High School, Chapter 1

High School, Chapter 1 is the first chapter of the sixth volume of the K-ON! Manga by Kakifly.

Summary
It's the start of the rainy season, and Ui is feeling an ominous presence around the school that isn't just the dark clouds outside. In fact, Ui feels like she's being watched, like the time when Mio was being stalked. However, they quickly notice that the stalker is only Nao, and she's doing a rather poor job at it. She thinks her cover hasn't been blown, even though she's attracting attention to herself by hiding in plain sight. Nao's spying on Ui to try to find some fatal flaw in an otherwise perfect person.

At the club meeting that afternoon, Azusa presses Nao to explain what she was up to. Nao instantly buckles to the pressure and confesses to wanting to find a flaw to Ui. She figures that everyone must have something they can't handle. For example, Jun can't take humid weather, Azusa can't sing, and Sawako Yamanaka really doesn't like ghosts. Ui pops into the conversation to serve tea and strawberry mousse. She confesses that like everyone else, she isn't completely perfect. For starters, she's finding it hard to live without her older sister Yui. But even so, Nao is still jealous of Ui, since she thinks that Ui is the exact opposite of herself.

They launch straight into practice. Nao shows her band some of the new ideas she has for songs, and Ui is able to flawlessly execute the riffs on her first try. By the time they wrap up practice for the day, it's raining pretty heavily. Unfortunately, Nao, of all people, forgot to bring an umbrella. Luckily for her, Ui always brings a spare umbrella for a friend, just in case, as completely expected of her. Except today, although she remembered to bring her spare umbrella, she forgot to bring her own, so she still only has a single umbrella.

Since neither of them can do anything about it, they head back to the club room to have tea. Ui confesses that the one thing she really does admire about Nao is her ability to create songs so easily - Ui herself doesn't have any improvisational skills. They chat some more, and think up of a plan to leave school in the rain by wearing the animal costumes in the storage room. The moment Sawako pops into the room to warn them that the school is about to close, she's met with the most horrific, ungodly, frightening sight: Ui in the koala costume.