Hanabi

Chapter 38: From good to awkward

Mami got visibly confused with the situation, and that made Haruna give the blonde one of her best smirks. The brunette laid down her cards and the blonde let out a soft groan before tossing her own cards on the floor in front of her. Haruna won the game.

The displeased expression only lasted about two seconds on the blonde’s face though. When she realized that she really succeeded in blocking Haruna from her mind during the last five turns of that card game, her heart raced in a very good way.

- Did it work or you let me win? - Haruna asked while taking all the cards back from the wooden floor of the open hallway.

- It worked. - Mami said excitedly, and that made the shorter girl smile in a clearly satisfied way - Damn I’m terrible with cards when I don’t know what you’re thinking…

Haruna laughed softly, and that alone put a large grin on Mami’s face.

- For how long did it work?

- Last five turns, so… I guess like 3 or 4 minutes?

- Hm, that sounds little but…

- It’s great, I only managed to block Tomo for 2 minutes last night playing shougi. - despite all the excitement, Mami sounded and looked quite a bit tired, and Haruna didn’t miss that - I think I’m getting better at this, slowly… But…

- But?

- Well, the same thing still happens… I can only block one person at a time and it’s really tiring.

- Oh… So you were hearing all that mess inside and out their heads?

Haruna finished the sentence while pointing at the other three girls - or maybe two girls and a giant yellow cat - in the backyard.

Tomoko was still focused on making Tomomi escape her, and it had been getting better the last few days. When Haruna and Rina came back from Mount Kurama days ago and found chaos running loose in the backyard, they thought the girls were fighting at first. But when Tomoko explained her idea, it really made a lot of sense.

Now Rina was the one fighting her along with Tomomi, and she had a bokken in her hands. Rina was fighting extremely well, hitting Tomoko several times and preventing her from getting to Tomomi when the terrified brunette made some mistake or ran in the wrong direction. Tomomi was a lot better as well; she had been capable of playing the entire song for three consecutive times without getting any scratch from the nekomata the day before.

Mami should be there practicing with them, but it was a matter of choice. Mami could either fight Tomoko or train her mind. Doing too much of both in the same day was a very bad idea, the blonde got too tired doing either of those things. They settled things for someone to be always practicing along with Tomomi against the nekomata while Mami tried to improve with whoever was free at the time. So far things seemed to be working fine.

- Yes, I was hearing them the whole time. - Mami replied while resting her face over her hands, her elbows placed over her legs - But this is still very different for me.