Vol 1 Chapter 4.1 (1/2)

VOLUME 1

[4th Discussion ~ The Reform of the Student Council]

“It’s never too late to turn over a new leaf!”

As usual, the president stuck out her small chest and proudly spoke as if she were reciting something she probably read in some book.

That was a saying I had heard time and time again, but I personally liked it quite a bit, so I gave the president a smile.

“Yeah, that’s true.”

And when I did that,

“I’m talking to you, Sugisaki!”

For some reason, the president firmly pointed her index finger at me. I blinked with surprise. Minatsu was sitting next to me, and she wrapped her healthy-looking arms that came out of her short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt around my neck, constricting me. I could faintly feel her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on my cheek… what a wonderful time to be male.

“I agree, this guy really needs to turn over a new leaf right away.”

Minatsu responded to the president like that, and then put more strength into her hold… ugh. My neck’s starting to hurt.

In front of me, Chizuru gave a smile as she watched me. This girl had already established that she was a huge s.a.d.i.s.t a few days ago…

“Isn’t that nice? Key-kun is fine as he is now,but I’m also a bit interested in what the reformed Key-kun would be like.”

“Hey-, reformed?! I’ve been a really serious person from the very start and-“

When I got to that point, I felt the force constricting my neck increase even more. This wasn’t funny anymore… I tried to tap Minatsu’s arm and tell her that I give up, but she completely ignored me… ugh, this is-

“Mafuyu also… wants to see it. Ma, Mafuyu thinks it would be really nice if Sugisaki-senpai could become more diligent…”

Mafuyu-chan was sitting next to Chizuru-san, and even she agreed.

C, Cough! “I, I feel like I just got rejected by everyone right there.”

As I struggled and tried to get out of Minatsu’s grasp, I turned my gaze to Mafuyu-chan.

Mafuyu-chan looked away from me and looked towards her sister. “O, Onee-chan, you should probably let go of him soon…” Was this her way of atoning?

And then, having received such a request from her cute little sister…

“Sorry, Mafuyu. For the very first time since I’ve been born… I refuse Mafuyu’s request!”

“Why do you do that now all of a sudden?!”

I retorted, and at the same time, I felt the pressure on my neck increase even more. Ah… wait… at this point, this is starting to feel good. What is this? Am I a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t?

Oh? This wasn’t the student council room at all… but a flower garden? Ah, look, there’s a pretty river over there. And then on the opposite sh.o.r.e was…

”Ken-kuuuun~~! Come over here~~~. I’ll give you aaaaaaaall the love you want~~~!”

Ahh, there was a group of lovely onee-sama on the other side wearing swimsuits! What was that?! Was Utopia over there?! Well, I guess I have to go! Let’s get going, Sugisaki Ken!

“I, I’m coming over!”

I began running at full speed. I was going so fast I might as well have been a manga character! I was going so fast that normal people probably couldn’t even see me! I was the wind! No, I was light! I suddenly understood the Theory of Relativity with my own body! I was already simply a weapon!

Yes… I felt stronger than I’ve ever felt. Having been raised in an environment filled with only tsun, my s.e.xual desires had already broken through their critical point! And because of that…

”Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh?!”

I drove right into them. Right into the group of onee-sama. No, not even that. I blew everything away. The world on the other side of the river. Utopia. By the time I came back to myself, everything around me had already turned to scorched earth.

“What the h.e.l.l. So that group of very pretty onee-sama wasn’t enough to match my desires?! … Well, there’s no helping that.”

And that was that.

I crossed the river, and returned to the place I originally was.

–

……

–

…… It’s was dark. Am I sleeping…? Hm. I think I can hear voices…

“… Hey? Ken? Hm? Is he dead?”

“What do you mean, ‘is he dead’?! Onee-chan?!”

“Hey, Minatsu! I might have told Sugisaki to reform his life, but I never told you to end it… what am I going to do? If this gets blamed on me as the student council president… oooh…”

“And so the first casualty in the student council room has come… I never expected that things would turn out like this… well, there’s no helping it. Let’s hide the body. All four of us. Let’s go ahead and do what those four women did in Kirino Natsuo’s ‘O*t’ to get more readers…… Fufufu, I can’t wait to show you what I can do.” (1)

“Wait wait wait, Chizuru? This is probably the first time I’ve seen you look so lively like that…”

“Alright, Aka-chan. First you have to cut off the arms and legs…”

–

“ARGHHHHHHHHHHH AS IF I’D LET YOU DO THAT!!!!!”

–

Panicking, I woke up. I wouldn’t let myself die quietly.

My chair almost got knocked over as I forcefully stood up. It seemed that I was unconscious and sprawled out over the desk. Everyone watched me, dumbfounded.

Minatsu muttered something.

“Ah, he came back to life… that’s pretty boring.”

“What the h.e.l.l?! My life is that unimportant to you?!”

“I was pretty confident we could have gotten rid of your body and kept this hushed up too…”

Looking very disappointed, Chizuru-san put the saw she was holding back onto the shelf. Wait… why exactly was there a saw in the student council room in the first place? And why did Chizuru-san seem to know so naturally where that saw was supposed to go?

“M, Mafuyu is relieved…”

In the end, Mafuyu-chan was the only one who teared up and breathed a sigh of relief for me… ahh, Mafuyu-chan sure is nice, isn’t she? Being so worried for me like this-

“I’m so relieved that onee-chan didn’t become a murderer~~.”

“That’s what you’re relieved about?!”

As always, she was an innocent yet cruel girl. In a certain sense, the most villainous character in this entire student council was none other than Mafuyu-chan.

I turned my gaze towards the president. She was… looking at me with quite a serious expression.

Oh, this is… was this her being dere? I see! Certainly, once she saw that someone she had always treated so rudely was on the verge of death, she became even more aware of how precious that someone was! It was that kind of pattern! Great! Risking my life was completely worth it!

I looked right back at the president.

“Prez…”

“Sugisaki…”

“… Do not worry. I won’t die. I love you after all.”

“…… Sugisaki……”

The president stared fixedly at my face… h, hey hey, Prez… no, Kurimu. Are you going to kiss me now? Seriously? Well, I don’t know… wouldn’t it be embarra.s.sing to do it in front of everyone like this? But if Kurimu-chan says she wants to, I would be ready and willing…

…… Sigh.

“Hm?”

When I puckered my lips, the president sighed. And then, she clunked back down into her seat, giving out another sigh.

I didn’t really know what had just happened, so I just c.o.c.ked my head to the side in puzzlement.

“Ah, so I guess you decided that you would rather save our first kiss for when we’re completely alone?”

“… Sigh. I had a bit of hope back there too…”

“Hm? You mean about a kiss? No, I was completely ready to do that back there…”

“… I had just a bit of hope. Haven’t you heard people say ‘you can’t cure an idiot without killing him’?”

“Huh?”

At long last, I came to realize that the president wasn’t really being dere towards me right now.

The president once again pointed her index finger at me.

“I was hoping that if you went through a near-death experience, you would become a normal human being!!”

“… Ahh, so it was that. It’s okay, Prez!”

“What’s okay?”

“I’m an incredibly normal human being!”

“That’s not something a normal human being would ever say!”

It seemed that just saying it out loud like that wouldn’t work. Seeing no other choice, I checked to see if any of the others agreed.

“Everyone, I’m completely normal, aren’t I?!”

”…………”

And then, it finally hit me like a pile of falling bricks when everyone awkwardly turned their faces away from me.

………

…… And this is the episode where Sugisaki Ken is depressed.

When I finally calmed down from my near-death experience, I sat down heavily in my chair, feeling glum. The president cleared her throat and looked like she was about to start again. How un-loli-like.

“In any case, I think Sugisaki needs to change. Yes. After all, he is the vice president, so it wouldn’t do if he didn’t have the dignity fit for the role.”

“… Dignity, huh…”

I took a good look at how loli the president was and sighed. Everyone else also let out strained laughs.

Realizing she was being stared at, the president once again cleared her throat.

“In. Any. Case! Let’s improve Sugisaki’s personality today! That’s what I want to do!”

“What’s this all of a sudden? Saying something like that…”

At my question, the president began to fish through her bag, and grabbed something out. “Look at this!”

It seemed to be one of the wall posters that the Newspaper Club occasionally put on the school’s bulletin board at irregular intervals. The president always was pretty interested by them and would often bring them up during meetings, but… today it seemed a bit different.

Minatsu went out of her way to begin reading it aloud.

“Oh oh, what is it? Breaking News! The student council vice president Sugisaki Ken may have once been a two-timer! This one?”

“Oh my, oh my, I’m sorry for you, Key-kun.”

Chizuru-san said she was sorry for me, but she seemed to be having fun. Geez… these people were just…

Mafuyu-chan was the only one who backed me up.

“That’s a terrible article! We have to go and scold them! S, Sugisaki-senpai is not the kind of person who would… who would…… sorry.”

And she apologized… she seemed to have started backing me up, but then after thinking about it, realized that I wasn’t trustworthy at all when it came to women.

After gauging everyone’s reactions, the president placed the newspaper back on the desk and once again pointed at me.

“To think that such an article could be written about someone who’s a part of the student council!”

“… well, that Newspaper Club really enjoys stories like this after all.”

I picked up the newspaper in question and read the contents… the headline sure was flashy, but there wasn’t much there otherwise. There were almost no details written. Even after I read the entire article, there was almost no information past the statement that “Sugisaki Ken may have once been a two-timer.”

What had probably happened was that they had only obtained vague information from random witnesses and friends and written those down… I have to admit, it was definitely something I would expect the president of the Newspaper Club to do.

I knew the Newspaper Club president personally (she was a pretty girl, after all), but she told me, “Well, I’ll leave reporting the truth to someone else. Isn’t the job of the school newspaper also to entertain everyone with stories that are based on facts? Oh hoh hoh hoh!” Considering she said all of that with a straight face, even I came to the conclusion that she had a troubled personality, and I was a bit hesitant to try and capture her.

I had given her a lot of leeway up until now because she was so pretty… but when I became the target, of course it didn’t leave me feeling very happy. And the worst thing was…

“Sugisaki! First, you better make clear whether or not the contents of that article are true!”

The president seemed incredibly offended. I scratched my head, and tried to get out of this.

“Ah, Prez, is it that you’re jealous? You can’t help thinking about the girls in my past-“

“Don’t think you can get out of this just by saying things like that!”

When the president got into her “President Mode” like she did now, it was pretty hard to tease her.

I didn’t really know what to do, and Chizuru-san came at me with another attack.

“Key-kun. When Aka-chan gets like this, she won’t stop raising a fuss until she gets all the facts. You know that, right? So just give up.”

“I know that, but…”

What the h.e.l.l was this? Ugh… well, it’s not like I have to go into too many details.

Alright… looks like I’m out of options. I’ll go for a compromise.

I looked the president in the eyes. I gave her a serious look. She might be in President Mode, but when I looked at her seriously like this, she would definitely listen to whatever I had to say no matter the topic. And even if this was hard to say, I had to say it clearly and precisely.

–

“Well, starting from the end, it’s the truth. I did two-time once.”

–

At my words, the president… didn’t flare up or come at me at all. If I had said that casually, she probably would have said something like “Sugisaki! This is why you’re so…” but because I had said it completely seriously this time, she showed no signs of getting like that.

And Chizuru-san, Minatsu, and Mafuyu-chan were the same. n.o.body hurled abuse at me like they usually did.

The president sighed and took her seat. “I see. And then?”

“Is Sugisaki going to give us a few more details about what happened?”

“No. Please, just let me off the hook for now.”

Even for me, there were one or two events in my past that I didn’t want to talk about. And this incident was the most extreme of those events.

At my words, the president sighed. And then, she continued.

“But it really was the truth…”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to justify yourself?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“… Hm, I got it. Let’s close the book on this incident then!”

After the president said that, she stretched and seemed quite refreshed.

And then, she returned to her usual energetic demeanor and came at me.

“Now then, Sugisaki! There are a lot of things to be done if we’re going to reform you quickly! It would be bad if stories like this kept coming out about you, after all!”

“… That’s true. Well, rather than saying we’re going to reform me, let’s just try and patch things up a bit on the surface.”