adora • lookism

17. J High Festival

Excited to bursting, Ari wandered from booth to booth, trying to take a look at all the events that the different departments had set up. Her left hand held a croissant in a sleeve of waxed paper, and her right held a stick of grilled chicken with some sort of honey glaze on it. Both of her wrists were weighed down with bags full of things. Jay followed a few steps behind her with a couple trays of drinks in his hands, which they were going to deliver to their friends who were tied up to their respective booths.

Ari had invited many of her friends and family to come visit her school's festival, but unfortunately, they were all busy working and couldn't come. Her parents were running the shop, of course, and both Hangyul Baek and the good-looking gangster from the library had also replied that they were unfortunately working at that time. Even Eugene-oppa had regretfully told her that he had to manage his own school's festival, which, by chance, was held on the same day as J High's. ("But I will certainly have that fixed by next year," he'd told her, which had made Ari wonder how much power student council presidents were supposed to have in private schools.)

The only person not busy with work was her cousin brother, who nonetheless couldn't come because he was otherwise occupied visiting someone on the other side of the country. Which was all fine, except for what he'd said after that...

"You know, you could try inviting that guy, too. He's a busy kid, but I know he'd make time to go if you called him."

"No! He's not invited! I don't care if he's busy or not!"

"Hey, come on. You know he was only trying to protect you... if you want to blame anyone, you should blame me, not him."

"Whatever, I said no! And don't you dare tell him anything! He's so annoying!"

Ari could feel her cheeks beginning to puff out even at the thought of that guy. Ugh. Hmph. So irritating.

"?" Jay asked, poking her cheek with a finger.

"No, I'm just remembering something annoying that my cousin brought up yesterday." Ari shook the useless thoughts from her head and looked around. "Oh look, it's Zack's booth!"

Ari passed her skewer into the hand holding the croissant and waved vigorously at Mira, whose turn it was to manage their class's booth.

"Mira~!"

"Hi, Ari," Mira smiled back at her, and then at Jay next to her. "Hi Jay. Did you come to watch Zack? Or did you want to give it a try? It's supposed to be $5, but I won't charge if you don't tell."

"Tempting," said Ari, peering over at Zack. He was hard at work weaving and dodging around feet, fists, half-cut pool noodles, and several rubber chickens, which had been Ari's personal contribution to the booth. It had been difficult to avoid explaining why she had them, but at least their loud, obnoxious squawking helped to attract more attention to the booth. "But we're just here to bring you guys some drinks and snacks while you're hard at work! Here, take these."

"Oh, peach iced tea and dough twists! Thanks, guys!"

Ari sent a wave towards Zack, who barely managed to wave back whilst ducking under the assault of several shrieking rubber beaks, before heading over to the Architecture Department's booth.

"Hey, what brings you here?" said Jace, who was handling the actual management of the booth while the other members of Burn Knuckles cheered Vasco on. The cheering seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm and very little effectiveness; Ari tactfully pretended not to notice the solitary tear going down Vasco's cheek.

"Hi Jace! We came to bring drinks and snacks." Under Jace's vigilant eyes, Ari turned towards Jay and plucked out one of the plastic cups from the tray he was holding. "The strawberry milk tea is Vasco's, and this coffee is yours. And we also got all sorts of stuff for everyone to share!" Ari thrust out one of the plastic bags on her arm.