"Ah, d-did I say something wrong?"
"No, nothing wrong." Ryo shook her head, licking the sauce off her hand clean.
She glanced at Jhin nonchalantly. "Let's head over too."
The five of them entered the Haunted House. Inside, there was only dim lighting and dilapidated walls. Eerie roars rang out from all around occasionally. The terrifying atmosphere made the girls shrink behind Jhin. Only Hitori Gotoh felt a familiar sense of security, becoming a shield for the girls alongside Jhin.
This dark environment in the Haunted House is so like the closet at home. It feels much better than outside.
"I say... if you're so scared, you shouldn't have chosen the Haunted House from the start."
"I'm not particularly scared, I-I just think it's a bit dark, worried about falling, r-right, Kita?"
"Ijichi-senpai i-is right."
You two are trembling while speaking, yet you say you're fine.
Jhin felt they were the type of people who would be scared watching horror movies but still tirelessly wanted to watch them—cowardly yet addicted.
In this dim environment, with three heads popping out behind two people, no matter how you looked at it, their side looked more like ghosts. Hopefully, they wouldn't scare the student acting as the ghost into fainting instead.
"Then I'm going to walk forward. Watch your step."
"O-Okay."
Not far away, a wall illuminated by red light was particularly conspicuous. Jhin had already seen the student waiting in the shadows beside the wall. This method was indeed quite clever; using the light to attract the visitors' attention, making them mistakenly believe that the place illuminated by the light definitely had a jump scare, and then suddenly jumping out from the side to scare people while they were fully focused on the wall.
"Jh-Jhin, why aren't you walking?" Nijika stared dead at that wall, which looked more suspicious the more she looked at it.
Could it be that he saw something?!
"Nothing, let's keep going." Jhin said in a relaxed tone, "I was just thinking that we haven't seen a jump scare after so long, isn't it about time we met one?"
"Don't expect that kind of thing!"
Before Nijika's voice had faded, a terrifying head pierced by a syringe poked out from the darkness and let out a shrill scream at them.
"Kyaaa!!!"
Nijika and Kita Ikuyo were so scared that two teardrops squeezed out of the corners of their eyes. They let out sharp shrieks and coincidentally squeezed Hitori Gotoh away to hug Jhin. The other three basically had no reaction, looking calmly at the person playing the ghost.
Hitori Gotoh was startled by the tourists' screams from not far away and also joined the army of hugging Jhin. Ryo walked silently behind him, sandwiching Jhin in the middle with the girls from four directions.
Jhin struggled to pull out a hand and gave a thumbs-up to this staff member playing the ghost.
Bro, you did a good job!
The group walked through the entire Haunted House in this strange posture. Nijika wiped the sweat from her forehead and said, pretending to be relaxed, "Ah~ The Haunted House was really interesting."
"You clearly didn't dare to open your eyes inside at all, and you wouldn't let go of holding Jhin."
"Ryo, what are you saying? I don't remember anything like that." Nijika whistled guiltily, not daring to look her in the eye.
"If I don't remember this matter, can the deducted wages be made up?"
"Yes."
"Then I have amnesia."
Kita Ikuyo squatted in the corner covering her face. Hitori Gotoh asked her with concern, "Kita, are you okay?"
"Ugh... Bocchi-chan, I'm sorry to you. I actually hugged Jhin for so long. C-Can we still be friends?"
"It was just a hug, it-it's not that serious, right?"
"Bocchi-chan... you really are an angel..."
I just feel that after coming out of the Haunted House, have your characters crumbled a bit?
The small interlude passed quickly, and the group continued to stroll through the Cultural Festival. When passing by a classic shooting game stall, Jhin saw that Kita Ikuyo seemed to like one of the dolls very much, so he stopped to ask her, "Kita, not going to try it?"
"I played with friends at festivals before, I couldn't knock down the dolls at all."
"What about you guys? Anyone want to try?"
"I'm not good at this kind of game. Hitting anything would be pretty good already."
"It's more cost-effective to buy food with the money."
"Ah, I haven't played this kind..."
Seeing that the girls didn't plan to play, Jhin rolled up his sleeves, ready to show off his skills properly. The price at this stall was much cheaper than in the amusement park; twenty yen for ten shots. Seeing that it was quite conscientious here, he planned to finish ten shots and call it a day.
Paying the money, Jhin skillfully picked up the gun and pressed the butt against his shoulder in a standard posture. His first target wasn't the doll Kita Ikuyo had eyes on, but the cola doll on the side.
"Bang!"
"Wow, knocked it down! Knocked it down!"
"Bocchi-chan, for you." Jhin took the cola doll and handed it to Hitori Gotoh.
"Ah, thank you."
The remaining nine bullets harvested nine dolls. Jhin took the doll Kita Ikuyo had fancied and gave it to her. "Kita, for you. Nijika and Ryo, you choose whichever ones you want too."
"Is it really okay to give it to me?"
"Of course. It's useless for me to have so many dolls, and you like this one very much, right?"
Kita Ikuyo hadn't expected her action of stealing glances at the doll to be discovered by Jhin. She held up the doll to block her flushed little face. "Th-Thank you."
"You actually shoot so accurately. I feel like we must take Jhin along for festivals in the future."
"We'd be blacklisted by the shopkeepers like that." Nijika saw at a glance that Ryo wanted to take Jhin to the festival to loot those target shooting stalls. "We might even be considered to be specifically there to crash the scene."
"Just let those poor shopkeepers off." Jhin held the remaining dolls in his hand, preparing to send them to Gabriel and the others later. As for the remaining two dolls, he would just treat them as prizes for the top two in the Mihama Academy placement test.
The crowd strolled around outside the teaching building and incidentally bought a crepe at Kita Ikuyo's class's crepe stall. Approaching the afternoon when the Cultural Festival was about to end, she actively proposed to go see the gymnasium venue for tomorrow's performance.
Students rushing back and forth were preparing for tomorrow's individual program stage in the spacious and bright gymnasium. Cleaning, moving props, checking equipment—they were all busy with the tasks at hand.
"What a beautiful gymnasium..."
Ryo estimated roughly: "If it's full, there should be 1000 people, right?"
"I think... not that many people will come, right?" Kita Ikuyo felt that a full house might not be realistic, but it would be good if there were as many people as possible. After all, this was their first step out of STARRY!
"There will definitely be a lot of people coming. At least many people in Jhin's class said they would come!" Nijika and the others hadn't helped out in vain that day. Being first in class turnover was already an indisputable fact, and the Class Monitor was preparing to drag the whole class to watch the performance.
As the saying goes, a drop of water in grace should be repaid with a gushing spring.
"After the Cultural Festival ends, I'll take you guys to a mysterious place to play."
Jhin's abrupt statement aroused their curiosity.
"A mysterious place?"
"How mysterious is it?"
"That, we'll save for later."
____
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