"Why don't you show them what that machine can actually do?" I asked Shindo.
I did not want to bother with actually speaking with Melty or dealing with her nonsense anymore.
With that said, at the very least Melty seem to be slightly interested in what we were doing. At least she had the decency to feign some interest even if it was entirely fake. On the other hand, Filo look like she was bored five seconds in.
"Don't you have something more interesting? Like a volcano?" Filo asked.
"I asked my brother to do it, but he refused," Shindo said.
"The fact that you and a twelve-year-old have the same thought process says volumes about things," I told Shindo. "Now, as I said, start the demo, Shindo."
Shindo began turning the cycle. The light bulb began to grow. But that was about as well as we could do right now. It were taken an ungodly amount of time for some charge of anything of value like a cell phone.
"Is that it? " Filo asked. She was clearly unimpressed.
"Filo, they worked hard on this," Melty said.
"I know all we can do right now is make a lightbulb glow up," I said. "But as the system gets up it better, will be able to do more things with him, such as even recharging your cell phone."
"It seems somewhat interesting," Eclair said. Apparently, mild enthusiasm was the best that she could give us.
"That may be," I said. "But, there is a prize for the most popular project. In other words you get to both on it. As such I think that you guys should definitely be supporting advocating for this." I needed to leverage their presence in some way or the other.
"Do you really want to cheat like that?" Melty asked.
"Is it really cheating when all that I'm doing is asking my friends to go for me?" I asked. "Not to mention you guys wanted to tag along for this did not you? I doubt you want to do anything else here so emails will help me out a little."
"Uh, bro, I do not really care about winning any kind of prize. I just wanted to show something and that happened already," Shindo said.
"Yeah I know that you have very little interest in this," I said. "However, I worked very hard for this and I would like to see us get something out of it." Perhaps it was strange that I was more concerned about the prize than Shindo was, but that was because Shindo did not really care about the project so much in the first place.
Granted, I had another thing I was concerned about. Where was Raphtalia?
Maybe she was busy or In traffic. Or perhaps she had just decided not to come. After all of this was not a very exciting place to be anyway. Regardless, I handed out forms for building to everyone who was there instructing them to vote for us.
And all of that would have been the end of it. However, as you can expect something just had to go around at the last minute.
"Rocketboy, I found you!" a voice exclaimed. "I am sorry, I mean Naofumi."
I thought for a second, hearing an excited female voice, that it would be Raphtalia, but no, it was someone else.
"Atla...?" I asked, seeing her. "How did you even know that I was here? Wait, why are you here anyway?"
"I followed you this morning!" she said excitedly, as if this was something perfectly normal and not strange in any way whatsoever. She then turned her gaze to look at Melty and Filo. Her expression then soured. "Is this why you didn't want to be with me, Naofumi? Because of these girls?" She then glared at Melty. "Is that it Naofumi? Are you into girls younger than I am? Was I too old for you? Is that why you rejected me?"
This girl was definitely going to get me arrested.
"Bro, she's going to get you arrested one day," Shindo said to me.
"Not helping!" I retorted.
"Is this your fault, huh?" Atla asked, now trying to seem intimidating while speaking to Melty. "Are you trying to steal Naofumi from me you skank?"
"H-Hey!" Melty yelled out indignantly. She likely had no idea what 'skank' meant but from the tone knew it wasn't anything nice.
"Listen up, Naofumi is going to be my husband when I grow up," Atla said. "So stay away from him, clear?"
"I have no interest in Mr. Naofumi that way!" Melty said, her face now a bright shade of red. Eclair stepped in-between the two and said,
"I will not tolerate such words directed at Melty-sama."
"As if I'm scared of you!"
"Hold on, guys, relax," I said, trying to calm things down so that this didn't escalate into a fight. "Atla, Melty goes to college with me, and Filo is just her friend. Please don't shout such accusations at people. And, I thought you were supposed to stay away from me? Do I need to file a restraining order?"
"But Naofumi-"
"No buts, I can't have you following me around everywhere," I said this with firmness as I heard a voice in the crowd yell out.
"Atla!"
Right behind her was Fohl. Atla sighed out of exasperation. When Fohl approached us, though he seemed to be relieved, he paused as he noticed something.
"Wait- you are-" Eclair began saying. It was like she knew him.
"Eclair, you know Fohl from somewhere?" I asked her.
"Well, he uh..." she began saying, but didn't seem to want to actually answer. I looked at Fohl and while he also looked like he knew who Eclair was he didn't seem in anyway eager to divulge where he knew her from.
"Atla, come with me!" Fohl said. He then turned towards me. "I'm sorry about this, I let my eyes off of her for one second and then she-"
"-hey, you're not the boss of me!" Atla retorted.
The two of them began having a fight, though Fohl ultimately prevailed and dragged her away.
At least, that was how things were going, until Atla broke free of his grip before charging off to go somewhere else.
"Agh!" Fohl said, as he was pushed back and nearly crashed into a table, though he caught his balance in time before completely careening the table over, he still nudged it ever so slightly. As he saw Atla's frame disappear into the crowd, he was about to chase after her when someone grabbed him from behind.
"Hey- kid, look what you just did!" it was a college student, someone who stood two heads above Fohl, who looked pretty upset. He pointed to a broken glass case on the grown, which was oozing some sort of odd green fluid. "You just ruined my project!"
Pretty soon a big crowd was gathered around Fohl and the stall, and security even had to be called.
I felt a lot of second-hand embarrassment for Fohl, but didn't know what on earth I was going to be doing about it until Filo tugged on my sleeve.
"That mean guy over there is lying," she said.
"Huh?" I didn't understand what she was saying until I pieced it all together.
