My phone suddenly rang, shattering what had possibly been the greatest moment of my eighteen years of existence.
Kazuha startled at the sound and immediately pulled away from the hug. The warmth disappeared so quickly that my brain needed several seconds to understand what had just happened.
Who? Who dared interrupt this sacred moment?!
Still trapped inside the ridiculous bear costume, I hurriedly pulled off the giant mascot head and grabbed my phone. The moment I saw Joseph's name on the screen, I sighed.
My best friend had somehow become my greatest enemy in less than five seconds.
I answered the call. "Hello?"
"WHERE ARE YOU?!"
"Ow!" I immediately pulled the phone away from my ear. Even without speaker mode, I could hear Niina saying something loudly in the background.
"I'm in Section D, near the garden. Stop shouting!" I replied.
"Is Kazuha with you?! We lost her too!"
"Oh." I glanced sideways.
Kazuha was still sitting extremely close beside me. Only a few seconds ago, she'd been hugging me.
My stupid heart immediately started beating faster again. "Uh... yeah. She's here."
"Okay. Don't go anywhere. We're coming there, and then we should go home."
"Roger."
The call ended, leaving us in an awkward silence that felt completely different from the peaceful silence we'd shared earlier.
Neither of us looked at the other.
I stared intensely at my bear head as though it contained the secrets of the universe, while Kazuha stared somewhere ahead.
Eventually, she quietly sighed. "What am I even doing right now?" She pulled her knees closer and buried her face against them.
I blinked.
What did that mean? Was she embarrassed because she hugged me? Did she regret it already? Had she finally realized she'd voluntarily embraced the same idiot who once loudly asked whether he could get pregnant inside a convenience store?
I nervously glanced toward her, but at almost the exact same moment, she lifted her head and looked at me. Our eyes met.
My heart jumped. I immediately looked away.
"U-Uh... I guess they're worried about us." I slowly pushed myself upright, only for pain to immediately shoot through my injured ankle. "Ow!"
Kazuha sighed again.
Before she could say anything, however, a familiar shout echoed from somewhere in the distance.
"OIII!" Joseph and Niina were running toward us.
Joseph slowed down the moment he saw me. His expression moved through confusion, disbelief, concern, and then back to confusion.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
I looked down at myself. Right, "It's a long story."
Niina's reaction was completely different. Her eyes practically sparkled the instant she saw me. "SO CUTE!"
"Huh?"
"Kaoru! Put the head back on!"
"What?"
"Please! I want a picture!"
Before I could even breathe properly, Niina had already grabbed the mascot head and shoved it toward me. "Wait! I've been suffocating inside that thing for—"
"Just one picture!"
One picture became five. Then she wanted a selfie. Then another pose. Then she wanted me to raise both paws. Then she hugged my arm while Joseph took another picture.
At some point during my unexpected second career as a theme park mascot, Joseph quietly approached me. "What did you actually do?" he whispered.
"Long story."
"That's the second time you've said that."
"I'll tell you later."
His gaze shifted toward Kazuha, who was still sitting quietly nearby, before returning to me. "You didn't do anything weird to her, right?"
I thought about the last hour. I tried giving her my jacket. She put it back on me. We shared it. I disappeared without telling her. I bankrupted myself. I became a bear. She found me. Then she hugged me. "I'm not sure..."
Joseph stared at me. His expression perfectly communicated, What the hell does 'I'm not sure' mean?
I shrugged helplessly. There was no short explanation.
"Kazuha?" Niina finally noticed her sitting alone. "Are you okay?"
Kazuha nodded and slowly stood. "Yeah. Let's go home."
Then Niina spotted the enormous merchandise bags. "Whoa!" She immediately rushed toward them. "Kazuha, you bought all this?! You really love that bear, huh?"
Kazuha shook her head. "They're not mine." She calmly pointed toward me. "They're Kaoru's."
Silence.
Joseph slowly turned his head toward me. "Kaoru...?"
Niina looked equally surprised. "Really? Kaoru, I never knew you liked this bear so much!"
Sweat formed on my forehead. "W-Well..."
Three pairs of eyes stared at me.
"When I saw it today, I immediately realized how... cute it was."
Nobody believed me.
"So, you know, there was this lottery, and then my competitive side sort of awakened..."
Joseph's expression darkened. "How much?"
"Huh?"
"How much did you spend?"
I looked away. "A perfectly reasonable amount."
"Show me your bank account."
"No."
"Kaoru."
"That's private financial information!" I defended myself, clutching my phone against my chest as though Joseph were trying to steal state secrets.
Joseph stared at me silently. Niina was already chuckling beside him, while Kazuha let out a tired sigh.
Several minutes later, through methods I would rather not discuss, Joseph was staring directly at my banking app.
Balance: 627 yen.
I gave him my most innocent smile.
He slowly raised his head. "YOU IDIOT!" And thus began a lecture about financial responsibility from a man who had called a girl Princess Niina within minutes of meeting her.
The injustice was unbelievable.
Niina laughed harder with every unfortunate detail she learned about my financial decisions, while Kazuha occasionally joined Joseph's lecture whenever she apparently felt he wasn't scolding me enough.
"You could've stopped after the first few draws," Kazuha said.
"I was already committed!"
"That's exactly when you should've stopped."
"But the grand prize—"
"Wasn't worth emptying your bank account."
But these were all for youuu, Kazuhaaa! I cried silently inside my heart as the very girl I'd bankrupted myself for continued helping Joseph lecture me.
I lowered my head while Joseph continued lecturing me about food, transportation, emergency savings, and several other boring adult concepts that had somehow become extremely relevant now that I possessed six hundred and twenty seven yen.