The cultural festival was coming up fast, and everyone in Clair Academy was discussing their classes' and clubs' contributions. He might not have been an expert on what everyone was doing at any given time, like that Omemi girl or someone, but Nakayama Takashi liked to think that he knew most of the important stuff.

The Iris Class and the Poppy Class, for example, had each decided to build a haunted house, and they'd fought over the multipurpose room until the principal had to step in. Geez. Underclassmen always made a big deal out of everything. Then again, whatever had apparently happened in the high school division of the campus was worse. All he'd heard of that was that the Poinsettia Class, or maybe it was the chemistry club, had accidentally poisoned their classroom. Probably an exaggeration. When Takashi had gone over there, everything was just covered in purple smoke.

Then there was the Lily Class, the second-year middle school girls' class. Whether it was their loopy teacher or the weirdos among the students, they'd come up with the worst idea ever. Seriously, a public tribute to Pretty Cure? He'd only seen them once, but he didn't think they were all that interesting. Okay, yeah, they had magical powers or whatever, but that was too much to think about. Seira seemed to like the display the class was doing - she was even dressing up for the thing. For his part, Takashi didn't have the heart to tell her that, for some reason or another, seeing her in that Cure costume just felt disturbing. It was one of those things that you couldn't understand because you didn't know everything, but you had a feeling about it either way. Takashi felt like that a lot.

Compared to all of the above, the Rose Class was probably getting off easy. Takashi hadn't exactly voted for what they were going to do, but it sounded hilarious, and it was better than getting pulled into a war over the multi. Easy as anything.

"Ahem."

Takashi promptly looked up from the sports magazine hidden in his textbook. Urobuchi-sensei, a tall man in a yellowish woven suit that smelled like the secondhand store, cleared his throat and addressed the room.

"Boys of the Rose Class, I have unfortunate news." He sniffed. "It appears as if a number of issues have turned up, the chief one being the submission of parental concerns. I realize that the cultural festival is coming up quickly, but you must show initiative and improvise, as we have officially been given orders beyond our control. With that, the planned contribution of 'comedy crossdressing maid cafe' is unfortunately cancelled."

Well. There went that.

Futari wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon ~solar eclipse~

Bonus Episode 2: Fateful Cultural Festival... What? Takashi's Side!

"Okay, we're stuck," Takashi groaned, plopping down in his seat at the lunch table. "Whose parents complained?"

"Who knows?" Yokote Haruka pushed around the food in his lunch box. "Either way, it's a pain, because now we'll have to spend all our time coming up with something new and I'll never get a break! The teachers are already watching me like I stole something."

"Well, you did try to look into the girls' changing room five times last semester," Takashi sighed. "Then there was the camera thing a couple weeks ago. Still can't believe you actually thought that would work."

"It was a noble cause," Haruka said, stabbing his pile of rice.

"You're a mess," Takashi said. "Was the panty thing last fall you, too?"

"Copycat criminal," Haruka said, pushing his bleached bangs out of his face and posing like he was trying to summon a background of bubbles and sparkles, with maybe some roses for good measure. "Clearly jealous."

Takashi rolled his eyes. "Again, you're a mess. Why are we friends?"

Two more of their classmates sat down beside them. One of them rolled his eyes and opened up his lunch box. "Come on. We have, like, 900 yen left in the class cultural festival budget, so we can't do something new anyway. Might as well cut our losses."

"I don't know about you," the other snapped, "but I don't want a bad mark for sucking, and you know Urobuchi-sensei's not going to let us off easy even if it isn't our fault." He rolled his eyes and sat down with a bright pink lunch box with hearts on the lid.

Takashi gave a halfhearted, floppy sort of wave. "Hi, Koyama. Hey, Outa, who's the lunchbox from?"

"Hanamori from the Poppy Class," Outa shrugged, opening the box. "Think it looks edible?"

"Why do you get all the girls?" Haruka grumbled. "At least it's just an underclassman. Whatever, I don't feel like talking about this."

"Meaning you got shot down again," Takashi shrugged, ignoring Haruka's resulting convulsion. "As for the cultural festival, I hate to butt in, but I agree with Outa. Even though it's pretty much impossible not to suck at this rate, we at least have a cafe, even without frilly pink dresses or whatever."

"Yeah, but it's still hopeless." Koyama rolled his eyes. "We went cheap on the food because we thought seeing a bunch of guys in dresses would make it funny enough that the actual eating didn't matter, remember? All we have is a bunch of premade frozen stuff and some pop and bad tea. We can't even steal ingredients from the home ec room and make anything. The Cooking Club's watching that place like a bunch of rabid dogs."

Outa facepalmed. "Normal dogs stand and watch their stuff, Koyama, but rabid dogs? They just stop eating for a couple days and then start attacking you and eating your furniture in between seizures. Everybody knows that."

"The point is, it's useless!" Koyama growled. He picked up a piece of salted salmon between his chopsticks and tossed it across the table. Outa ducked to the side. The fish sailed over to the next table and landed in somebody's hair. Koyama's jaw slowly lowered and his eyes opened wide as his unintended victim - tall, silent, and wearing the high school variant of the Clair Academy boys' uniform - turned to the side in his seat and stared directly at him.

"Asamiya from the Lisianthus Class," Outa whispered after taking a quick glance. "Nice knowing you."

The older boy called Asamiya reached up for what felt to Koyama like ages and flicked the bulk of the piece of fish out of his hair and onto the floor. He frowned.

"What was that for?"

Koyama shivered and stared with even wider eyes. "Um... Food fight?"

At the declaration, even more eyes turned to look. Asamiya slowly rose from his chair. Hands from all over the lunchroom were already going to their onigiri and octopus-shaped sausages, ready to support any side or, more than likely, none but the cause of joining in the chaos. Takashi shook his head and got up from the table with his lunch.

"See you later, guys. I'm going to get ideas for how to make our cafe not suck and also avoid getting suspended." He started to walk away, lunch box in hand.

Haruka looked up from his sulking, blinked, and flailed to grab his own lunch. "Hey, wait, I'm coming with you!"

Takashi took pity on Haruka about halfway down the hallway and let him catch up. They walked down the hall and past the Rose Class' open door.

"Wait, that's our-"

"I'm not going to our classroom," Takashi said without looking over his shoulder. "I'm checking out the competition."

Haruka ran to catch up again. "You're going to sabotage all the other classes?"

"No, moron." Takashi lightly bopped him. "I'm going to see what they're doing that we're not, since what we're doing is gonna suck if we sit here and run the most boring cafe in the universe. Short of drawing up a couple of censor bars on the windows and carrying around picket signs when we're serving people-"

"Hey, that sounds pretty cool-"

"If we actually do that, they're going to complain again," Takashi groaned. "They're obviously going to be able to tell when we're calling them on being a bunch of morons, and we're not going to be able to do anything about it until we're their age. Probably even later."

"Who says?" A third voice emerged. The boys halted and spun to the side. A girl wearing the middle school uniform smiled out of the Lily Class' doorway and adjusted the oversized modelling clay hairpiece affixed to her bright yellow hair.

"Seira!" Takashi rubbed the back of his head. "You popped up out of nowhere. You working on your class' exhibit thing?"

"More or less," Seira replied, taking the hair decorations out and laying them on a desk before walking out to greet the boys. "What are you guys doing?"

"Drowning in our own hopelessness. Uh, hey, Mitsuishi." Haruka fumbled through his quick mental readthrough of How To Address Other People's Hot Girlfriends In Front Of Said Other People.

Seira herself just blinked. "Huh?"

Takashi sighed. "Somebody's parents complained about our maid cafe. Something about how kids our age crossdressing will confuse and traumatize us for the rest of our lives. It's stupid and now we're trying not to fail because our food sucks and our presentation has nothing to it. I wanted to see what everyone else was doing."

"What? Really?" Seira crossed her arms. "I shouldn't be surprised. Even when I was overseas, parents freaked out about stuff we thought was normal. In fact, I'm pretty sure they freaked out more there than they do over here. Do you want to come look at our display?"

"I've already seen that," Takashi said. "Sorry, but it kind of freaks me out."

"What's wrong with Pretty Cure?", Haruka asked.

"I have nothing against them!", Takashi snapped. "They keep us from getting eaten by monsters. That's a good thing. Can we get back to looking for ideas?"

Seira cut in. "I heard the dance club is having a dancing challenge with one of those arcade rhythm games. We could check that out first? Then the Anemone Class is doing face painting, the girls' lacrosse team is having a fortune-telling booth..."

"We might as well check every room out," Haruka groaned.

Takashi brightened, and he did a small fist pump. "That's exactly what we're going to do. Come on, you guys." He gestured for them to follow as he walked down the hall.

"I'm up for it!" Seira twirled after.

"Seriously? Nakayama, you've got to be-" Haruka blinked and flailed, left behind again. "Hey, wait!"

And so, a tour of the school they did. Most of the clubs were doing small food stands or, as expected, haunted houses and maid cafes. Takashi wondered if anyone had ever held a haunted maid cafe. The art club had set up a station for people to try drawing in various media, the orchestra was holding a concert, the boys' soccer team was just making everybody pancakes. Entertaining, maybe. Okay, definitely entertaining, though most of that was laughing at Haruka tripping over himself trying to steal the Cooking Club's ingredients after they warned him for the fifth time that day. Takashi sort of felt sorry for the guy. At the moment, though, he felt more sorry for his class' grade.

"Well, that was a colossal waste of time." Takashi leaned against the wall where the stairs turned. "Maybe everyone else was right. Might as well just work with what we've got."

"Don't worry," Seira said, though she didn't look like she wasn't worrying, either. "We've spent a lot of time on this. It's already supper break."

Haruka looked up the stairs and caught sight of a quarter of the clock tower's face. "Whoa, it is? Sorry, guys, I've been starving for ages. The Cooking Club's food stores call! You two coming?"

"No way." Takashi waved him off with a shrug. "Leave me your stuff in your will."

Haruka cringed as if he'd been shot before brushing it off with that smile and flourish again, the one where he expected a bubble-and-flower background to lift itself out of a shoujo romance and deposit itself behind him on command. "Lesser beings might fear the wrath of the Cooking Club during preparations, but I have charm." He sprung off, humming some song or another.

"Lunatic." Takashi facepalmed.

Seira laughed. "He is pretty weird. I feel a little guilty saying so, though."

"Why?" Takashi raised an eyebrow. "Everyone else says it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even care by now. I mean, we're friends."

"It's one of those things you have to feel guilty about. Even if you find somebody utterly creepy." She sighed. "Not saying he is, but it's one of those things."

Takashi raised an eyebrow. "I don't even get it, but I think I kind of do."

Seira smiled a little. "Anyways, about what you were getting at before, like with the 'censored' thing? I really think you guys should do it."

Blink. "Are you serious? We can't, we'll get in trouble from the school and the parents."

"I know," Seira said. "Maybe this is a bad idea, but what else are you going to do? Everyone will know what happened. At least this way, they'll know how you feel, too. Besides, it might be fun!"

Takashi shrugged and laughed. "Heh. Maybe."

His phone rang.

"Hey. Nakayama Takashi here. Oh, hey, Mom. Yeah, the cultural festival's going decently. Except our cafe... I'll just tell you later. ...What? No, I haven't. I'm just with Seira right now, and... Mom, I don't want to talk about this right now."

And so it continued the way it was heard.

Takashi didn't know why he was doing this. Well, he did, when he thought about it. Common sense said that he should talk to a faculty member about these kinds of things, but Urobuchi-sensei - and, indeed, pretty much every teacher at this school - would probably tell him to suck it up, keep his parents happy, and not act all too weird.

Every teacher but one, anyway.

Nakata Ami, science teacher and the Lily Class' homeroom teacher, sat down at the front desk of the chemistry lab with a sympathetic smile that almost made Takashi forget she was crazy. He fidgeted in his own seat, a lab chair pulled up to the other side of the desk. Ami-sensei folded her hands over something that looked like an archaic purple portable tape player.

"Tell me what's going on, Nakayama-san."

He did. With everyone else bustling around the school and the chem lab oddly deserted, Takashi told his sister's deluded teacher about the Rose Class' problem first, but then the words started rolling out like a pyramid of weights in the gym's fitness room that had collapsed their stand and were tumbling down the floor. He talked and kept talking about his parents, about Seira, about the town and the country and the whole stupid world and how it just wasn't-

"Fair," Ami-sensei finished. "It just isn't fair, is it?"

"You're telling me!" Takashi's fist pounded the teacher's desk. "Even if you're lucky enough to be born a normal guy, you still have to fit in, and that includes being stupid. There's nothing wrong with Seira! There's probably not even anything wrong with actual foreigners! My parents are just the kinds of people who don't want anyone to think they didn't step out of a Perfect Family of the Year award ceremony or whatever."

Ami frowned. "Society does shape people to be that way. They start to hate abnormality, and because normality isn't real in the first place, they start to hate themselves. Because of that, they turn on those less normal than they are."

"I guess you'd know," Takashi muttered.

Ami twitched. "Pardon?"

"Sorry." Takashi turned bright red and looked at the floor. "Even you want to be normal, huh?"

"A student normally wouldn't outright say to a teacher's face that he thought she was a lunatic," Ami said. She paused and shook her head. "But again, we're back to normalcy, aren't we? Yes, I do want to be normal sometimes. I dress professionally so that my bosses will pay attention to me, and I try to influence my students to become better people so that that attention will pay off when the principal sees my work. But on the other hand, I know I won't ever get that promotion I want." She sighed. "To tell you the truth, Clair Academy hasn't even hired any woman into the administration levels in the school's entire history, let alone an abnormal one. It's common in places like this. There are laws enforcing equal hiring at the bottom levels, but who gets to the top from there is another story. A lot of places, office buildings in some of the big cities more than schools, actually have people trying to marry off their employees, expecting that they'll retire to become housewives."

Takashi blinked. "Well, yeah, that's normal."

"Normal, but ridiculous and stupid," Ami-sensei said. "Just like what your parents said about you and Mitsuishi-san."

He thought about this. "Well... yeah. I guess I wouldn't want everyone thinking my life had to be a certain way. When you think about it, they already do, for everyone."

"Some more than others." She nodded. "Setups like these hurt the 'regular' people like you, too. They restrain you as much as they restrain the odd ones like me. It's fine to be a housewife if you want to be, but not if you're forced to be. Even if I wanted to be a housewife, I'm not naturally attracted to anybody, so one of the main qualities doesn't quite work out."

Takashi blinked. "You're not-"

"No."

"You mean, nobody you know?"

"Nobody at all."

"Are you sure you just haven't found-"

"No," Ami said. "Why does everybody ask the exact same questions? This is why the future generations have to be educated! As a sign of togetherness and understanding of one another! Understanding will break down the notion of normalcy, and with it, the unwarranted hatred that people defensively perpetuate towards those different from themselves! The world will be a better place in the future!"

Takashi stared and took in the impassioned speech as it echoed around the empty lab. It felt like forever before he spoke again. "...You really believe that, huh, Ami-sensei?"

Ami coughed and nodded. "I do. I always have, Nakayama-san. People change, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better. Sometimes both at once. The only stipulation is that you or I or anyone else can't make them change. We can give them one or two ideas out of many, but their reactions are their own. People change if they want to change. It's painful when they don't, but I know that some of them do. Offering our own help is the best we can do."

Takashi thought. Finally, he shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I didn't really expect anything different, anyway."

Ami-sensei picked up her tape recorder and smiled. "If anything happens, tell me. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about before I go?"

Takashi scratched the back of his head. "Well... Kazahana City tries to be normal, but it's a pretty weird place."

Ami nodded again. "It is, at that."

"And sometimes I'm not sure what's real and what's made up."

"More is real than you think," Ami-sensei said.

"And I'm jealous of Yoko," he admitted. "I used to rag on her all the time for lying about the whole car thing, but I never thought she'd actually come out and admit it to everyone. I know it's not a huge thing, but if I did figure skating, I'd never admit it."

"Figure skating takes a great deal of fortitude," Ami interjected. "It isn't good to judge things by the glamour or lack of grittiness of their appearance."

"Yeah, well." Takashi sighed. "Speaking of my sister, I'm pretty sure she's hiding something."

Ami smiled a little. "Do you think so?"

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Well, more than usual. I mean, there was the car thing, and how she randomly started baking last month for no reason and got really mad when I ate her cake, and ever since we were seven I've been pretty sure she's a lesbian, but I mean something more important than all that stuff. She's always out and there's obviously something she's not mentioning, and with how weird this town is getting, who knows what she's doing."

"You're thirteen years old, Nakayama-san," Ami said, her smile widening a bit. "It's normal for somebody that age to be hiding things from their sibling and parents, no matter how innocuous the secret is. I hope that things go well for you, regardless."

Takashi bowed and started to pick up his things. He paused. "Wait. Didn't you say that normal doesn't exist, Ami-sensei?"

Ami-sensei smiled and stood up. The shine of the light coming in through the window made her black hair look purple.

"So I did."