Chapter 1
A few weeks earlier
Aww, c’mon! Your hand won’t change no matter how much you moan and groan about it.. Quit dragging your ass and discard your tiles, Kohaku-chan!
Shut it. You’re distractin’ me, so can you just pipe down a sec?
…‘Kay, I got it! I’ll go with these tiles.
Hmm, I’m starting to see your hand bit by bit. Well, I guess same goes for you too.
Ohoho…! This tile! She fits so perfectly in my hand! Ah, the ridges running against my fingertips—
All right, come to papaaaa! Lady Luck, I’ve been waiting for you ♪
Gyahaha! Today is my lucky, lucky day! At this rate, I’mma take the crown in no time flat! Riichi!2
—Sigh… Amagi. It’s fine to be excited, but don’t be so loud. This is a place for the general public to come and relax.
This is not to be taken as a challenge, but HiMERU will also call Riichi.
Wh… First Rinne-han, then HiMERU-han?!
Urgh…
(Is this tile here safe…?—No, think harder. Ain’t this one too risky? So I should go with this tile instead…)
Kohaku-chan, Kohaku-chan. I think that tile’s too big of a risk. This one’s probably a safer bet.
Really? If that’s what you think, I’ll throw it out. There we go.
Hey! Niki, you bastard! What’re you tipping him off for? You’re supposed to be at work, ain’tcha? So get the hell back to waiting tables!
Hang on now~ I was gonna let it be too, but Kohaku-chan still doesn’t have mahjong down pat, so I’m not gonna let him fall victim to your villainous schemes. I felt kinda sorry for him~
Anyway. I got all your orders.
There’s a ton of seasonal options for fall on the menu, but you guys all picked the same old stuff. If it were me, I’d have gone with the limited items before anything else.
Dumbass, a man’s gotta devote himself to what his heart tells him.
And now the most insincere guy I know is preaching devotion to me.
Yup yup. You must really love the taste of knuckle sandwich, huh Niki? I’ll give you as much as you want, so stuff your face ♪
Arghahggrhahah!!! Ah hike ehyhing ehihull! Huh hash hot! (I like anything edible! But that’s not!)
Oh, c’mon. Quit your fightin’, you guys. You’re kickin’ up dust.
Fiiiiine, whatever.
Gah—! I got caught up in all of this for nothing… But I didn’t say anything wrong, either.
As a chef, I can’t forgive you for skipping over the seasonal menu. The limited options means that it’s the best time to enjoy the delicious ingredients that are in season.
And fall is a gold mine of ingredients! A treasure trove of yummy things ☆
Speaking of autumn, next month the ES Halloween will be hosted at ES.3
Amagi, does this imply that Crazy:B will not be participating? It hasn’t been mentioned at all until now.
Fucky wu—You made what?
So anyway, Crazy:B is gonna fuck it up at the ES Halloween!
Huh?! Then why didn’t ya say so sooner?!
We’ll be participating…? And then what? What’re we even gonna do?
A live, obviously. Yanno, something like “Fooooo! Let’s have a Horror Night Halloween!”
Doesn’t it sound like it was made for us? C’mon, let’s get this party started!
Halloween, huh…
Hm? You don’t look too thrilled, Kohaku-chan.
It’s less that and more… I don’t know all that much about it.
—Well, that’s only natural. The excitement around Halloween has only been a recent development.
Until only recently, Halloween was a Western occasion almost entirely foreign to Japan.
The Japanese likely focus more on Christmas over anything else.
Sure, but it really feels like it’s finally my time to shine! Halloween’s my number one all-time favorite holiday~ ♪ I’m so happy to see it spreading!
Huh… Hard to believe it’s gettin’ to be that much of a hit and I barely know anything about it.
Oh? What’s this? Kohaku-chan, don’t tell me you really don’t know a thing about Halloween. You must’ve been brought up in a nice little ivory tower.
It wasn’t a tower, it was a zashikirou.
Aww, there, there. Don’tcha worry, Kohaku-chan, I’ll teach you everything from A to Z so you don’t feel left out in the event.
Quit pattin’ my head all friendly-like. I already know enough about it, even if I haven’t experienced it myself. I saw it all over the internet before.
Isn’t it the holiday where people dress up as monsters or ghosts, and then they give out and go around collectin’ candy and such, right?
But lately, it looks like it’s turned into just a bunch of young’uns in cosplay goin’ around and makin’ a ruckus. Either way, it’s just a bunch of kiddie stuff, I reckon.
Actually, it doesn’t look like Halloween at ES will be quite as childish as you think.
Huh?
All of the section titles in this story are references to horror movies. This one is Friday the Thirteenth.
I am not going to pretend to understand mahjong or the rules on the websites i am looking up. Instead i will simply link this beginners guide to mahjong and pray it makes sense to someone else out there.
Not 100% sure what “next month” is supposed to be referring to honestly because that would imply that this chapter takes place in September, but it’s… labeled as an autumn chapter in-game, which would mean it’s in October at earliest. (For the record, September is considered a summer month in Japan, and all September stories up to now have been labeled as summer, both in ! Era and !! Era.) So either Nishioka thinks September is autumn or Halloween is in November. Not sure which one’s the case here.
Originally Rinne-kun says he had a “Careless Hachibei moment.” Careless Hachibei is a comic relief character from a period drama that ran from 1969-2011. Supposedly, he has a habit of saying careless things, and his way of apologizing is by saying “this guy’s so careless!” to the extent that he got a nickname out of it. I changed the reference because I can’t even find information about this character in English so I’m pretty sure we are Not the target audience here.