EE Chapter 11

# Chapter Eleven - "Party Games"

### Junko

    In hindsight, we may have all been too enthusiastic to get ready for tonight's dinner. Once Eimi filled us in on what the plan was - "even huger than last night" - we dropped everything and started to get prepared. We took a bath - which was fairly uneventful except for Rinko pouting over not being allowed to take Mister Froggy (by popular demand) leaving her reliant on herself to get into trouble - then passed around the clothing we were choosing from for dinner while our hair dried. We leisurely got dressed - again in a selection of yukata that fit us almost too well - did our hair and makeup, and were ready to go. Tonight's selections seemed to be themed, comprising about a dozen yukata all featuring flowers, foliage, or plantlife of some sort. I went with a pale bluish piece with clusters of brighter blue and pink flowers, and I have to admit that it left me feeling rather cute and excited.

    Except it was still over an hour until dinner started and here we were, all dressed up with nowhere to go.

    The light staccato on the roof made it clear that in our case that expression was to be taken literally. Having nothing else pressing, it seems we would have some time to do, well, nothing important, until we got word to head down the hallway. We could have looked around the inn but there isn't much that we hadn't already seen and, besides, we wanted to stay out of the way and cause as little nuisance as we could. Or at least I wanted us to. Everyone else seemed just fine embracing a little havoc before dinner.

    "No, it's gonna work! Just watch!" The other girls were sitting in a circle around our room's kotatsu, which was slightly awkwardly positioned by the nature of how five bodies gather around a square object. Despite them having been practically untouched, our futons had been put away while we were on our outing, so I dragged one out of the closet and, leaving it rolled up, was using it as a rather large throw pillow to lean against. Along with themselves, the other room's occupants had brought Momo's dwelling with them, setting it between them on the table. Predictably it was Chiyo leading the festivities surrounding her best friend. "Come on, someone pick a card!"

    What had started as plans to play a few rounds of hanafuda had somehow turned into an opportunity for the girl to show off Momo's new trick. The entire deck was now spread out facedown on the table and she was holding Momo above it so she could see it all at once.

    "Alright, I'll give it a try…" Dam-Bi reached over and slid one of the rectangles off the edge, showing it to the other girls around her.

    "Don't let Momo see it! That'd ruin the trick… Ok, now Rinko, you pick up all the cards and give them to Eimi." She did just that, dropping a few on the ground as she slid the entire heap off the table and into her lap. She handed them over to Eimi in not too dissimilar a state, stacked but still angled in nearly every direction. "Now Eimi, you take Dam-Bi's card and shuffle it into the deck. Make sure to mix them up really good." The blonde looked very skeptical, but did what she was asked without complaint for once. "Ok, now Kanon needs to spread them back out on the table…"

    Once that was done, Chiyo instructed everyone to watch. I have to admit I found myself sitting up enough off my makeshift lounge out of curiosity that I could see what was going on. Momo was gently lowered to the table and let loose. She ran a short distance straight ahead, immediately latched onto one of the playing cards with her fuzzy little paws, and started vigorously chewing at the edges. Chiyo giggled excitedly, picking up her hamster who refused to let go of her new chew toy.

    "Dam-Bi, was this your card?!"

    "That's amazing!" The ravenette giggled loudly, quickly covering her smirk with her hand. "How did Momo know which card to pick?"

    "Sorry. We can't reveal our secrets. See Kanon, I told you Momo could do it!" Kanon merely patted the hamster on the head, then did the same to her roommate-slash-best friend. A certain blonde had her head hung in her hands, making me think that, possibly, Momo hadn't actually chosen the right card and that this was all for Chiyo's benefit.

    "Well, we don't have enough cards for hanafuda anymore, so what else should we do to kill some time? Rock-Paper-Scissors? Odds and evens?" Dam-Bi held out both hands in front of her, her fingers trying in vain to find some way to represent both games at once until she ended up flashing a pair of peace signs. Or maybe they were supposed to be scissors. Or just two fingers. It was hard to tell with her fidgeting exactly which meaning she intended.

    "Thumb wrestling! No! Arm wrestling!"

    "Post office?" One of the poor cards found itself stuck to the blonde's lips as she turned to Dam-Bi and Rinko on either side of her. Neither made any move to claim it for their own, which I'll admit made me smile slightly. She practically spit the card away once she realized she was barking up the wrong trees. "Fine, I didn't wanna play that dumb game anyway. Especially not with you guys. I'm going to go make myself useful. No point in wasting the day away."

    "But Eimi, that's exactly the point of a vacation!" The blonde resorted to her usual response - sticking her tongue out at Rinko like she was four years old - before looking a little bit shocked and storming out of the room, tripping a bit over the hem of her robe as she turned into the hallway.

    "I don't get it…" My little sister - more or less - was staring at a card in her hand, then held it up to her face, holding it in place with her lips for a few seconds before grabbing it away. "How is this a game…?"

    "Do it again! I'll show you! It's neat!"

    Kanon looked just as confused - having been on the receiving end of some of Rinko's explanations it's hard for me to blame her - but secured the card back to her lips. My stomach flip-flopped and my breath caught in my lungs as I watched my best friend lean over and try to take the card from Kanon's mouth. It seemed stuck.

    "Now you've gotta blow to let the card go!" Kanon's best friend didn't seem to be paying much attention to the card game, doting on Momo and brushing her with a tiny plastic brush I suspect may have once belonged to a doll, but even she knew how it was supposed to be played. A soft pop and Rinko pulled back, now in complete control of the phoenix card. To make things somehow even worse for me, Rinko continued her demonstration, turning to the ravenette next to her. My heart felt like it was in a vise as they drew closer - I honestly couldn't tell you if they were moving slowly or if I was experiencing everything in slow motion - only for everything to snap back to normal as Dam-Bi pulled away and Rinko suddenly blew the card toward her. It landed on the ground between them.

    "I can't do it! Sorry! No offense, Kanon, but it's just not hygienic!" Dam-Bi was blushing so hard I could see it even from my lazy spot across the room. If she's that upset over post office, it's a good thing nobody thought to bring any Pocky…

    Rinko giggled at our friend's chickening out then wiped the card off and placed it back on the table. "If the card falls before the other person has it, sometimes you end up kissing, which some people think is fun but sounds really gross, right?"

    "Ohh…" Kanon blushed slightly, keeping her vision aimed right down at the table. "I think thumb wrestling is safer then…"

    "Dam-Bi has to go first cuz she chickened out!"

    That's how we spent the next half an hour or thereabouts: having an impromptu thumb wrestling competition. They even roped me into it somehow - okay, Rinko asked me to and I folded immediately - and we played and chatted until Mrs. Aihara announced that dinner was ready. Not that it matters, but Dam-Bi won anyway. We're pretty sure she cheated by being double jointed or something.

    As we walked to our supper, Rinko's chest caught my eye. I mean, something shiny swaying very near her chest as she walked. Not her actual…

    "Hey, what's that?" I pointed out the shiny disc of metal threaded through a hole in the middle by a thin silvery chain.

    "This? It's my new lucky coin. A cat in the garden gave it to me and Dam-Bi helped me make it into a necklace! It's gonna bring me lots of luck, I just know it."

    "A cat?"

    "Yeah, a little white cat like Arty. You know." She waved one paw, er, *hand* in the air and imitated a few quiet mews. Rinko as a catgirl… Hmm… "A lucky cat."

    By her pose, I was reasonably certain that what Rinko *meant* is that she had found the coin near one of the statues in the garden - ostensibly a maneki-neko or some similar depiction of a cat - but, being Rinko, it was impossible to completely rule out that some strange cat had actually appeared and given her fifty yen. Though, thinking on it, it must have been when she was jogging with Dam-Bi, and though she's nearly as accommodating of our friend as I am, I can't see her being the type to either accept money from nor stand by while Rinko robs a poor little kitty cat.

    "It's because of the wishes today. I can tell. It's already working!"

    "Right…" Is fifty yen a real measure of success? If that's the case then I have success to spare just in my coin purse. Still, I can't stand to burst her bubble. Not when she's happier than I've even seen someone be over what amounted to an extremely small sum of pocket change. "I think I can feel it too. I have a good feeling about it."

    "Then it's gotta be working! If you can feel it too then I know it is!" Getting a surprise hug from Rinko while we were dressed like this, somehow, felt simultaneously both nicer and more embarrassing than usual. "I knew it'd work if we did it together!" She held on for I don't know how long, during which I froze pretty much completely until the other girls noticed we were lagging behind and Chiyo rescued me with a tug on Rinko's yukata to get her moving again.

    "Come on! We're gonna be late!“

    Rinko let Chiyo drag her on toward our dinner. Let her, I assume, because we'd seen earlier that even a full three of us could barely combat her strength of will when she's determined to do something. That a folk legend about a waterfall could instill such passion in her whereas she let herself get pulled away from me without so much as a fight… Well, I chose not to dwell too hard on that until later in case it ruined my mood for dinner.

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