It was the next day, after school on a Monday.
We were marching into the student council room.
“I beggeth your pardon! Yield your signboard to me!” Mimimi declared loudly like a dojo-busting swordsman as she slapped the door open.
Cut it out, don’t make weird demands.
“Mimimi-senpai, what’s the matter?”
The student council (I assumed) all started murmuring to one another at the sudden intrusion. There were about five students and one teacher in the room, and all eyes were gathered on us.
“Heh-heh-heh, aid hath come!”
“Pardon?”
Mimimi was being silly even to the younger student who had kindly addressed her, leaving her with a blank expression. Despite that, Mimimi’s still so popular—earning that goodwill on a daily basis is important, huh.
As for me, while attention was focused on Mimimi, I was observing the situation in the room. For a new quest, you observe first. Those teachings from my master are ingrained in me now.
The students had pulled their desks to face each other. Some were playing board games, while others acted like they were doing work on their computers, but they were actually just talking to some chatbots or whatever. Nobody seemed to be actually doing their jobs.
I didn’t know if it had been like this pre-Hinami or if it had started after she was gone, but it was most likely the latter. I got the sense that without the central figure keeping them moving, they had run out of gas.
“Um, what do you mean, ‘aid’…?” one of the student council members asked.
“Aid for the student council, of course!”
Some of the students got excited. “Yeah!”
Well, Mimimi had gone up against Hinami during the student council election. Even though she’d lost, she had left quite an impact, and now she’d shown up just when they needed her. She was perfect for this job; no one was better to fill the hole Hinami had left.
“Um… The truth is, we’re in a little trouble right now.”
“You can make things work out somehow, right, Mimimi-senpai…?”
One after another, the student council members were falling into agreement. I’d been thinking that nanashi could step in if a disagreement started, but it seemed things would be okay.
“Hey, hold on there.” Putting a halt to this trend was Muramatsu-sensei, the student council teacher advisor. He was a well-built male teacher in his forties, and I seemed to recall he was in charge of the advanced class. His lips were drawn in a hard line that expressed a certain firmness of will. He looked like a rather tough person to negotiate with.
“What’s the matter, Muramatsu-sensei?” Mimimi said brightly.
Furrowing his thick eyebrows, Muramatsu-sensei took a step closer to Mimimi. “It’s true you could help. But we can’t let in someone who’s not a member of student council.”
There was the thick wall: It’s the rules. Well, as the teacher in charge, he had to hold the line. While I considered how to deal with this, I watched to see what Mimimi would do.
“But when I lost the student council election, you said I didn’t have to be the president to join the council—right?”
“Ahh, I do seem to recall that…,” Muramatsu-sensei said, cocking his head. “But you refused, didn’t you?”
“I did!”
So you said no? That’s no good.
If we needed to play semantics for this negotiation, then it was my turn to step in, but as I was considering various approaches, Mimimi kept talking. “And back then, you said to me, ‘If you change your mind, then come any time!’”
“Agh. It’s true, I do think I said that…” Muramatsu-sensei’s expression was spasming.
Eventually, Mimimi said with a smug look, “—And now I’ve changed my mind!”
“Hey now, look…”
Seeing Muramatsu-sensei’s reaction, an idea struck me. “Um…” And I joined in with a rather conspiratorial tone. “If you invited her beforehand, then I don’t think it would count as giving Nanami-san special treatment.”
Most likely, Muramatsu-sensei wasn’t actually worried about Mimimi joining the student council. In their current state, they would probably welcome her right now.
However, this would set a precedent for allowing someone to join partway through the year on someone’s discretion. As the teacher in charge, he must have figured that he couldn’t make exceptions.
Put another way: Our interests were most likely aligned in the sense that we might be able to get this stalled student council going again.
I decided to give him an excuse and to propose a line to connect the two points. “I assume this kind of situation is why you left the door open for her in the first place…”
“Hmm… Well, you could look at it that way… Hmm…”
And as that excuse led him toward my goal, Muramatsu-sensei’s lips relaxed out of that hard line.
Then Mimimi followed up with another blow, just for insurance.
“Please!! That’s!! Exactly right!!”
Another blow for insurance. In other words, sincerity and volume. A loud voice makes you ten times more convincing.
Eventually, Muramatsu-sensei raised both eyebrows and let out a little sigh. “Well, frankly…I was thinking we might not even be able to keep the event running…” Then he surveyed the rest of the council, and they actually seemed excited at the arrival of this unexpected ace. “It seems nobody opposes it, and your help would save us.”
“Thank you very much!” I exclaimed along with Mimimi.
Then she declared loudly, “All right, ladies and gentlemen! Please welcome Minami Nanami, appointed as the substitute student council president!”
“Did you just appoint yourself to an important position?!”
“Which means—what about you, Tomozaki?” Mimimi said excitedly as she laughed and jab-jabbed at my side with her elbow.
I sighed at her. But eventually, remembering the fun times we’d had, a smile spilled out of me. “I’m the Brain, right?”
“You got it!”
Ding, ding, ding, ding. Her smile was genuinely happy, with none of her earlier reservations.
“I’ll be counting on you!” Mimimi said, raising her hands to the sky.
“Yeah, yeah, likewise.”
While my reply was careless, the truth was that this was a shot in the arm for me, too. Back when we’d been playing that game, I’d been sincerely enjoying myself.
—Clap.
The sound of us sealing our relationship as accomplices rang out pleasantly in the student council room.