June 22nd, 2020
Keiichi Maebara was a man of many wisdoms. One of those wisdoms, for example, was curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, an attitude that occasionally gave him grief. Another was the importance of adhering to the club rules, of course.
And thirdly, something that had not needed to come up for the main portion of his life, was never let Satoko on the internet.
Admittedly, it took forever and a half to hook up even the most simple of broadbands –some of Hinamizawa still didn't even have electricity– but once they had, well, the club may have grown up, but they hadn't lost their childish spirit.
The problem with this was, of course, Satoko. She had grown up, but she had never lost that diabolical sense of mischief that had made so many of Keiichi's schooldays and club activities a misery.
And with the internet, came opportunity.
And with opportunity, came electronic mail-ordering.
And with that, with Satoko, came trouble.
Keiichi's first inkling of this was when Satoshi had come in smiling, mentioning how Satoko had ordered bath-crayons she could use to scribble things in the bathtub as she thought. And admittedly, that was cute and wholesome. The rest of the gang had been invested, and Keiichi had even borrowed a red one and had some fun with it in his own shower, drawing half-baked plots and connecting the strings in some of the mystery novels he read.
It should've stopped there. Of course, it didn't.
Next was a tangle of bungee cords. Then a set of rock-climbing ropes. Then a hang glider. Then a paintball gun. Then a comprehensive encyclopedia of urban warfare and trap-setting books. Then a set of professional hardware, like a construction worker's kit.
Satoko kept ordering stuff, stuff that no average citizen should reasonably order and use, and Keiichi and the others went about in a nervous, tense state of waiting, wondering what horrors Satoko was about to construct and wreak upon them. Sometimes she showed them, sometimes they found out the hard way, sometimes she gave a frighteningly detailed presentation with graph charts, postboards, and a pointer, talking about the new defenses she had added on her special trap mountain. It'd originally been Sonozaki property, and Mion had half-jokingly given the Hojo family the rights to it on Satoko's 18th birthday. Rena joked during one of these presentations about the mountain now being practically impregnable even to a modern army.
Keiichi wished they could not take that statement seriously. But alas, it was probably all too true.
The next faux pas was all on him, however, much to his grief. After a detailed lecture on all the ways she had built up the defenses on her mountain, Keiichi had dismissively made a comment about how Satoko may as well build her own fort atop the mountain, since she was defending it like a feudal lord.
The next online order to show up on the Hojo doorstep was several metric tons of granite, as well as a truckload of mortar mix. The mixer and several other construction tools arrived a few days later, and Keiichi was all but tearing his hair out as Satoko loaded block after block into her beat-up muddy truck and drove them up the mountain, and slowly but surely a fort rose at its highest peak.
He was going to convince Satoshi to lock her damn account before Satoko created a prefecture up there.
12.29 PM, USA Central Time