was the trembling Shinomiya and—
"I’m not scared, I’m not scared..."
—the trembling Miyuki.
Something felt ominous...
It was about time for the staff member in the mask to come in and rattle the bars.
I counted down in my head.
One, two, three!
"Kwoooooo!!"
"Kyaaaaaaa, President——!"
"Uwooooooo, Shinomiya——!"
Shinomiya was one thing, but why were you scared too...?
This was bad. At this rate, we weren’t going to make any kind of impression at all.
I moved closer to Hayasaka and whispered, "At this rate, I don’t think this is going to work..."
"I have a plan. Like this..."
The method she told me was pretty good, so I walked over to Miyuki and grabbed his shoulder.
"Hey, Miyuki."
"Hwaaah!! O-oh, it’s Hotaro. W-what is it...?"
He was really freaked out. Was this actually okay?
"I analyzed the room logically, and I can roughly predict where things are going to jump out from."
"You can analyze that too?!"
"Yeah. And if I were you, I’d want to look cool in front of Shinomiya, right?"
"I do, but my body just won’t listen..."
"I’ll give you a signal before something looks like it’s about to pop out. Then you get ready in advance and cover Shinomiya like the dependable guy you are."
"There’s a way to do that...? Thanks, Hotaro!"
The greatest fear in a haunted house comes from not knowing when or where something will appear.
If you know where it’s going to come from, that fear gets cut in half. That should be enough to protect Shinomiya.
While I took care of Miyuki, Hayasaka held Shinomiya’s hand and trembled dramatically, making her fear even worse.
"K-Kaguya-sama. They say this theme was built on top of an old grave site, and that real ghosts show up here... I’m so scared... sniff."
"Hayasakaaaa...! I’m already scared, so please stop...!"
Hayasaka, pretending to forget her own cover in terror, and Shinomiya, so panicked she’d forgotten to use her fake name.
They were doing great over there too.
Now it was time for something new to appear again. I tapped Miyuki on the back.
One, two, three!
"Kuwaaah!"
A monster burst out from something that looked like a grave. And then...
"Nooooooo—!"
"Kyaaaaaaaa——"
Hayasaka screamed with a completely blank face and shoved Shinomiya hard. And there, in that spot...
Thud!
"Oh, are you okay, Shinomiya?"
"P-President?"
She had landed right in Miyuki’s arms.
"If you’re scared, stay by my side. I’ll protect you."
"......President."
Shinomiya’s face flushed pink as she clutched Miyuki’s sleeve tightly.
Romance blooming in the middle of a murderous room. Yes, this was it.
Hayasaka and I grinned and quietly exchanged glances.
Because I always warned him just before something scary jumped out, Miyuki had enough room to breathe and handled the puzzles smoothly, and he took excellent care of the terrified Shinomiya every time something appeared. Good. Very good.
But who would have thought that kind of variable would show up?
Given the gloomy setup and all the equipment fixed in place all over the room, there were probably some hard-to-reach spots. And naturally, that meant the room could also have living...
"................!!"
cockroaches. Miyuki was absolutely terrified of bugs.
The moment he saw a roach leap toward him—
"............glooooop!"
—he foamed at the mouth and toppled backward. Oh no, this was bad. I had to do something...
Shinomiya was still too busy panicking to notice.
I caught the guy as he fell back, then—
Smack!
"—Ghk!"
—slapped his cheek once.
I swear there was absolutely no personal feeling behind it. Really.
Then Hayasaka, who came running toward us while holding a severed arm prop that was flopping around, swung it down—
Bang!
—and sent the cockroach flying into the distance. A home run.
The outcome had been decided in a matter of seconds. Thankfully, Shinomiya seemed not to have seen a thing.
"W-what happened? I thought I heard a noise..."
"Ahh, Shinoomiya. Nothin’ happened..."
Because I’d forcibly woken Miyuki after his soul had practically crossed the river, his cheeks were puffed up and his speech was slurred. The fact that he hadn’t fainted was impressive enough.
Thanks to that frantic response, we managed to escape safely, with a time of 47 minutes.
"Ohhh, you made it out! Let me take a commemorative photo, so please stand over here!"
"A commemorative photo...?"
"Yes! If you escape within 60 minutes, we give you a commemorative photo!"
Miyuki and Shinomiya both brightened up at that. We struck a pose.
"Okay, taking the picture. One, two~"
Click!
Rustle rustle
"...Do you only get one copy?"
"Yes, since it’s a Polaroid, we can only provide one, customer..."
"Then Shinomiya should take it."
"R-really?"
"Yeah. You can have it printed later when you have time."
"Okay...! I definitely will."
Shinomiya happily accepted the photo. The mood was really nice. Maybe I should keep this momentum going.
"Where are we going next?"
Shinomiya asked with a smile blooming across her face. Hayasaka answered her.
"Now, the next place we’re going is...!"
*
A pottery workshop.
That was the place I had suggested.
And Hayasaka’s fierce opposition to it.
"It’s too quiet. There’s no way anything dramatic will happen there."
"Before long, everyone will get absorbed in making their own pottery and stop talking altogether."
"Most of all, it’s way too plain!"
After discussing it with Hayasaka, I realized she seemed to prefer romantic, flashy kinds of dates.
But really, what was wrong with plain?
It’s a prejudice to think a man and a woman have to do something active and highly interactive.
A quiet time to make something of your own while relaxing. How wonderful was that?
Even Hayasaka, who had kept objecting the whole time, couldn’t argue against that point.
"At a pottery workshop, you have to come back a month later to pick up the finished pieces."
".........!!"
"In other words, it gives us a reason to meet again."
This time they’d gathered somehow because it was their first date, but Hayasaka had thought they’d need a reason to meet again later too, so in the end she had no choice but to agree.
And so the third course was decided: the pottery workshop.
*
The pottery class was more professional than I expected.
As everyone focused hard on making their own pieces, I casually glanced at what Miyuki was making beside me...
"W-what the hell is that."
A monstrosity that vaguely resembled a man’s... thing was taking shape.
I hurriedly lowered my voice and asked Miyuki in his ear, "Why are you making it like that...?"
"I-I don’t know... It just keeps getting worse every time I try to fix it."
Sure enough, the more he touched it now, the stronger the shape of the thing became. Bigger and longer, if anything.
In that case, there was no helping it...
"Master, what’s that sculpture stuck to the ceiling over there?"
"Ah, that one is..."
Thud!
I drew the instructor’s attention with my question, then punched straight through the center of Miyuki’s monstrosity.
Apparently not expecting me to smash it, he stared at me in shock.
It was better to destroy it than to make pottery in that shape...
When the instructor turned back around, he saw Miyuki’s piece and went pale.
"Oh, my Jesus Christ..."
The instructor slowly approached with a stunned expression, while Miyuki looked at me with a wronged face, as if asking why I’d broken it.
But the emotion filling the instructor’s face was surprise and awe.
"I’ve never seen such a creative piece of pottery in my 30 years of work! To think you could express such a deconstructive yet avant-garde feeling..."
"......Huh?"
Miyuki’s face looked dumbfounded, and honestly, so did mine.
"It gives off the profound, deep allure of staring into the black hole of the universe... A genius has appeared in the pottery world. Gorgeous!"
Stunned by the praise, Miyuki just scratched his head, unable to keep up with the situation, while Shinomiya looked at him with sparkling eyes that said, [The President is amazing at pottery too...♡]
Well, in the end, I guess it worked out...
The other three pieces didn’t stand out much. The girls’ side definitely had a neater, more polished feel to it.
The pottery workshop was over before long, and now it was almost time for dinner.
But Hayasaka and my plan had reached its endpoint.
This was the part where our opinions had differed the most, but in the end, we decided to leave everything after dinner entirely to those two.
After all, progress had to be made by the two of them, so the final conclusion was that they needed to figure out the rest on their own, voluntarily!
The problem was how to slip away naturally, and we put that plan into action just as we had discussed yesterday.
"I’m going to the bathroom."
"Ah, I’ll go too~"
While they were paying for the pottery class and cleaning up afterward, Hayasaka and I slipped away, saying we were going to the bathroom.
We went up one floor above the restroom level and stopped in the corridor between the floors.
I gave her a thoroughly reluctant look and said, "...Do we really have to go this far?"
"Nothing works better than something visual. Here."
She took off both of her heels and handed me the right one. It was about five centimeters high.
Like a board-breaking demonstrator in a taekwondo show, I dropped to one knee, held both sides of the heel with my hands, and extended it forward with the heel facing her.
After bouncing up and down a few times, Hayasaka spun her body around 360 degrees. And then—
Crack!
A clean back kick landed. The heel snapped apart instantly.
After calmly smashing her designer shoe to pieces, she held out one arm to me.
"Come on, support me."
"...Fine."
I bent slightly at the waist so Hayasaka could rest her arm over my shoulder, and my right arm wrapped lightly around her waist. She flinched a little.
As we went to all this trouble and put ourselves through such unnecessary hardship, I wondered if Miyuki and Shinomiya would ever realize what we were doing for them—
With that thought in mind, Hayasaka and I headed down the stairs.
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