While I was walking to finish up the remaining student council work,
"Guess who~."
someone suddenly covered my eyes with both hands and asked.
She lowered her voice to hide her identity, but it was definitely a girl’s voice.
There were only a handful of girls I’d ever spoken to alone. Among them, the one who’d do something like this was...
"...Fujiwara?"
"Correct~ Hehe."
Yep, it was Fujiwara Chika. Her personality and social skills were both excellent, so she treated even shut-ins like me pretty well.
As long as you ignored the weird, unpredictable side of her, she was actually a pretty decent person.
"Where are you headed, Suzuki-kun?"
"The student council room. Miyuki asked me to help with something."
"Oh, I see...! Should I help too?"
"It’s fine. It’s not urgent, and it’s not hard."
"Mm-hmm, you’ve become pretty dependable, Suzuki-kun. Then I’m off to the TG Club! Bye-bye~"
"Yeah, sure."
Fujiwara headed off to club activities, and I kept walking to the student council room to finish my work.
But then, when I got to the front gate, something came to mind.
"Right, he told me to bring Fujiwara here if I ran into her..."
One of the work requests Miyuki had given me suddenly surfaced in my memory. He had something to discuss with Fujiwara, but her phone was off, so he’d asked me to bring her over if I saw her.
If I finished everything here and went to fetch her later, she might already be gone. And if I worked with that hanging over my head, it would probably keep bothering me.
"...Guess I have no choice."
The detour was a pain, but it was the best option, so I reluctantly changed direction and headed for the TG Club, where Fujiwara was.
TG Club was short for Table Game Club.
In simple terms, it was just a board game club.
The club’s reputation could be summed up in two words: "a den of eccentrics."
They were known for things like rolling giant dice all over the school and playing TRPGs, and every year during the Boshin Festival, they stubbornly proposed a school-wide 100-player battle royale game using the entire campus as the field...
At this point, the rumor that the disciplinary committee suffered stomach cramps because of the TG Club didn’t seem like much of an exaggeration.
Still, I was only dropping by for a quick errand to pick up Fujiwara, so I figured nothing weird would happen as I opened the door.
And what I saw on the other side was...
"Chika-chan, didn’t anyone teach you that if you pull a stunt like that, your hand gets chopped off?"
"...Do you have proof?"
It was a truly savage scene.
Fujiwara and a senior-looking club member were playing poker with their wrists tied down on top of the desk.
I’d clearly underestimated the TG Club. Should I just run?
"Proof? Of course. So where do you think that ace of spades you’re holding came from? I’ve got one too~"
"T-that’s...!"
"Gigako-chan, what are you doing! Hurry up and snap the picture!"
"Sorry, Chika. Now that you’ve been caught, there’s nothing we can do..."
The girl called Gigako lifted a huge hammer over her head.
"N-no, wait. Kyaaaah—!"
Bam! Bam!
Fujiwara’s wrist was struck several times with a toy hammer.
"Kyah, kyaah! Ahh!"
Fujiwara took the hammering in a strangely breathy voice. The genre had suddenly shifted from noir to toddler variety show.
When the punishment ended and they noticed me standing at the door, the club members all looked over. Fujiwara was the first to react.
"Ahh, S-Suzuki-kun! You’ve been watching this whole time?"
"...Just a little."
"From where?"
"From around the part where they said your hand gets chopped off if you pull a stunt like that..."
"Waaah, I’ll never get married now..."
"...??"
"Wow, that’s harsh. Peeking at something like that without permission."
"If people see that, I won’t be able to hold my head up as a woman..."
Ah, this is killing me...
Just seeing a crying girl was enough to trigger PTSD from that incident in the student council not long ago.
"S-so! Suzuki-kun, what brings you here?"
Fujiwara asked with a bright smile, as if nothing had happened. Yeah, I knew it.
I didn’t even have the energy to get angry anymore. At this point...
"Miyuki said he couldn’t reach you, and if I ran into you, I should bring you to the student council room. Seems like he has something to discuss about the meeting minutes."
"Ah! Right! I had my phone turned off!"
"...Was there really a reason to turn it off?"
Our school barely touches electronic devices unless you’re openly using them during class.
Just look at students like Ishigami, who secretly carry game consoles around.
But Fujiwara’s reason for turning hers off was absurd beyond belief.
"Because I hunted the ancient dragon sleeping in the old building to protect Shuchiin! Interference from modern technology is outrageous in TRPGs! Powering off is mandatory!"
"Ah, I see."
Let’s not think about it anymore. Yeah, that’s better.
"Is that urgent?"
The girl with the bob cut beside her asked.
She’d called Fujiwara her senior earlier, right?
"No, not particularly urgent, but..."
"Then we can’t hand Chika over! Now that you’ve entered this demon lord’s castle, you must face us in battle!"
"Heh. Hero boy, rescuing Princess Chika from our three great demon generals won’t be easy."
Then Chika clutched her body as if in pain.
"Ngh... no. The dark energy is taking over my body...!"
"...??"
"Fufufufu, the Chika you knew is gone. I am Fuji-Fuji, one of the Three Great Generals, also known as the Fallen Princess!"
"..."
Where was I even supposed to start with this?
Was it the part where they suddenly decided to battle me, or the obviously improvised patchwork setting they were forcing on me?
People said my energy-saving philosophy had been breaking down lately, but this wasn’t just breaking down. This was having my energy sucked dry.
Then there was only one answer.
"...Have fun, everyone. I’m heading out."
Unfortunately, I hadn’t managed to meet Fujiwara today after all.
TG Club? Weird. Did our school even have a club like that?
Huh, why am I here? Strange. Maybe I should head back...
"W-wait a second, Suzuki-kun!"
Just as I was about to open the door and leave, Fujiwara grabbed my hand from behind and stopped me.
"...What."
"Lately, Suzuki-kun, it’s just been work, commute, work, commute over and over!"
"......"
"If you don’t take a break and clear your head with something like this, you won’t have a single memory left later on...!"
"...!"
Maybe she really had been worried about how I looked to other people. It was true that I didn’t do anything besides student council work.
I thought this lifestyle was fine since I’d gotten used to it, but maybe an outgoing person like Fujiwara saw it differently.
She’d suggested it because she was worried about me, so I couldn’t exactly complain.
"...Just for a little while."
"Yay~ Come on, come on! This way!"
Fujiwara grabbed my arm and dragged me to a chair before walking over to a shelf packed with board games.
"Suzuki-kun, have you played many board games?"
"No, not really."
"Really? Not at all?"
"Well, if you count playing cards or tag-the-thief as board games..."
"So you’ve barely played any at all... Hmm, what should we start with? I’ll pick the game, so please introduce yourselves first!"
Following Fujiwara’s instructions, I greeted the two girls sitting in front of me and introduced myself.
"...Hello. I’m Suzuki Hotaro, from Class 2-B, student council clerk."
"I’m Terakoya from Class 3-A. Nice to meet you."
"Terako, my foot. You got demoted to Gigako last time."
"Kozue, give me a break..."
She was a senior with long brown hair and a pretty normal-looking face. Her name was Gigako? Terako?
So she’d dropped from terabyte to gigabyte, huh. I didn’t know they named nicknames after computer storage. I thought it was her real name.
"Hi, I’m Makiwara Kozue, the TG Club president from Class 1-A."
A senior with short black hair... Huh? A first-year?
The club president, on equal footing with third-years, and Fujiwara called her senior, but she was a first-year?
Now that I thought about it, she looked kind of familiar.
I felt like I’d run into her a lot in the first-year hallway back when I was a first-year too. Ah, I see.
"A repeater student, maybe..."
Everyone had their own circumstances, and I didn’t feel like nitpicking over something so trivial, so I let it go.
While we were exchanging introductions, Fujiwara came back with a game.
"All right, let’s start with a simple game of Halli Galli!"
"...Halli Galli?"
"The rules are simple! Now then... President!"
"You’re dumping this on me? Geez, I’ll let it slide because you’re cute."
After listening to President Makiwara’s explanation, the rules really were simple.
Each player received cards showing one to five pieces of fruit, dealt according to the number of players. Then, taking turns flipping them over, if the total number of one fruit reached five, you rang the bell in the center of the table and took all the cards that had piled up during that turn.
"We’ve played so much that we could do it with our eyes closed, but let’s give the beginner a try."
"That’s how we all started too~"
"Exactly! You learn by doing at first. Let’s start!"
At Fujiwara’s call, everyone began flipping their cards at frightening speed.
And then, at some point...
Ding!
All three hands except mine were on the bell.
The owner of the hand at the very bottom was—
"Hehe, Suzuki-kun. Did you see that? That’s how you do it!"
Fujiwara. She puffed out her chest proudly and boasted at me.
Just from watching once, I had a rough idea of what to do.
"Let’s try it once."
"It’s only natural not to be good at first, so don’t get discouraged~"
"We can’t go easy on you, so we’re going to train you Spartan-style."
Why was everyone so talkative? They were acting like I’d obviously fail.
"You won’t know until you try."
"That’s a brave thing to say~ All right, game start!"
The cards flipped furiously again.
Maybe fifteen cards had piled up when a banana-5 card suddenly appeared.
And the first person to react was...
Ding!
me.
Not a single one of them had even managed to reach out yet. Everyone looked stunned.
"You’re better at this than I expected...?"
"Hmm, is this beginner’s luck? Let’s go again!"
The game restarted, but you all overlooked one thing.
I’d caught on.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
I crushed them ten rounds in a row. I didn’t let a single card go to anyone else.
If you had good dynamic vision and reaction speed, there was no way to lose this game.
Before long, the TG Club members’ card stacks were nearly gone. I grinned and asked everyone,
"So, when exactly does the Spartan-style training start...?"
"Ghh, what humiliation...!"
"Unless all you do is eat and play Halli Galli, there’s no way this should happen..."
"Tch, Suzuki-kun. You’re pretty good...! But the next game won’t be so easy!"
As soon as Fujiwara finished speaking, the club members gathered up the cards and stuffed them somewhere out of sight, then crouched in a corner of the clubroom and started plotting.
"There’s more?"
"...That game is..., with our brains..., there’s no way a beginner could beat us..., whisper whisper..."
They were seriously trying to choose a game they absolutely couldn’t lose to a beginner? Wasn’t that kind of pathetic?
Well, I guess they’d been hurt that I’d overwhelmed them despite never having played board games before.
Before long, after they’d apparently reached a consensus, Fujiwara slammed the game she’d taken from the shelf onto the table and declared,
"All right, this time we won’t lose! This game is Clue!"
"...What kind of game is that?"
"Simply put, Clue is a deduction board game."
"Ohh..."
"The TG Club is a brain collective, a gathering of intellects. We won’t lose at a game of wits!"
So after physical speed came deduction, huh.
Unless they’d picked it on purpose...
"...Sounds fun. Let’s give it a try."
For the first time in a while, I felt a little motivated.
I might end up feeling a little sorry for them. I was actually somewhat confident when it came to deduction games.
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