"What are you guys doing here?", said Eli after opening the rooftop door with Nozomi at her side. Honoka, Kotori, and Umi were still up there, playing with the puppy and avoiding class. The sun was hanging in the middle of the sky at this point, indicating that it was about noon so a few hours had past since the three girls had worked out their love triangle.

"Oh, Eli-chan, Nozomi-chan! What're you doing her?" said Honoka, dodging the question Eli asked by making up her own.

"We received a report for three missing second-year students and the chairwoman had Nozomi and I look for them during our lunch break. It seems that we found them though. I can see you doing something like this Honoka, but I never expected that Umi and Kotori would do it too."

Eli didn't notice that Lily was there. She was hiding under Kotori's skirt while Kotori was seated on the ground. Lily tried her best to not look at Kotori's underwear because she was just too classy of a lady to do something so vulgar, but sometimes the view was unavoidable.

"Hey! What's that suppose to mean!?" Honoka was greatly offended by Eli's remark about how she is not surprised that Honoka would ditch school.

"It means that you three are in trouble."

"We're sorry Eli-chan but we can explain!", pleaded Kotori who stood up while holding Lily snuggly in her arms. Eli immediately saw the puppy and became furious.

"Why is the puppy here at school!? You're breaking two rules at once! This is not acceptable-" Nozomi started rubbing Eli's back to calm her down.

"Er-chi, serrtle dun." Nozomi was chewing away on a piece of bread

"Don't talk with your mouth full!" Eli sighed and pinched the area between her eyebrows in frustration. Then she started shaking her head slightly as she said, "What am I going to do with you children...?"

"You could always let us off the hook."

"Honoka!", yelled Umi. She was shocked that Honoka said something so inappropriate in the context of this situation.

Eli slowly raised her head and responded, "Give me a good reason why I should do that."

"...um...uh..."

Honoka was at a loss for words for a while until she came up with a really lame excuse.

"Because she's so cute!" She pointed to Kotori and the puppy who were both making adorable faces. The exterior of Eli's ice cold heart began to melt, revealing its inner warmth after seeing such a remarkably sweet sight.

"Alright, you got me. I can't compete with those faces... Anyway, I don't care why you're up here or why you brought the puppy to school but I'll make you a deal. I'll send you guys home and tell the chairwoman that I found you crying in the bathroom because you were grieving over a lost friend from a different school or something."

"That's kinda morbid Eli-chi."

"Well, I can't just say that they were all sick because that sounds too sketchy, especially since none of them went to the infirmary."

"Good-point. Who knew that my wonderful Eli-chika was so cunning and devious.", whispered Nozomi into Eli's ear while hugging Eli from behind.

"Knock it off Nozomi!" Eli pushed Nozomi away with a luminescent blush on her face that she quickly tried to get rid of before confronting the other girls again.

"Ehem, back on topic here. I'll cover for you three but you need to promise me that you'll never bring the dog on school property ever again."

Honoka, Kotori, and even Umi wore a sullen expression. They didn't say anything.

"Is there a problem?", asked Eli.

Umi decided that she would explain things because she was the person that Eli was most likely to listen to.

"Um, Eli-senpai... We apologize for infringing on the rules and we won't bring the puppy here ever again if that's what you truly desire, but I wanted to let you know that Honoka, Kotori, and I came up with a plan for keeping her here during the school day and-"

"I don't want to hear it! No means no!", interrupted Eli.

Umi felt really stupid for trying to convince Eli and getting rejected in the process.

"Hold on Eli-chi, I wanna know what their plan is. It won't hurt to hear them out all the way, right? Maybe you'll change your mind.", said Nozomi with half-lidded eyes. Nozomi knew how to get Eli to give in. Just one look from her made Eli submit to just about anything Nozomi wanted her to do.

"Fine, but make it quick."


This time Kotori volunteered to talk since Umi was too upset to speak and Honoka was busy comforting her and repeating the phrase, "Shh no tears... only dreams now.", over and over again. Eli and Nozomi ignored Honoka and Umi's weird friend-shippy thing as they waited for Kotori to begin.

"The plan was that I get my mom to give us permission to keep the puppy at school during the day. I'm pretty sure she'll let us if I can make her believe that it would be a good learning experience for us, which it will be. If she gives us the okay we were thinking that the nine of us could pitch in throughout the school day to take care of her and play with her. Then someone could take her home at night. Don't worry about the supplies. Honoka has a cage to keep her in and all of us can help with providing her food and stuff. What do you say?"

Kotori was still holding the puppy when she was talking to Eli and Eli couldn't not look at Lily while Kotori was speaking. It made her momentarily forget all of the possible negative outcomes of Kotori's plan.

After Kotori was done, Nozomi answered on Eli's behalf before Eli could say anything.

"That's a promising plan Kotori. I think it will be effective if everyone works together. I approve but for now, you need to focus on getting permission. Until then, you'll have to keep the puppy at somebody's house.

"I'll talk to my mom about it tonight."

"Good. Now Eli-chi, do you have anything else to add?" There was that look again.

"I don't..."

"Okay, so that's that. You guys work out arrangements and Eli and I will talk to the others during practice about what will happen if your plan goes through. Sound good?"

"Sounds good." agreed Kotori.

"Alright, now skedaddle out of here you poor saps. I'll be praying for you and the family who lost their precious daughter." said Nozomi while winking.

Kotori winked back, gathered Umi and Honoka, and left. They planned on staying over at Honoka's house again.


Meanwhile, Eli had a bone to pick with Nozomi after they lied to the chairwomen about what happened to Honoka, Kotori, and Umi.

Once they walked out of the chairwoman's office, Eli pinned Nozomi to the wall and growled quietly, "You made me look like a big idiot in front of my juniors!"

"Oh, what's this!? Eli-chi is being the dominant one for a change!? I actually kinda like this side of you."

"Shut up! I'm mad at you!"

"Uh-oh, does that mean Eli-chi is going to punish me?" Nozomi was pushing all of Eli's buttons now.

"Come on, I'm being serious here. Please don't do stuff like that anymore..."

"Not even when we're alone?" said Nozomi with disappointment.

"You can when we're alone but that's it."

"Okay... it appears that we are alone right now so..."

"No w-" Nozomi cut Eli off with a passionate kiss. Normally Eli would've pulled away and scolded Nozomi by now but she was way too wound up to object to anything that Nozomi did.

Little did they know that Kotori's mom could hear everything that they were saying and doing. When some of the sounds became too suggestive, she went out into the hallway to break things up.

"Excuse me girls, I'm sorry to disrupt you but could you please take the location you are in into consideration before you act upon your feverish desires? Doing this at our school is prohibited. Anyway, lunch is almost over so I suggest that you two return to your classrooms. Thank you."

Eli and Nozomi were frozen solid for a moment before they leaped off of each other, but unfortunately for them, they were a bit too late. Kotori's mom already went back into her office and there they were, standing dumbstruck in an empty corridor. Eventually, they regained the ability of speech.

"Hey, Eli-chi?" said Nozomi stiffly.

"What?" Eli had the same tone of voice.

"Aren't you glad that she was the only one who saw?"

"I am not glad in any way whatsoever."

"So does that mean you wanted more people to see us?"

"Don't even start with that! Everything will be better if you just stop talking. Let's forget that that just happened and go back to class." Eli was pissed. She stormed away in the direction of their classroom but Nozomi caught up to her and grabbed her arm to stop her.

"What do you want!?"

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry and that I love you..." It didn't happen often but Nozomi's feelings were a little bit hurt from Eli's harsh words. She didn't show it though.

Eli was a sucker for romantic lines like this. Her scowl turned into a faint smile.

"Fine, I forgive you, but please quit joking around so much. I can't handle the stress it causes."

"Okay Eli-chi, I respect your wishes. I'll only goof around once in a while. Also, I don't want to forget what happened earlier because you were so cute! That's all I'll be able to think about for the rest of the day."

"Stop it, you're embarrassing me!" Eli turned her head but Nozomi took this opportunity to kiss the cheek that Eli turned away. This made Eli look forward at Nozomi again.

"Let's get going Eli-chi. We don't wanna be late."

"Right..."


Nozomi took Eli's hand and the two speed-walked down the hallway to their classroom. They made it back just in time before their afternoon lessons started but even though their bodies were present, their minds were elsewhere. Later, the teacher called them out on it and Nico snickered at them from the other side of the room. They both gave her a dirty look but she just countered it with her ultra powerful (not really) "Nico-Nico-Ni" attack. It wasn't very effective.

When Eli and Nozomi were done getting lectured about the dangers of daydreaming, they went up to Nico, grabbed one of her arms each, picked her up into the air, and dragged her up to the roof like she was a little kid. She was throwing a tantrum the whole way.

They released her when they got all the way upstairs.

"Hey!? What was that all about!? You guys almost dislocated my shoulders!" yelled Nico in discontent.

"Quit being over dramatic Nico. You're fine." said Eli.

"It's just payback for laughing at us, Nico-chi. Karma is a strong force."

"No, it's you two that have a strong force!"

"We're here!", exclaimed Rin. Maki and Hanayo were with her too. Nico ran up to Maki and jumped into her arms and whined, "Eli and Nozomi are bullying me!"

"You probably deserved it." Maki was not amused and she let go of Nico.


Eli clapped her hands. "Now that everyone's here, I would like to make an announcement."

"Where are Honoka, Umi and Kotori?", asked Rin. She at least knew that 6 did not equal 9.

"They went home already. We're going to practice without them." informed Eli.

"Oh, okay."

"As I was saying, I have an announcement to make pertaining to the puppy." Eli explained the plan to them and everyone agreed to it.

"Now that that's settled, let's start our practice."

The girls worked hard today even though three of them were absent. They were all excited about the news of possibly having a pet puppy to play with at school so they were pumped up for practice. Right when they finished, Eli's phone rang.

"Hello?... Hi, Kotori... Okay... That's great... Uh huh... See you tomorrow... Bye."

"Was that Kotori-chan?" asked Hanayo.

"No, it was Santa Claus." said Nico sarcastically.

"Really!? I wanna talk to Santa-san too!" Maki still holds on to that childhood magic.

"Come on Maki-chan, you should know by now that-" Rin and Hanayo lunged at Nico and covered her mouth.

"Nico-chan, you can't taint her innocence!" said Hanayo."

"Yeah, what Kayo-chin said! That would be really bad!"

"Please, Maki-chan isn't innocent at all, at least not around me."

Maki was really confused and Eli had enough of this madness.

"Calm down you guys! That was Kotori just now. She said that she talked to her mom about the puppy. We have permission to keep it here but there are a few conditions. The first being that we can't tell anyone else about it. Secondly, we can't leave during the middle of class to take care of her. Then finally and most importantly, she cannot make any noise. She is naturally quiet as it is so there shouldn't be any issues. I assume that we can all follow these rules as well. We are to meet in the club room tomorrow before school starts to set up the cage that Honoka brings and come up with a schedule. Is that clear?"

"Yes ma'am!", said four of the girls simultaneously. Rin accidentally said, "Yes sir!"

"Excellent, you are free to go."


The first-years and Nico left together but Nozomi stayed behind with Eli.

"Eli-chi, wanna go get parfaits?"

"Hmm, after what happened today? Why should I?"

"Cuz you looove me!"

"... alright."

"Yay!"

"This is the last time you're getting away with your excuses though. Got it?"

"Whatever you say Eli-chi, but it's true. You looove me."

"Yes, I do."

"Say it right."

"I love you. Now please, don't make me say it again."

"I won't make you, but you'll probably want to say it anyway later on."

"Nozomi!"

"What?"

"Never mind. Can we have a nice quiet walk today?"

"Sure, anything for you Eli-chi!"


Afterword

Puppies sure do bring out the best in people. Personally, my life wouldn't be complete without my borador, Henry. I mentioned in the first chapter that Lily was a Kisha Inu. Here's some trivia: Kisha Inus are also commonly called Kisha Kens so if Lily was a boy, her name would be "Ken" on "Kenny".

Yup, that's about it as far as this afterword goes. Before I go, I'd like to say thank you to my kind readers and I hope that I was able to make your day a little bit brighter. See ya in the next chapter!