Chase The Truth

Chapter 32: Summer Festival

Begin!

~Normal POV

8/20 - Saturday

After a week of doing a massive favor for Yosuke in the form of temporarily working part-time at Junes, Yu was looking forward to this evening. Tonight was the annual Inaba summer festival. It was to be held in the shopping district, and the local shrine. Yu and the other boys sadly didn't have any yukatas of their own to wear for it, but the girls promised that they'd be wearing theirs tonight. Hm, Rise in a yukata. Now that was an image Yu was interested in seeing. He guessed that she'd look great.

Plus, he needed a way to make it up to her. The other day, her first meeting with Marie was a complete disaster. Rise assumed they were on a date and got a little jealous. But she was quick to drop it when he explained they were only friends. Well, Yu thought she handled jealousy a lot better than his school friend Ai at least. She straight up told him to never talk to another girl while he's hanging out with her! (Even though he already told her he didn't want to be her boyfriend.) He... heavily considered not hanging out with her anymore after that, but she needed his help with some personal matters. So he couldn't turn her down.

Yu met up with Yosuke, Teddie, and Kanji that evening and they headed into the festival, in the part that was in the Tatsuhime Shrine. The shrine wasn't very big, so the festival reflected that. Most of the stalls were out in the shopping district street. But they promised the girls this is where they'd meet up. There were a few food stalls and some game ones giving out prizes. There was also an area for drawing fortunes. It was strangely devoid of the usual crowd you see at such a place.

"Funny, I remember this festival being a lot more crowded..." Yosuke commented. "Is it because of the murders?"

"Yeah, there ain't that many people here this year," Kanji said. "Well, I guess you can't blame people for being scared... Haven't seen the reporters around either. They sure are good at stirring up shit and then disappearing."

"It's what they're bred for," Yu replied.

Kanji nodded in agreement. "Well, it ain't so bad to have thin crowds. What is important right now is that we go get some ikayaki!"

"Ooo, I wanna get some too!" Teddie said, bouncing eagerly on his heels. "Kanji, what's ikayaki?"

Since they were still waiting on the girls, they decided to buy food for themselves. The girls were bringing Nanako along too- though Dojima was going to come later and pick her up. The four of them bought their favorite snacks from the food stalls and stood around eating while time passed.

"Man, they're late..." Yosuke said, munching on his fried treat. "Why were they meeting up at Yukiko's house in the first place?"

"They'll show up sooner or-" Kanji paused from taking a bite out of his ikayaki and stared ahead in shock.

"Whoa, isn't that them?" Teddie asked, stupefied.

The girls and Nanako approached them from the shrine gate. Chie was wearing a white yukata with green and yellow flower-like splashes on it. Yukiko was dressed in a nice dark blue yukata with white flowers on it. Rise was wearing a reddish-pink one that had white butterflies on it. And little Nanako was wearing a cute pink and white one with yellow flowers on it; she was also already carrying a bag of prizes from the stalls, which must have been why the girls took so long.

"Sorry we took so long," Chie said, smiling.

"It took us some time to get dressed," Yukiko admitted.

"You have to wrap towels inside, so they're not as breezy as everyone says," Rise explained.