"Nice to meet you, Kabuta"
"Yeah, yeah, let's pretend I believe you, let's just participate already. Damn it, if I hadn't missed a day they wouldn't have taken the chance to put me in so many events" Kabuta complained.
"Mm? What do you mean?" Yuuji asked curiously.
"Oh? Right, you missed a month so you don't know. Participation was decided by classmates voting, so they took the chance to vote for those who were absent" Kabuta explained while finishing putting on a pair of red sneakers that matched the class color.
"Isn't that... extremely unfair to those who were absent that day?" Yuuji asked, doubtful.
"Ha! man, you have no idea" Kabuta looked at Yuuji as if he were the most unfortunate person in the world. "To avoid that, they spent a whole week choosing participants.
Who told you to skip an entire month? Haha"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time" Yuuji sighed, finally understanding why his participation was so high.
The race was about to start, so Yuuji and Kabuta stopped talking and tied two of their legs together, forming a single third leg.
"Three, two, one, start!"
Bang!
As soon as the starting pistol fired, Yuuji and Kabuta, along with the rest of the teams, began running.
'At least this is simple' Yuuji thought while easily coordinating his legs with his partner's.
Maybe they calculated the weather on purpose or maybe it was coincidence, but that day was quite hot, and after already participating in two events almost without rest, he didn't feel like staying under the sun for long.
Fortunately, Yuuji had already seen that the class had no intention of seriously trying, because coordinating with his partner meant matching his speed, which left them far behind the leading team.
"By the way..." While they were running, Kabuta, who Yuuji was surprised to realize wasn't trying to hinder him like he expected, suddenly spoke between tired breaths.
"Why aren't you using... uff uff... competition sneakers?"
"Competition sneakers?" Yuuji asked again, having no idea what he was talking about.
"You didn't know?" Kabuta raised an eyebrow, looking at him strangely. "But your girlfri... waaaah!"
Before he could finish speaking, Kabuta's sneakers, which looked completely normal, suddenly deployed two thrusters from the back and wheels from underneath, activating instantly and throwing both of them off balance.
"Waaaah! Stop it!" Kabuta shouted as they moved toward another nearby team with no way to stop.
"Hey, what are you doing?!"
"Stop!"
The other team saw them rushing toward them at full speed and tried to stop them with words.
But if words were enough, why would we need rocket sneakers, right? Well, Yuuji was never good with words, and even less now that he couldn't focus.
"Dodge!"
Finally, just a few centimeters before crashing, Yuuji lifted Kabuta into the air and redirected them, barely avoiding hitting the other pair.
"Hey, we're flying, is this normal for you?!" Kabuta asked, shaken, noticing that his feet were getting farther and farther from the ground.
"More or less" Yuuji replied, then turned toward the finish line. With the thrust from the boosters, they reached it in seconds despite having been the last team because of the incident.
As soon as they crossed the finish line, the sneakers returned to normal.
"And first place... let me check something" the announcer's confused voice sounded through the speakers. After five seconds, she finally spoke again. "Well, the rules don't say anything about not being allowed to fly or about having to stay on the ground during the race, so:
First place goes to Yuuji Rito and Yahari Kabuta from Class 1-C!" she announced excitedly.
Of course, neither Kabuta nor Yuuji paid much attention.
Kabuta was busy taking off the sneakers as fast as possible out of fear, while Yuuji searched for Lala in the crowd.
He quickly found her distinctive bright pink hair among the people. As soon as Yuuji looked at her, she hid something like a game controller behind her back and avoided his gaze, trying to act natural.
"Damn, man, your girlfriend is kind of crazy, good luck with that" Kabuta just said those words and walked away, holding his sneakers carefully with his arm extended, afraid they might activate again.
'Looks like not all my classmates are crazy like the anime showed' Yuuji thought. 'Maybe I should pay more attention to them instead of sleeping all the time.'
"Kabuta, what are you doing?!"
"Yeah, you just made him stand out even more!"
"You're a traitor to our Sainan men's association!"
'Or maybe not' he thought, returning to his spot under the tent to sit down and rest, for 5 minutes.
...
5th event - Scavenger Race.
"Is this a joke? How am I in so many?" Yuuji muttered, complaining.
"W-well, maybe a lot of people assumed you were good at sports?"
Yuuji looked toward the voice beside him at the starting line and was surprised.
"Rito, what are you doing here?"
"Good, Yuuji Rito, let's compete to see who is the better man!" another voice interrupted before Rito could answer.
"Ren, why compete, I'm not even Lala's fiancé anymore, right?" Rito said.
"It's not about that, Princess Lala already said defeating you doesn't matter, I just want to beat you because I want to, you are my destined rival" Ren said with overflowing excitement and competitive spirit, so much that Yuuji was sure he could see some kind of aura coming from him.
"Wait, isn't this supposed to be a competition between classes, why are you two also participating?" Yuuji asked, confused.
"To make it more fun!" Ren said excitedly.
Yuuji ignored the excited Ren and instead looked at Rito, expecting a logical answer.
"Actually... the class really just thought it would be more fun this way" Rito said, somewhat embarrassed by his classmates' childish thinking sometimes.
In reality, Rito believed they did it because the three of them were the closest boys to Lala, and if they weren't near her, others might have a chance, but he wouldn't say out loud that he thought not only his class but the whole school was a bunch of childish people.
Especially looking at Lala sitting on a nearby bench with the girls, while any boy who tried to approach was crushed by the girls' sharp looks and words, making them retreat with their self-esteem shattered, Rito didn't just think they were childish, but also very foolish and hopeless.
"Yuuji, catch!" While Yuuji was trying to understand the rules modified "for more fun", he felt something thrown at him from behind and caught it by reflex.
It was a small red gift with a yellow ribbon that fit perfectly in the palm of his hand.
"What is this?" he asked in Lala's direction, since she had just thrown it, but she was too far away to hear him, so when she saw him looking at her, she just raised her hand and made a peace sign with a smile without saying anything.
"Ah! I know what that is!" Rito said beside him, catching Yuuji's attention.
"It's called Every-Tan, just pull the ribbon while thinking about what you want and you'll get it.
Ah! But make sure to think about..."
BANG!
Before Rito could finish speaking, the starting pistol sounded. Rito immediately ran off as if he had an important goal to win the race for.
With the scavenger objectives being the main focus, the track wasn't very big, so even at a normal speed, Yuuji didn't take long to reach the middle of the track, where there was a box with folded cards inside so you couldn't read them unless you picked one and opened it.
Rito and Ren arrived almost at the same time as Yuuji and quickly grabbed a card, both excited, though for different reasons.
"A legendary sword! I'll go find it right away!" Despite getting the hardest and clearly joke item, Ren's excitement didn't falter, it only increased as he ran off to search for a legendary sword.
On the other hand, Rito, after reading his card, just blushed without moving.
His previous excitement disappeared as his body sank in despair.
Yuuji took his own card and, as he passed by, discreetly read Rito's, wondering how bad it could be.
'Freshly removed panties' the card said.
Yuuji could only mentally apologize to Rito for ever thinking he was the unluckiest person in the world, realizing he had been overestimating himself and didn't come close to a protagonist's level.
After the mental apology, Yuuji read his own.
"Pretty girl" he murmured out loud after reading it.
Although it seemed the people who wrote the objectives had too much fun writing them, at least it wasn't anything too strange for him.
Yuuji could have gone to the stands and called Lala or any other girl, since the average appearance at Sainan was already quite high, but in the end, curiosity won and he decided to use the item.
After all, what would an alien object consider a pretty girl? Curious about the answer, he pulled the ribbon, waiting to see what would appear.
And when he saw the result, he felt quite dumb, thinking he should have expected it.
A familiar mist came out of the gift followed by a familiar puff.
"Yuuji? What am I doing here?" Lala asked, appearing in his arms, unlike usual, this time she had clothes.
"I used the item and you appeared here" Yuuji replied.
"Really? What were you looking for?"
"A pretty girl."
"Well, I am pretty" Lala nodded confidently.
"Eh? What am I doing here?" Suddenly, with another puff, another girl appeared, one with golden hair and almost as popular as Lala in Sainan, standing next to Yuuji and looking at him and Lala curiously.
"Saki?" Lala asked in surprise, then realizing what was happening, she looked at Yuuji a bit nervously. "Y-Yuuji, you didn't just think 'pretty girl' without specifying only one, right?"
"What?" Yuuji asked, still not understanding the implications.
Puff.
Puff.
Puff.
Out of nowhere, more and more girls started appearing around them.
Starting with Risa, Yui, Haruna, Mio, and continuing with girls Yuuji didn't even remember seeing before.
"Yuuji, tell me you set some kind of limit" Lala said, tense in his arms.
"I thought about a pretty girl from the high school?" Yuuji said, unsure if that counted as a limit.
"Think about sending them all back, quickly! Or every matching target in the high school will appear!"
Yuuji followed her advice.
The next second, all the girls disappeared instantly while the gift reappeared in his hand.
By that point, the top three had already reached the finish line, so Yuuji was immediately disqualified.
"Um... did I come back?" the announcer's voice sounded slightly confused for a second, but she quickly recovered. "Well! A bit late, but... we have our top three. The winner is..."
Even though Yuuji didn't make the podium, he was still happy that the problem was resolved.
It was curious, if he had lost normally he would have been somewhat disappointed, but since a problem occurred after the race started, even if he didn't win, he was still happy to have solved it, something that hadn't even existed before the race in the first place.
'A strange paradox' Yuuji thought as he went to sit under the tent, hoping he wouldn't have to participate in the next event as well.
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I have an important question for all of you: how does this chapter compare to the rest in terms of writing? I'm not talking about what happens in the chapter or anything like that, just the writing itself.
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)