The sports festival had moved into its afternoon half. Distant cheers from the athletic field carried all the way into the Literature Clubroom.

Inside was Riko Shiratama, a first-year from Class 1-F. She was still in her cheer squad outfit, busy snapping a series of selfies with her phone. Finally satisfied with one she’d taken, she hummed a cheerful little tune as she sent the photo to someone, then began to unbutton her costume.

“Heeey, I’m coming innnn!” a thoroughly chipper voice rang out, and the clubroom door slid open.

“Hello, Yanami-senpai.”

Anna Yanami strode into the room, still in her own cheerleader outfit. “Oh, Shiratama-chan! You’re changing in here too?”

“Yeah. The girls in my class usually keep me at a distance,” Shiratama said matter-of-factly. “So it’s just more comfortable for me here.”

“O-Oh…” Yanami faltered, taken aback by how casually Shiratama had said something so bleak. The girl in question simply tilted her head, looking at her senior with innocent curiosity.

“What about you, Senpai? Why are you changing here?”

“I just took Komari-chan to the nurse’s office, so this was closer than the locker room.”

A flicker of worry appeared on her face. “Did something happen to Komari-senpai?”

Yanami shook her head.

“It’s not that something happened, per se, but that she transformed.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Into a legend.”

Shiratama blinked. For a second, she seemed as though she was about to ask for an explanation, but she quickly thought better of it and gave a slow nod instead. “Ah. I see.”

“Yep, yep. Exactly,” Yanami said, looking satisfied as she pulled her top over her head.

Shiratama continued changing as well. For a while, the only sounds left in the club room were the soft rustle of fabric and the whir of zippers. A roar erupted from the distant field, followed by the sharp crack of a starting pistol.

Yanami glanced at the clock on the wall, and as her gaze drifted back, it landed on Shiratama’s slender frame.

“So skinny…” she breathed, the words slipping out unintentionally.

Shiratama, who had just grabbed a cleansing wipe, paused. “Is something wrong?”

“Ah, no, it’s just, I was wondering what kind of food you normally eat, Shiratama-chan.”

“Hmm.” Shiratama pressed a finger to her cheek and adopted a cutesy thinking pose. “Well, I really love vegetables, so I guess I mostly just eat salads~”

“Just veggies? No meat? No rice?”

“Oh, just a salad is enough to fill me up. Maybe I’m more of a bunny than a tanuki. Boing, boing.”

“A salad… fills you up…?” Yanami muttered in disbelief.

Seeing that her little bunny act had been completely ignored, Shiratama smoothly switched back to a composed poker face and continued to change her clothes. “Other than that—well, if we’re talking meat, I’ve been really into making my own chicken ham lately. It’s actually pretty fun.”

“Ham! So that’s also an option, huh,” Yanami said, seeming to have reached some sort of revelation. She began aggressively rummaging through her bag, still standing there in her sports bra.

Intently watching Yanami’s upper half, a quiet thought escaped Shiratama’s lips.

"If only I had those, maybe Onii-chan would..."

Yanami, now vigorously shaking a deodorant can, glanced over with a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing. By the way, Yanami-senpai, what do you usually eat?”

“Hmm.” She thought for a moment. “I guess you could say I’m pretty big on keeping things balanced,” she said confidently, punctuating her statement with a spray of deodorant.

“Oh, so you’re really conscious of your nutritional balance.”

“Something like that. See, when you eat something salty, you start craving something sweet, right? But then after the sweet thing, you want something salty again. It’s an infinite loop!”

“Ah… Right.”

Shiratama nodded along obediently. One must never argue with Yanami-senpai when she’s talking about food.

“Therefore, the optimal solution is a Black Thunder^[2] bar with kakinotane^[3] in it!” Yanami beamed. “You can even add extra kakinotane on the side to tweak the sweet-to-spicy ratio, and basically eat them until the heat death of the universe!” She paused. “Wait, what were we talking about again?”

Looking thoroughly confused, despite having started the tangent herself, Yanami pulled her gym shirt over her head.

“I guess the real secret is having a healthy stomach,” Shiratama muttered, her eyes glued directly to Yanami’s incredibly prominent chest.

At the same time, Yanami, smoothing down her hair, found her gaze firmly locked onto Shiratama’s impossibly slim waist.

The two girls stared at each other’s figures for one long, silent moment. Then, in perfect unison, they let out a wistful sigh, muttering the same thing.

“...Must be nice.”

Translator Notes

1. While localized to “The Grass Is Always Greener,” the original title uses the idiom naimononedari (ないものねだり, lit. “asking for things you don’t have”). The phrase implies a childish, bittersweet longing for things that are fundamentally unattainable. Both parties know they can’t have something but still long and envy for it. This should be obvious, but Blue references Yanami and White references Shiratama.

2. Black Thunder (ブラックサンダー) - A cheap and popular Japanese chocolate bar filled with crunchy cocoa cookies. It’s crunchy and sweet.↑︎

3. Kakinotane (柿の種) - Small, crescent-shaped spicy soy sauce rice crackers. It’s very salty. The point she’s making is that sweet and salty cures the infinite loop. ↑︎