Another week had gone by, and student council work had become even more comfortable.
"...H-hello."
The reason was the lucky break that had joined the student council after me: Ishigami.
Miyuki had recognized the first-year, Ishigami, as a talent in all sorts of ways and recommended him for the accounting position.
And thanks to the terrifying efficiency he showed the moment he joined, my own clerical workload, which had been spread all over the place, had dropped along with it.
Because of that, I had a little more time to watch Miyuki and Shinomiya, and now that I was paying attention, it was obvious Shinomiya had feelings for Miyuki too.
The problem was that she didn’t seem to have any intention of confessing either. Were you two seriously planning to wait until you died of old age for the other side to make the first move...?
With Ishigami in the student council room, it was the first time in a while that the whole group was gathered together.
Today’s issue started with a book the principal had confiscated.
"Oh my, what is this?"
Shinomiya asked Miyuki after noticing a magazine placed on the table.
The eldest daughter of the Shinomiya Group, whose total assets were said to be worth 200 trillion yen, a genius with dazzling achievements in academics, entertainment, music, and martial arts, and the undisputed school beauty as well...
She was a woman with a terrifying number of titles. Somehow, Miyuki had her under him. Amazing.
When I’d seen her in first year, she’d been the very image of an ice princess, but now that I’d actually spent time around her, she was kinder than I’d expected. Over the past few days, I’d noticed her and Miyuki sneaking glances at each other now and then, so there was definitely something going on.
The pink-haired girl with the black ribbon who followed behind Kaguya also noticed me and greeted me brightly.
"Ah, Suzuki-kun! Hello~"
Fujiwara Chika, the student council secretary.
She was the daughter of a famous politician. Now that we were in second year, she’d ended up in the same Class B as me, and it was easy to tell she was cheerful and very sociable.
Judging from all the talk I kept hearing from the boys in class about how cute she was and how they wanted to date her, she seemed pretty popular too.
I wasn’t planning to get close to anyone since I was only supposed to be in the student council for a week, but while I was here, I should probably keep my distance in a proper way.
"Yeah, hello."
After a light greeting, I went right back to my book.
After I’d been focusing for a few minutes, Kaguya spoke to me.
"I’m about to make some black tea. Would you like some too, Suzuki-san?"
"...No, I’m fine."
"I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve brought some snacks."
She was as considerate as ever. I was just about to think that when...
"Ah, I’ll have some tea."
Fujiwara, who had been sitting beside me, suddenly spoke up.
"Eh?"
"If you’re making tea, then I’ll have some too!"
Then, as if she’d just remembered something, Fujiwara turned to me.
"Oh, Suzuki-kun, do you want some?"
"...No, I’m good."
"Really? Then I’ll have two cups!"
She was cheerful as always. I had no idea what she was thinking, but she was probably just trying to lighten the mood.
At any rate, the student council room was as peaceful as ever.
Or at least, it had been until the principal’s confiscated magazine came up.
"What is this?"
Shinomiya asked again, picking up the magazine and flipping through it.
"The principal confiscated it from a student earlier. He told me to dispose of it because it wasn’t suitable for educational purposes. Honestly... he could have handled it himself."
"...Not suitable for educational purposes?"
Fujiwara, curious, took the magazine and skimmed it, but then she suddenly screamed and dropped it on the floor.
"Kyaaaah!"
""...?""
"It’s indecent... no, it’s depraved! This country is depraved!"
""———!!""
At that, the gazes of all the men, myself included, rushed toward the magazine.
I was a healthy young man too, so my reflexes were only natural. Ahem.
Meanwhile, Shinomiya calmly picked up the magazine and started reading.
" ‘When was your first time?’ survey. ‘Before finishing high school’... 34%?"
"That’s a lie! There’s no way everyone did that!"
Fujiwara’s fierce denial was unexpectedly backed up by Ishigami.
"...It’s the trap of statistics. That’s the limit of a gossip magazine that has to look provocative, but the sample itself is obviously limited to pathetic people who actually buy this kind of thing, and they probably just drew a conclusion from a one-time survey—"
"There’s an additional note at the bottom. It says that among groups packed with capable people, like the student council and sports clubs, the percentage can reach around 80% depending on the case..."
"Eighty percent...!?"
Everyone was shocked by that, but Ishigami’s reaction was especially severe.
"...T-the student council has five people. If I exclude myself from that..."
He counted on his fingers by himself, and his expression grew darker and darker.
He seemed to be making some huge misunderstanding...
Drip, drip.
Tears began to fall from Ishigami’s eyes.
"I-Ishigami?"
Miyuki called out to him, but it seemed he’d already reached his own conclusion.
"I feel like dying, so I’m going home..."
"He was the first one to fall into the trap...!?"
Ishigami, who had mocked the trap as stupid and then fallen for it himself, was out.
The rest of us somehow managed to keep the conversation going.
"Oh my, President, you were visibly flustered earlier..."
"M-me?"
"I heard you’re quite popular. Don’t you have a girlfriend?"
"...!"
Shinomiya’s attack was pretty direct.
All right, how are you going to answer that, Miyuki?
"...Well, yes. I’m not in that kind of relationship with anyone in particular."
He paused once before finishing his sentence.
"Right now—"
"...Pffft!"
I couldn’t help laughing.
He shot me a glare that clearly said, What the hell are you doing?
No, come on. The guy was talking like some experienced player while still being a virgin. How was that not funny? Still, I had to clean this up somehow...
"Cough! K-khrrk—!"
I coughed violently like I had a cold, as if to make it seem like I hadn’t laughed at all.
"Suzuki-kun!? Do you have a cold?"
"...I think I may have caught a bit of one from sleeping with the window open last night."
"Oh dear, you need to be extra careful at times like this."
Fujiwara and Shinomiya both looked concerned. I thought I’d successfully changed the subject, but then I noticed the corner of Shinomiya’s mouth lift slightly.
Oh no, she’d noticed, hadn’t she? Shinomiya smiled sweetly and asked me,
"Suzuki-kun, since you’re the president’s old friend, have you ever seen him dating a girlfriend before?"
"...!"
She was asking me? It was true that sometimes asking someone around the person was more effective than asking the person directly.
Miyuki also looked troubled, staring at me with a desperate expression that seemed to say, Please answer this well...!
This was hard. Really hard. In situations like this, I had no choice but to answer cleverly.
"Well, he was pretty popular."
The magic of language, the power of implication!
Popular = obviously dated before.
It was a trick that avoided answering the actual question, as if that equation were the obvious premise.
Miyuki also looked at me with a "Nice!" expression.
See? This is basic if I’m the one helping.
"...For example?"
"Well, his shoe locker once got stuffed full of chocolate."
"Ah, that did happen."
He’d bought chocolate to eat during exams, put it in his shoe locker, forgotten about it, and it melted and overflowed.
I still remembered laughing at him hard back then.
"He probably made a lot of girls cry too."
"Thinking about it now, I do feel a little bad... heh."
Because this guy was catastrophically bad at soccer during gym class, there were a few times when a wildly kicked ball had hit a girl in the head and made her cry.
Maybe that was why a number of girls had developed what you might call "Shirogane aversion syndrome" during gym class.
We kept the conversation going with these statements that weren’t exactly lies, but weren’t exactly the truth either, and somehow we felt pretty satisfied with ourselves.
But for some reason, Shinomiya’s expression only grew colder. It wasn’t my imagination.
"I’m sure that was nice for you. Being so popular."
With that icy breeze blowing straight at us, Miyuki and I realized something had gone wrong.
That coldness looked like it could snap her right back into her old ice-princess mode any second.
"Damn, was this not it...?"
I desperately searched my mind for another move, but nothing came to me. Then, at that moment—
"Eeeh, enough boring bragging about the past. Let’s talk about the future instead!"
Fujiwara wrapped her arms around Shinomiya from behind and tried to end the topic. With that attempt—
"...Ah."
Shinomiya’s cold expression softened again. The two of us let out sighs of relief.
Nice save, Fujiwara.
She was completely uncontrollable, which was a problem, but once in a while she really did help.
"Now, now! Let’s have a turn where everyone talks about their ideal type! I’ll go first!"
So the next topic was ideal types. Not bad in this situation.
"As for me, I like someone who keeps challenging themselves no matter how bad they are at something, even if they have to roll through the mud!"
Hmm. That was about a million light-years away from me.
Fujiwara probably wasn’t going to fall for me romantically.
"...Huh? What was that?"
For a second, Shinomiya gave Fujiwara a creepy look, as if she were staring at something that wasn’t human. Or maybe that was just my imagination?
Well, they were childhood friends like me and Miyuki, so there was no way that could be it.
"I..."
It was Miyuki’s turn next. He hesitated a little before continuing.
"Looks, ability, family background... none of that matters to me. My ideal type is... a girl who can move without hesitation even in moments when everyone else is reluctant to act."
For someone who said those things didn’t matter, he sure seemed to like a girl who had all of them, but whatever. He was my friend, so I let it slide.
"Hmm, the president’s ideal type is a little hard to pin down. All right, next is Kaguya!"
"I..."
She seemed to think for a moment before continuing.
"Someone who always works hard, naturally considers others, and has kindness that comes from the heart rather than from calculation..."
Shinomiya lowered her gaze shyly, and then...
"I like a man like that."
She finished speaking and looked up at Miyuki.
"...!!"
At that instant, his face flushed bright red in utter panic.
She hadn’t singled anyone out, but the way she phrased it and the way she looked at him made it impossible not to think, Wait, is she talking about me?
A fearsome opponent. If she’d calculated that on purpose, it was honestly admirable.
Miyuki, red as a beet, couldn’t calm down at all and kept looking at me with a pleading expression, as if asking me to do something.
Now that Shinomiya had landed a heavy blow, if things kept going like this, his defeat was certain.
As for what I could do... making Shinomiya embarrassed would be hard for me.
But maybe I could warn her that if she didn’t confess, something bad was going to happen.
I roughly put together a scenario in my head and opened my mouth.
"My ideal type is someone who honestly says when they like something."
"Aha! So Suzuki-kun likes certainty over vagueness!"
"Yeah. Vague feelings after dating are a problem, but if you haven’t even started dating yet, it’s even more serious."
"...!"
I could see Shinomiya flinch. Good, let’s go with this.
"Liking someone is a wonderful thing. If the other person seems to have some feelings for you too, that’s even better."
Shinomiya brightened at that, but it was too early to relax.
"But for someone to like another person and still hope the other side will come to them first... that kind of vagueness is honestly the worst."
"...Ugh!"
"If I kept hesitating and failed to give the other person any certainty, wearing them out in the process, they’d end up thinking, ‘So you really don’t like me after all...’ and leave first."
"Ah, that’s weirdly convincing..."
"...Th-that can’t be."
Fujiwara’s reactions only pushed Shinomiya deeper into a state of confusion. Maybe it was time to drive the final nail in.
"Besides, the person I like is probably someone attractive to other people too. If that wounded heart were then comforted by someone new who had quietly been watching and liking them all along..."
"Then they’d become a couple!"
"Right. And I’d be thinking to myself while watching the person I liked end up with their close friend."
"...?"
Fujiwara leaned toward me to listen closely, while Shinomiya was already pushed to the brink of collapse.
All right, take this. Final blow.
"‘I liked them first...’ that’s what I’d say."
"...Khk!!"
In the end, Shinomiya took a massive hit, coughed up blood, and collapsed onto the desk.
"Kaguya-san—!?"
See that, Miyuki?
With this divine move, Shinomiya would surely want to confess to you...
"Th-that can’t be... no, it can’t be..."
You went down too...!
I was clearly aiming for Shinomiya, so why the hell were you the one foaming at the mouth and collapsing too...?
The cleanup was entirely left to Fujiwara and me. Hah. This wasn’t easy.
*
Today’s result: Kaguya and Shirogane’s defeat
(Because they got way too emotionally invested)
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