Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear

Fina looked very embarrassed to walk around in her brand new clothing. We kept telling her it looked great on her, but that seemed to have only made it worse.

At least she didn’t have to worry about going around the festival in stained clothes.

Tilia had bought the clothes for them, so I decided to buy some handkerchiefs I noticed were sold in the shop as well.

I wanted the girls to pick for themselves, but Noa beat me to the punch by saying, 「Yuna-san, please choose one for us,」and the other two agreed with her. I didn’t have any fashion sense, but I somehow picked out what I thought matched the three of them.

The three of them received the handkerchiefs happily, but when I thought about the complicated outfit picking process from earlier, I worried whether they really were happy or not. Shuri’s expression seemed genuine, though, so I had done just fine, right? If Shuri didn’t like it, she would have surely said something like 「Yuna-neechan, this is not cute at all,」straight out. She had received my gift happily, so she must have found it acceptable.

「Tilia, you sure you don’t want one?」

I wanted to buy one for Tilia, too, but she had refused.

「If you really want to give me a present, then the bear plushies will do.」

Afterwards, we won a couple more prizes that Shuri and Noa wanted, and ate some food from the food stands. Time quickly went by, and before we realized, we were informed that day one of the school festival was over. All the shops began cleaning up, and the visitors slowly began to leave.

We considered returning to Shia’s stand but quickly decided against it as we might get in the way of their cleaning and disrupt the flow of people leaving the academy.

「I will let them know, then.」

Tilia would stay at the academy for a while longer, so she returned to Shia to tell her we were leaving without her.

「Thank you for accompanying us today, Tilia.」

「I had a lot of fun today, so no biggie.」

「Tilia-sama, thank you for purchasing these clothes for us.」

「Thank you, Princess.」

「Thank you very much, Tilia-sama.」

「Don’t worry about it. I bought them because I wanted to.」

Tilia said, smiling at the three girls.

「Okay, I will give you the plushies, then, just as promised.」

I took out a set of Swaying Bear and Hugging Bear plushies, and passed them to Tilia.

「Uwah, you’re really giving them to me?」

「I promised you I would, didn’t I? Also, you brought us around for the entire day, so this could be considered my thanks to you.」

「Well, I will gladly take them, then.」

「Yes, and please take good care of them. I will ask Her Highness if you do.」

I would be very sad if she used them as practice targets for throwing knives or something.

「I will take good care of them, of course. Should I place them in the palace’s treasury to keep them safe?」

「I would feel bad for the plushies, so please don’t do that.」

「Fufu, I’m joking. I will keep them safe in my room.」

After we said our goodbyes, Tilia embraced her plushies and walked towards Shia’s stand while we headed straight back to Eleanora-san’s mansion.

When we got there, Fina handed the wolf meat she had received for her dismantling to Suririna-san, so she could use it for tonight’s dinner. Then, she asked where she could wash her dirty clothes, but Suririna-san took them from her.

「If it’s laundry, please leave it to me.」

「But...」

「This is my job, so I can’t let you do it. While you are at this mansion, you are our guest, Fina-sama.」

Fina still looked troubled.

「Fina, you should let her do it. I’m sure you wouldn’t like it if somebody else tried to do your job, would you?」

Well, if somebody tried to do my job, I wouldn’t complain, but that wasn’t the point here. Fina was too serious and tried to do everything herself. While that was one of her good qualities, it also made her very inflexible when it came to letting others help her.

「Yuna-oneechan... Okay. Suririna-san, please wash it for me. I got blood on it, so you can wash it off with-」

「Fina-sama, you don’t have to worry and leave it to me. I will clean it properly.」

Once Fina finally let go of her clothes, we returned to our guest room. We just had to accept that we would be taken care of here. Yes, we could have stayed at my Bear House, but Shuri wanted to stay here, so there was no way I could just drag her and Fina off into the sunset.

Well, I had actually let both girls decide as I didn’t really care either way, and it was Fina who had let Shuri have the final choice, hence we ended up staying at Eleanora-san’s mansion.

Back to the present:

「Fufu, I will place down the Ten of Water.」

「Okay, then I will put down the Four of Fire.」

「Alright! Three of Fire!」

The three of them played Sevens all the way until dinner time.

I didn’t play with them and instead collapsed on the bed. My body didn’t feel tired, but I was mentally exhausted from all the stares and whispers I had received.

As we were resting, Shia came into the room.

「Welcome back.」

「Welcome home, Onee-sama.」

「I’m back... Wait, that’s not it. Yuna-san, what on earth did you do at the school festival?!」

For some reason I was not aware of, it seemed that Shia was mad at me?

As I thought that, she made her way to me.

「I just enjoyed strolling around the festival with everyone like any normal person would. Right?」

I got up from the bed and looked at the girls, prompting them to agree with me.

I found no reason why Shia would belittle me as such.

「Yes, we had fun checking out many attractions together.」

「And Yuna-oneechan was with us the entire time.」

「Mhm.」

Everyone defended me.

I didn’t know why Shia was mad at me, but I hoped this would be enough to prove I was innocent?

Shia looked at the girls and sighed.

「Everyone, how come you have all these beautiful clothes, hair pieces, and accessories?」

「Tilia-sama bought the clothes for us.」

Shia was a bit surprised by this information, but the girls didn’t give her a chance to inquire on it more deeply.

「I got this hair piece from Yuna-neechan.」

「Yuna-san won this brooch from a game.」

「And I got this bracelet from Yuna-oneechan.」

The girls continued to show all the accessories I had gotten for them to Shia.

「I won this one myself. Oh, and this one is another Yuna-neechan got for me.」

「She also got us flowers.」

The three of them practically boasted about things they had won or I had won for them. They lined them all up on the table, including the handkerchiefs I had bought for them. There was quite a number of items altogether. We had worked hard, hadn’t we?

Shia glanced at our loot and sighed once again.

「Onee-sama, is something wrong?」

「Of course there is something wrong with this! Think about it. What do you think happens when Yuna-san, in her bear costume, wins all these eye-catching prizes?」

「Hmm, now that you mention it, there was a bit of a clamor around us.」

「Yes, but everyone always looks at us whenever we walk with Yuna-oneechan, so it was nothing special.」

「Everyone is always looking.」

Me being a focus of attention was nothing special. A bit of clamor should be expected when I wore my Bear Suit in public. People always had something to say about my outfit no matter where I went. Most people had considered me a part of the festival in this instance, so such an amount of attention shouldn’t have been enough to cause trouble to Shia, right?

「Of course, Yuna-san’s costume is part of it. But, those prizes she won are supposed to be the best prizes, the hardest ones to get, and yet she easily cleared all those challenges.」

Oh, that was what she had meant by causing a commotion?

It hadn’t been my outfit, but rather me winning all those prizes?

Still, I had won them all by following the rules. It hadn’t said anywhere that I wasn’t allowed to use my Bear Equipment to win. If there had been such a notice, I wouldn’t have played.

「When you did the knife-throwing challenge, you hit the faraway targets dead center. When you threw the balls, they had a smooth trajectory, dodging all the obstacles with ease. When you rolled the balls, they moved as though as they were alive. I have even more of these.」

「How do you know all of this?」

It sounded almost like she had been watching me herself.

「A few people from my class saw you throwing knives, and it immediately became a huge topic amongst the whole class. Then, more classmates said they witnessed you doing the same thing in different challenges. The topic got completely out of hand when Tilia-sama was also brought into the conversation. Practically everyone was talking about it.」

Basically, Tilia had been the gasoline being poured into the already rampaging fire?

Hmm, maybe it had been a bad idea to do so many things at my first school festival. Still, I couldn’t possibly refuse when Shuri and Noa looked up cutely at me and requested something. I had ended up going completely overboard because of them.

Also, Fina would never say she wanted something, but whenever she received a present she seemed very happy. I couldn’t help but work hard to see their delighted expressions. Tomorrow, however, I had to hold back so I wouldn’t cause Shia even more trouble.

I proceeded to promise her I wouldn’t do anything to stand out tomorrow.

「By the way, how was your stall?」

We hadn’t gotten the chance to check on their shop again before leaving. I was a bit curious as to how well it had done.

「Thanks to the bear statue you made for us, people kept coming and we sold more than we expected.」

It sounded like the Bear statue had successfully attracted customers. It had been worth making it in the end.

「The people who came because of your bear statue immediately got curious about the cotton candy, and since it’s something that can be eaten while walking around, more people heard of it, and the crowd kept rushing to our stand nonstop.」

「That’s good to hear.」

「Yes, but there was just one problem...」

「What happened?」

「Our customers started to spread the word that our stand was called the Bear Stand, so people suddenly started to order saying 『I would like the Bear’s candy』even though our sign clearly said ‘cotton candy’...」

That... was kind of hard to comment on.

「Still, thanks to all the people coming for the bear-related reasons, we had way more customers than anticipated, so we can’t really complain.」

「If it starts getting in the way, you can destroy it at any time.」

「No, no, it helped us out a lot, so there’s no way we can destroy it. It just became a bit hard to manage, that’s all. People mostly lined up nicely, but there were some troublemakers who cut in line. Not to mention that we couldn’t take breaks properly, with how busy it was. Marcus was barely able to raise his arms by the end of the day. Timor, Cattleya, and I switched him out of course, but none of us could really take it easy when we weren’t managing the machine. It was awful with all the people assaulting our stand.」

「You guys had it that hard?」

「Yes. We only have one cotton candy machine, so we couldn’t keep up with all the orders, and the line just kept getting longer and longer.」

「Then, how about I lend you one, maybe two more of the machines so you can make more at once?」

With two or three people making the candy at the same time, the line should be more manageable, right?

「Really? Thank you very much. That should help us solve the problem.」

I took out the machines I had used at the orphanage and passed them to her.

I really hoped this would lessen the burden on them.

Afterwards, we ate dinner, then Shia and the girls played some more card games before the day finally came to an end.

Author’s Note:

Day two of the festival coming with the next chapter.