How We Met Again

Chapter 20: Captured by the Junta!

As we were finishing our crepes, and mine had been reduced to mostly a mixture of pastry and delicious radioactive sludge, there was a loud buzz, and we were suddenly surrounded by the gentle sound of precipitation, the chirping of birds, and the thrum of the rainforest. In the distance was the call of some monkey or other. Confused, I momentarily looked around me, before it finally clicked:

Itsuki's phone was ringing.

She pulled it out of her pocket, glanced at the screen, and immediately blanched. Her hands trembling slightly, she slid out of her seat in our booth, and indicated to the smartphone.

"I... I have to take this."

Quickly, Itsuki walked away, pulling the phone up to her ear to talk with the caller as she went. I glanced over at Yotsuba next to me, who had a forlorn look on her face.

"What...?"

"It's probably our dad," she said, poking at what was left of her crepe. "He's gonna find out that a bunch of us were skipping our sessions with Takeda-san..."

"Oh," I said, taking another bite out of my crepe. "Hey, maybe he'll get fired?"

"Maybe..." Yotsuba said doubtfully. "I'd feel kind of bad if that happened though, Uesugi-san."

"Eh? Why?"

"Um, well..." Yotsuba paused to think. "He's not very nice... but Miku and Ichika didn't even give him a chance. And... and he only had a few weeks. When I think about how hard I had to work over two weeks just to make any progress... it was really, really hard! I don't think I could have done it just from being forced by someone else. It really had to come from me. So... um... ah, shoot, what am I trying to say?"

"Are you trying to say that you don't think he had a real opportunity to get you all to pass, even if you'd all gone to the sessions and studied diligently?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah!" Yotsuba said, pointing at me. "That's what I was trying to say! Good job, Uesugi-san!"

I frowned. "I suppose that's fair, as much as I don't like it. I'm worried about him holding you all back, though."

Then, a half-smile came to my face.

"Well, not you. I'm not really worried anymore on that front."

Yotsuba's face reddened slightly. "Eh? Uesugi-san? I--"

"Yotsuba?"

We both turned to see that Itsuki had returned, and was holding out her phone, a grim look on her face. Yotsuba blanched, and I slid out of the booth so that she could exit and grab the omen of incoming doom from Itsuki's hand.

"D-Dad?" she said nervously into the speaker, wandering off. Itsuki slid into the booth across from me, her face pale.

"So...?" I asked tentatively. "How'd it go?"

"How do you think?" she said, shaking her head. "He's unhappy. About the grades, of course, but more-so the skipping of tutoring sessions... though he also listened to what I had to say about Takeda-san's tutoring abilities. I think Yotsuba will get a pass, since she only skipped a couple of sessions, and also her grades were mostly fine. The others though..."

They're screwed.

She winced. "It's going to be a bloodbath when we get home. Our father is calling a family meeting tonight."

"A family meeting...?"

The concept of a formal 'family meeting' being a cudgel capable of producing this much dread was absolutely alien to me -- it took me a few moments to mull the concept over in my head before I could really process it. My own father had occasionally called such family meetings... but they were always about news he had, either good or bad. The idea of a meeting regarding their collective behaviour, formalized to the point of evoking such fear in the girl in front of me...