“My slogan is ‘Serious reform.’ If I were to publicly acknowledge such a frivolous organization, it would destroy my reputation. I cannot allow it,” said the president, refusing my request. “Your deadline is in one week. One week from today you must present two hundred copies of a literature club newsletter. If you do not, the club will be suspended and the room vacated. I will hear no objections on this matter.”
A newsletter? I wondered if that was anything like an anthology.
“Fine,” Haruhi agreed. It wasn’t her line, though—Nagato should’ve been the one to say so.
Nagato, of course, was silent, and she seemed unlikely to say anything, so I supposed it was all right for Haruhi to speak in her place, but something about the particular nature of Nagato’s silence at the moment made me think it was different from her usual taciturnity.
“…”
All the while, Nagato faced Kimidori, neither of them looking away from the other. Nagato was expressionless, while Kimidori had a thin smile.
I wasn’t sure why, but maybe it was fortunate that Haruhi didn’t seem to notice Kimidori, the SOS Brigade’s very first client. Apparently Haruhi was too busy glaring at the president to pay any attention to the secretary. Or maybe she just didn’t remember the face. She hadn’t seen that cave cricket, after all.
“A newsletter, eh?” said Haruhi with an expression like a mathematician who had just proven a theorem. “Is that like a zine? With stories, essays, columns, poems—stuff like that, right?”
“The contents are none of my concern,” said the president. “You are free to use the printing room and may write whatever you wish. However, there is another condition. The completed newsletter will be set out on a table in the main hallway, and that is all. You may not hand it out or solicit readers. Bunny girls are out. If you cannot give away all two hundred from that table within three days, there will be a penalty.”
“What kind of penalty?” asked Haruhi, her eyes shining. She did so love her punishment games.
“We will let you know when the time comes,” said the president, annoyed. “But be prepared. There are a number of ways to use volunteer work. I will say it again—this is a concession.”
The president seemed to be worried about unilaterally bringing about the tragic end of a clan. You didn’t have to know the history of the Ako domain to guess that much—especially not when your opponent was Haruhi. And I doubted Haruhi would be satisfied with just the head of the president. If things went badly, the school itself would be scattered to the wind.
I will leave it for future generations to decide whether the student council truly gave in or not, but in any case this “club newsletter” business was certainly their way of evading the issue.
And while Koizumi might have worked for the Agency, he was no literary agent, which meant the literature club would have to step up. And as an activity of the literature club, the newsletter had to have literary merit of some kind, but what did that even mean? Who was going to write it, and what would he or she write? And why was Haruhi looking so bizarrely delighted?
“Well, isn’t this interesting!” She grinned like a child who’d discovered a new game. “Call it a bulletin, a newsletter, or a zine—if you say we’ve gotta make it, then we’re gonna make it. This is for Yuki, after all. Can’t have the Lit Club disappearing. That clubroom is mine, and I hate it when people take my stuff.”
Haruhi’s hand reached for the nape of Nagato’s neck—not mine, for once.
“Well, since it’s decided, we’ve gotta have a meeting. Yuki, we’ll put your name in the masthead as publisher. I’ll do everything else, of course, so don’t worry about that. First we’ve got to go learn how to make a newsletter!”
Haruhi grabbed the back of Nagato’s collar.
“…”
Nagato was pulled wordlessly along, and easily too, as though she were a balloon. Haruhi opened the door with a clunk, then dashed out through it like a bullet from a rifle.
I looked over my shoulder and saw Nagato’s feet disappear through the doorway, and then she was gone, dragged out by Haruhi, who’d barged into the room like a strong wind but left like a typhoon gaining strength.
“Such an obnoxious girl,” observed the president accurately, shaking his head, then looking down at the table beside him. “Miss Kimidori, we’re finished here. You may leave.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Kimidori nodded politely, closing her notebook and standing. She put the notebook back on its shelf, nodding briefly at the president before walking out of the room.
She gave me a brief bow as she passed by, walking through the door that Haruhi had opened without meeting my eyes. Her hair fluttered a bit as she went, a pleasant scent wafting behind her. I found myself a bit dizzy.
As I was pondering the nature of Nagato and Kimidori’s relationship, the president snorted and spoke.
“Koizumi, close the door.”
His tone was very different from a moment ago, and I turned my gaze back toward him.
The president watched Koizumi close and lock the door, then roughly sat down on a nearby folding chair and put his feet up on the desk.
What the hell?
But it was too early for me to be surprised, because the president then furrowed his brow as he rummaged in his uniform’s pocket for something. By the time I realized that he’d produced a lighter and cigarette, he already had the cigarette between his lips, a curl of smoke beginning to rise from it.
It certainly didn’t seem like the kind of thing the student council president should be doing. Just as I was beginning to feel like I’d discovered a firefighter committing arson—
“That’ll about do it, right, Koizumi?” said the president, cigarette in mouth as he removed his glasses, put them in his pocket, and took out a portable ashtray. “The plan changed a little, but I pretty much did what you wanted—but damn, keeping up that stupid act was a pain in the ass. You gotta put yourself in my place. Talking in that serious freakin’ voice all the time really takes it outta me.”
The president’s cool demeanor had completely changed as he exhaled smoke and tapped the cigarette’s ash into the ashtray.
“Student council president, my ass. I never wanted the job! Pain in the neck, if you ask me. And then I gotta deal with that flighty broad. Ridiculous damn work.”
In only a moment, the president had turned sulky and peevish. He put the stinky, smoking cigarette out on the edge of the ashtray, then got out another one and turned his attention to me. “You want one?”
“I’ll pass.” I shook my head, then looked over at the serenely smiling Koizumi standing next to me. “So the president’s one of your guys?”
I’d sort of figured as much. They’d exchanged suspicious eye contact, plus if you’d really wanted to contact the literature club, you’d skip Koizumi and just go straight for Nagato. I didn’t even have to think about it hard—there was no reason for the student council to go to the trouble of calling me in either.
Koizumi returned my look, making a show of smiling as he answered.
“I suppose you could say that, but he is not an associate in the same way that Mr. Arakawa or Miss Mori are. He is not directly connected with the Agency.” Koizumi glanced at the president, the smoke from his second cigarette now rising to the ceiling. “He is our confederate within the school, cooperating with us in exchange for certain considerations. If Mori, Arakawa, and I are the inner circle, you could consider him the outer circle.”
I didn’t care who was in what circle—how did a guy like this get to be student council president, I wanted to know.
“You could say it was the result of an extreme effort on my part, considering his lack of motivation. I had to make him a candidate, position him to gain the favor of the constituency over the previous council’s recommended nominee, and constantly maneuver to win the majority in the election for president. It took quite a bit of work, all told.”
I was bored already.
“The amount of money it required to win the presidency was probably about as much as it would take a minor political party to run for office in the lower Diet house.”
Now it had gone beyond boring and was actively sapping my will to live.
“Going by what Koizumi here said,” said the president, ill-temperedly exhaling smoke, “I had to become president before that stupid girl Suzumiya—or whatever her name is—got the idea in her head to try it herself. I wound up getting tapped thanks to my ‘presidential face.’ Friggin’ ridiculous. I even had to wear these fake glasses.”
The conversation had long since turned tiresome.
“Upon fully considering what Suzumiya’s image of a student council president would be, the closest match of that image in this school was him. In this case, his disposition was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was his looks.”
And he’d made the mistake of falling for Koizumi’s spiel.
He was tall, handsome, and bespectacled—a pointlessly haughty upperclassman. His role was to play a Haruhi-esque villain who would abuse student council power to deal with a small-time humanities club.