It Has Nothing to Do with Prithvi Bir Bikram Shah – Part 01
Friday, July 7th.
At last, exams were over. I was pretty sure I just got the best grades of my life. I felt confident about it.
I tried not to think about the supposed delivery from Big Teach. There hadn’t been any sign of it showing up, and if I called, she’d probably just hang up on me again.
At this point, I figured the whole thing had been called off.
The last day of exams brought perfect weather, gray stretching across the whole sky.
Cloudy days were the best. With that much sunlight blocked, I could actually walk home alone. Maybe it would even rain. I didn’t want to see the sun again for a while.
But please, not tonkotsu broth rain.
Staring up at the overcast sky, I headed home. I should’ve gone straight inside, but instead, I stopped right in front of the door.
“What the hell is that?” I muttered.
I didn’t even try to cover my mouth. Either my eyes were tired or my brain was just fried. I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath of fresh air before looking again.
And still, nope. What I saw was just as insane as before. Sometimes, reality is stranger than zombies.
I rushed inside and bolted up the stairs. Without knocking or saying anything, I threw open the door to Haruna’s room.
“Hey! What the heck?! Don’t just barge in!”
She stood there in nothing but a camisole and a pair of white silk panties with ribbons on the sides, an outfit that offered zero protection. Her face was flushed.
“You creepazoid! Geeet ooout!” She grabbed the bed sheet and held it around her waist.
I completely ignored her and shouted louder than she did. “That’s your doing, isn’t it?!”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“That thing on the balcony.” I pointed toward Sera’s room. “Where the hell did you get it?”
“Oh that,” she muttered. “From the mountains, obviously.”
“For what?!”
“You mean you don’t know? You’re so behind the times. Today’s Tanabata.”[1]
Tanabata, huh. Okay, that explained it.
“Come with me.”
I grabbed Haruna’s hand and dragged her toward Sera’s room. She tried to cover herself and resist, but I pulled her with all my strength.
“W-Wait! Wuh?”
Sera’s room used to be my parents’ bedroom, and from there, you could step right out onto the balcony. And on that balcony, towering bamboo stalks had taken the place of laundry poles.
If someone told me we were under attack by bamboo-shaped aliens, I might believe them.
I guessed it was one stalk per person? Four massive bamboo shoots had burst straight through the balcony floor and stretched up into the sky.
And not just regular bamboo. Each one was decked out in flashy lights, like something out of a Christmas display.
“Okay, I get it’s for Tanabata, now clean it up.”
“Why?!”
“Because this is clearly wrong!”
“What is?” Her cowlick tilted as she cocked her head, like she had no clue what I was talking about.
I mean, sure, I could understand wanting to put up Tanabata decorations. I could even tolerate the lights.
But come on. Putting a star on top? Adding cotton snow?
When I explained that it was half a year early for all that, Haruna said, “You’re just behind on the trends.” She shrugged, sniffing audibly. It was infuriating. “Tanabata… when the river of stars flows across the sky, a legendary man comes with two beasts in tow. Wearing clothes covered in the blood of his victims, he carries a sack large enough to hold a person. Under the cover of night, he enters homes decorated with bamboo. Then, with his deadly Thunder Cross, he grants the wishes of anyone with a ponytail. It’s a famous story.”
I get it. She had somehow confused Altair with Santa Claus.
“And what’s the deal with the bamboo?”
“Maybe it’s his staple food?”
I see. So Santa has the diet of a panda.
Wait a sec. Maybe it’s the reindeer that eat it.
So now, here we were, mulling over what to put on our tanzaku.[2]
For some unknown reason, the Santa that Haruna talked about only granted wishes to people with ponytails. So, of course, everyone tied their hair up.
Sera, already rocking her usual ponytail, looked no different.
Eu, with her waist-length silver hair gathered into a ponytail, looked a little more relaxed than usual. Or maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe my own softened expression was tricking me into thinking hers had changed too.
Haruna had forced her shoulder-length chestnut hair into a tiny ponytail. I hate to admit it, but she looked cute. Even on someone as lacking in sex appeal as Haruna, a girl’s neck had a certain kind of allure.
As for me…
“Ayumu, it looks good on you,” Sera said.
Why wouldn’t she look at me, though? She just kept snorting at me, over and over. Look, it’s not my fault I don’t have long hair like you people.
She held a marker against her glossy lips, wondering what to write. And yep, another snort.
“Ayumu, it looks good on you.”
“Why, thank you.”
What a nasty grin.
“All right! This is it!”
Haruna held up her tanzaku, only to glare at it a second later. Dissatisfied, she crumpled it up and chucked it into the trash. She’d been stuck in this loop for a while now.
I picked one up and smoothed it out. The wish said: A heart that loves peace?
Way too cool for no reason. And why was it a question? Aren’t wishes supposed to be more, I don’t know, selfish? Wasn’t that kind of her thing? Wait, did she not have a heart that loved peace already?
I grabbed another. Curious, Eu leaned in slightly, her silver ponytail brushing against me.
Koshien[3] Phantom Slayer (Greatsword).
What the hell is that? Like some kind of Dragonsbane[4] knockoff? Would Santa even get that reference?
Eu must’ve instantly regretted looking. She turned her gaze back to the TV.
“Hey, don’t look at those!” Haruna said. “It won’t come true if someone else sees it.”
Was that a thing? Okay. Once she settled on one, I’m definitely gonna take a peek.
“Just don’t wish for anything weird, all right?” I said. “At least make sure it exists in this world—”
Before I could finish, Eu tapped the table twice, drawing my attention. I glanced at Eu’s note.
“Why do you want to kill the Koshien phantom?”
She really couldn’t let it go, huh?
“You don’t know about it?” Haruna said. “If you slay the beast that lives in Koshien, you get paid.”
No, you mean the school anthem gets played. It felt like someone had tried too hard to be clever. Who fed her that nonsense?
Sera covered her mouth and let out a soft chuckle. Don’t tell me the resident Vampire Ninja was the root of this misunderstanding.
“Ugh, forget about mine!” Haruna snapped. “Ayumu, hurry up and write yours already. We’re all just waiting for you.”
I see. Fine. I’ll just wish for something like, “May my nail clippers never go dull.”
No, hold on. That kind of thing would never come true. And Haruna would 100% throw a fit, yelling, “You think I can’t make it happen? Watch me!” or something like that.
All right, here’s my wish: May no wishes come true.
With this, even if Haruna started yelling, “My wish is not coming true!” I could just say, “Mine got granted first.” Just imagining her frustrated face made my lips curve into a smirk.
“Ayumu, is something wrong? It looks good on you.”
What the hell was she talking about? The ponytail? Or the stupid grin on my face?
“What’s your wish?”
“Big brother, what did you write? Show me!”
Today Eu had her silky silver hair tied into a ponytail for a change, but her expression stayed the same unreadable blank. Still, I swore there was curiosity flickering behind those eyes. If you wanted to understand her feelings, you had to read deep into her gaze.
“It’s a secret. But you’ll probably find out soon enough.”
I gave her a small, knowing smile. Haruna throwing a tantrum about it was practically guaranteed at this point.
Since I’d already written mine and Sera’s constant staring was starting to annoy me, I reached up to pull out the rubber band in my hair.
“Stop! The ritual hasn’t even started yet,” Haruna said.
Tanabata had rituals?
Sera had already finished writing too and was now watching TV with Eu. Meanwhile, Haruna was groaning like she was stuck in a fever dream.
“Let’s get this over with already,” I said. “I wanna take a bath.”
“Just wait till the ritual’s over. Can’t you be a little patient? Ugh, the digital generation, I swear to God.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, what kind of ritual are we talking about?”
“Uh… well…” Haruna gave a quick glance at Sera.
Figured. She totally just made that up on the spot.
So, the whole Santa-Tanabata mashup really did come from Sera, huh? Eu never seemed that into holidays, which pretty much left Sera as the only one around to teach Haruna Japanese customs.
1. Tanabata (Evening of the Seventh), also known as the Star Festival, is a Japanese festival originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival. It celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively).
2. Tanzaku are long, narrow strips of colored paper on which people write wishes, poems, or prayers, primarily for the Tanabata festival in Japan.
3. The National High School Baseball Championship of Japan, commonly known as Summer Koshien, is an annual nationwide high school baseball tournament. It is the largest scale amateur sport event in Japan.
4. The dragonsbane (Dragon Killer in DQotS) is a powerful sword in the Dragon Quest series.
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