Normally, when you hear the words “Freshman Welcome Party”, you’d immediately think of certain things, right?
Like watching each club’s performance, and thinking, maybe I should join that club with the pretty uppercla.s.smen whose uniforms suit them perfectly? Ah, but that club has a loli, so I can’t overlook them?
Isn’t it a special event with such wild delusions, that makes you feel happy?
It’s such a major event that a country should protect it with all its power – it might as well be a national policy, right!?
Well, I may be the only one who’s this emotional about it, and I do realise that I may be the exception, so I won’t continue to a.s.sert my opinion. But even so, the scene before my eyes was difficult to accept.
For example, if you were to think of a Calligraphy Club’s performance, what would you imagine?
Surely, you’d think of a Yukata-clad black haired girl, with a tranquil demeanor.
“———So why in the world is there a girl standing there and striking her opponent with a giant brush as though it was a weapon!?”
Had modern-day calligraphy evolved into this kind of thing? Is it possible that this is actually cutting-edge work, and I just don’t know about it?
……No, that’s definitely impossible!

At the same time, the Art Club’s performance that was going on nearby was all over the place.
I had been expected an adorable twin-tailed girl, who would embarra.s.sedly introduce artworks and talk about the appeal of the fine arts, although admittedly I could be an idiot and an impure existence for imagining this.
I definitely haven’t forgotten how in the past a girl in my cla.s.s mistook me for having strange preferences, and how she put a slightly greater distance between us. But this just isn’t right.
“There’s a palette floating in midair from which art tools are flying out of…is this like a special move or something…!!?”
What would be the Art Club’s enemy anyways? It isn’t meant to be that kind of club. It was meant to be something more gentle and peaceful.
No matter how many times I rubbed my eyes, the scene before me did not change at all.
Rather, I had rubbed my eyes so excessively that they had turned red, and it seemed like I had been moved so much by the performance that I had cried.
Although it’s true that I would like to cry, however you look at it, it wouldn’t be in a positive way.
“Ahh…”
I let out a deep sigh.
Perhaps this also seemed like a sigh of admiration, as the male students standing beside me nodded several times, as though saying “Yeah, I know” in agreement.

“Hey, are you planning to explain this?”
I glared at the grinning 4-eyed b.a.s.t.a.r.d standing with the male students, who was an uppercla.s.sman, and also my cousin.
“Huh? Congratulations on getting into this school…?”
“I’m not happy! Not one bit! Shigure, you’re the only one who’s happy! What’s with this!? You deceived me!!”
“Eruna-chan! I’ve asked you so many times to call me ‘Onii-chan’, you know? Ah, are you embarra.s.sed because we’re in public?”
“I don’t call you onii-chan even at home! You idiot!”
Wanting to punch him, I raised my arm, but his expression seemed so ecstatic at the thought of receiving my punch that I felt disgusted from the bottom of my heart and lowered my hand.
“Why did I decide to go to the same school as this kind of cousin…”
Shigure’s sharp ears picked up my muttering, and he happily replied,
“Don’t you think that’s because of lov-gaah!”
Before he could finish his sentence, I punched him with all my strength. With my fist. With my fist, using my entire body’s weight.
“No your entire body’s weight isn’t even that much so it isn’t really that important a point,” was said while my maiden’s feelings and my innermost heart were exploding.**

The Welcoming Party was still going on.
It was unbelievably noisy, and impossibly absurd…however, everyone seemed to be having fun.
———I have a premonition that this is the beginning of quite an interesting story.

Translation Note:
Onii-chan is a cute way of addressing your older brother, and can also be used with cousins.
**I’m not actually sure whether Shigure says this or it’s just something Eruna says in her mind.