Puppet Skin [OHSHC]

Chapter 11

As if Iiyo wasn't annoyed enough, the class president also came to the club room, but only to observe and to check on the clay charms, which was fine with her for the most part. He thanked them for volunteering their club room and their club time for the festival, but didn't sound so enthusiastic. Both Umehito and Iiyo welcomed the gratitude anyway.

For the official first ten minutes, Iiyo was busy lighting candles, because there were complaints that it was too dark, and the Black Magic Club president refused to turn on the lights. She did this while listening to Umehito explain the different forms of divination. He said if they worked hard, they would be able to also use more complex divination in time for the festival, and then summarized how to read a person's fortune in the different methods. Iiyo could tell he was very excited at the possibility of having more members, and, surprisingly, he was refraining himself quite well. Maybe with this good behavior some people would actually stay, even if it was to only learn about fortune-telling. It was a start.

Umehito had been classmates with most of the volunteers since elementary school, so knew them well enough to suggest which form of divination would suit them best. Sayoko was chosen for palm reading, which made her very happy. Umehito assigned Narumi Sasa, a quiet girl with one of the top grades and was well-known for her chess-playing skills, with mahjong tiles. Soma Sakura was a very athletic girl, which surprised Iiyo that she would volunteer at all, so Umehito thought that her covering the dice and dominoes would suit her well. Joshuyo Wazuka was a very gossipy sort of girl who knew a little something about everybody, so tarot cards fit her perfectly. It turned out that she even had her own tarot deck at home that she preferred using, so it seemed that Umehito wouldn't need to instruct her as much since she already knew what she was doing. The last volunteer, and the only boy, was Minoshita Kageru. Unlike the others, he transferred into the school late, so Umehito didn't know much about him, so on a whim decided he should manage the oraculum divination—a book of questions, in which depending on the number of stars drawn, leads the questioner to the answer. It was basically a Napoleon's Book of Fate and Oraculum.

Umehito said he would be managing the scrying table, and told Iiyo that she would be managing the playing cards and the Lenormand table. She knew a little of playing cards, but hadn't heard of the Lenormand method, so immediately went to look for a book on such without much luck. At most, she could only find that Lenormand used the normal playing cards, but they had entirely different meanings from the playing card method. At a time like this, she wished she had a private computer, or a laptop. She looked back at Umehito to see that he was teaching Sasa and Sakura about their methods since dominoes and mahjong were very similar. Wazuka and Sayoko chatted mostly while Sayoko was practicing off of the other's hand, using a book Umehito recommended as reference.

Iiyo didn't know if she liked it—the club having more people in it. It was hard keeping track of where people were, and when she was trying to read, she could feel the buzzing presences moving about behind her. The chattering wasn't any problem, she hated complete silence even more, but it made it all the more different. Overall, it was kind of lonely.

There was a sudden vibration to Iiyo's right, out of her eye line, which made her snap her body towards it. Kageru, the boy, was taking a seat right next to her with his book in hand. "Whoa, sorry. Didn't mean to scare you," he said in good humor, but Iiyo couldn't keep her analytical stare off of him. Even Umehito didn't sit directly beside her, so it was nerve-racking to her.

Even so, she tried to keep her composure. By default, she guessed she was the Vice President, even though that wasn't confirmed, so should act like one. "No, no, not at all. You just surprised me. Did you need help with something?"

"Yeah. I kind of understand this, but I wanted to make sure."

To be honest, Iiyo didn't know how to use this book of fate either, but was willing to learn with him—that's what Vice Presidents were supposed to do, right? After she read the instructions a few times, and tested it out herself, she explained, "You have the person, or the querent, either ask a question, or have him or her choose a question from this list. Some questions won't be exact so choose whatever's closest, and then have the querent draw five rows of stars, telling them not to count. If the line of stars is even, put one star, if the line has an odd number of stars, place two stars—I don't think it's required to add up the digits of the number of stars on a line. Then, once you have your pattern of stars, find the question number on the graph, and line it up with the star pattern, and there's your answer. Do you think you understand?"

"Yup, thank you." After a few minutes, Kageru started smiling, as if he was holding in his laughter, and taking quick peaks at the corner of his eyes.

"What?" Iiyo asked.

When she was about to look where he was peaking at, Kageru stopped her by quickly whispering, "No, don't look! Just don't look." He took a few breaths to calm down. "I think the president likes you."

Iiyo made a confused face, looking at Umehito, and then looking back.

"Not the club president, the class president. He's been staring at you for quite a while."

"No way, you're lying." Even after saying that, Iiyo took out a compact mirror and placed it on the table. Once she got the angle right, she could see the class president working on clay charms, but after a while, he looked up to look at her for a few seconds before getting back to work. She snapped her mirror shut and looked at Kageru. "Thank you so much for creeping me out now." It didn't help that the candle light made the president look eerie.

Once Kageru started laughing, it was infectious, it made Iiyo start giggling.

Umehito looked at Sayoko and Wazuka, but it wasn't either of them giggling—not in the same way at least. He looked farther into the club room and saw that it was Iiyo chuckling, with Kageru sitting right next to her. He was startled that Kageru was so physically close to her, but when another round of Iiyo's quiet giggles started up, he thought she would be fine—if she thought he was too close she would have pushed him away. Still, he didn't like it. He didn't know why he didn't like what he was seeing, but he just knew the sinking feeling in his gut told him that he didn't like it.