The Messy Emotions

#9 - Sacrifice with Embarrassment

It was a new week in the highschool, and the pressure of the rushing Monday morning was really intense. Fortunately, the queue for the bathroom was perfectly managed, so they were all dressed up by quarter past seven. Then, the boys went down to the cafeteria like usual to eat their breakfast. After that, they went into the school hall, and it was really busy as usual. Students running around, carrying materials while talking to each other was becoming the vibe of the mornings.

After Ben and Takayuki splitted apart from Tom and Alex to go to their class, they encounter Amelia on the way in which started a conversation. "Oh, good morning!," she greeted. "Oh, hi!," Ben greeted her back as Takayuki nodded. "Have you heard about the upcoming freshman hazing?", Amelia asked. "Oh, what's about that?", Takayuki asked her. "Well, in the previous years, around a person from each class was chosen per year, but they're reducing it down to just one person for the entire grade this year," she told him. "Well, the chance of being picked is like 1 in 400, so I'd not worry much about that," Ben said. "Well, it's a guaranteed 0 percent chance for me since I'm the one hosting it," Amelia said with an excited voice. "Um, good for you? I guess we just have to avoid the jackpot, then. Right, Ben?", Takayuki said to cheer himself up. "Y-yeah..," Ben said, seemingly agreeing with him.

When lunch time approached, the boys walked out the classroom, and into the hallway towards the cafeteria. Along the way, they saw a poster about the freshman hazing, telling people to join on Friday at 2:30pm at the school's gym. Takayuki thought of watching the hazing, but was forced by Bennett who wanted to watch Amelia. Still, he doubted that he'd be the one that was picked.

On Thursday, each freshman student were given a piece of paper to write the name of the person they wanted to nominate and their class number. While Takayuki was having a hard time coming up with a person to nominate, he saw Ben decisively writing down his name. 'Why not do the same to him?', he thought, and that was what he did. They then put it in a box for it to be randomly picked tomorrow. So, if more people wrote your name down, you're more likely to be picked. However, although only one person nominated you, you might be the one picked. Therefore, nothing was certain.

Before he knew it, it was Friday; the day of the hazing. Takayuki surely didn't want to be the one sacrificed, but he could only hope. After the last class of the day which ended 5 minutes late, Ben and Takayuki casually walked to the gym. When they got there, they were just announcing the person nominated for the hazing which made everybody's heart pound very quickly. Tension was building up while Amelia was picking up the piece of paper that will decide someone's faith. Then, Amelia slowly opened her mouth before saying, "The person nominated is... Takayuki Masumi from class 3!" Right then, Takayuki's heart almost stopped as Ben just couldn't believe what he had just heard. Right then, 2 older boys who were standing nearby noticed them, and dragged Takayuki right out to the middle of the gym where he was surrounded by everyone's loud cheer. "Well, well... My dear friend.", Amelia said in a menacing voice. "Looks like you're the one that I accidentally chose, right?", she taunted him. "P-please take it easy...", Takayuki nervously begged. "Well, depends, but let's get you in your proper clothes.", Amelia said as he was dragged to the side of the gym. As he was being trailered to the guys dragging him, he saw Ben winking at him from the amphitheater while Izumi just sat there staring at him with a little excitement in her eyes. He took a big gulp, and decided to just accept what happened next.

As Takayuki had been dragged to the side of the stage, Amelia continued to entertain the audience for the time being. After Takayuki had been dragged to the side, some boys in the corner quickly take off his blue ties and blazers while some pulled off his shoes and socks. They then continued unbottoning his shirt, and taking his pants off of him, leaving him in only his white briefs. He then tied his arms in front of him, and got his legs tied up as well before being dragged back to the middle of the gym. He was then told to sit on his knees in front of Amelia who approached him from the back. "Oh hello, dear friend. What an unexpected faith you have to encounter today...", Amelia teased him. "Well, good luck, buddy. I'm going to have a ton of fun today.", she said in a menacing voice. The audience then cheered as Takayuki was left in a very anxious state.

"Well, I'll announce your first trial.", Amelia said to the audiences. She then explained, "So, for your first trial, you'll have to crawl around this cage, and pop all of the red balloons. But, as you can see, there are mostly white balloons in there with some extra colors in there as well, so if you pop the wrong color, you might be getting a shower in something no really nice... For real, I guarantee that the red ones are just filled with air." "楽しそうですね? [tanoshi sou desu ne?] (Sounds fun, right?)", Amelia teased him. "あ... はい... [Ah... hai...] (Ah... yes...)", Takayuki answered nervously. "Well then, let's go!", Amelia yelled before the audience went wild.

Shortly after that, 2 boys came from the side of the gym, and dragged him towards the cage. Takayuki doubted at first that his friend could do such a thing to him, and thought she was joking. He noticed it was lined with tons of tarp, and suspected that something sticky might actually be happening to him. They then stuck a bicycle helmet with some sharp parts on the top of it onto his head before securing the straps to his chin. They then opened the cage, and let him in to empty part of the cage before telling him not to move yet. They then locked him in the cage before walking back to where they came from.

"Well, 3, 2, 1, go!", Amelia yelled before signaling Takayuki to start moving. He was scared at first, but when she said, "The faster you pop all those red balloons, the faster you can get out.", he quickly get to moving. Being a clumsy boy that he was, he almost immediately popped a white balloon above his head which made a gush of heavy cream rush through his hair, and down to his face. He froze right there, in shock, as he tried to process what had just happened before wiping the cream off his eyes. 'If this is the game I must play, how in the world can I reject.', he thought, hopelessly.

As he navigated through more and more white balloons, and getting himself drenched in more heavy cream, he accidentally popped an orange balloon which sent a surge of sticky orange jam down onto him. Of course, he was obviously disgusted, but when he moved his head a bit to the right, he accidentally popped a red balloon this time. However, when it popped it just sounded louder than other colors, and he took it into notice.

After a monent that he popped the balloon, tons of pies came flowing right towards the cage before shattering on impact with the metal, and covered him in some more muck. As Takayuki tried to escape, he was caught tons more cream from white balloons while getting a shower of pies and buckets of cream. Soon enough, he was all covered in white, and was dripping in white muck which made him a disgusting looking figure that the audience enjoy. Certainly, progress was slow for our Takayuki since he was spending too much time wiping the cream off his eyes from the neverending shower.

A short moment later, Takayuki discovered a jungle of various color of balloons after bursting through many white ones, and a cream shower. When he popped the yellow one, some banana shake was deployed onto him, and covered his face and hair with it. As he tilted his head a bit to the left, he popped the purple balloon, and was met with a huge splash of blueberry jam. When he got way too curious, and popped the blue balloon, he was finally able to get a little bit cleaned up by the water in it, but it seemed like it was the only one in the entire cage. Still, he tried the green balloon, and surprise, surprise, he got a full shower of vegetables smoothie. Yuck! With all those curiosity aside, Takayuki searched for the very rare red balloon inside the rainbow group of it. Of course, he did get all covered in all other stuff, and some cream, but he managed to clear all of it in that zone.

After the rainbow balloons were red ones dotted among the white ones which gave him a new coating of heavy cream. Of course, more pies were thrown all over his head, back and butt, but Takayuki had to hold on some how. However, the cream buckets were getting more and more frequent, so it was no doubt that Takayuki wouldn't look like an overfrosted human.

After around 3 grueling minutes of popping all the red balloons, all of them were popped, along with all other colored balloons, leaving just creamy Takayuki right in the middle of the cream filled cage, laying in a pool of cream. A moment later, a boy came to his cage, and unlocked it which made him able to get out. Of course, he really much struggled, but was somehow managed to get out of the cage. When he got out, he crashed right in front of the cage when a pie flew from nowhere, and landed right on his face. As a reaction to this event, he squirmed really hard while trying to shake the blueberry pie off his face. Although the audience laughed at him really hard, he still prioritized his sight first.

Then, Takayuki was well aware what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into, but how will he cope with it? Let's find out in the next chapter!


End of Chapter 9