That afternoon, Haibara met the student she hadn’t seen in a long while—also the problem child who gave her the biggest headache.
In a little while, this high school idol would arrive at her office.
She planned to have a proper talk with the girl first, even though it likely wouldn’t do much good.
Soon there came a knock at the door.
Haibara gave a curt “Come in,” and the door slid open as a girl whose figure could only be described as petite and slender walked inside.
Her figure was quickly forgotten, though—what really caught the eye was the girl’s hair.
Though it only reached down to her neck, the rest of the strands were long and flipped out, dyed a dark red—yet somehow it didn’t look out of place on this girl.
And at the crown of her head, a few streaks of highlighted green hair hung loose.
Her eyes were dark red too.
How to put it—she was cute, sure, but for someone like Haibara, pushing thirty, it was a little hard to understand.
Was this really what young people liked these days?
She’d heard it was called something like…
jirai-kei?
But honestly, to her the girl’s hair looked more like a delicious tomato.
Beyond that, the girl before her was delicate and lovely—at first glance she resembled an exquisitely packaged porcelain doll, her limbs and neck all very slender, her skin as tender and fair as porcelain itself.
At the front of her slender neck hung a swaying pendulum.
This little girl was Tachibana Airuru—a female high school idol, and also the magical girl secretly active in this city.
Her real name was, if she recalled…
“Sakaki Chika, correct?”
Haibara said her name coldly.
From the moment she entered, the girl had kept her head down, not saying a word.
When her name was called, Sakaki Chika gave a little shudder, lifted her lowered head, and looked cautiously at Haibara.
“Y-Yes…”
Her voice as she spoke was as tiny as a mosquito’s, and she didn’t dare look at Haibara.
Haibara propped her cheek on one hand and kept watching her, while Sakaki Chika stayed just as she had been.
Yes—this little girl was terribly afraid of her.
Or rather, whenever she wasn’t being an idol, Sakaki Chika was always this nervous, fawn-like creature—she would stutter when she spoke and didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes.
Honestly, it was hard to imagine how someone like this could ever be an idol.
And supposedly, when Sakaki Chika was up on stage, she even played that energetic persona.
The idol profession really was something incredible.
Crossing one leg lightly over the other, Haibara picked up the roster on her desk, glanced over Sakaki Chika’s file, and said casually:
“I haven’t seen you in a good while either.
Why the sudden urge to come back and study here?”
Haibara was very blunt.
Though Sakaki Chika looked so pitiful now, whenever a Weirdo incident broke out she would still rise without hesitation to become a magical girl and save the world.
Sakaki Chika was clearly startled by Haibara’s cold tone.
Her face paled for a moment, and then she clasped her hands uneasily in front of her and said in a low voice:
“Because…
I want to…
study.”
Haibara’s gaze stalled for a beat; she thought she’d misheard.
She lifted her head slightly and looked at Sakaki Chika.
Then her eyes drifted back to the roster, and she recalled a little about this girl’s family situation.
The mother’s whereabouts unknown, her only living relative at present was her father, and the household seemed to be of ordinary means.
She’d become an idol back at middle-school age, and had barely attended school since; even after entering high school, she spent most of her time performing.
She wasn’t quite sure whether this “I want to study” was meant to fob her off or was sincere.
Sakaki Chika lowered her gaze and mumbled:
“While I was away from school, when I didn’t have performances or practice…
I also…
tried to memorize the textbooks, but…
I couldn’t understand them.
Lately I asked my manager whether I could…
take a break for a while.”
It sounded far-fetched, but it didn’t seem like a lie.
Haibara frowned slightly.
Mm…
back when this girl used to come to class, she’d seemed to listen quite attentively, and she’d completed all her homework properly—even if the results were basically a total mess.
After mulling it over, Haibara crooked a finger, motioning for the girl to come closer.
The girl shrank back a little, clearly frightened of her, but still came over quickly and stopped right in front of Haibara.
Haibara looked her up and down, then pointed at her—
“Your hair—can you dye it back?
This hair color was far too conspicuous.
She didn’t get this whole idol thing, but with a normal hair color, the girl probably wouldn’t draw so much attention.
“O-Okay…”
When Sakaki Chika drew very close to her, Haibara studied the girl a bit more carefully.
Her build seemed extremely thin—it was hard to imagine just how light she must be.
Even though the uniform she wore was a small size, it still looked somewhat loose and ill-fitting on her.
Then, as she glanced toward the part of the girl’s shoulder that lay exposed, she noticed some discordant colors against the fair skin—faintly, she could make out what looked like bruises.
Something was off.
Drawing on her experience as a teacher, she looked next at the girl’s wrist, and on its inner side she could see something like scratch marks.
It seemed the problem was a bit more serious than she’d imagined.
Haibara’s expression, however, didn’t change.
“You’ll start attending classes this afternoon.
I’ll get that bunch of students to quiet down.
For today, try your best not to leave the classroom, and as for anyone else who comes by to see you, I’ll drive them off.”
She gathered up the file, meaning to send Sakaki Chika on her way, but just as she was about to do so, she suddenly remembered something.
Haibara raised her head and asked, seemingly offhand:
“Before—in your class, was there anyone you got along with fairly well?”
Though Haibara didn’t much care about the relationships between students, given the state this child was in, it would be less of a headache not to leave her all alone.
After hearing this, Sakaki Chika hemmed and hawed for a moment, then quietly spoke a name:
“…Kirishima Ai.”
Seeing that Haibara showed no reaction, Sakaki Chika added a not-very-confident explanation:
“Before, Kirishima Ai helped tutor me with my lessons…
so…”
Haibara said expressionlessly:
“Understood.
We’ll be changing seats in a couple of days—when that happens, you can sit together with her.”
Sakaki Chika was taken aback, blinking those pretty, endearing eyes.
“Thank you, Teacher.”
At the end, she seemed to say it a little happily.
And with that, Haibara’s conversation with the problem child came to an end.
As for what came next—the business of whipping these problem children into shape and salvaging her own performance record…
the road ahead was still long and arduous.