Hyouka (Light Novel)

Chapter 2.3: Yet Another Storm

2-3 Yet Another Storm

020 – ♦04

I had originally wanted to just keep a low profile.

I totally did not intend to get into an argument with anyone.

It all began when Kouchi-sempai said to President Yuasa as the flow of customers started to decrease, "Well, turns out it was a mistake to sell such plain stuff after all. Nobody's coming at all. But it's not too late for us to change this and turn it around. We should have an anime character poster outside. Since we're all so free anyway, it wouldn't take us a lot of time to draw one."

I didn't believe the reason there were so few customers was what she said. The anthology was selling pretty well. However, it was indeed true that the stall was far from lively no matter how positively I try to see things. I wasn't particularly against the idea of drawing an anime character poster in order to attract customers; at least it's better than dressing up in skimpy cosplay to attract the boys.

But what I couldn't stand was Kouchi-sempai trying to bring the president into all of this, seeing as how she was now being surrounded by Kouchi-sempai's followers. It looked as though she was being protested against. Though President Yuasa merely smiled calmly, I wondered how she must have felt.

"You may be right, but this was what we all decided on doing..."

"It may have been decided, but not by majority consent. To begin with, what's with this anthology anyway? A review of a hundred manga titles just sounds so tedious, who on earth is gonna read that? We should have made more parody mangas instead."

Come to think of it, someone had suggested everyone in the Manga Club could try making their own parody manga. Right now, there were a few of them lined up around the stalls. The reason why there were so few of them was mainly because they were either not confident about displaying their works in the Cultural Festival, or they did not want to end up making a loss. But to blame it on the presence of Zeamis was just absurd.

Upon being told that no one would bother reading the anthology that I worked so hard on, the atmosphere in the room became delicately tense. To begin with, Kouchi-sempai's group was entirely uncooperative in the making ofZeamis. Uncooperative as in shoving the work to other people. Even someone as lazy as Oreki still bothered to take time to write up the manuscript despite constantly complaining about how bothersome it was, but Kouchi-sempai's followers were simply slacking off. Even now, not a single one of them had offered to help sell it. There were quite a few people in the club who found such behaviour revolting.

The only reason such sentiments had not erupted was due to Kouchi-sempai, who had herself diligently worked on her own rather interesting column. She didn't even brag about the fact that she had it completed within the day.

Extending her arms from within her long Taoist priest robes, Kouchi-sempai crossed them and looked up as though preaching some truth.

"Even if we assume that there's no such thing as a boring manga, this would be like reading an interesting manga a hundred times over. Anyone would get bored doing that. There's simply no meaning to it, right?" she said, seeking approval from those around her. A chorus of barely audible agreement could be heard, muttered by her followers. If you want to be a Yes Men, you could at least be more assertive in your agreements.

But to say that it has no meaning, well...

Some of the members turned their gaze toward the sales booth where I was seated... While I was indeed the only one who disagreed with Kouchi-sempai, I would have preferred they not look at me like this.