"Hiratsuka-sensei has gone off to who-knows-where again."
Hachiman looked at the dilapidated wooden cabins and couldn't help but sigh: "So what exactly are we supposed to do about the cabins? Do they really expect us to repair them?"
"How could that be? If something goes wrong during the school trip, the school has to bear the responsibility."
Yukino said calmly: "Besides, anyone can figure out even if they think with their kneecaps that it's impossible for just a few of us to repair this entire row of cabins in three days."
"I am truly sorry that my kneecaps don't possess the capacity to think." Hikigaya shot her a sidelong glance with his dead fish eyes: "Then what exactly did Hiratsuka-sensei mean by her words earlier?"
"Although Hiratsuka-sensei didn't explicitly say it, her meaning should be for us to log and compile a list of areas needing repair during these three days. The formal restoration will definitively be left to professionals."
"But if we truly do absolutely nothing, what are we supposed to do if it actually rains? We can't exactly pitch tents inside the house, can we?" Hachiman shook his head.
Then, both of them simultaneously looked over at Asakura, who hadn't uttered a single word and had been deep in thought about something this entire time.
Asakura opened his eyes, looked at the two of whom, and then spoke in an earnest manner.
"What are we having for lunch?"
"Is there perhaps something wrong with student Asakura's frequency channel?"
"The thing with an issue might actually be the eardrum."
Hachiman and Yukino from under the snow bitingly complained in unison.
"What are you looking at? Aren't you guys having lunch?"
Asakura cast a glance at Hachiman.
This guy was actually quite afraid of him at the beginning, yet after just a single day, he could already interact with him as if nothing had ever happened.
"Although it feels like there are plenty of areas I want to complain about, eating is indeed an issue as well."
Hachiman scratched his head: "Setting restaurants aside, I'm afraid even the nearest convenience store around here is several kilometers away."
"And most of them are difficult-to-walk forest paths, you know." Asakura added a sharp follow-up blow.
"Failing to prepare an ample supply of simple instant foods right from the start was truly a tactical miscalculation."
Hachiman grew even more distressed.
"I brought chocolate," Yukino suddenly spoke up.
"That can't exactly fill an empty stomach, can it?" Asakura responded.
"The calories are sufficient." The young girl replied indifferently. She completely ignored Hachiman's 'what about me?' expression and spoke to Asakura: "If you want some, I can share a bit with you."
"Well..."
Just as Asakura was still hesitating over whether or not to accept the chocolate, Komachi suddenly came running out from behind the wooden cabins: "There's a vegetable patch behind the cabins! Even though it feels like it has been abandoned for ages, there are actually some tomatoes and cucumbers!"
The three of Asakura exchanged glances, and immediately followed Komachi, moving over to the plot of land behind the cabins.
Sakiko, who had been embarrassed earlier from being worshiped by the group, was also currently standing by the edge of the patch, looking at the crops inside with a hint of pleasant surprise.
To call it a plot of land was an overstatement; its actual area was as small as the flowerbeds in the courtyard of Sobu High, likely just something past students had put together to experience country life here.
However, as the saying goes, life will always find a way. A portion of the vegetables that past students had cultivated just for fun during their school trips had actually managed to survive tenaciously—though because the place was overgrown with weeds, almost all the surviving vegetables looked completely malnourished.
"Hmm, the quantity isn't very large, it feels like it won't be enough to eat." Hikigaya scrutinized the tomatoes, which were small to a pitiful degree.
The cucumbers, on the other hand, looked a bit better, though they were also considerably shorter and smaller compared to the common cucumbers seen on the market, giving off a bit of a snack-cucumber vibe.
"It's not just cucumbers and tomatoes," Asakura pointed to a clump of weeds nearby: "If I'm not mistaken, these should be potatoes, and the ones next to them are radishes."
"The things our predecessors planted are a bit of a mixed bag," Hachiman evaluated.
"They probably just planted a chaotic mess of things purely because they thought it was fun." Komachi gave a yank, pulling a long, thin carrot out from the soil that looked as if it had just come out of a refugee camp: "Can this thing really be eaten?"
"No matter what, as long as we have potatoes and carrots, we can make a completely vegetarian curry, right?"
Asakura suggested.
"An excellent suggestion, but we don't have curry blocks." Yukino poured cold water on the idea: "Nor do we have turmeric, coriander seeds, nutmeg, or cumin."
"Cooking starting all the way from a curry block's raw recipe is way too hardcore." Komachi complained.
"As for curry blocks, I can go buy some."
Asakura raised his hand.
In any case, he could summon the flying vintage car, so whether the road conditions were good or bad had absolutely no impact on him.
"If you could buy a portion of side dishes at the same time, that would be even better." Hikigaya muttered, "To be honest, I don't have much confidence in the edibility of the items produced from this plot of land..."
"As for curry blocks, I brought them."
At this moment, a voice rang out from behind them.
Asakura and the others turned their heads, discovering that the one speaking was Hiratsuka, who had popped out from who-knows-where.
Furthermore, aside from Hiratsuka this time, there were other people with her.
"Yahallo! Yukinon, Takuma-tan~" Yui greeted the two of them happily.
As for the girl... youth by her side? In short, Asakura wasn't familiar with the other party, but he had at least seen them a few times; it should be Hachiman's goddess... um, Totsuka Saika.
In addition to that, there were several classmates whom Asakura found quite familiar but had barely ever greeted.
He remembered that they should be called Hayama, Miura, Ebina, and...
"Kakeru."
"Why are you suddenly calling me directly by my first name?!"
"Sorry, because your name is relatively easy to remember, Kakeru."
"Is it just my imagination that I feel nothing but malice?"
"No such thing, Kakeru."
"Saying my name is easy to remember, you couldn't possibly be failing to remember my surname to this extent, right?!"
"...No such thing, Kakeru."
"My name is Tobe Kakeru! Stop continuing to emphasize my first name alone!"
"I understand, Kakeru."
"You bastard!"
Tobe Kakeru wanted to head-butt Asakura in a fit of rage, but he was held back by Hayama beside him, acting as a peacemaker.
"Everyone is a classmate, and it's a rare opportunity to do a volunteer activity together outside of school, so there's no need to make things so tense. Asakura-san should also just be joking, right?"
The other party spoke in a thoroughly good-natured way.
Asakura nodded with a fake smile.
"Tsk, the face of a normie." Hachiman didn't seem to have any good feelings toward Hayama's behavior, muttering quietly from the side.
"What's wrong?" Asakura asked curiously in a low voice.
"I don't deny that guy is a good person, but a so-called good-person normie, to put it bluntly, just likes to smooth things over. Furthermore, when you are at an absolute disadvantage, the other party will stand on the side of the 'masses' without a shred of hesitation—after all, that's what makes a 'normie'."
Hachiman ground his teeth, complaining in a low voice.
"Are your teeth okay?" Asakura asked.
"It's nothing. It's just that recalling my middle school life, because they are all beautiful memories, I couldn't help but grit my teeth and clench my fists... ..."
"No-no-no, those are definitively not beautiful memories, right?"
"Because they are far too beautiful, tears are about to stream from my eyes..."
"Those are absolutely tears of sadness."
The whispering between Asakura and Hachiman didn't affect Hiratsuka's progression of the volunteer activity mission.
"I brought both curry blocks and solid alcohol. If you want to eat, you must use the vegetables from here—"
However, Yukino spoke up and interrupted her.
"Although I don't wish to make any evaluation regarding a teacher's personal character outside of school, Hiratsuka-sensei, don't you think you should introduce those two little ones behind you?"
"Oh? Oh. Right, there's that matter too."
Hiratsuka only then came to a sudden realization as if remembering something, shifting her body slightly to the side to reveal the two little ones behind her.
"They are... well, summer camp members who will participate in this volunteer activity."
"Hiratsuka-sensei... although you are unmarried, you actually have kids already?" Hachiman was shocked.
"I'll kill you." Hiratsuka threatened.
"I'll clean up the aftermath." Asakura said calmly.
"No-no-no, you should save me instead!" Hachiman called for help in a panicked state.
"Didn't I say before, the volunteer activity was originally a summer camp to take care of little kids... But due to various reasons, the elementary school's summer camp plan was shelved. It's just that there are always children whose itineraries weren't canceled due to some accidents..." Speaking up to here, even Hiratsuka herself couldn't quite keep a straight face; after all, this matter was indeed a bit absurd. However, considering that the higher-ups of Japan are always bizarrely abstract, it unexpectedly felt like there was no problem with this happening: "In short, let me congratulate you in advance on having two reliable members join."
Without waiting for Asakura and the others to raise any questions or objections, she quickly introduced them: "This is Tsurumi Rumi, and this is Yukihira Itsuka."
"They've appeared." Asakura said in a deep voice.
"What?" Hachiman was startled, thinking some bad entity was about to pop up again.
He stared at these two little children, sizing them up from head to toe, staring at the child named Yukihira Itsuka until she felt a bit frightened, instinctively wanting to shrink behind Hiratsuka.
Conversely, the little girl named Tsurumi Rumi didn't seem to care about this at all—or rather, she was in a state of absolute indifference toward everything.
Hiratsuka looked at Hikigaya, who was still desperately scanning the little girls with his dead fish eyes: "Although it might just be my prejudice, Hikigaya, could it be that you are a lolicon?"
"Eh? Is that so? Hachiman..." Asakura was full of shock.
"Not at all, this is slander! Pure slander!" Hachiman hurriedly defended himself.
But that child named Yukihira Itsuka looked even more terrified.
"Come to think of it, Brother has said before that compared to female junior high school students, he prefers elementary school students." Komachi said completely out of the blue.
"Because when I said those words, I was an elementary school student too! I say, Komachi, why on earth do you remember that specific line so vividly?!"
"In order to protect Brother's mental health, occasionally Komachi will pay attention to Dear Brother's fetishes too, you know."
"When you say that kind of thing right in front of everyone, your brother's psyche has already begun to turn distorted..."
Hachiman fell into a state of total low atmospheric pressure. Carrying a sense of self-abandonment that said 'whatever, nothing matters anymore,' he asked Asakura in a low voice: "So what exactly has appeared?"
"A mini version of student Yukinoshita." Asakura looked at Tsurumi Rumi and said.
Hachiman: "..."
I was a fool for taking you so seriously.
"Big Sister Yukinoshita is also very youthful right now!" Komachi, who had overheard the conversation between the two, protested from the side.
Yukino had a face full of black lines.
The point to complain about isn't that, is it!
Yui, who was off to the side, had an expression that practically screamed she wanted to join the interaction. However, because Miura and Ebina were there, she was pulled by the gravitational force of the two into the small clique of normie girls, completely unable to squeeze her way over here.
"So in reality, our current task is to harvest the wild greens in the patch—okay, I know these vegetables were planted by humans, but I really don't want to call these bumpy, rough things vegetables—and then use the curry blocks you brought, Hiratsuka-sensei, to make curry?" Asakura asked Hiratsuka.
"That's exactly right." Hiratsuka nodded.
"I have a question." Asakura inquired calmly.
"What question?" Hiratsuka asked.
"Even if we can truly make curry, how are we supposed to eat it without rice?" Asakura threw up his hands.
"No rice... Ah, I knew there was a reason why I had this lingering feeling that I forgot something when leaving the house today. It turns out that besides forgetting to bring the whiskey, I also forgot to bring the rice." Hiratsuka smacked her forehead: "Then we have no choice but to go buy some. It looks like we'll have to split into two teams now; one team will be responsible for gathering vegetables and making the curry, and the other team will come with me to buy rice... and buy some seasonings and things while we're at it, and be responsible for hauling them back."
"Is it really necessary to buy that much?" Sakiko, who had been acting completely invisible in the corner this whole time, couldn't help but ask upon hearing Hiratsuka's plan of spending money so lavishly: "Didn't you say we are only staying here for three days? Furthermore, if the day we arrived today and the final day we leave are both counted, the time we actually truly live in this kind of place is only tomorrow. We don't need this many living supplies, do we? As for the rice supply, buying one of those small 5-kilogram bags should be more than enough, right?"
"No, no, no, of course not. Or rather, it's not just prepared for you guys. Don't forget that in a little while, the third-years will be coming here for their school trip. You can never have too many seasonings and things like that." Hiratsuka explained.
In fact, the artisans who would come here later to repair the wooden cabins and other facilities would likely consume a portion of the supplies as well, so the more, the merrier.
"Then how should we split the teams? Will Hiratsuka-sensei assign them directly?"
Hayama asked Hiratsuka.
"I haven't become dictatorial to that extent yet, you know."
Hiratsuka said with a beaming smile.
Hachiman silently mouthed the word 'liar' toward Asakura.
Then he got elbowed by Hiratsuka.
Hikigaya clutched his chest and collapsed to the ground, his survival status unknown.
"Excellent. Regardless of how everyone else turns out, this guy Hikigaya is definitely on the rice-buying team." Hiratsuka announced with a cold smile: "And you will absolutely be responsible for the heaviest portion."
Everyone else cast a gaze of pure pity toward Hikigaya, who was sprawled on the ground.
"As for the rest of you," Hiratsuka thought for a moment and made a executive decision: "We'll just draw straws to settle it!"