Bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt-

I groaned and reached out to smack the alarm on my phone shut. Whoever had invented alarm clocks clearly had a little bit of a sadistic streak. Whoever had invented Monday mornings, even more so. Why couldn't they spread out weekend breaks a little bit, maybe so that we only had to go to school in the afternoon? I wouldn't mind dragging myself out of bed for school on Saturday if it meant I could sleep in a little bit. God knew most people my age hated school enough already, without having to make it any more annoying than it needed to be. Plus, it would get me ready for the time-flexible, lethargic life of house-husbandry I'd always looked forward to.

Of course, life had a tendency to do the opposite of what you wanted to happen, just for the hell of it. Dreams could be crushed with wanton abandon; hopes could be ground into dust and stomped on by the leather boot of reality. And people from whom you had expected certain things could succumb to the irrationality inherent within all human beings.

No one was immune from it. Not Yukinoshita, or Yuigahama, or Komachi, or Hayama, or any of the other people I'd come to know, if not necessarily come to like.

Not even Isshiki, it seemed.

Having cleaned and dressed myself to an acceptable level, I meandered towards the living room, where Komachi was already busy filling herself with the sustenance she needed for the day. Unlike my energy-saving self, she needed all the calories she could get. "Morning, Onii-chan," she spluttered through a mouthful of egg.

"Morning. Don't talk while you're eating." I slid into the seat opposite her and began digging into my own portion of breakfast. I was just about to take a bite when I noticed Komachi staring at me intently, a strangely inquisitive expression etched on her face. "What?" I asked, lowering my fork.

"What?" she parroted, her mouth still chock-full.

"You have something you wanna say, right? Also, like I said, don't talk while you're eating."

She gulped down her food and coughed. "You came back pretty late last night, didn't you? Around eleven or so."

"Around that time, yeah." The trains were much sparser that time of night, and the lights were completely off by the time I'd gotten home, so I'd presumed Komachi was asleep – my parents, as usual, had yet to return at the time. "Were you waiting for me?"

"What do you think? Those Komachi points ain't gonna score themselves. Komachi was too sleepy, though, so she didn't get up." A sly grin tugged at the corner of her lip. "How was the triple date?"

"If you call me tagging along with that lot a triple date, then I worry for your future boyfriend. Also, there were a lot more than just three people. Including a couple other guys."

"Maybe Komachi would have a current boyfriend instead of a future one if you didn't scare all of them away, Onii-chan," Komachi snickered. "By the way, what's that?" She pointed at the plastic bag I'd placed in the chair next to mine.

"Oh. That." I peeked at the sack of Destinyland goodies splayed over the seat cushion. "I'm giving it back to someone. They left it with me yesterday."

"Did she now?" Komachi wiggled her eyebrows.

"I never said it was a 'she'."

"You didn't need to. The outline and color of that stuffed toy tells Komachi everything she needs to know. Isn't Komachi smart?" She held two fingers up in a 'V' and lifted them up near her eyes.

Seeing that gesture suddenly reminded me of Isshiki and her three choices, and my stomach turned a little. What did she have in store for me after school? I'd seen – and, once in a blue moon, fallen prey to – my fair share of unfair and unusual demands, alongside the full gamut of what the ignorant adolescent masses could do to someone they looked down on. Invariably, that also brought back stinging memories that, though seemingly long past, still continued to rub salt in my many open wounds.

"Onii-chan?"

I blinked. "What is it?"

"You should eat." Komachi pointed at the clock. "We'll be late if you don't hurry up."

"Oh, yeah. My bad." I wolfed down the remainder of my meal, wincing as the miso soup burned the underside of my tongue. Whatever would be, would be. I didn't presume to be one of those off-the-charts-IQ shounen manga protags that could guess and second-guess their adversary's every move, but maybe if I put my considerable deductive abilities to use, I would eventually be able to decipher Isshiki's cryptic codes.

Or not. Perhaps my best course of action would merely be to go with the flow. I wasn't overly fond of surprises, but I had little choice in the matter. The study of girls was a little like the study of infectious diseases – the more you discovered, the less you wanted to have anything to do with them.

Komachi being the notable exception, of course.

As we put our shoes on in the front lobby, I inadvertently raised a hand towards Komachi's hair and tousled it. She looked up at me quizzically, but simply responded with one of her usually radiant smiles as she pulled the door open, allowing the crisp winter air and gleaming sunlight to pool into the house.

I really did have the cutest little sister in the world. That much I could be sure about.


"You're late, Senpai."

Arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently, the source of my momentary worries stood agitated next to the billboard outside the family restaurant, fixing her impudent glare upon my unworthy self.

"You said to meet after school. It's currently after school. Also, I had to pop by the Service Club and excuse myself for the day." I lifted the bag of souvenirs up before she could rebuke. "Here. You forgot this."

"Oh, right. Thanks." She peered at me as I passed it over to her. "You didn't look inside, did you?"

I shrugged. "Does it really matter? Not like you have underwear in there or anything."

"So you did look." Isshiki's eyes narrowed, but she couldn't hide her playful smirk. "You're a bona fide voyeur aren't you, Senpai. Looks like I misjudged you – or rather, I was right about you all along."

"Yeah, you were. But you knew what you were getting into from the start." I stifled a yawn. "Now can you tell me what we're doing here?"

"Let's have a drink first. I'm thirsty." She marched towards the family restaurant, and I reluctantly followed her in through the automatic glass doors.

We eased into a booth near the window and ordered our respective beverages – I opted for an ice coffee so as to keep myself fully alert – and then I waited patiently for Isshiki to start speaking. Which, after casting some oddly furtive glances at our neighbors, she did.

"Long story short, I want you to join the student council," she said, smiling confidently as though she already knew what my answer would be. "Consider it an invitation from its president."

"Not happening," I immediately replied.

Her eyes and ears drooped slightly. She couldn't have looked any more like a lost puppy if she'd tried. "But whyyy? You're already doing a good chunk of the work with me. You might as well make that a full-time stint."

"Firstly, that's only for the Christmas collab event. Secondly, Yukinoshita and Yuigahama are helping out now as well, so you should probably invite them too in the interests of fairness and harmony. But if you did, you'd just make the student council an extension of the Service Club. It would never fly, especially since… well…"

It would be a tough blow for Yukinoshita to take, becoming a lackey of the council so soon after she'd laid to rest her aspirations of being its leader. She could handle it, that was for sure, but that wasn't the issue here. And as for Yuigahama… let's just say she wouldn't be of much assistance. Yet I wasn't sure how to tell Isshiki all that whilst guaranteeing my own personal safety if she happened to spill the beans to the other two.

"Anyway." I cleared my throat. "It's a no from me."

Isshiki puckered her lips. "Aw. And after I spent the rest of last night thinking about what I should get you to do, too. Knowing you, Senpai, I thought you'd leap at the chance to exert your influence over the rest of the school."

Who did she actually think I was? A shounen manga villain pulling the strings behind all the obstacles the protagonist had to get through? "I thought you'd said you'd already thought of something before you got off the train."

"Oh, right." She stuck out her tongue in a display of patently false innocence. "I did say that."

"You could just tell me what you originally had in mind. Again, as long as it's not too unreasonable or inconvenient."

"I guess I could. Then…" Isshiki twirled her fingers and then pointed at her own nose. "I want you to make me a better student council president."

Was that really it? It didn't seem like something that simple last night. Besides, that sounded far too vague to be a reasonable objective. "What exactly would that entail?"

"I dunno. I just thought you'd be able to tell me."

"I'm the last person you wanna be taking advice about good leadership from. I take the heavy world upon my shoulders, but I don't presume to lead people by the nose."

"I have no idea how that relates to anything, but I'll take your word for it." She propped up an elbow on the table and leaned on her hand, squishing her cheek like a squirrel. "C'mon, Senpai. You were the one who told me there would be benefits for being the president. You should at least tell me where to go from here. You're in the Service Club, aren't you? Service me."

"The Service Club takes horses to water, but it doesn't tell them how to drink," I replied with a shake of my head. "Unless this is a personal request from you, though I've had enough of those for a while."

"If that's how you wanna think of it." Her pout grew more pronounced. "At least tell me what you would do if you were the student council president. Especially if you were dealing with that weirdo."

"By 'that weirdo', you mean… Tamanawa?"

"I mean, you seem to know how to handle him. Birds of a feather flock together, huh?" Isshiki paused. "I've been thinking about it, you know. How to get the student council to at least respect me, if not like me. Even if I became the president for a different reason to what most people might have expected, I still wanna do a good job of it. First impressions are important, aren't they?"

"You're surprisingly earnest," I commented.

She stuck her tongue out again. "Flattering me won't get you anywhere, Senpai."

"I changed my mind," I grunted. "You're not cute at all."

"So you thought I was cute before. I see."

"I never said I-"

"You didn't need to. It's written all over your face." She beamed triumphantly, and for the briefest of moments I saw a hint of Komachi in her expression. A considerably more annoying and considerably less adorable Komachi, mind you. "Take care of me, okay, Senpai?"

I didn't need a mirror to know that a blush had overtaken my face again. Why was I like this? It was the fate of the unpopular and unloved to see heaven in the faintest whiff of paradise, but I'd convinced myself that an oversaturation of exposure to femininity (extended to include girly-looking boys like Totsuka) had desensitized me to the emotional vulnerabilities that were familiar to all who walked the same path as I. Evidently I was naïve to think that was the case after such fleeting contact.

"If you say so," I muttered.

"Is that a yes?"

"Maybe." Our drinks arrived, but I was no longer in the mood for coffee – all I felt like doing now was taking a long nap, and hopefully waking up in time for dinner. I watched idly as Isshiki gaily imbibed her glass of soda, immersing herself in the flavor, as though the person sitting across from her were little more than an afterthought. Not that I wasn't used to being treated as such, but still.

If that was Isshiki's request, then so be it. I didn't have to acquiesce to her demands, but I knew she would pester me as often as she could if I tried to brush her off. Plus, she wasn't wrong – I did have a hand in getting her into this situation. I wasn't the archetype of an honorable person, but I always paid my dues. Still, a request as nebulous as "making Isshiki a better student council president" was bound to present its own set of problems, problems which I would have to deal with as they came.

"Fine," I said. "I'll think of something."

"Yay!" She did a mini fist-pump, almost spilling her drink in the process. "Now maybe Hayama-senpai will-"

"Hayama-senpai will… what?"

"Oops." Isshiki put a hand to her mouth, as though the cat that had just been let out of the bag would miraculously return. Unfortunately for her, that cat wasn't coming back. "Just forget you heard that."

"Surely you weren't thinking something as shallow as, 'Maybe if I do a good job at being student council president, Hayama-senpai will look at me in a different light'?" I peered at her, scrutinizing her reaction. "As ulterior motives go, you can't do much worse than pitting the affections of your unrequited love against the expectations of the entire student body."

I was largely being facetious, but Isshiki seemed to take my words a little more personally than I would have expected. Maybe that was only natural, considering the pain of her rebuffed confession still burned in her chest. "I'm sorry for thinking that way, okay?" she scowled. "Geez, Senpai. You have no tact at all. Not everyone can be a dead-eyed robot like you. No wonder most girls – and most people in general – give you a wide berth."

"I'm… just saying." I looked away sheepishly, even though I was convinced that I wasn't actually at fault. "My bad. That wasn't a nice thing to say."

"No, it wasn't. That means you owe me double, got it?" The same simper I had grown accustomed to seeing returned to her face without a moment's notice. Her mask-swapping abilities were to be admired, even if that duplicity made it impossible to take her completely seriously. "I'm looking forward to seeing what you have planned. Just don't make it weird, okay?"

"That's my line."

Having finished – half-finished, in my case – our drinks, we decided to part ways whilst the sun had yet to fully set. Isshiki had a student council meeting planned for the next day, meaning I could have some time for myself to think. I wasn't exactly sure how to even begin working on her request, but luckily for me, I was in close contact – figuratively speaking, since she wouldn't want me anywhere near her physically – with someone who I knew would have been a far better fit for the presidency than the current incumbent. Someone who was, in almost every sense, the polar opposite of Isshiki.

Of course, getting the Ice Queen to agree to help would be a different matter entirely.