Although things may not have gone as smoothly as the diary described, all the bags were eventually completed.

At any rate, the power of the iron and sewing machine had been incredible. At a stretch, the bags looked like something you might buy. No, that was going a bit too far.

As they looked at the bags placed atop the table, the trio let out a sigh.

"There"s still something not quite right."

"You think so too?"

Indeed. Even though they were well made, there was something missing.

"How about we embroider a small design on them?"

"That"s it."

The three girls took their embroidery threads out from the lower section of their sewing boxes.

"Ah - . If we"re going to embroider, we should have done that first."

No point saying it now, when it"s too late to do anything about it. After all, it was only when the bags had been completed that they established that something was missing. They were left with no choice but to take extra care when doing the embroidery not to sew the front and the back of the bag together.

"Red, white, yellow and three types of green."

Sitting before the bags and six types of embroidery thread, the trio folded their arms.

"So, what can we do with these?"

"Roses are predictable. And embarra.s.sing."

"Right. I don"t think we should embroider something with too much meaning."

Something meaningless would be better.

They weren"t presents from the future Red, White and Yellow Roses, but personal gifts from f.u.kuzawa Yumi, Toudou Shimako and Shimazu Yoshino. They chose to turn a blind eye to how this contradicted with the discussions that had led to them deciding to make the bags.

"We"ve got a lot of green, so we could use the different shades for something like clover."

"Or a turtle."

"Or a crocodile."

The moment she said this, Shimako-san and Yoshino-san"s silently mouthed the word "crocodile."

"We don"t really have to focus on the green too much. There"s red, white and yellow too."

Shimako-san pointed out.

"What about tulips?"

Yoshino-san, red, white and yellow tulips would be a bit too simple. But instead of saying that, Yumi said:

"Or a multicolored umbrella with red, yellow, white and green."

At which point, Shimako-san and Yoshino-san looked shocked as they pointed out:

" &h.e.l.lip; Don"t all of Yumi-san"s recent ideas sound like corporate logos you"ve seen somewhere before?"

The criticism came because they were willing to overlook the first time, but not the second.

"Oh, really?"

Those designs probably came to mind quite clearly. The crocodile and umbrella were both famous brand logos.

"That"s not what I meant."

Yumi shook both her hands.

"Even though it was so blatant."

Yoshino-san wasn"t about to go easy on her. Shimako-san then kindly followed that up with:

"Since we don"t all have to do the same embroidery, if Yumi-san wants to do an umbrella, then that"s fine. Just as long as you don"t have red, white, yellow and green lined up alongside each other. For instance, you could restrict it to just one color."

Red umbrella, yellow umbrella, white umbrella, green umbrella.

"I"ll pa.s.s."

Even in her imagination, none of those struck home.

"If I was going to do an umbrella, I"d want it to be blue."

But, unfortunately, they didn"t have any blue embroidery thread.

"Ah."

Remembering, Shimako-san said, "Yumi-san"s blue umbrella."

"What"s that?"

Yoshino-san tilted her head in confusion.

"You know. It went missing at a convenience store, then for some reason it was returned by Aota-sensei - "

"Ah, there"s a story there too, huh."

That story took place during last year"s rainy season.

Yumi"s umbrella, which had taken a solo voyage before returning to her, was still in active use.

If umbrellas could talk, she"d secretly like to hear the tale of what happened during its ten day trip.