The Weird Girl (Ayana Moriko)
| The Weird Girl (Ayana Moriko) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 28 September 2015 |
| Location: | Seishou Public School |
| Synopsis: | Ayana |
| Cast of Characters: | Ayana |
School. It's nothing like Ayana expected. In the mangas Takashi had made her read, 'school' had mostly been a place for magical girls to meet one another, talk about fighting youma, and hang out between battles. It wasn't supposed to be 'hard. But hard it is, for the familiar. Certainly she is crafty and clever, and certainly she has some of Takashi's intelligence. Underneath it all, however, Ayana is still just a little fox in a world she was never meant to understand. She doesn't have six grades of experience to draw on; she wasn't ever taught how to study or how to analyze sentences. But she is Takashi's familiar, and as he so often likes to remind her: that means she must be great.
And the worst part of it isn't even that Ayana isn't "great"; oh no, she could deal with that, because she has other ways to impress and please her master. No, the worst part of it is that she also doesn't really fit in. While other students are social and outgoing, easily making friends, understanding social norms, and not needing to eat constantly.
For Ayana, school has become the worst form of torture: a place of misery where there's never enough food, she winds up making everyone around her uncomfortable by talking about the wrong thing. It's a place where she barely manages to get passing grades, where her only friends are several grades younger, and where she is the butt of nearly every one of her classmates' jokes.
Nothing like in the magical girl mangas.
A week ago, the torture had reached new levels of awful, when the three Wards' clothing shop announced its "Fanciest Fall Dance". While every other girl in her class was hastily paired off with cute boys to dance with, Ayana was left feeling miserably alone. She couldn't ask Takashi; he would almost assuredly not be going, or if he did it would be with Miss White. But the little fox desperately wanted to feel pretty, and to see a real school dance.
Imagine her surprise when, very quietly, Asokah Jin asked her to meet him after school. She was hesitant, as Jin had been somewhat cruel to her before. Nevertheless, Ayana met him, and asked her to meet him at the dance! He even promised to dance with her.
Of course, Ayana was overjoyed and accepted, naive enough not to realise that shee was being set up for a horrible prank. Without bothering to ask permission, she took the time to buy herself a cute new dress, a fancy one suited for a ball. She bought shoes, too: with heels, because all the other girls would be wearing them, right?
When the day of the dance came, Ayana showed up just like she was supposed to. She'd been stood up, just like Jin had planned. And instead of a romantic night of dancing and fun, she'd hid under the table in embarassment, playing games on her phone.
"Wait, she did?" asks Misako of the storyteller. "But I thought I saw her dancing with that one guy from Infinity."
"No way, the weird girl got to dance with Mamoru Chiba?"
"Yeah. Jin was bragging about how he stood her up, and how she'd hid under the table all night, but apparently someone else danced with her."
"Yeah, but that guy? He's so ... cute."
"And popular, too."
"Why would he dance with her?"
Ayana rounds the corner, then stops when she sees the gaggle of girls all busy talking about her, some furious and some frustrated, all confused. "Well," says one, "I think he might have just felt sorry for her."
"Seriously? They danced for like five or six songs. I don't think he just felt sorry for her."
"But she's so weird," says one girl to the next.
Ayana sighs and shakes her head, then puts the little red rose to her nose and sniffs it. Let them talk badly about her. Quietly, the walks by, her nose still buried in the flower as she passes. As one, the girls all stop their babbling to turn and stare at her.
"Do we have to be her friend, now?" one of them asks when Ayana passes by them all.
"I don't think so," says another. "But ... maybe we should lay off picking on her. At least for a few days."
