Chapter 53
The school-trip bus.
Red autumn leaves ripple past outside the windows. The lively atmosphere inside the bus showed no sign of fading.
A boisterous atmosphere.
“But what are we going to do at night?”
“How about a Truth Game?”
“Oh, a Truth Game! We absolutely have to do that.”
“Let's do it on the last day.”
Since it was a trip, everyone kept talking without a moment's rest.
Sasha, who had been chatting with the kids in the back seats, spoke to Vita.
“You're joining too, Bianca, right?”
“Huh, yeah…?!”
Vita was slightly flustered.
“You mean, me…?”
When Vita pointed at herself and asked Sasha in return, Sasha tilted her head.
“Of course you. Who else?”
They went on talking about how a Truth Game was the unwritten rule for the last night of a school trip.
“Right, guys?”
“Agreed, agreed.”
Her seatmate Sasha was excessively energetic, so she whispered to the boys without letting the teacher hear.
“Hey, boys. You're all coming too, right?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Of course we are!”
The girls squealed and clapped their hands together, while the boys swallowed nervously in anticipation.
Meanwhile, Vita was left a little flustered.
‘Uh, um…’
The truth was, Vita had never done anything like that before. She wasn't naturally the sort of person who blended into the popular crowd, after all. Something like a Truth Game, that is.
‘M-me too…’
Was she finally becoming one of the popular kids?!
She was a little nervous.
[Hey, Vita. We're going to the girls' room. Want to come with us?]
[…No, I'm not going.]
[What a bore.]
What had she done then? She had probably stayed behind alone in the room and watched anime.
But even back then, she had possessed a certain amount of dignity.
‘Screw you, popular kids.’
If you'd come to the academy, you were supposed to study quietly!
Boys and girls over the age of seven being together, at night no less…
Being together in the same room was unthinkable. At least, that was what Vita back then had thought.
‘Mm, right…’
That was what she had thought. But in truth, even back then, Vita had been a little envious.
Just a little. Very, very little.
In a way, she had simply been shy, bad with strangers, and a little narrow-minded in some respects.
“So are you doing it, Bianca…?”
“Uh, yeah!”
Vita hesitated for a moment, but eventually answered.
Things were definitely different now. For some reason, Vita had recently felt that her way of thinking had changed quite a lot.
Especially after becoming a girl. It felt as though she had changed a little after meeting Carlisle.
“A big shot has decided to join us!”
“Good job, Sasha!”
“Hey, boys. You really aren't hiding how much you like this, are you?”
“No, when did—”
At her friends' reactions, Vita let out an awkward laugh.
They said they were doing it on the last night of their three-night, four-day trip anyway. Why was everyone making such a fuss over a game they wouldn't even play until then?
It was a little childish, but she also wondered why she had never done anything like this until now.
‘…Maybe this is okay too.’
And so Vita gradually found herself smiling.
It was her last school trip. Even if she let herself act a little childish and youthful, it probably wouldn't be so bad.
The bus bounced along the autumn road.
Once the boisterous atmosphere finally began to quiet down, they stopped at a rest area and then continued driving for quite some time.
“All right, everyone, attention!”
Suddenly, the teacher in the front seat called for everyone's attention.
“The guide is going to explain the destination now. Is everyone ready to listen?”
“Yes, teacher.”
Then a woman in a distinctive outfit stood up from the seat right beside the teacher.
“Hello, everyone! I'm your guide, Neneko.”
Vita's eyes widened.
‘Wait, could it be…’
“Neneko isn't my real name. It's more like a name I use as a guide?”
Clap-clap-
Everyone welcomed her with applause and cheers.
“Wow, she's pretty!”
“That's a really unusual outfit.”
Vita was astonished.
‘Surely, that's…?!’
It was an exotic traditional outfit she had only ever seen in anime! It was probably called a ‘yukata’ or something like that.
She hadn't expected this at all.
No, she had already heard that their destination was an exotic place.
But why was a yukata suddenly appearing here? Seeing the unusual outfit she had only ever seen in anime, Vita felt inexplicably delighted.
“Well then. I'll start explaining.”
The students responded with cheers.
“Great response. You may be able to guess from this outfit, but…”
The guide's explanation began.
***
<The Disappearance of Popo and Mari>.
An anime that, unusually, had become a huge hit even with the general public—!
“I think there are very few people who don't know this movie.”
“Yes, I know it!”
“It's a hugely famous movie.”
Naturally, the reaction was still quite enthusiastic.
As Vita continued listening, she learned that the destination of their school trip was a resort designed around <The Disappearance of Popo and Mari>.
‘No, seriously…?!’
Vita was excited inside, too.
“A-amazing…”
It was rare to see Vita this excited, so Sasha tilted her head.
“You didn't know, Bianca? I mentioned it in the chat several times.”
“Ah, really…?”
To be honest, Sasha talked so much, after all.
Most of it was girls' talk, too.
So at some point, Vita had started scrolling past the messages altogether. She must have missed it because of that.
No, so…
That actually made it even better. Since Vita hadn't known, it felt like she had received a present.
It seemed that some of her friends had already known about it.
But Vita wasn't the sort of person to look up information about a trip ahead of time.
‘Come to think of it, yesterday…’
Vita suddenly remembered. So that was what Carlisle had meant when he said something strange for no apparent reason.
[We might see it soon.]
He had said that while they watched anime together.
What a coincidence. The anime Vita had watched with Carlisle just yesterday was ‘The Disappearance of Popo and Mari,’ the very movie they were discussing now.
Of course, to be honest, she hadn't watched it properly from the middle onward because her attention had been diverted elsewhere.
‘Still, we didn't go all the way…’
It had been the night before the school trip, and Vita's thoughts had been confused for all sorts of reasons lately.
“Ahem.”
Anyway.
Vita coughed and soon brushed aside her distracting thoughts. She had to listen to the guide's explanation.
“To give you a brief summary, it's a movie about a girl named Popo who, one day…”
While moving to a new home with her parents, ten-year-old Popo gets lost and passes through a strange tunnel with them.
“But that very tunnel was a mysterious passage leading to the world of the gods, wasn't it? When Popo came to her senses, her parents had already been transformed into pigs…!”
“Oh…”
“Ah…”
All her friends let out sighs of dismay.
“She explains it really well.”
“Yeah, she does.”
At Sasha's words, Vita nodded slightly and recalled the movie's setting.
After that, Popo went to a strange hot spring. More precisely, to an inn.
An inn at a hot spring.
To save her parents, who had been transformed into pigs, Popo took a job at that bizarre hot-spring inn and was given the name ‘Mari’ in place of her original name.
‘The hot spring is actually a pretty complicated concept.’
Was it the world of the gods? Anyway, the hot spring itself wasn't part of the human world. It felt like a separate realm.
The guide's explanation continued.
“At the hot-spring inn, Popo meets a boy. Together with him, she begins an adventure to save her parents and return home. Could you look at the screen for a moment?”
Flash-
The screen at the very front of the bus suddenly came on with a flash.
“Whoa!”
All the students let out exclamations.
[Welcome, everyone, to the hot-spring inn.]
Those words had appeared on the screen.
“Now, let me introduce myself properly. Hello, everyone! I'm Neneko, your guide to the magical world of 'The Disappearance of Popo and Mari.'”
Just then, a huge building passed outside the bus window. It seemed they had nearly arrived, and the guide had timed her explanation perfectly.
“We arrived at just the right time. The place you can see over there is where Popo worked in the actual movie.”
It was a huge hot-spring inn.
The architecture felt completely different from the city and from the familiar places they were used to.
Red lanterns hung in rows along every alley, and unusual wooden buildings stood scattered all around.
Silver bells swayed among the autumn leaves whenever a breeze passed through. The village had a quiet, serene atmosphere.
There were souvenir shops, too, as well as a cable car.
“At the souvenir shops, you can rent costumes and take pictures. In the evening, all the lanterns throughout the village are lit. You could call it a dreamlike atmosphere, perhaps?”
Meanwhile, the bus had just entered a tunnel.
“Once we pass through this tunnel, we should be there, right?”
“Yeah, probably.”
Just as Vita and Sasha were exchanging those words,
The entire view inside the bus briefly went dark, then emerged as though engulfed in a dazzling sea of light.
“All right, then. Over the next three nights and four days, let's make your final school trip an unforgettable memory!”
Everyone applauded, and a few students cheered.
And so, in the late afternoon, the students finally arrived at their destination.
***
The surroundings had a truly serene feel.
“They're called torii.”
Two red wooden pillars stood tall at the entrance, marking a sacred boundary. They were the symbols of the exotic-style shrine Vita had only ever seen in anime. Beyond them stretched a forest path of gravel and trees.
“Wow…”
Everyone reacted with wonder. Vita was no different.
‘Is this what I've only ever heard about…?’
The guide smiled as she explained the unusual foreign-style shrine.
“It's called a shrine.”
Gravel covered the ground, making a crunching sound with every step.
“When you hear this sound, the gods of the hot-spring inn wake up in the evening!”
“Eeh—”
“Eek!”
The students laughed in surprise.
A large tree stood in the middle of the shrine courtyard. Its surroundings were shaped like a well, and red maple leaves drifted down, creating a serene atmosphere.
Plop-
The guide tossed in a coin first.
“You toss in a coin like this, clap twice, and then offer a prayer.”
“Are we supposed to make a wish?!”
“Mm, something like that.”
Plop- plop-
The students all tossed coins into the well.
‘We can make a wish…?’
Vita hesitated for a moment, then tossed in a coin as well.
She couldn't believe she was doing something she had only ever seen in anime.
Of course, the wish Vita desperately wanted to make had already been decided.
Without realizing it, Vita glanced toward Carlisle. Carlisle gave her a smirk and made a point of acknowledging her.
Snap-
Vita quickly turned her head away.
Yes, exactly.
‘Please let me beat that guy! Anything is fine, just let me…!’
She was definitely going back to being a man, after all.
The only wish she could make was to beat that guy. It was infuriating enough to drive her mad.
After making her wish, she also bought a souvenir.
“This is all just a sales gimmick!”
“Then why are you buying one?”
“It's a souvenir, isn't it?”
Sasha, who had called it a sales gimmick, bought a bracelet as well.
Vita hesitated for a moment and was about to turn away.
Tap-
Just then, Carlisle, who knows when he had approached, held something out to her. He nudged her lightly, kept his eyes turned elsewhere, and secretly handed her something.
On closer inspection, it was a ring.
‘What the heck, all of a sudden…’
Vita was sulky for a moment, but then—
‘I saved money on this, didn't I…?’
She soon felt as though she had gotten a lucky break.
There was no reason to refuse a gift when he had gone out of his way to give it to her.
She had to buy a souvenir anyway, and this way she could show it off to her parents later.
In the end, Vita cleared her throat and took it. By then, Carlisle had already slipped into the crowd of other students, pretending not to know her.
After that, everyone headed toward the lodging. By the time they finished looking around the shrine after arriving in the late afternoon, it was already dinnertime.
“The lodging is probably over there.”
“The hot-spring inn…?”
“Doesn't it seem kind of scary?”
“It sounds like fun.”
As they exchanged comments like that, everyone arrived at the lodging.
***
The many red lanterns symbolic of the hot-spring inn illuminated the lodging.
“They're called tatami.”
The somewhat worn yet stylish wooden floors and ceilings, along with the murals displayed throughout the building, created a strikingly exotic atmosphere. Everyone let out exclamations of admiration.
“It's really just like a movie.”
“We're sleeping here, right?”
Dinner was served buffet-style. The meal spread was incredibly lavish.
“That's the bread from the movie.”
“What do you call that again? A steamed bun?”
“I think so, probably?”
There were also various exotic dishes and oddly shaped cuts of meat.
“It's totally cartoon meat!”
The meat was shaped just like something out of a cartoon. Sasha even grabbed a piece by the bone and tore into it, making Vita laugh helplessly.
“You'll turn into a pig if you keep that up.”
“No way…”
The school-trip atmosphere wasn't bad after all.
But still, how should she put it?
Maybe it was because it was the first day, but she did feel a little tired. They had been traveling for a long time.
So the schedule after dinner was already set.
“Those who want to rest can rest. The evening is free time, so anyone who wants to enjoy the hot spring may do so. Just always remember to stay safe.”
Everyone grew excited at their homeroom teacher's words.
“Oh, and boys! Obviously, the men's and women's baths are separate. Don't do anything improper, all right?”
“Right, exactly!”
The girls laughed, while the boys booed.
After all, this was a hot-spring inn.
‘Hot spring, hot spring…’
Vita began to worry.
So, she would be going into the women's bath?
No, she liked the idea.
Honestly, she did—but she also felt a little guilty about it.
‘No way, Emily's…’
The bare skin of the girl she liked! Once her thoughts reached that point, Vita grew nervous.
‘…But is this really okay? I was originally a man.’
‘If you're a man, you should look all the more. Are you an idiot, Vita?’
While Vita was waging an intense internal battle,
“You're coming too, Bianca? Since we're at a hot spring.”
“Ah, yeah.”
Sasha suddenly asked her, and the flustered Vita accepted before she knew what she was doing.
“Then let's go!”
“No, wait…!”
Sasha practically dragged Vita along by the hand.
By the time Vita came to her senses, she was already standing in the changing room.
Vita was completely flustered!
‘W-what…?!’
Her face instantly grew bright red. There was a good reason for that.
“What's wrong, Bianca?”
She had absolutely no idea where to look.
Because a whole new world had unfolded right before her eyes!