After homeroom ended, the Literature Club sans its president gathered in the gymnasium along with the rest of the school's clubs. Amidst the clamor and the crowd of people, they managed to find their way to a plastic table that sat roughly in the center of the room. It bore a plastic, laminated sheet of paper which simply said – "Literature Club."
"Awesome! Let's get started," Sayori said with a grin, dumping the box she'd been carrying onto the table. Then, she looked up with a start. "Wait, how long do we have until people start showing up?"
Yuri thought for a moment. "I believe that we have fifteen minutes," she said.
"Ooooh! Challenging!" Sayori said, rubbing her hands together with an excited smile.
Natsuki shrugged. "Not really," she said, pulling streamers of colored construction paper from the box and laying them across the table. "There are three of us. So long as we hurry along, we can do it."
The other two members concurred and got to setting up the table in earnest. Sayori stacked the pamphlets that she and Monika had printed out yesterday. She paused and smiled pleasantly to herself, her thoughts briefly returning to the time she'd spent with Monika the day before.
Meanwhile, Natsuki and Yuri were setting up the decorations that Yuri had made. Natsuki draped a streamer across the front of the table. "Tape," she said. Yuri promptly sliced off a bit of tape from the dispenser they'd brought with them and spread it atop the streamer.
"Good," Natsuki said, reaching for another streamer from where she'd put them on the table.
Yuri squeezed her hands together behind her back. "I…I like how you organized them by color, Natsuki. It looks cute."
Natsuki paused, poised over the streamer, and gave Yuri the evil eye over her shoulder.
Yuri's fingers fluttered anxiously. "W-Wait, no, I didn't say that you were cute, just the d-decorations…" She looked away. "Sorry…"
Natsuki averted her eyes and grabbed the next streamer, holding it down next to the last one. "Tape."
Yuri wordlessly placed another length of tape along the streamer.
Natsuki huffed and tried to quell her racing heartbeat. "Thanks."
The three of them continued on in this way for some time, but before long, Sayori was done with her pamphlets. She eyed Natsuki's cupcakes, which were still in a closed container within the box, and reached for them slowly.
"Sayori," Natsuki snapped without looking up.
Sayori retracted her hand quickly. "I-I was just going to set them up! I swear!"
Natsuki rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Just let me set them up, okay? I'm almost done with the streamers, anyways." In fact, just then, Yuri taped down the last one. Natsuki placed her hands on her hips and admired their handiwork for a moment or two before nodding and cracking a smirk. "Hey, we did a good job!"
Yuri hummed and nodded emphatically. Natsuki grabbed her cupcakes, glaring at Sayori suspiciously as she did so, and started setting up rows of them atop paper plates.
"That went way faster than I expected it to," Sayori said with a proud smile. She checked her phone. "Yup! We've got a whole seven minutes left to do whatever we want with."
"Me and Yuri should probably wait here so that we're ready for when everyone arrives," Natsuki said, still setting up her cupcakes.
"Okay," said Sayori. "Oh! Do you guys care if I go find Monika?"
Yuri shook her head. "Not at all."
"As long as you're back in time," Natsuki said, narrowing her eyes playfully. "Like I said, I'm not running this thing!"
Sayori chuckled. "Alright, then. I'll be back in a flash!" With a smile and a thumbs up, Sayori skipped her way out of the gymnasium.
Natuski squinted after the girl. "Is it just me or is she extra bubbly today?"
Yuri tilted her head. "I thought so, as well. Do you think that something happened between her and Monika?"
"What do you mean?" Natsuki asked.
"Well, they've been walking home a lot more often, recently," Yuri mused. "And neither of them answered any of our texts yesterday."
"So? Monika hasn't answered her phone in, like, a week," Natsuki said.
"True, but Sayori always texts her friends back," Yuri replied.
Natsuki shrugged. "They were probably just working on the pamphlets. You know how absorbed Monika gets when it comes to work stuff."
Yuri hummed. "Maybe…"