"What's the matter, afraid you'll lose your harem? Fretting about the loss of those old nighttime dinner deliveries~?" – Mion had a sly smile; Keiichi, for his part, kept his frown – and his eyes on the bucket. Rika, being the fine young daughter she was, had been doing some work at the family shrine – "just preparing for the human sacrifice", she had joked, though curiously enough she hadn't laughed along with Keiichi – and now, for her hard toil, what awaited her? In the bucket, above the door, anything could lie in wait; - and Keiichi went through all the possible scenarios.
Nails? Too harsh even for Satoko; normally Keiichi was her target of choice after all; so that this trap had to be simply an exploitation of the situation – that evil hearted Satoko! Before he had begged her to help him buy a new baseball bat for practice, but she had insisted that she had "already spent her allowance". Even now she had the sweetest smile on her face; a false smile! But returning to the bucket, Keiichi thought, perhaps it was something annoying but harmless, like water-based paint.
Well, if that was the case there was no reason to worry; and so Keiichi joined Mion and Rena, who were still discussing the new arrival.
"Oh, spending more time with us, are you? Trying to make sure you remain the one boy in our group? But Keiichi, we'll be the judge of that!" Rena, of course was mostly just blushing whenever Mion began any more… tempting descriptions of what she was expecting. Keiichi, like mainly other visual novel protagonists are wont to do, began to zone out; - footsteps were approaching. It was of course well before class; as today they had began club activities early, before school, to continue yesterday's hard fought game. Rena still had the scars, and the penalty… was too horrible to mention. Still, like the good soldier she was, she, well, soldiered through. Keiichi had never been too adept at metaphors. Of course, she had blushed when she first put on the extra layers and been covered head to toe in cold water with the school hose. But all is fair in love and war; especially when the class representative has a love for war.
But though Keiichi, at least for one, was appreciating that memory, soon the increasing volume of the footsteps forced everyone's attention; Satoko was rocking in anticipation; Keiichi slowly breathed out, "I'm sorry, Rik—"
Just then the door opened; and out of the bucket-!
What was this? Flowers, sakura blossoms? And nobody had noticed the little wire that led to the record player, which let out it's crackling just as the door stopped screeching.
"Happpy biirrthhday to yuoooouuu", and, for the second stanza, Satoko joined in. Her usually devious smile seemed transformed into the very definition of selfless giving; and in a second, Keiichi understood where Satoko had spent her allowance.
Before they continued too far, Keiichi's quick thinking dragged his hands to his bag, where he had a hankerchef and sure enough…
"AWWWWW… that was shooo kyuutttee of you, Satoko~~~" Thus began the nosebleed. It was true, of course, that kyute mode Rena could lose any amount of blood and survive, due to the nature of the preternatural power of kyute-ness; but manners, after all, were manners. He handed it to her.
"Th-thanks, Keiichi-kun!" – she blushed, of course – and began to capture the majority of what had been unleashed.
Meanwhile, Rika and Satoko were playing. Rika was calmly and serenely smiling at the effervescent Satoko.
"Wasn't it… sho kyute of her… to put her powers to good use?"
"It certainly was – if only her play today had been as well-planned, she would have avoided facing the secondary penalty" – Rika, to her credit, avoided mentioning the texta markings on Satoko's shirt.
A car, meanwhile, approached.
"Ohhhh, I bet it's that new student, the boy!", Mion ejaculated on her way to the window. Rena, Keiichi, and the two lolicons also made their way.
It wasn't a boy at all, but rather, a girl, Sekai, newly transferred after being implicated in a bad PR scene in another school. Her friend Matoko had, it seems, taken his girlfriend, and Sekai's friend, to see Fighting Nemo, the top ten splash movie hit of the year. But the train crashed and they both died. The minister for transport, however, had sent more bribes in to head office than the minister for education, and so, sadly, education took the hit. Sekai was the scapegoat, and banished to the provinces. As for the confusion of her gender; that was also a part of the plan. She had been given a male pseudonym and transported safely across the countryside behind tinted glasses to avoid the legions of fans, for she was in fact the identical twin of a popular idol singer.
All this she would of course explain in time; for now, she walked up to Hinimazawa High School. For now, the speculation amongst the students continued. Keiichi, himself, had to leave early that day in order to help his father transport some artwork onto the car for transport to Tokyo. Polite, in this case, to an awkward fault, Rena, asked if he wanted his "things" back. Of course, he said he wasn't interested in her blood and she, realising her mistake, of course, blushed. Strangely, she seemed to still have the nosebleed; this was a longer duration than normal, but this Keiichi, being a dirty insensitive male, did not notice as he left.