Chapter 5: Festival Preparations (Part 1)

I woke up and did the usual 'take a shower and prepare for the day' thing. Because there's no school I throw on some casual clothes consisting of a white shirt and basic blue jeans. I mean, if I'm rolling with the 'white person with short black hair registered trademark' look, I might as well have simple clothes to match.

After getting cleaned up for the day, I check the time on my phone. It's only 8:00PM but knowing how jam-packed my weekend is, I will need all the time I can get. I open up the group chat on my phone and start conversing with Yuri.

Markus: Hey, what time are we going to do this at?

I wait for a few minutes and I get a reply.

Yuri: Give me thirty minutes to get over there. I'm at the store buying supplies like paints and brushes.

Markus: Wait, you're coming over here?

Yuri: I hope that's not a issue...

Markus: It's fine, it's just that I thought I would be going over to your house since you're the whole ringleader behind the atmosphere and decoration.

Natsuki: Well, if you're fine with her coming over to your place, can I do the same on sunday? Trust me, you do not want to come to my house.

Markus: That's also fine Natsuki. I can arrange for that.

Monika: I assume that I am also allowed to come over as well? ;)

Markus: Yes Monika, it's all good

The only hurdle I have to overcome is hoping that my mom doesn't get in the way. She's a nice person for sure, but she will probably tease me and the girls if they come over.

But wait, Sayori hasn't sent any messages. Maybe she is still asleep? I'll be seeing her later today anyways so I can confront the issue then. For now though, I should probably clean my room a bit.

Thirty minutes comes and goes, even though it feels like five minutes. Guess that's what happens when your room is messy and you have preoccupied thoughts. I hear a gentle knock and I go down the stairs. Well, more like dash down them. I want to greet Yuri to my mom, not have my mom introduce herself.

I open the door and I see the lovely lavender lass herself. She's wearing a tan sweater, with thin black pants and white tennis shoes. ...Look okay I don't know the specific names of clothing. She's wearing thin black pants as far as I'm concerned and that's the only name I'll give them.

"Good morning Markus. Thanks again for offering to help all of us."

I wave it off. "It's the least I can do. Wanna head inside?"

"Sure." We make our way indoors while I stay behind and lock the door. I notice her carrying a bag, presumably with all of the art supplies in it.

I gesture to the stairs. "Want to work on this in my room?"

She shrugs. "Sounds good." As we walk up the stairs, I see my bedroom in plain sight. It's so easy, all we have to do is walk by my mom's room and we are-

"Hello Markus! I see you brought a friend."

...God dammit.

"Hey mom..." I say nervously. "This here is Yuri."

Yuri bows her head. "I-It's a pleasure to meet you."

My mom smiled at Yuri's gesture. "Please, save the formalities. Call me Margret."

Yuri nods and looks away slightly. Time for me to push through this conversation. "Alright Yuri, lets get started." I walk into my room with Yuri following behind.

"Don't have too much fun you two~"

"Forgive my language but god dammit mom!"

I hear my mom snickering as I leave the door cracked open as Yuri puts down the art supplies. "Your moms a lovely person..." Yuri said softly.

"You have no idea..." I say in disbelief as we sit on the floor adjacent to each other. Leave it to my mom to embarrass me. I notice Yuri is examining my room.

"I see you take pride in cleaning." She looks at how spotless my computer desk is.

"Yep, I wanted to clean a little just 'cause I knew I was having company over." I see Yuri inspect my desk with her finger, presumably feeling how soft the surface is. She then reaches for the desk drawer and pulls it open.

"No!" I snatch her wrist and she recoils back a bit.

"Ah! I-I'm sorry M-Markus! I didn't k-know what got into me..."

I take a deep breath in a attempt to calm down. "It's fine Yuri, It's just that there's some stuff in there that I'm not too comfortable showing others."

"Ah. I understand." She says looking away. "It's troublesome having secrets that you have to keep from the rest of the world. But all we can do at the end of the day is embrace our own weirdness, right?

"...Right..." Yeah, thank god she didn't see what the contents were in that drawer. "So... What exactly are we making for the festival?"

Yuri pulls out a wooden cylinder. "Well Markus, do you have any experience with aromatherapy."

Aromatherapy? I mean, that's a move used in Pokémon but lets be real here, that's not what Yuri is referring to. Curse my video game expertise.

"I barely have a clue as for what that is." Technically, its not a lie.

"It's basically a way to enhance the mood using different oils from this diffuser. For our poetry performance, I will be using jasmine oil." She messes with the diffuser and a small stream of gas leaks out of the top. "Jasmine oil will lift your mood and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety. Because we are presenting pieces of writing that involves our deeper feelings, feeling relaxed is key."

"Sounds good." I say taking in the scent of the oil. "I feel like this is going help things immensely. Especially since my writing is... well, you know."

Yuri looks at me. "Just remember what I've- I-I mean what t-the club has told you. Your poetry skills hold no bound Markus."

"If you say so." I reply still sounding a bit unsure. Yuri then took out a big sheet of paper. "Next up, we will be creating a banner with the words, 'The Literature Club' across the top. And then we'll create a gradient using the paint. I was thinking of making a morning to night time look..." She stares off for a bit. "U-uh, if that's okay with you?"

"I would love to create that, Yuri."

She smiles and closes her eyes. "That's what I like about you... So open-minded..." She mutters, more to herself I'm guessing.

"Don't worry about it, it's nothing really. Just happy to help."

Yuri digs into the bag and pulls out the various different colors of paints. "Do you mind fetching some plastic cups and filling them with water?"

"Not at all, be right back." I stand up and head to the bathroom. I fill up two cups and head back. "I'm a little hyped to do this Yuri. I wouldn't consider myself artistic but this looks like fun."

She smiles back at me. "Indeed Markus. I'd reckon we would make a productive team." We each grab a brush and get to work. I work on the morning half of the banner and Yuri works on the night time half. It was a bit of a long process but I'd say it was worth it.

I lean over to use the blue paint and Yuri does the same.

"Ah!" Yuri jumps back a bit as we bump heads with each other.

"Oh no, sorry I bumped you Yuri."

She sets down the brush and feels her head. "Its quite alright Markus. I don't feel any bump." I look at Yuri's neck and I see that I got some blue paint on her from my brush.

"Sorry Yuri, it looks like I got paint on you. I'll go fetch us a towel." I head off to the bathroom and put a towel under hot water. I rub the towel around her neck. While doing this, she closes her eyes. Overtime my movements slowdown, with Yuri's hand keeping my arm in place.

"It feels nice..." She sighs contently at the warmth of the towel. I don't know if its the aromatherapy that's doing this, but the world around us feels like its stopped. All I can focus on is Yuri. It's at this moment I realize just how lucky I am. I have a attractive girl in my room, with her being very content with this friendly gesture of mine. We stay like this for a few minutes longer and our bodies have moved closer together.

Eventually though we both back away from each other, with Yuri looking a little nervous, despite the scent of jasmine in the air. "I think we should move on and finish this..."

"...Yeah." I reply weakly. Gotta be honest here, I think I like it when Yuri is a little more assertive. I didn't take her for being that way but she was open to talking to me about what we will be doing for the decorations. Maybe it's because she can interact better in a one-on-one conversation. Or maybe the aromatherapy is working its 'magic.'

After a little while longer, the banner is complete. And if I have anything to say about it, I'd say it turned out great. "So now we have to wait for the banner to dry?"

"Precisely." She says while picking up the remains of the supplies. "Do you mind if I let the banner dry here and then you can take it to school on monday?"

"Not at all." I pick up the banner and set it on my desk, pushing my keyboard to the side. If this was any other case I would find a better stop for the banner but I don't think I'm going to have time to use my computer this weekend.

"Was there anything else for us to do?" I ask while looking at the time. It's 1:00PM, so five hours of work so far was done on this. That leaves me with a good amount of time to help Sayori.

"There was one more thing." She pulls a roll of ribbon and a pocket knife. "We need a way to hang the banner so using ribbons to do so would be ideal I think." My attention has drawn into the pocket knife. The handle is mostly black with blue waves rippled onto it.

"That's a really pretty knife Yuri." Never before would I have ever thought that I would compliment someone's pocket knife.

"O-Oh, yes. My pocket knife. She flips the blade exposing the blue tinted metal. "I call it 'ocean-balance.'" She then looks a little nervous and plays with her hair a bit. "I know it's a bit silly to give inanimate objects names..."

"Eh, don't worry about it." I say, knowing fully well where she's coming from. "I have a attachment to video games, so I often give my consoles nicknames. I mean, like you said earlier; we have to embrace our weirdness..."

"If only it was that simple." Yuri said with a sigh.

She starts to cut the long roll of ribbon and make small strips out of it. We tape some to the back of the banner. All in all, a job well done.

"Nice one Yuri." I say complimenting her craftsmanship with the knife.

"O-oh, it's no biggie." She said shutting off the diffuser. It would appear that she is already looking a little nervous after the jasmine scent wore off. "Thank you for your assistance Markus, and y-you know." She hides behind her hair. "For letting me use your house to work on this project."

I see her packing her stuff. "It's no biggie. And uh, if you wanted to, we could uh..." I begin to lose my train of thought. "You know, we could hang out after school again. N-not that I'm forcing you to or anything."

Yuri smiles at my 'attempt' at flirting. "I'd would fancy that..." We walk down the stairs and to the front door. I see her looking a lot more nervous as she walks out the door.

"Hey Yuri, you feeling okay."

"Honestly Markus, I'm not. This poem presentation is going to be the death of me."

I take a step closer to her. "Just relax Yuri. Think about this, the aromatherapy will enhance the atmosphere there, you will feel calmer hopefully breeze through it. Also, I've seen your writing before. It's pretty impressive I think." Now I don't normally read a lot of poetry anyways but I'm sure Yuri's writing is still good enough to stand on its own.

She sighs and takes a step closer. "Thank you for the encouraging words Markus. I can only hope the people spectating our performance will be as nice as you." She backs away and starts walking back to her house.

I know Yuri has this in the bag... She's more talented than she gives herself credit for. I peek at my phone and I see its 2:10PM. Time sure flies by huh? I open to group chat to try to get Sayori's attention.

Markus: Hey Sayori, wanna come over to my place so we can work on advertising this event?

I wait a few minutes and no reply comes from her. It's a little concerning to say the least. Monika decides to butt in.

Monika: Don't you live next to Sayori's house? Why not try asking her?

Markus: Good thinking, just one question? How do you know where I live?

Monika: Sayori is always blabbering on about whatever the latest news is. You better believe she was happy to have a friend so close to her home. :D

Markus: Alright I'll go and see Sayori in person. Also stop using so many emoticons.

Monika: Never ;)

Natsuki: Does this bother you Markus? :D

Markus: ...I'm not going to leave a reply to your teasing

I sigh as I put my phone in my pocket. Instead I got more important matters to attend to, such as seeing what Sayori's deal is. I take the minute long walk and approach her door. I give 3 knocks and wait to see who opens it.

The door slowly opens with Sayori peeking out of it. Are those bags under her eyes? "Hey Sayori!" I say trying to ease her into conversation. "Did you oversleep again?"

She nervously giggles as she opens the door all the way to reveal herself. She has a pink t-shirt with short shorts. "Hehe. You could say that..."

"Well, remember what we have to do today?"

She looks down to the floor. "Are you sure that you would even want to help me?"

"Of course Sayori. This club means a fair bit to me and if it makes Monika happy then so be it."

"Classic Markus..." She says with a smile. "Always worrying about others. Maybe you should help Monika instead."

"But I reserved this time, right now, to help you. I'm going to be helping Monika tomorrow instead." I wonder why she's so stubborn about this?

All of a sudden, I notice that there's some water drops falling from her face. Are those tears?

"You don't understand Markus. I'm too much of a klutz to help you. I would end up getting in the way and you would hate my guts for it."

"I would never do that." I say putting a hand on her shoulder. "I want to work with you because I think it would be fun. Who cares if you are a little bit ditzy?"

She then embraced me with a hug. "The other club members always feel much more important than I am... I'm just some nobody that barely succeeds as club vice-president."

Whoa, I had no idea she was the vice-president. "I think that's really cool Sayori!" I'm hoping saying these thing will make her comfortable. "I mean, I could never handle the roles of what you do. And hey, Monika wouldn't of let you be vice-president if you were some klutz you know." We continue hugging for another minute.

"Tell you what?" I say looking her in the eyes. Her face looks red and she still has some tears forming. "My mom recently got cookies from the nearby bakery. We can have some snacks and work on the festival preparations, okay?"

Her eyes lit up at the idea. "I suppose cookies will be nice."

I nod as I walk to my house. "Come along now Sayori." She follows behind and we enter my house.

Her eyes squinted as she looked around the house. "So cool..."

I chuckle a bit at that. "It's nothing really. It's just my little humble abode." I go to the fridge and reach for the cookies atop it. "Here you go Sayori. Pick any one you like."

She goes for a chocolate cookie and takes a big bite out of it. "'sho good!" I notice she got some crumbs on her face already. But hey, so long as she's enjoying herself.

I hear my mom walks down the stairs with her empty coffee cup. "And who might you be? Another one of Markus' girlfriends?"

"MOM!" I yell, not really out of anger but it's to save me from embarrassment.

"Haha... Sorry dear." She said knowing perfectly well what she did.

Sayori looks a way with a blush. "Girlfriend huh?" I'm pretty sure she muttered that to herself but I overheard anyways.

My mom extends her hand out. "My name's Margret. And you are...?"

"Sayori. It's nice to meet you!" Alright well it seems that she is back to her normal self.

"I just came downstairs to put away my dirty dish here." She sets her cup in the sink and heads back to her room. "You two play nice now~"

I internally face palm and slide into a kitchen chair. Please, someone end my suffering.

Sayori then sits next to me as she pulls out her poster. "Isn't it pretty Markus." I have to admit, she knows a thing or two about artistic presentation. The purple poster board clashes greatly with the golden glitter. She is also advertising the poetry event at the bottom. "I just hope this one doesn't end up like what happened at orientation." She starts to look sad again as these thoughts consume her.

"What are you talking about Sayori?"

She heaves a heavy sigh and looks away again. "It was those meanies... They insulted our club that day and ripped up our old poster." The tears start to leak from her eyes again. "Monika tried to retain composure after that interaction, but she was probably feeling that way because you were joining the club." She quickly pulls me in for another hug. ...After all, I would hate to see who is normally a ball of sunshine become a harsh downpour.

"Why can't these rain clouds go away..."She said sobbing into my shoulder. Looks like its up to me to rescue this situation.

"Shhh... It's all going to be okay Sayori." Yeah, I say that but I don't know if it actually is. This is the first time someone was crying on me, so what exactly should I say. "Those jerks you described wouldn't know literature if it hit them. They have no idea how much fun it is, or how much fun all of its club members are."

"...You're just saying that."

"No, not at all! I'm serious Sayori, you are a wonderful person who is capable of doing good things, like advertisement for this club. Don't let their hurtful words get to you."

"But if I was a better vice-president t-then..."

I hold her tighter. "I've seen your artisic skills with this poster alone. If anyone is up to this task, its you Sayori. Give yourself more credit." We hold each other for a little bit longer and we then back away from each other. "Feeling better?"

Sayori wipes the remnants of tears from her eyes. "Y-yeah. I'm all good now. Thanks for that Markus. I needed a shoulder to cry on."

"That's what friends are for, right?" I look at the time and see that a hour as already passed. "Okay, so what are we doing?"

"I feel like we should make two other posters, each with the same meaning but a little different in design." She looks around her self. "Oh wait, I forgot the supplies at my house."

I smile at her forgetfulness. "It's all good Sayori. We can make a trip and get the stuff." We both stand up and head to her house. Seeing Sayori sad... hurt a little bit. Who knew someone so happy had bottled up sadness?

Despite this day being on the weekend, there were still a few stray students around the school. These students are presumably all members of some of the various clubs. They are hanging up posters inside the school, in anticipation of the festival. Me and Sayori had the same idea. We put one poster on the first floor and another on the second. Each of these advertise the room number on the third floor.

The final poster we hung up lies on the third floor, with a big arrow pointing to the clubroom down the hall. Not to brag too much but because of Sayori's idea with having a purple poster with gold glitter, I wanted to make my poster also have contrasting colors. So i opted on a blue poster with orange glitter. The other poster that Sayori made has a green poster with red glitter. While she was making it, she thought about how much it would fit if it was for Christmas. I'm glad to see her enjoying this...

We get done taping the last poster and stand back to appreciate our work. "We got a lot done, huh?"

"Yeah! I'm glad you got me to work with you."

"Hehe, yeah. Looks like I'm the master convincer now." I puff out my chest a bit.

"E-Eh! Meanie! I'm the master convincer here."

"Good. Once they see your posters, they will have to stop by the literature club."

"Yeah... I hope it doesn't end so badly this time."

I put my hand on Sayori's shoulder as we walk down the stairs of the school. "We got this, Sayori..."

The walk back home was silent for the most part. I can see Sayori is back to her usual self with her humming a little tune as we make it home.

"So..." I start to speak as I see her purple house. "See you at the festival?"

She nods slowly. "Yeah, See you later Markus." She darts into her house and I slowly make my way home. Sayori was such a treat to hang out with. Seriously, how could those jerks be so rude to her hard work. She's a endearing individual and if anyone says otherwise I'll-

I slam the door to my house with more force than I thought. Yikes. Gotta calm down a bit. I take a deep breath and retreat to my room. I pass my moms bedroom and she sees me walking by.

"How did it go with Sayori?" She asks with genuine curiosity.

"A little rough but we made it through."

"Oh-no, what happened?"

I debated on telling her what happened to Sayori last week. I think my mom deserves to know such details about my friends. "It was these jerks at school that got under Sayori's skin. They weren't specifically targeting her though. It was the literature club as a whole."

"Oh..." My mom closes her eyes in thought for a moment. "Poor girl. Did you at least try to make her feel better."

I nod in conformation. "Yep. We got to work on making those posters and hung them up around the school."

"Good, good." She looks at me with a soft smile. "You're a good person Markus. You two should be lucky that you have each other."

I yawn and look at the time. Only 7:00PM!? "I'm turning in early for the night. I've got two more club members to help out."

"Two more lovely lady friends i presume?"

I blush slightly at this. "How many times are we going over this? They're just my friends..."

"We are going over this many times until its no longer fun to me... So it could be forever." She says that last part with a gleeful tone.

"Ugh, whatever. Goodnight mom."

"Goodnight Markus."

I head into my room and close the door. A day that involved a lot of work and a few bumps hear and there. But now I'm curious: how will tomorrow go? Just have to wait and see. I pass out on my bed and doze off, prepping myself for the next day.