The days sandwiched between two of the most significant moments of my life so far passed by in something of a blur, as often happens when a distraction nibbles at the corner of your mind, not quite overtaking your consciousness in an obvious and overt manner, yet nonetheless occupying you enough that the ten percent of the brain humans are said to use feels more like one percent. This goes on and on until you are reduced to nothing but a zombie going through the motions, ambling across the day-to-day, responding to complicated questions with a perfunctory "yes" or "no". It takes a renewed sense of purpose or a new target to aim at to wake oneself from such a reverie, and no such convenient nepenthe could be found within my reach.

And so, the day before the meeting, I found myself once again at the Service Club, just as I had done the days prior, sitting in silence with a book in hand, waiting for the world as I knew it to end. Yukinoshita had not exactly welcomed me back with open arms the day after I returned from my battle with the flu, yet she seemed content enough to let the frostiness in the air cool the clubroom for as long as it needed to, just as she was wont to do. Yuigahama, ever the stickler for the status quo, said nothing that would chip at the ice in any way. Thusly the days passed, and thusly did Armageddon draw ever closer.

Thinking rationally and with the benefit of both hindsight and foresight, I had little reason to be anxious. Isshiki was not really my concern, and she had never been. I was doing this out of my own twisted sense of honor and responsibility, of a self-serving yet ultimately meaningless wish to see the Christmas collaboration event through to the bitter end. If she screwed up – and chances were that little would have changed between this meeting and the last – I was free to stay silent and let her flounder about blindly in all her newfound presidential glory.

Yet us humans were anything but rational creatures, needless to say. Even if we had absolutely no reason to destroy ourselves, we would do so just to see what it would be like. We would do anything to prove we were not piano keys waiting to be played by the whims and wishes of reality – we would tear the skin off our bones just to prove a point if the impulse so arose. I was allowing myself to be eaten alive by the most fleeting of worries, all for the sake of convincing myself that I was my own master, that what I was doing was right in some abstract way. The means justified the end, or something along those lines.

Isshiki didn't visit the Service Club that day, just as she had not visited the previous few days. Neither did anyone else. Afternoon swiftly gave way to dusk, and Yukinoshita closed her book, slipped her bag onto her shoulders, and slunk out of the clubroom without so much as a sigh to mark her departure.

This couldn't go on forever. If genuineness meant freezing to death in this wordless space, then I would sooner warm my hands on the fires of untruth.

"Are you going home too, Hikki?" Yuigahama asked hesitantly.

"Mhm."

As we packed our bags, I noticed Yuigahama's eyes flitting between me and the door. It was clear what she wanted to say, but her insecurities prevented the words from leaving her throat without considerable difficulty. Yet she persevered, and eventually she managed to stutter out a question.

"What… happened with you and Yukinon?"

My first instinct was to feign ignorance, though I knew that could not keep even Yuigahama at bay for long. "What do you mean?"

"You apologized to her, didn't you? Yukinon told me so."

"Yeah." I shrugged. "That's all good then, isn't it?"

"No, it's not!" Yuigahama pressed her lips together, creases digging into her forehead, her hands trembling atop her schoolbag. "If you really did make up, things wouldn't be like they are now! I thought we would be getting back together, just like how things were before all this happened. Yet I don't think the two of you have said more than a sentence a day to each other since the start of the week. Why, Hikki? What happened? Yukinon won't tell me anything!"

"You could've asked me before today, you know," I replied, trying not to appear too eager to react. In truth, I was simultaneously relieved that Yuigahama was doing what she felt needed to be done, and worried about what she would think if I – once again – was totally honest with what had happened that fateful day.

It also didn't really help that I myself had little idea about what had happened. It wasn't that I couldn't remember the events as they had unfolded – they were crystal clear in my memories, and I could pull them out and play them in my head on demand like a DVD movie. It was that I couldn't figure out the reasons behind them to begin with. Yukinoshita was an icy specimen, there was little doubt about that. Yet she had reacted unusually coldly even by her standards to Isshiki's arrival, as though visiting me were somehow her prerogative alone, to be exercised by no one else.

An idea sprang to mind, but I immediately dismissed it as the fantastical desires of a lonesome high-school boy who clung on to every crumb of quasi-affection he could scrounge from the foot of the dinner table at which the normies ate. They hadn't been jealous over me – there was absolutely no way in hell that was the case. Yukinoshita saw through the façades that Isshiki wore, and she despised her for it, just as she despised all that was superficial and insubstantial. That was all there was to it.

The greatest mystery, however, was the fact that Isshiki had reacted in the exact same way as Yukinoshita. Unlike Yukinoshita, she was not at all straightforward about her grudges – quite the opposite, actually. For her to make known her displeasure at seeing Yukinoshita, therefore, evinced the existence of some deeper complex, another piece of Isshiki Iroha's grand puzzle that I had yet to solve.

"Hikki?"

I blinked. Yuigahama had edged towards me whilst I was knee-deep in my own thoughts, concern written all over her features. She was an open book no matter who she talked to, unlike the other two, and that in itself was refreshing.

"My bad, I was thinking about something. What'd you say?"

The furrow in Yuigahama's brow deepened. "You've been like this the past few days, too. I tried asking you other things, but you kept dodging my questions. I'm not letting you leave until you answer me properly." Her lip quivered with that last statement, but her eyes were firm with resolve, if a little watery. "What happened when Yukinon went to visit you?"

I blew out a long breath through my nose. Screw it. Might as well be forthcoming with the facts and see where it takes me. "Isshiki happened to visit me at the same time as Yukinoshita. That's it."

Yuigahama's mouth opened and closed like a fish's as she gulped down the responses that were threatening to bubble out into the air. After a while, she finally said, "That's it?"

"What, you wanted more?" I muttered.

"Going by what little Yukinon told me, I thought it was something a lot worse."

"You know Yukinoshita. She makes everything sound ten times more horrible than it really is." I frowned. "Why didn't she just tell you, though? It's not that big a deal, is it?"

"Maybe not to you." The smile I had seen her wearing just a few days ago, that incongruous amalgam of understanding and regret, briefly returned to Yuigahama's face. "You should think about how she's feeling a bit more."

I snorted. "It's not like I haven't tried. I just can't figure her out."

"You know, Hikki, you're way better at understanding people than I am. If I can do it, you can do it too." Yuigahama tilted her head towards the door. "Let's go."

I acquiesced quietly and followed her out into the now largely empty corridor, though the frustration that had been churning inside me for the past few minutes did not abate. What would Yuigahama know about what I could or couldn't do? It wasn't like she could read my mind. Yet that irritation was more directed at myself than at her – the part of me, that pesky Socratic daemon, that gave voice to my conscience told me in no uncertain terms that she was right. In my zest to unravel the perennial mystery of just what exactly other people were thinking, I had overlooked the possibility that the simplest explanation might be the most reasonable one.

Yukinoshita and Isshiki did not trust each other, for various reasons. It was therefore no surprise that they would act so frostily in each other's presence. Was there more to it? Most likely. But I was in no mood to delve any further.

In either case, the true state of Yukinoshita's feelings were of somewhat less concern to me than Isshiki's. At least I could see with my own eyes that Yukinoshita wasn't best pleased with the situation; on the other hand, Isshiki's conspicuous absence dug more agonizingly into my psyche than any of Yukinoshita's infamous barbs could ever do. What sort of Isshiki would greet me tomorrow? The typically sanguine, deliberately air-headed, ostensibly shallow underclassman I had come to know? Or the empty shell of a human being who molded herself according to the whims of those around her, letting Tamanawa steamroller her with practiced ease, quick to resign herself to her inferiority? Or, perhaps, something else entirely?

As usual, there was little more I could do than to wait and see.

Wait and see… and then do what needed done.


At long last, the day of the meeting arrived.

Though I tried my best not to show it at the time, I have no problem with admitting that I was quite nervous. The student council of Kaihin Sougou sat across from us, hands clasped on the table, waiting dutifully for the quorum of the meeting to be met. Their president and glorious leader, Tamanawa, was positioned at the front of the room, clad as ever in a suave and self-assured expression. Though he flashed an occasional smile at his minions to make known his willingness to wait for the last person who was due to arrive, the irate tapping of his fingers on the sheet of paper in front of him told me everything I needed to know about his inner thoughts. With each passing minute, the velocity of his finger-tapping accelerated, and the sinking feeling in the pits of my stomach grew ever heavier.

Just as I considered running back to school – even if it was quite some distance away from the community center where our meeting was being held – to look for the one who would normally have occupied the seat beside me, the door throttled open noisily, and our own student council president strode into the room.

"Sorry I'm late." Isshiki dropped her bag into the leg space in front of her chair. An odd thing to do, presuming that she meant to sit there. I shuffled my chair over to the left slightly to give her more room, but instead she did something which I would never in a hundred years have predicted. Lifting the folding chair, she dragged it to the front of the room and, standing over Tamanawa, she made a flicking motion with her free hand.

"Scoot over," she said curtly.

Tamanawa, his mind perhaps numbed by the shock of being commanded so authoritatively by someone the same age as him, wordlessly got up and pulled his chair over to the side. Isshiki slotted her own chair into the area vacated by Tamanawa and, after making herself comfortable, looked around at the rest of us. "What?"

Judging by the surprised gapes of our own student council, I was not alone in wondering just who had kidnapped Isshiki Iroha and replaced her with an identical clone for today's meeting. "No, it's nothing," replied our treasurer, who was seated on the other side of me.

"Let's not waste any time, then." Isshiki cleared her throat and turned to the still-disconcerted Tamanawa. "Having looked over our last proposal, it's been determined that we neither have the time nor the budget to jointly hold a large-scale event together – I think that much was made clear during our last meeting. So, we should just drop the idea and focus on something else."

"But that's why we're here, isn't it?" Tamanawa attempted a smile as he forced himself back into the veneer of confidence he had wielded so efficiently last time around. "We can discuss the budget together-"

"No, that's pointless," Isshiki interjected, sending Tamanawa into a second bout of keen distress. "If you've actually read the budgeting information, you'll know I'm right about this. Nitta can give you the details if you want," she added, gesturing at our treasurer, who almost fell out of his seat at the unforeseen mention of his name. "Our best bet at this point is to host two smaller events under the same roof, with each school doing their own event. That way we can better manage the finer details of each individual event without having to worry about bothering the other school if something goes wrong."

"But surely the point of this Christmas event is for us to collaborate as one group," protested one of Kaihin Sougou's student council members, the others nodding and murmuring fervently in agreement. "That's right," piped up another. "It won't be much of a collab event if-"

"Stop parroting each other for a moment and listen," Isshiki brusquely cut them off. All of them shrunk away in unison, varying looks of offence and indignation etched on their faces as they glared at her. Ignoring the daggers they were shooting in her direction, she continued. "With respect, all the posturing we've been doing in the past few meetings is the exact reason why we're in this mess right now. I can count the number of days left until the event on the fingers on my hand, yet we have no concrete plan of action nor any idea how to implement any of the proposals that've been put forward without busting the bank. Which is why I suggested what I suggested – we each do our own event, bring them together under the same banner with some help from the elementary school, and leave it at that. Surely that's manageable even for your level of competence."

I snuck a peek over at Tamanawa. He was squinting at his fists, both of which were clenched white, baring the bone of his knuckles underneath his skin. I sympathized with him, but I myself was too busy trying to get my own head around who exactly it was that sat beside him, dismissing his complaints, controlling and directing proceedings as though she were the CEO of a large multinational corporation instead of a budding first-year high-school student.

Just what had happened to Isshiki in the days preceding this meeting? What kind of psychological revolution did it take for one to alter their personality to such a degree? Was such a thing even possible without undergoing some seismic emotional change, some mental upheaval of veritably traumatic proportions?

Isshiki clapped her hands, jolting me – and the rest of us – back into our surreal reality. "On our end, of all the proposals, a play seems like the most straightforward one to pursue. We can use the elementary schoolkids to our advantage – they won't cost much to dress up, and no one will really care if they muck about on stage. You could also do a play if you want, though it would probably be best to have some variety."

"No," Tamanwa mumbled, "I don't think we particularly want to…"

Isshiki shrugged. "Suit yourself. Anyway, now that that's sorted, I think we should just get to it and get started. Time is worth its weight in gold, after all. Also, if you'll excuse me for a moment…" She rose from her seat and flashed all of us a satisfied smile, the first time today that I'd seen any hint of the old Isshiki shine through. Her gaze met mine, and my burgeoning unease only worsened as she called my name. "Hikigaya-senpai."

"…Yes?"

"Come out with me for a sec. I need to talk to you."

I stood and followed her meekly, unsure what this unfamiliar new iteration of Isshiki wanted from me. I had been stunned into silence throughout the course of the meeting, and only now did the cogs in my head begin to dislodge themselves and restore themselves to working order again, my thoughts accelerating as I chewed through the possibilities. Was this change somehow my fault? Even if she had contracted my cold, surely that would not be enough to overload her neurological circuitry to this extent. Something else must have happened – or not happened – and I was soon about to find out what.

Once the door had been snapped shut behind us and we were out of earshot, Isshiki leaned into my ear and hissed, "Do you think they bought that?"

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. "Bought what?"

"You didn't help me think of anything, so I had to come up with something by myself to convince them to listen to me. What do you think?"

As realization dawned on me as to what she was actually saying, I stared wearily down at my underclassman, who seemed simultaneously proud of the wanton chaos she had just sown and expectant of the praise she thought I was about to heap upon her. The flaxen-haired vixen had weaved yet another mask, and it was the last one that she ought to be wearing right now, especially in these most delicate and sensitive of times. It was imperative that I nipped any similarly errant ideas in the bud before the damage truly became irreversible. I silently cursed myself for inadvertently providing her with the fuel for her folly, but for now, there was something I desperately needed to get off my chest.

Taking as deep a breath as I could manage, I said, "Isshiki…"

Her eyes – and her smile – widened in anticipation. "Yes, Senpai?"

"You're an idiot."