Kitasan Black's Stubbornness

Kitasan Black remembered how, back then, she had walked over to the broken trophy, crouched down to inspect the crack carefully, then looked up with a face trying hard to appear composed. In the most "grown-up" tone she could think of, she had said, "It's fine, just say I knocked it over. Th-this kind of thing, I—I'm really good at it. My grandfather knows lots of craftsmen. I—I'll secretly take it home, and I can definitely fix it!"

Her friends had all been a little flustered and agreed without thinking much about it.

But she had not actually gone to Grandpa.

After school, she had secretly stuffed the trophy into her School Bag, used the pocket money she had saved up to run to the stationery store and buy some supposedly powerful glue, then gone home and tinkered with it alone while hiding from grandfather, Grandma, and Mom and Dad.

The glue had gotten all over her hands and clothes. The repair was glaringly obvious, the broken edges did not even line up, and the whole thing sat crookedly.

Yet, through sheer stubbornness, she had somehow managed to barely glue the two broken halves back together.

Naturally, the teacher found out afterward.

Looking at the disastrously repaired trophy, then at Kitasan Black's nervous yet stubborn face, and listening to her increasingly foolish-sounding explanation—"I broke it all by myself. It has nothing to do with everyone else. There was nobody else"—the teacher did not know whether to laugh or cry.

In the end, she had not been harshly scolded. The teacher had merely told her to be more careful in the future, and that compared to the broken trophy, she was more worried that Kitasan Black might have been pricked or cut.

Whenever Kitasan Black recalled that distant memory in the