Kays Translations

Chapter 40: Ordinary Youth

“Tsumu-tsumu, can I have some of that tamagoyaki?”

“Sure, Keina. Here, say ‘ahh’.”

We were eating lunch together on the school rooftop.

“N-No, Atsumu! That’s exactly why Keina is becoming so spoiled and lazy!”

“Yeah… Asuka-san might be right. Keina, I’ll give you the tamagoyaki, but you have to eat it yourself.”

“Ehh, why are you listening to Asuka? Tsumu-tsumu, you’re so stingy!”

“If you say stuff like that, I won’t give you any tamagoyaki.”

“I’m sorry…”

Keina drooped sadly.

“Sometimes I really wonder if Keina-chan and the girl who walked that runway are even the same person.”

“Right? Kobe-san acts so different normally—it’s funny.”

Takarazuka-san and Himeji-san, who had been watching, laughed cheerfully.

“Come to think of it, it’s been a while since GalColle, and we haven’t seen anything of Mika lately.”

“Yeah, that video was pretty shocking. Maybe she got mentally crushed by all the comments online.”

The video of Mika-san falling on the runway and being carried off on a stretcher had spread across the internet and was widely mocked.

Up until then, her name recognition meant magazines still used her in photo shoots, editing the images heavily to cover things up. But since it was a live stream—something that couldn’t be edited—Mika-san had completely exposed her disgrace in front of the public. No magazine would dare use her now.

Even her Fotostagram account was apparently deleted after people started pointing out all the places her images had been retouched.

“Her brand’s gone too, it seems.”

“Yeah. Even if Nishiwaki acted alone and it wasn’t technically Mika-san’s fault, she had claimed she was designing everything herself…”

After GalColle ended, net news pointed out the strong similarities between the looks from Mika-san’s brand and mine.

Thankfully, because of the quality and various creative details, the public came to the conclusion that we were the ones whose work had been plagiarized.

It turned out Atsushi Nishiwaki, the designer Mika-san had hired as her brand’s designer, had stolen the designs on his own. But since Mika-san had been advertising the clothes as her own creations, in order to deny she had plagiarized, she’d have to admit she hadn’t been designing them herself. Either way, criticism was unavoidable.

In the end, she publicly admitted she wasn’t the one designing the clothes, and that the plagiarism was the designer’s own doing. Mika-san’s brand was then shut down.

“But seriously, I laughed so hard back then. When that old lady realized she had been praising a design that Tsumu-tsumu made… her eyes rolled back and she fainted!”

“Haha, I feel bad for her, but I have to admit I laughed a little too.”

After Nishiwaki was taken away, Mika-san realized something:

When she had confidently said, “I’m really proud of this design,” during her greeting—it meant she had praised the original version, my design, without knowing it.

“I—I praised this man’s clothes…?! I… I can’t believe it…”

That’s what she said before rolling her eyes and fainting. It was a real pain getting her off the stage after that…

“Actually, not just Mika, but the Amagasaki Agency itself has been having a bad reputation lately. Mutsuki is still suspended.”

“Io-san’s name doesn’t come up among actors anymore either.”

“All of that started after Sakasegawa-kun left, didn’t it?”

“Tsumu-tsumu was the one holding that agency together.”

“Was I really…?”

“That’s right.”

“Indeed you were.”

“That’s right.”

“For sure~.”

Everyone agreed in unison, backing me up.

Hearing them say all this made me think—maybe what I did for the people who used to be my family really did have some meaning after all.

(A lot has happened since then…)

I happened to look up at the sky.

I was reflecting on everything that had happened since I was thrown out of my showbiz family home on my birthday, where I had always worked behind the scenes to support them.

I transferred from an entertainment school to a regular school, and there I met Tsukiyo Himeji-san, known as the Ice Queen. I was the only one who knew that she was actually a popular Vtuber.

From there, for some reason, they kept transferring into the school one after another—Asuka Ashiya-san, the center of the top idol group Asterisk, Rin Takarazuka-san, the top star and male-role actor of the revue troupe, and Keina Kobe, a supermodel in demand overseas. There were days when I felt like I was drifting further and further from any kind of normal youth, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

The meals I used to eat alone became meals for two. Then before I knew it, we were a group of five. Acchan goes to a different school, so she’s not here right now, but I’ve come to know the warmth and the good taste of eating with someone else.

And little by little, I’ve come to know the happiness of being accepted.

Eating lunch like this on the school rooftop with everyone, all our titles and labels fade away—we’re just friends, all getting along.

There’s no one above and no one below here, and nobody gets special treatment.

If someone else were to see this scene, they’d probably say it’s not normal. Being surrounded by such amazing people would seem anything but ordinary.

But to me, this is my ordinary youth.

That’s why—from now on, too—I want to continue enjoying this ordinary youth to the fullest.

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