“THIS should do it,” Satsuki declared with her arms crossed as she sized up the pile of thick books stacked on the desk before her.
They were photo-books about the art of flower arranging. She needed study materials for the school flower arrangement exhibition, and just finished selecting these books at the library. What the selection lacked in quantity, the four volumes made up in size—each a large coffee-table book with thick, glossy paper. Simply hauling each volume to the desk proved arduous in its own right.
Satsuki tilted her head to one side. I wonder where Shindo could be...
She needed to transport these materials to the Student Council Room. She originally intended to ask Shindo to carry them, but he wasn’t with her at the moment. He usually stopped by the classroom to check on her before the afternoon announcements, which were essentially allotted time as a short homeroom class. But she told him to wait in her private suite since she had “Student Council work.”
I wonder if he is waiting in my private suite... Deciding to find out, Satsuki slightly narrowed her eyes... A sound akin to the crackle of snow on TV resounded in her head.
She slowly slid open her third eye, which differed from her physical eyes... Scenery that expanded beyond her line of sight filled her mind. She found Shindo’s mind near where she expected.
✦ ✦ ✦
“WANT one?” Shimizu, a man nearing forty, pulled out a silver cigarette case, flipped it open, and offered a thin cigar.
Shindo was about to turn down the offer, but the man next to him jumped in before he could. “Don’t waste your breath. Shindo here doesn’t smoke, not even cigars,” informed the middle-aged man, Matsunaga. His thin, short frame burst with energy.
“Really? And here I thought most young men smoked,” Shimizu assumed as he closed the cigarette case.
Shindo smiled genially as he brought the coffee cup to his lips. “I would hate for the smell to spread from me to the little lady,” he explained.
“Do you drink?”
“Only for social occasions. I couldn’t turn down the master or an important client if they offered me a drink,” Shindo answered.
“But you normally don’t?” Shimizu pushed.
“I might have a sip every once in a while to help me sleep. But I would never live it down if I made the Miss stink of alcohol the next day.”
“So you hold back on that for her as well?”
“Of course,” Shindo replied with a smile. There wasn’t so much as a hint of dissatisfaction or hesitancy in his answer.
Not only was Shimizu stunned, but also impressed. He personally loved cigars and the bottle. Why, he was convinced all men loved them. It would have been unbearable if he was told to abstain from them for his mistress. He had no doubt he would sneak it behind her back.
At the end of the fifth floor of Saikai Private High School for Girls, there was a large room known as the Guardian’s Lounge. It was the designated waiting area for guardians who came to pick up the girls for early dismissal or after school. However, their guardians hardly ever utilized the facility. Instead, it primarily served as a waiting room or lounge for the students’ personal chauffeurs and attendants.
While the term “lounge” might give a Spartan impression, a cushy rug was spread across the floor along with a sofa and several armchairs surrounding a table. To keep them entertained, the bookcases were amply stocked.
The coffee Shindo was currently drinking came from a self-serve coffee maker that invited a relaxing atmosphere. This space was where the majority of the chauffeurs and such in service of the young ladies attending this school came to shoot the breeze.
Shindo hardly ever dropped by. Tsujikawa Corporation exercised its influence over the school, allowing him to remain with Satsuki on school grounds throughout the day as her retainer. The school allotted her a private suite on the fifth floor, much like this lounge. Shindo usually spent his days there, but would occasionally make an appearance in this common room. Viewing interacting with others as a form of collecting information proved beneficial to the Tsujikawa family, and therefore beneficial to Satsuki.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Mr. Shindo, you truly are devoted to your little miss!” Matsunaga belted, slapping Shindo on the back. It was painfully obvious that Shindo was a good foot taller than the man. Matsunaga thought he gave Shindo a hardy slap, but not only did it fail to so much as make the younger man budge, it didn’t even make the coffee in his hand ripple.
“Unlike us, he’s an attendant. And a retainer at that, right? The lad must constantly put his charge first and forefront,” Matsunaga explained to Shimizu, who stared admiringly at Shindo, before stealing a quick look at his watch. It was getting close to when he was instructed to have the car ready.
Shimizu and Matsunaga both served as chauffeurs. In fact, the majority of employees who came to this room were either chauffeurs or drivers. There were only a handful of attendants who spent the entire day on school grounds.
The girl whom Matsunaga chauffeured was a third year like Satsuki. With such a long track record, he stood on familiar terms with Shindo. Shimizu, on the other hand, was the driver for a first-year girl who just enrolled this spring. This was only his second or third time speaking with Shindo.
“But I get where you’re coming from. I think I’d want to do anything for my client if she was such a pretty, sweet little thing,” Shimizu opined as memories of the brief glimpses he caught of Satsuki every morning came to mind. The heiress he dropped off and picked up on a daily basis was lovely in her own right, but it was depressing how she paled before Satsuki.
“I bet a youngster like you is eating this up, eh? It must be great to spend every waking moment with such an adorable sweetheart,” Shimizu continued with something of a suggestive tone in his voice. Shindo downed the rest of his coffee and shot a quick look at the man.
“She sure is quite the looker. I was blown away when I first saw her, even though I’d heard the rumors. Don’t they say she’s as ‘delicate as a flower; beautiful as an angel’? Well, they got that right... I swear, it’d be any man’s dream come true to serve a babe like her!”
“...Thank you,” Shindo said, expressing gratitude as a retainer for how Shimizu praised Satsuki. Yet part of him felt that if she were present, her heart would only be pained by the perverse thoughts that managed to slip through.