Fun and Games (self-insert #4)

Chapter 3

"This is it." We stopped in front of the room marked 3-1 but before he opened it Yasuhara glanced over his shoulder at a nervous Mai. "I'm going to open the door."

He'd barely slid it open an inch before Mai and Bou-san blanched. "Do you smell it?"

They plugged their noses hastily. Judging from their faces it didn't do the job. "How to describe it..." Bou-san croaked. "It smells like the fish you left sitting in the kitchen sink for three days in the summertime by mistake."

"A perfect harmony of the smell of something that's gone bad and a drainage ditch that's starting to dry up." Mai added.

"Basically, it reeks in here." They summed up in unison.

I followed Naru's example and breathed through my mouth and watched as he strode through the classroom, his slender pale fingers brushing each desktop. "There aren't any areas of the room that smell stronger than others." He remarked.

"Exactly. We've looked for the source of the smell for a while but the entire classroom smells." Yasuhara agreed. Behind him, Mai and Bou-san scrambled for a window.

Bou-san released his breath with a fed-up roar. At this point, Mai was practically in tears. It doesn't even make any difference if you open the window." She whimpered.

Naru's fingers brushed against a desk...and he stopped. Out of nowhere he asked, "Did you do anything abnormal here?"

Yasuhara cocked his head. "Abnormal?"

"For example, summoning a spirit?"

"Summoning..."

Yasuhara had brought along two classmates, and right now they whispered to each other. "Perhaps he's talking about Orikiri-sama?"

"Silly! That's different. Because that was..."

"Orikiri-sama?" Bou-san asked, confused. "What is that?"

"Lately, or actually since the second semester, it's become increasingly popular." Yasuhara explained. "Orikiri-sama, Gongen-sama...it basically is..."

One of the girls cut him off, rustling through her pockets. "I have it right here! We haven't used it yet!" She produced a piece of paper and, unfolding it, held it up for us to see. A figure of a person was drawn on it with an alphabet around it, a grid on either side, and a character over it. A circle of a single word surrounded it. "Look, this is it! It's very popular at school right now."

Bou-san's eyes widened as Mai took it for a closer look. "This is Kokkuri-san."

The girl recoiled. "EH? That's not right! Doesn't Kokkuri-san summon a fox-spirit? Orikiri-sama summons a god and it can guide us in relationships. Gongen-sama is...oh, no!" She yelped as Bou-san crumpled the paper into a ball, his lips pursed into a thin line. It was the first time I saw him genuinely upset.

"Gongen-sama...Hanako-san...Cupid-san...Angel-san..." With each name he smushed the ball even smaller. "These are all simply names to call Kokkuri-san! Whatever the name may be, you're basically doing the same thing! You're just playing with the spirits out of curiousity."

The girl was persistent despite his obvious irritation. "That's not true!" She cried. "I was told that Orikiri-sama is a god, so it's risk-free..."

"That is misinformation." He chucked the ball into the garbage can. His voice rose. "Even an amateur can summon a spirit but you need to be trained to be able to send them back to where they came from. Don't ever try this by yourself!"

Naru was still touching the desk. "You said it's really popular. How popular is it?"

"Well..." The second girl said hesitantly. "It's definitely all over the school. I'd bet there are more students who practice it than those who don't."