(Un) Fortunately the Yandere is Not After Me

Short Stick

"So why are we all here?" Arata asked. He was called over by Yogi to meet him behind the school. It seemed that everyone else was invited too. That would include the library committee and gardening club as well. However, there was one person missing out of all of this. One that made him a little surprised for their exclusion. "And where's Akiba?"

"Right, you don't know." Yogi explained it to him. As it would turn out, her birthday was coming up. Since it also was near Christmas, the group agreed that it'd be a shared party among all of them.

"Huh, that's interesting." He commented, noting that when he thought about it. Arata had no clue when anyone's birthdays were. "I didn't realize that we cared about birthdays so much, mine's was just last week." There was only one person outside his family that knew that, but she wasn't here at the moment.

"Oh, it's just... Did you just say your birthday was last week?" Yogi asked.

"Um, yeah? I didn't think anyone cared about birthdays that much, so I didn't bring it up back then."

"You see, the reason we do this with Akiba." Misei spoke up. "Is because of how close it is to Christmas, if we had known, we would've included yours as well."

"Yeah, we're really sorry Arata." Erina followed up. "Maybe we can make it for both of you?"

"Nah it's fine." Celebrating his birthday wasn't a big deal for him. Usually that just meant having dinner with his family, which is why he didn't bring it up to them back then. Akiba was the only one of his friends to know, and that was because she tried messaging him back then.

"Great, then we should get down to business." Misao took command of the operations here. "You see, we're all here so that we can get things ready for the party later tonight."

"We're planning it the day of?" Arata asked. If it was for a birthday/Christmas party, he was going to have to find a way to get a gift.

"Sorry, since it was common knowledge for all of us, we forgot to tell you. Everyone else has gotten their things ready." That was disappointing to hear for him. Now he was going to be behind all of them. "Anyway, we already have the place reserved. So it's only a matter of getting everything set up just the way it needs to be."

"Perfect." Akaki said, he was the one most excited for this. For obvious reasons from Arata's point-of-view. "Then, after school we'll get started."

"Yeah, sounds good to me too." Arata followed up.

"Not so fast, we still need someone to buy us time." Misao knew that in order for this plan to work. The birthday girl was going to need to be distracted from them.

"Exactly." Yogi pulled something out of his pocket, a bunch of sticks. "Go ahead." No one did anything, they only stared at him. "Aren't we going to draw straws?"

"Why do you have a bunch of sticks with you?" Misao asked.

"Hey look, you never know when you need to draw for times like this." Yogi chuckled at what he believed was common sense.

"Right..." Arata replied. "And I guess the gardening club and library committee aren't a part of this." He confirmed that those people would not be candidates of the distracting job. It would be weird if any of them suddenly took an interest in her when they didn't really hang out. "Speaking of, why are you all here?" They were invited my Yogi, who just thought the more the merrier. Despite the fact that pretty much all of them had next to no relationship with Akiba.

"I'd love to go to Akiba's birthday party." Matsu beamed. "She's one of the nicest girls at school, so it'll be a lot of fun." Arata had a nervous grin from hearing that. That statement was true for most people, but he had seen some of the things she had to say in their messages. One would say that they were far from kid-friendly. Maybe even not safe for the ears of most adults.