Chapter 3: Hole Digging
Majime asks Shijima whether she has made a decision regarding which club to join for the final day of club trials, to which the latter responds that she has no intent of joining one, and that if she did, she would be content with anything. Majime comments on her "throwing her responsibilities away" as usual while conjuring up a mental image of Shijima literally throwing them like a javelin. Shijima jokingly suggests that the school should have an "Apathy Club" where members must engage in a catch-22 contest of constantly neglecting their responsibilities. Later, Majime discovers a "Hole-Digging Club" on the list, which, to no surprise, specializes in digging holes. The girls decide to go to the club trial located behind the northern building and find its advisor, Ms. Mogawa, trapped in a self-dug hole. Majime goes to help the teacher out, only to end up falling down herself while Shijima stands and watches. Shijima desires to go home, but is eventually persuaded to pull them both back up through a ladder.
Ms. Mogawa recounts to the girls how she was compelled by her fellow teachers to unwillingly become the curator of the Hole-Digging Club a year prior, digging holes all by herself due to the absence of its two members. Shijima cheers her up by giving her a sasa-kamaboko (a type of fish cake). Ms. Mogawa tells them about an epiphany she had regarding the seemingly useless activity of digging holes, equating it to the act of living itself — people accumulate sins throughout their lives as if they are digging themselves deeper into a hole. According to her, the other club activities are equally pointless anyways. Shijima eventually agrees to join the club on impulse, with Majime doing the same.
Later, as Shijima and her sister are having dinner at home, the latter reveals that the club used to be known as a "Hole-Filling Club" during her time at the same high school, and speculates that it must be looping back and forth between filling and digging holes, seemingly without any purpose. When Shijima asks her what she has been researching lately, the sister responds that her motivation is to "save the world". Ever since stepping out of her closet and into the outside world, Shijima feels her daily life changing as Majime frequently drags her into stranger things, comparing the experience to descending further down the proverbial rabbit hole, much like Alice did in her journey.
