“Of course not.”
“Giving information out for free is a waste.”
“By the way, Lady Angelica, have you ever met Lady Sakura?”
“It would be ideal if we could learn a little more about her personality.”
“I can’t help you there, I’m afraid,” Lady Angelica replied with a chuckle. “But I know someone who can.”
“You mean Sara? She would know a lot since she worked for her.”
“She’d be on her guard if we started grilling her, though. I doubt she’d reveal anything too personal.”
“No, no, no. Asking Sara would be best, of course, but we have someone right here who knows plenty herself. Don’t we, Misaki?” Grinning, she turned to look at me.
The twins’ eyes gleamed. They stared at me like two snakes about to strike.
“Oh, Misaki, when did you get into the information-gathering business?”
“Has our training finally paid off?”
“Lady Angelica, did you have to sell me out like that?!”
“Well, you know, you’ve been avoiding me lately, so think of this as payback.” She stood up and prodded me in the cheek. “Anyway, I still have student council business to attend to, so I’ll be heading out. The rest is in Misaki’s capable hands!”
“No fair!” I cried.
She grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me down in the chair she had vacated. “Enjoy your evening, everyone.” To Himeko, she said, “Get in touch if there’s anything else.”
Then she made a graceful departure.
When she was gone, the Kokonoe sisters demanded details.
“Out with it, Misaki.”
“Cough up everything you know.”
I felt like I was being interrogated. All I could do was obey; I shared everything I’d heard from Sara that felt harmless enough, leaving out the details of Sara’s personal life, for example.
Afterward, they nodded, satisfied.
“My, my!”
“You had better info than expected.”
“Well done, Misaki.”
“You did a good job of squeezing it out of her.”
“That wasn’t what I was going for,” I insisted.
They started patting me on the head encouragingly, which was all well and good—but when they tried to go for my butt, I hurriedly put my hands in the way.
“Oh, but if you do that...”
“You’ll leave your chest totally unguarded!”
I gasped as their hands bore down on my breasts. I reflexively put my arms in a cross formation to cover them, but of course that meant my butt was an open target again. Deciding it was the lesser of two evils, I gave in and submitted to the butt patting, groaning in disgruntlement.
“Heehee! Don’t be so annoyed.”
“We’re going to give you a present for telling us such juicy details.”
“You are?”
“Yep!”
“Wait here a moment.”
With that, Music Ayaka stood from her chair and dashed off somewhere, then quickly returned holding several notebooks.
“These are for you. Well, not all of them. Half are for Kirara, and then you should swap.”
“Huh?”
I still didn’t get what they meant, so I took one of the notebooks and flipped through the pages. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
“What is this?!” I exclaimed, gawking at the contents.
The notebook was filled with personal data on the young ladies of the academy—their names, dates of birth, hobbies, special skills, favorite and least favorite things, and so on. The whole thing was full, with each lady having roughly a two-page spread to herself.
It was an unbelievable amount of information. Does this cover every Societal Arts student in the whole school?
“Researching it all for yourself would have been best, of course.”
“But you and Kirara are working hard, so we thought we’d help you out.”
“What? I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this.”
It didn’t feel right at all. Terms I’d never really thought about before like “information breach” and “data protection law” flashed into my mind.
“But it’ll be so handy.”
“You might wind up in trouble without it.”
Their tone was like they were telling a ghost story, which only exacerbated my anxiety.
“How? What do you mean?”
“Let’s say Lady Himeko invites a guest over.”
“You’ll have to be thoroughly prepared to welcome them, won’t you?”
I stared back, suddenly afraid they might be right.
“That’s going to be tough if you don’t know what they like.”
“Imagine serving them something they hated! What a disaster.”
“You’d make Lady Himeko look like a terrible host.”
“In the worst-case scenario, you might even ruin her relationship with the guest.”
Groaning, I replied, “That could happen, yeah.” It was far too believable. I could just picture it.
“We’re not telling you to use it for evil.”
“Although you could also study up on everyone’s weak points.”
“If you work it to your advantage, it’ll be a lifesaver.”
“Depending on how you use it, the information in this book could be worth more than gold.”
I let out a whimper.
“Either way, if you don’t start memorizing the ladies’ details, we’ll have to keep going with our lunchtime training forever.”
“If you’d rather gather all the information on your own instead, be our guest!”
“Fine, all right. I get it.”
It sounded like I didn’t have a choice, so I reluctantly took the notebooks crammed full of sensitive personal data.
Himeko raised no objection either. “I think this’ll be a big help for you, Misaki. You should make good use of them for your future.”
For my future? Does she mean it could help me with finding a job?
Applying to companies with a connection to the ladies of Amanotsuka Academy was likely to make things at least a little easier. Even if not, asking Himeko to point me out to relevant ladies and making sure they remembered my face could be beneficial in other ways.
In any case, it occurred to me that losing any of these notebooks would be a catastrophe. As I took them into my hands, I felt like I was taking on an immense amount of responsibility as well.
✤
After receiving the Kokonoe sisters’ notebooks crammed full of personal information, I started looking through them whenever I had a free moment. Kirara did the same, and we often ended up treating it like an English vocabulary study session. We’d open it up and repeat the contents aloud to try and drum it into our heads.