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The Quality of Being Quiet

category story ending Body bond level
HanaNinomiya's Story The Quality of Being Quiet The Quality of Being Quiet Is a child being complimented when someone says they are quiet?
If it is, then Hana Ninomiya's elders must all consider her to be a good child when she was little.
When she was in kindergarten, she once played hide and seek with her classmates during a spring outing. She was so good at hiding that the other children all forgot she was hiding after the game ended.
The teacher noticed that something was wrong when calling the roll and found Hana Ninomiya sleeping soundly in an inconspicuous place after searching everywhere frantically.
"Oh my... Aren't you scared hiding here all by yourself?"
Hana Ninomiya remembered that she wasn't scared at that time. She was just a little disappointed.
She dreamed that she was a princess of a fairy tale story who was hiding in the woods from her evil pursuers, waiting for a prince to save her. Unexpectedly, she opened her eyes to see her teacher with a reproachful expression, so she could only rub her sleepy eyes and mutter "I'm sorry" under her breath while keeping her head down.
"Should I say you're lucky not to encounter any danger while sleeping here, or should I say you're so quiet that no one noticed you at all?"
Looking back at this incident many years later, she realized that her teacher's unintentional comment was like a curse to her. She had become even more quiet and was often overlooked by everyone around her.
When she was in the third grade of elementary school, her class was to perform a stage play. Hana Ninomiya found out in advance that they would perform a play she loved, so she secretly memorized the script over a few nights by reading it under her blanket with a flashlight. On the day of casting, she raised her hands high excitedly, shouting with enthusiasm.
"I want to play the heroine!"
But no matter how actively she expressed her wishes, nobody looked at her. Afterwards, with pursed lips, she complained to some classmates she got along with about how everyone ignored her, but they said questioningly: "Did you really raise your hand?"
At that time, Hana Ninomiya thought they were teasing her and was depressed about it for a while. On the day of the performance, when she saw Kana Fujita, who was chosen to play the heroine, being so active on stage, she had to admit that Kana was more suitable to stand under the spotlight than herself.
After all, even she found herself staring closely at Kana who looked like she had walked out of a fairy tale.
Hana Ninomiya even began to doubt whether she really said loudly that she wanted to play the heroine. Maybe she went with the flow and voted for Kana Fujita when she saw everyone doing so. Perhaps she didn't want to admit her defeat so pathetically that she told herself she had tried her best, but everyone chose someone better for the role.
"Am I really as brave as I think I am?"
She doesn't know the answer, but if it's possible, she hopes she really did try her best...
However, not all her memories of that day were bad. Hana Ninomiya, who played the role of a tree, won the Best Effort award because she didn't move at all during the performance and was the perfect backdrop on stage, which was not an easy task at all for a child her age.
"Congratulations! Hana, you're so amazing! Aren't you tired at all after standing for so long?" Upon hearing the heartfelt praise of the heroine, Hana Ninomiya looks at the certificate in her hand with mixed feelings.
"...Um, compared with getting this award, I would rather be the heroine." She said in her heart with an inward sigh. 		絆レベル1