It's only one more day before the start of Hope's Peak Academy's school festival.
Somewhere before that, their class went along with the haunted house suggestion, since compared to the other ideas everyone else proposed, it sounded the most viable and the most fun, at least according to a good number who voted. Thankfully, it's been heavily toned down from Sonia's original idea, though at the same time, though, it's still very nightmarish despite that.
Everyone in the class began to work really hard with it, contributing to their class attraction as much as they can. Even Teruteru had sorta dropped some of his pervy levels down while helping out in his own ways, just a little bit.
For one, the costumes were made by Ibuki herself (which was pretty unexpected, no one knew she was this good at sewing), and honestly, they're scarily impressive. Even the bravest of men would scream and cry if they saw those costumes. Akane would sometimes assist in that too, mostly with the props for those costumes. Though for obvious reasons, Ms. Yukizome would always double check on them to make sure they're safe to handle.
Ryota helped in directing the movements of the monsters, managing to figure out which are the best ways to effectively scare people while still keeping them completely immersed in it. It turns out that working with directors who made adaptations based off his manga helped him figure that out somehow, along with his actual talent.
Sonia, having been the one to suggest it in the first place, is also one of the primary contributors to it, along with Gundham and Kaz assisting her.
Nagito handled most of the errands, including trips to the hardware store and such, in order to get the materials they'd need. Sometimes, Mikan would tag along with him, just in case if there's a lot of material, or if it's too big or too much for just one person to handle.
About what Hajime did, he more or less managed everything behind the scenes and kept everything under control. Which means that, yeah, all the not-so-fun stuff like keeping track of their budget and other similar stuff came under him. He didn't mind it that much, though.
Then they even went as far as planning and preparing for souvenirs like spooky-themed food, courtesy by Nekomaru, and some charms. They're also considering having Mahiru sketching (or full out painting) the best moments of those, based off the footage captured by the installed cameras, depending on the price and the shot requested.
Though, there is one thing that kinda bothered Hajime a bit. Not because it's bad, but even compared to the weirdness his class gets into, it made him raise his eyebrows a bit.
Class 77-B's Haunted House Attraction
Be ready for real thrills and chills!
Get your heart pumping and your blood rushing!
Kickstart and improve your relationship with the person you love!
Yeah, the last one is heavily out of place, especially for a frigging haunted house, of all things.
When he first saw that, Hajime's got a good feeling on whose idea was that. He remembered discretely squinting at a certain shark-toothed animal breeder, who then suspiciously began to whistle innocently and pretend he didn't notice that at all.
Speaking of that, it's actually kinda surprising that Ms. Yukizome approved that kind of advertisement for it at all. He even swore he saw her kind of blush after seeing that slogan for a brief moment.
'Ah well, if that ad helps it sell well, then I guess there's nothing else to complain about it,' Hajime inwardly resigns to himself, giving that poster one last look before slightly shaking his head. 'Even if still sounds way too ridiculous to me. Who would combine horror with cheesy romance like that?'
Now that they've finished preparing the last touches to their haunted house, their class is going to stay here overnight, to ensure that they'll be prepared way before the culture festival officially starts. In hindsight, that might've been a bad idea, because a few screams have been heard already. It eventually died down after a few hours, but it was still rather startling.
Hajime has no idea what time it is now, but he gets the feeling it's somewhere close to midnight, if not already passing it. He figures he should get himself to sleep as soon as he can. Overthinking things won't help him get any closer to getting drowsy.
After yawning once more, he makes himself comfortable in the futon their teacher provided, and then he exhales, letting his eyes flutter close as he slowly drifts into a peaceful sleep. Somehow, subconsciously, he knows he's going to need all the rest he can get for tonight.
Tomorrow is going to be a very, very long day ahead for him and everyone.
Morning came around a lot quicker than he'd like, and contrary to how he would've preferred, he didn't get that much rest at all. It's not so bad to the point he'd fall over himself, but it's not exactly the complete hours of sleep a normal person should get either.
'I guess I can't complain too much about it.' Hajime thinks to himself before letting out an audible yawn. Even though his body didn't feel like it at the moment, he still makes himself get up from the futon, ignoring the softness that's beckoning him to come back. He then stretches himself, and then goes off to checks on the official time. 'Huh, it's still five-thirty in the morning.'
If he remembers correctly, excluding the opening ceremony, the culture festival will officially start by around nine in the morning. In any other situation, he'd feel tempted to go back to sleep and wake up after thirty minutes or so. Not this time, though.
'In any case, here it is. The culture festival of Hope's Peak Academy.'
Hajime yawns once again, blinking as he rubs over his eyes. He figures he should prepare himself first, right before he'll go check on the others, and if possible, get started to waking them up too.
It didn't take long before everyone is up and prepared too, somehow. Aside from Kaz (who looks like he got negative amounts of sleep, what with the layers of eye bags he's got), the others look a lot better than Hajime did, in terms of getting some sleep, that is.
And then there's Ms. Yukizome, who somehow looks even worse than anyone else did in their class. However, in spite of that, she's still as cheerful as she always is. She turns to them, raising a fist up as she loudly cheers.
"Let's do our best, everyone!"
The current time is around eight-fifty in the morning. Just ten more minutes before people, including other Ultimate students, Lil' Ultimate students, reserve course students, and even outsiders, will start flooding in.
Hajime squints, taking a good look from outside the window. If he's being honest right now, he has never seen this many people in any other culture festivals before. Or any other similar school events, for that matter.
So far, their haunted house is getting a moderate amount of people around. A good number of them are mostly couples, but he does see a whole group of friends popping in now and then.
In the meantime, they decided to go and send Sonia, Gundham, and Kaz off to walk around the school and promote their haunted house some more. Sonia and Gundham were pretty enthusiastic about it, and they pretty much dragged Kaz around when they left.
About why their class did that, they thought that it might be pretty effective in drawing some more potential customers around, but then again, considering that trio's combination, it might even be a little…too effective, so to say.
For now, everyone's taking turns in shifts, with at least a quarter or so of the class taking on the role as the attraction's monsters. Then, the other remaining half, while waiting for their turns, would watch over what's going on outside of the haunted house, including the customers and those souvenirs and such.
Which includes him, who's currently overseeing the customers as well as looking over their attraction's earnings. They've accumulated a fair amount so far, which is looking pretty good on them.
About the others who are currently working as the attraction's monsters, he knows that Hiyoko is a literal gremlin whose main job is to grab at people. Judging by the look in her eyes when she heard that, he had a gut feeling that she might end up enjoying that job a little too much. His gut feeling ended up getting proved exactly right when he heard multiple high-pitched screaming within the past couple of moments.
Speaking of taking shifts, Mahiru is the only exception to that, since she's going to handle those souvenir commissions.
As minutes passed by, though, it feels like he blinked for just a moment, and before he knew it, there are way more people coming over to their attraction, compared to how it started out. In fact, he's sure that individual faces are starting to blur out to him.
It didn't take long time as a whole becomes a total blur to him. Once he got the chance to breathe again, so he checks over the clock once more. He audibly exhales, letting himself slump over on the desk. 'Damn, it's only been two hours, but it already felt like half a day has passed.'
"Hey, Hajime." Akane calls out to him. "We're short on one person. Mind if you fill in?"
Despite the sheer mental exhaustion he's got, he says back to her with a slight smile and a nod, "Alright." He gets himself up, and then stretches his stiff limbs with a satisfied huff.
After checking over the one who'll take over his spot, he breathes out in relief when he sees it's Ryota. He then heads off to their changing rooms in order to get himself prepared. As he gets to changing into one of the available costumes, his mind starts to reflect on a few things.
He's never done this before, so he can't help but feel a bit nervous about it, even with Ryota's surprisingly firm direction in mind. He really doesn't want to screw this up for everyone, not after they've all worked so hard this far.
But at the same time, he also feels pretty excited about it.
Sosuke will admit a few things. The first thing is, he never felt so dead inside before he was forced to wake up at an ungodly early hour; to be exact, around four AM in this morning. Like, seriously, who the hell wakes up in that kind of time?
Yeah, he gets it. He's part of the Ultimate Student Council, and today is going to be one of the biggest events of Hope's Peak Academy. He really does get the big deal about it, and why it's so important for them to take it seriously, but please, cut him and everyone else some slack now and then.
His mood didn't really improve when Hino started assigning everyone to go and patrol the school grounds throughout the day. But then, when he saw that he's going to partner up with Kiriko, suddenly all of his tiredness melted away just like that. He can't let himself be a cranky grouch, not when he's with her.
So now, that's what they're here for now.
'Remember,' Sosuke reminds himself as he takes a deep breath. 'This is just another student council duty you've got to do, not a date.'
Glancing around their surroundings, it still feels so unreal, even to him. He knows that most of the Ultimates aren't the only ones participating in the event, and that even outsiders are allowed to go in here.
But even so, he never thought he'd see so much people around here. It feels so crowded, even with considering the massive school grounds in mind. Though, from what he can see so far, it looks like they're all having so much fun. He supposes that's all that really matters.
As he and Kiriko walk on even further, he narrows his eyes. From there, he can see a small group of students, three boys and a girl, gathered around somewhere in that corner. He decides to quietly come closer to that area, with Kiriko following close behind him.
Once they're close enough, he glances over at that group's uniforms, and then frowns. 'It looks like they're from the reserve course.'
Those four reserve course students don't seem to be doing much for now, aside from whispering and such. Sosuke can't exactly make out what they're saying, but then the girl in that group starts getting more vocal.
She tosses her arms up and loudly grumbles, "It's like throwing breadcrumbs at us and expecting us to be happy with it."
Sosuke decides he's heard enough, and makes his presence clear as he clears his throat in front of them.
They suddenly go quiet as soon as notice him, freezing up on the spot like they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't have.
He hasn't even said anything to them yet, but those four students immediately scramble out of there. 'I wonder what was that about.' The whole situation baffled him, but since they haven't done anything yet, he decides not to go after them, for now, at least.
They've finished the last of their patrols and then reported back to the rest of the student council, including what he saw and heard from those reserve course students. So, now that they're done with that, they're free to go and leisurely walk around to enjoy the school festival. Hey, just because they're part of the Ultimate Student Council, it doesn't mean they can't have some fun too.
Speaking of that…
Sosuke can't help but look at her with so much adoration in his eyes, every now and then. 'I love her so much.'
He can't believe it took him this long to finally man up and spill his feelings out to her. He'll admit that he was way too scared to do it, and if it weren't for the combined efforts between Soshun, Tsubasa and Taro, he might've never done it at all.
That day will always be ingrained on the back of his mind. To say that he's glad that she felt the same way for him too would be a very big understatement. It makes him wish he confessed about it way sooner, but oh well, better now than never at all.
"Hey, Sosuke, we should go check that out!" Kiriko suddenly calls out, lightly tapping on his shoulder.
'Crap, I got lost in my thoughts.' He quickly snaps himself out of it and then looks over to where Kiriko is pointing at. He blinks in confusion; all he's seeing is just a small group of three people walking by. The group is composed of a blonde girl, someone who looks like major poster boy for all chuunis out there, and some punk-looking guy with dyed hot pink hair and a beanie.
Upon looking closer at them, he then realizes that all three of them have the same slogan on them. 'It looks like they're advertising for their stall or something.'
He squints, now noticing something else on those slogans too. 'Oh, they're from Class 77-B, huh? They must be Hinata's classmates, then.' He blinks, and then checks on the slogans again. 'Wait a minute…a haunted house?'
So far, he has only heard most of the wackier stuff from word of mouth from this morning. Apparently, there's something about Class 77-B's haunted house attraction managing to help start new relationships, as well as improving existing ones somehow.
He has no clue on whether that was part of their advertisement or if that was just something the students spread around for some reason. Assuming it's the first option, he's got no idea why they went with advertising it like that, but it clearly worked like a charm, given with how so many students kept talking about it. Talks about that even reached up to the Student Council, even though they're nowhere near close to its location.
Either way, there's no way in hell he's going in there. Forget about the haunted house, he's heard all about the crazy stuff Class 77-B as a whole, and the kind of headaches they've caused.
It looks like Kiriko might've read his mind, as he can feel her grab even more onto his arm.
"Hey, come on, Sosukeeeee…" She even tugs on his arm for good measure. It didn't hurt at all, but it put the point across. "It'll be fun! I can feel it."
He awkwardly chuckles, playfully shaking his head. "Alright, you've made a convincing argument right there." It looks like he couldn't resist Kiriko like this at all, especially not when she kept insisting with such a cute, pouty look on her face too.
And so, the two of them start looking around for where the haunted house attraction might be. All the while, he can't help but wonder exactly why she wanted them to go in that kind of attraction. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but, she didn't seem like a horror fan to him.
Just as the famed haunted house became clearer in their vicinity, suddenly, a realization dawns upon him.
He knows he can be kind of dense sometimes, but even so, he almost wants to slap himself for not realizing it sooner. She may not have directly said it to him, but it's clear why she wants them to go in there. A haunted house is the perfect place to huddle close together.
Another realization comes to him after that, and once again, he wants to slap himself for not realizing it immediately. Of course a girl like her would love the idea of her boyfriend protecting her from something really scary. This is the perfect chance for him to impress his girlfriend.
Even if the danger isn't real in here, he's going to show off just how well he can protect her. And he definitely won't be scared of some fake-ass monsters in there too, while he's at it. It's not like they can actually hurt anyone, anyway.
Besides, even if the others said it's so terrifying, it might as well have come from straight from a horror movie, he doesn't believe it'd be that bad. They've all got to be exaggerating, right?
Not to mention, even if the haunted house was as scary as they said it is (which he highly doubts), he's sure that nothing can ever terrify him anymore. Not after all those times he got….a certain kind of treatment from the Ultimate Nurse a year ago.
Once they get there, he then sees that there's a surprisingly long line ahead of them.
Sosuke frowns in disbelief. While yeah, a lot of people did talk about it, but he didn't expect for this kind of attraction to be that popular. He wonders if the talk about starting or improving a romantic relationship was the biggest draw to that, especially since even Kiriko was drawn to it for that kind of reason.
Fortunately, even though the line was long, it was also pretty quick to get shorter as time went on. When it looks like their turn is getting even closer, Sosuke stares down at the…strangely ominous entrance with a heavily determined look.' I'm going to look so cool in front of her.' He clenches his fist.
After that, they got themselves checked in, including signing a waiver before entering for some reason. In hindsight, that should've tipped him off, but with how excited Kiriko looks about the whole thing, he decided to let it slide for now. He'll assume they added that just for the fun of it, and not because it's actually that bad, right?
Now that they're inside, well, he's gotta say, he's kind of impressed with how…convincing the interior is. The grime and dust all over the place, plus the occasional creaky noise on the floor, he'll have to give it to Class 77-B for going all out with it. Though, it looks less like a haunted house, and more like a creepy maze or dungeon of some sort, in his honest opinion.
He quietly gulps. It's probably just him, but it feels like the eerie atmosphere is starting to get to him—
'No, stop that right now.' Closing his eyes, he steadily inhales, and then exhales with gritted teeth. 'Come on. Keep yourself together, Sosuke.' He reminds himself as he lightly taps on his cheeks with both hands. 'You can't let yourself look lame in front of her.'
As they walk on, he then hears something that sounds like piano keys smashing each other. It startles him a bit, making him pause from walking for a split second right there. Swallowing, he looks around, checking if there's anything that will pop out to scare the hell out of them.
He quietly breathes out a sigh of relief when nothing did, but still, he keeps his guard up, just in case. That's always the kind of trick they go with in these kinds of stuff.
While he tries ignoring the cold sweat dripping from his forehead, he then hears Kiriko whimper from his side, no doubt still shocked by that noise from earlier. Out of instinct, he reaches out to hold her even closer to him.
Something drops in front of them. He couldn't make out exactly what it was, since it's so dark, but it did make Kiriko jump a bit. He holds her closer to him as he discretely moves faster than usual; he'd rather not stick around and investigate what that might've been.
Sosuke isn't sure if they're any closer to the exit, or what time it is now. All he knows is that, he definitely felt something grab at his ankle a while ago, and it took everything within him not to react, no matter how much he wanted to flinch. Since Kiriko didn't even notice anything weird, he counts that as a success.
He blinks. 'Is it just me, or was there something else up there?'
Somehow, even in this kind of darkness, he sees something move from the corner. But, by then, he realizes too late that it's heading right towards him and Kiriko. He wasn't even thinking anymore as he shoves himself right in front of her in an instinctive yet futile attempt to shield her from whatever that thing is.
His jaw involuntarily drops out, his irises shrinking down to dots.
Even though the surroundings are so dark, somehow, his vision goes white.
A moment after that, an unusually high-pitched noise starts ringing in his ears. Sosuke dazedly realizes too late that those noises didn't come from Kiriko or from whatever the monster is in front of them.
That high-pitched noise came from him.
Around a few minutes or so ago…
Hajime grunts as he put himself in some kappa costume. It was pretty big, and rather hefty too. Not so much to the point it's hard for him to breathe and move around in, but still.
Once he's sure he's got everything in and closed the costume, he checks himself out in the mirror.
"Wow."
He's going to be very honest here. This costume looks way too good for a simple haunted house attraction like this. Actually, it feels like it belongs more in a high budget movie or TV series.
Now that he's got himself fully…'dressed', so to say, it's time for him to get in the haunted house.
At the moment, he's just going to do nothing. Other than staying in his spot while waiting until some unlucky sap walks their way here, then he can do his usual thing. Which is, of course, jumping out from his spot and chasing after them.
While waiting for his cue, he thinks back on how it started. From underneath the costume, he can't help but crack a tiny smile. He remembers all the fun, and not-so-fun times they've had in the past month while preparing for this.
He thinks he might've already lost track of how many people have visited their haunted house attraction already. It's still too early for him to say for sure, but…
'It would be nice if our class wins.'
He then hears something that sent chills down to his very core, making him nearly jump himself out of his skin right before he suddenly realizes, 'Oh yeah, that was just Ibuki.' His shoulders slump. 'She's setting the horror atmosphere for this one a little well, though.'
After a couple of more moments, he hears footsteps creaking his way. 'Looks like that's my cue, then.'
He straightens his posture, getting himself ready as he looks over on who might be coming. It's a good thing that they installed something that lets anyone who wears this costume see in the dark.
As soon as he sees who those people are, he can't help raise a brow. 'Ichino and Nishizawa? Huh, that's the second time someone from the Student Council came here. Oh well, please don't take this too personally, you two.'
Without wasting any more minute, he runs towards them, at least, as much as this costume can allow him to. Once he's close enough to them, he presses a button from within, activating a mechanism that allows the kappa costume's eyes to glow brightly.
'Shit!' He curses, realizing too late that he set the brightness up too high.
Hajime watches as Ichino throw himself in front Nishizawa with open arms. But then suddenly, Ichino's eyes start to widen and, well…he never thought that he'd hear such a high-pitched shriek come from Ichino, of all people, but here he is right now.
After about a minute or so of screaming, Ichino grabs Nishizawa by the wrist, and he proceeds to sprint out of there as fast as he can, all while the very confused girl holds on for her dear life.
Hajime tries to recap what he witnessed just now. Yeah, his ears definitely didn't deceive him at all, and neither did his eyes, for that matter.
'I think I might have to keep this to myself for now, though.' Hajime thinks to himself with a slight smile. 'He still has to keep his reputation up as someone from the Ultimate Student Council, after all.'
A/N: I think I'm getting all fired up with these updates hehe. Also, I think things should start getting crazier for the next chapters.