Book 4.5: Chapter 2: part1
Chapter 2: Katsuragi Kohei is surprisingly troubled
A lot of the time, I think Japanese people are very tolerant in regards to religion. Of course, leaving aside what it was like in the past, in modern times, nobody cares what religion you choose to practice and you are free to do so. Even if you choose to have no faith, that in itself is no problem too. However, even though they do not care about religion, in regards to certain events like birthdays or Christmas, there is no denying that they are influenced by the faith of Christianity.
Of course, you could say it derives from the faith of those people, but one can also say that the success of companies also depends on those events. In recent years, the rising trend of celebrating Halloween can also be attributed to that flow.
What I mean by all this is---for this school, birthdays are also a huge event. In shopping malls and convenience stores on school grounds, there are surely corners being set up for all these events.
The thing is, this particular incident happened a week before Ibuki and I would be stuck in an elevator together. It was a chat I received from Kushida, the healer of our class.
"Actually, next week Wednesday is Inokashira-san's birthday it seems. If you're ok with it, would you celebrate it with us?" she texted me.
That sort of message had been sent to our chat group, in fact. Inokashira, by the way, is plain and quiet girl from Class D. A type similar to Sakura. She doesn't have many friends, so the story here is to make friends with her for her birthday event. Of course, for Ike who received the same message, there was no reason to refuse. Because it's blatantly obvious he has taken a liking to Kushida.
He must want to use this event to get even slightly closer to Kushida.
"You got a message from Kikyo-chan too, right? Let's prepare some presents for Kokoro-chan!". Ike did everything he could to get us to give our consent, but Yamauchi's response was slow.