As expected, the White Star phenomenon only intensified
following her battle against Black Star, and the two magical girls remained
almost the sole talking point for the rest of the week. Sanae soon found
herself getting used to it, although it was still a little difficult not to
turn around every time she heard someone cry out "White Star!" in the
corridors.
To her surprise, it also seemed as though Black Star had
gotten a small peripheral following. Her villainous nature hadn't stopped some
people on the Internet from expressing affection for her, and she had seen more
than one person posting things like "I don't care if Black Star is evil,
she's still adorable as hell", or "Black Star did nothing
wrong", or "Isn't Black Star a character from Soul Eater?" She had to scroll past that last one fairly
quickly, for fear of copyright issues.
Much to her horror, Sanae also found a small group of
people who were obsessed with the idea of "shipping" White Star and
Black Star together. By the weekend, she had already seen at least three
pictures of the two magical girls expressing their love for one another in some
manner. I don't get it, she thought. How does one look at two mortal enemies
fighting to the death and think, 'I bet they actually really want to screw each
other'? Probably watched too many tsundere anime.
Having become a little burnt-out on her alter ego, and
feeling all the more glad that no more monsters had appeared since Monday,
Sanae spent the weekend relaxing and putting all thoughts of White Star and
Black Star to one side. Come Monday morning, she was ready to go back to school
and face the endless chatter all over again. Amaya was not so ready.
"Just let it die already," she mumbled, as she
shuffled towards the school. "Just let the White Star fad die
already."
"Are you alright, Amaya?" asked Sanae.
"You look tired. Like, really tired."
"My mom was up all night playing the new Bat-Dude
game and she had the volume turned up really loud for whatever reason,"
she groaned. "I couldn't get a wink of sleep, and I know half the plot
now. I can still hear Bat-Dude's voice in my head…"
"Well, to be fair, there's worse voices you could
have in your head," said Sanae. "Like Sailor Moon and her annoying
whiny baby voice. Ugh." She shuddered. "I hope I don't get a voice
like that when this series gets animated."
"I don't have to worry about that, because I'm a
tomboy," said Amaya. "They wouldn’t give a tomboy a voice like
that." She yawned, and then sighed. "They're gonna give me an
annoying voice now just for the fun of it, aren't they?" she muttered.
Sanae shrugged. "We'll find out someday.
Hopefully."
Amaya nodded "Hopefully," she muttered. Then
she stopped walking, and her head suddenly lolled forwards onto her shoulder.
"Amaya?!" exclaimed Sanae, startled.
"Don't tell me you've just fallen asleep standing up!"
"I'm too tired to go to school," said Amaya.
"Too bad!" said Sanae, seizing her arm.
"You're the straight man to my idiot! I need you to make the classroom
scenes funnier! Besides, if you don't come into school, what are you gonna do
for the whole day? Stay at home while your mom plays Bat-Dude?"
"Let's go," said Amaya suddenly, her head
snapping upwards as she resumed walking.
"Wow, that was fast," remarked Sanae.
"Good thing I didn't have to drag her all the way up there, though. That
would have been tiring."
Amaya suddenly glared at Sanae over her shoulder.
"Did you just make a fat joke?" she asked.
"Well, if the boot fits-" quipped Sanae, an
instant before Amaya's foot impacted her face, knocking her to the ground.
"Sure fits your face nicely," grumbled Amaya,
before walking off again. Sanae picked herself up, rubbed her face, and made a
mental note never to tease Amaya while she was sleep-deprived.
***
When they finally made it to school, Amaya proceeded to spend
most of the day sleeping at her desk, only waking up when a teacher barked at
her to do so only to go right back to sleep again five minutes later. When it
came to lunchtime, Sanae gently nudged her friend awake. "Amaya," she
whispered, "wake up. It's lunchtime."
"Thanks, Sanae," mumbled Amaya, rubbing her
eyes. "I think I'll eat here today, you go ahead to the cafeteria."
"You sure?" asked Sanae.
Amaya nodded. "I'm sure," she said.
"You're the main character, you go do your main character stuff."
"Okay," said Sanae. "I'll be back once I'm
finished eating, okay?"
Amaya nodded, and yawned. "Sure, whatever," she
said.
Getting up out of her seat, Sanae grabbed her back and
headed off to the cafeteria as usual. On her way there, however, she spotted a
flyer crudely stapled to one of the walls. Usually, she didn’t pay attention to
the various club flyers stapled to the walls, but this one happened to catch
her attention, as this one had a picture of White Star on the front. Moving in
closer, she began to read it:
"Are YOU a fan of White Star?" it proclaimed
boldly. "Why not join the new WHITE STAR FAN CLUB? Meetings are every day
after-school (location tbd). Come and discuss White Star, Black Star, and any
other cool supernatural stuff that happens in Mitsuzawa!"
Sanae couldn't help being surprised. "Wow, I even
have a fan club now…" she muttered.
"Wanna join?"
Sanae shrieked and jumped about a foot in the air,
paranoid that whoever had just spoken had heard what she had said. Looking
around, she realized it was Hitomi, the heterochromatic girl she had run into -
literally - at the start of the semester. "Wh-wh-wh-when did you get
here?!" she exclaimed, flustered.
"F-f-f-five seconds ago!" replied Hitomi,
mimicking Sanae's stuttering. "I heard you were interested in joining the
White Star Fan Club! Is that right?"
If Hitomi had heard her, she wasn't letting on. Sanae
decided to give her the benefit of the doubt for now, and forced herself to
calm down. "Uhh… maybe…" she said. "Are you in it, Hitomi?"
"I'm the club president!" she said boldly.
"Or rather, I will be, once we get one more member, a room, and a
supervising teacher! Then we'll be a proper club!"
"You already have three other members?" said
Sanae. Somehow, despite all the attention she had gotten over the last week,
she was still surprised that there were people who liked her enough to join a
fan club dedicated to her.
"Sure do!" said Hitomi. "You wanna go meet
'em?"
"Sure, why not," said Sanae. She was rather
curious about what kinds of people would join a fan club dedicated to her.
"Alright, let's go!" said Hitomi. "They're
over in Class 1-3, so follow me~!" Hitomi headed off down the corridor,
with Sanae following along behind. I hope
I get to eat my lunch while I'm there, she thought, I'm really hungry…
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