Chicken Tactics
“Then, do you remember how the Holy Eve Festival went last year?” Rafina asked.
“Oh, yes, I do.”
Mia nodded as she thought about what had happened. The biggest event in Saint-Noel every year was the Holy Eve Festival. The festival was meant to show gratitude to His Holiness for the past year. It was based on the story of how the Holy Deity came down to earth and gave people the light of hope.
Every year, it was held during the first week of the last month. It started with a solemn mass by candlelight and was followed by a lively party. During the mass, everyone stood around the altar with a wooden lamp in their hands. Before Rafina spoke, a traditional list of hymns was sung.
At the end, everyone would go outside and throw their lamps onto a bonfire, making it grow from a small flame to a huge one. The ritual meant that God’s light of hope was shining on the earth.
After that, the party started, and the fun would keep going all night long. The event wasn’t just at the academy, either. It took place all over the island, and students would wander through the town in bands, spreading cheer and fun.
The year before, Mia and her friends had gone to the market for a long time and then stayed up all night talking in Chloe’s room.
If anyone wants to know how the festival went in the past Mia timeline, it went about as bad as you would have thought.
She stayed in her room waiting until Sion would come to ask her out. During the party, Esmeralda stopped by with a group of friends and asked her to join them. She turned them down because she thought she couldn’t leave in case Sion showed up while she was gone.
She wasn’t waiting for a certain time, and she hadn’t been promised anything. She just waited and waited, and the next thing she knew, birds were singing and she was awake.
It was one of those times, yes.
Her sad memories of the event, on the other hand, gave last year’s festival a lot of contrast, which made an already enjoyable night into a night she’d remember for the rest of her life.
“I see,” said Rafina. “You know how the festival goes as a whole, right? Most of the student council’s jobs are in the second half, when the party is going on. During that time, there will be a lot of people coming and going from the academy. For example, merchants who usually aren’t allowed in will be let in, but they’ll have to be checked out first. There will also need to be changes to security routines. So, the student council won’t be in charge of all of that at the minute level. Instead, the people in charge of the different tasks will send us reports, and it will be our job to check those reports and make sure there are no problems.”
“Hmm… It sounds like there is a lot to do before the event. When does it happen?”
“The day of the festival itself is a pretty easy one for the student council. Not much will need to be done. As part of our planning, we set up systems that allow staff on-site to work in a flexible way without having to report every little problem.”
Mmm… That does make sense. Miss Rafina can’t just go wherever she wants that day, after all.
Rafina was also a saint of the Central Orthodox Church. She was the daughter of Duke Belluga. She was the school’s chaplain on the day of the Holy Eve Festival. She had to go to the candlelight mass and then go from guest to guest to greet and talk to them. This kept her very busy. So, systems had to be set up ahead of time so that the festival could still go on even if she wasn’t there.
“I know it sounds like a lot, but it happens every year, and both the person in charge of security and the person in charge of operations know how things work. I don’t think it will be as hard as it sounds,” Rafina said with a soft, reassuring smile.
This comment didn’t really make Mia feel better, of course. She was even more nervous because she had little or no work to do on the day of the festival.
I could go outside and leave the island because there’s not much stopping me.
It would have been better if she had been told that she had to run around the academy putting out operational fires or that she had to stay in the student council office and deal with a steady stream of work. That would make it almost impossible for her to sneak away and let bandits attack her.
It was hard to imagine that she would be able to convince Rafina and the rest of the group to let her leave the island on her own when she had a lot of work to do.
Being able to move around freely made it much easier to leave the island, which gave the Chronicles’ prediction a lot of scary weight.
Oh, but the me in the Chronicles didn’t know that leaving the island would kill me, so maybe I just wanted to get some fresh air and didn’t think much about it at the time…
She tried to picture herself deciding on a whim to go for a long ride and just walking off the island with a horse. She succeeded.
Okay, I could definitely see myself doing that.
She thought about what this thought meant. For example, she might have felt tense because of all the work she had to do to get ready for the festival. She might have been looking for a way to get rid of her anger and hoped that a long gallop would help her do that.
Since the party was on the island, she would have to go somewhere else to ride her horse. She would have to leave the island. The more she thought about this situation, the more likely it seemed that it would happen.
In that case, however, the answer is easy. I just have to make sure I don’t do the stupid thing and leave Saint-Noel, no matter how busy I am or how frustrated I feel. That’s it. I might just spend the whole time in my room. I could even throw some kind of student council appreciation party at work and party there all night… Huh, I like how that sounds. Maybe there will be mushroom stew at the party…
Even though her mind thought this was a good plan, her stomach didn’t seem to agree, and something in it kept fluttering. It bothered her, and she couldn’t get rid of it for some reason.
A-Anyway, I should use this time to prepare as much as I can until the day comes. At least I know I can do something useful like that!
Where there is carelessness, death is not far behind. So Mia would stay away from both of them by never letting her guard down. She planned to win this battle by staying away from her enemy like the plague.
As the saying goes: when you’re a chicken, you should do what chickens do. So she is using Chicken Tactics.
