Read Online Rocket Girls: The Last Planet by Housuke Nojiri - Free Book Online Page A

lighting and climate control in the house was connected to a single button in the vestibule. When Yukari pressed it, the house lit up and the air conditioning came on.
    Pulling a bottle of ginger ale out of the refrigerator, Yukari threw herself down onto the sofa in the living room. “It’s true what they say,” she said, “there’s no place like home.”
    She turned on the television. It was the news. They were showing an aerial shot of a very familiar-looking scene.
    “…It was just time for second period classes to begin at Nellis Academy when a spacecraft suddenly landed in the school’s garden pond, causing quite a disturbance. Strangely enough, the school is none other than Yukari Morita’s alma mater…”
    “Hey! We’re on!” Yukari shouted.
    The news switched to the principal, standing with the school courtyard behind him. “Yes, well, uh, I was happy to let bygones be bygones and focus our efforts on making sure everyone was okay—”
    “What a doofus. He’s sweating bullets.”
    The reporter was asking him about Akane now.
    “Yes, well, we’re still looking into reports that a student at our school assisted the astronauts, so I, er, have no comment about that at this time.”
    Yukari lifted an eyebrow. “What? He should be crowing about it to the world! A lot of taxpayer money went into that experiment she saved.”
    “ Hoi … He’s using a lot of complicated words,” Matsuri said.
    “I don’t think he has any idea what he’s saying, Matsuri.”
    “ Er, concerning the disfiguring of our garden, we are going to be processing a damage report and cost analysis and will be bringing that to the Solomon Space Association in hopes that proper restitution will be made— ”
    Yukari shook her head. “Can you believe this guy? I mean, I feel bad for the gardening club, but boy, if we had hit anywhere else…”
    “True, true.”
    “Those Taliho curses get more frightening all the time.”
    Yukari wasn’t the only one who had started to lend more credence to the influence that the spirits of the Taliho tribe—the people living closest to the SSA base—had on their rockets and orbiters.
    Yukari’s missions had been plagued with difficulties. She wasn’t the kind to believe in bad luck, but surely the number of sheer coincidences they’d had to face was reaching a probability of zero. They might be operating at the very cutting edge of science, but with all of the things going on, Yukari couldn’t help but feel like their space program had less to do with science and more to do with the supernatural.
    “I thought they made cursing our program illegal anyway. Are those villagers still doing their ceremonies?” Yukari asked.
    “You’re wrong,” Matsuri said, shaking her head. “This wasn’t a Taliho curse, Yukari. This was your curse.”
    “Huh?”
    “You cursed that school of yours—maybe not out loud, but somewhere, deep inside your heart. You resented how they treated you. Your negative feelings summoned an evil spirit.”
    Yukari guffawed. “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Matsuri, but I’m not the curse-throwing type.”
    Matsuri looked over at her and calmly asked, “You know someone else who would want to curse that school?”

[ACT 9]
     
    AKANE FOUND HERSELF being called into the principal’s office. In all honesty, she hadn’t seen it coming. She knew that technically, she had been truant. But she firmly believed that it had been for a good cause. She wouldn’t have even been surprised if they had given her some kind of award.
    But here she was enduring this, this inquisition .
    “So,” the school counselor said for the tenth time, “Yukari Morita coerced you into getting onto that helicopter. Isn’t that right?”
    “No, it isn’t,” Akane said once again. “She asked me if I would join them, and I went of my own free will.”
    How many times did they have to go through this? What do these people want to know?
    “You sure you weren’t