Ayako Saiki was never sure whether she liked being called Saiko or not. On the one hand, it humanized her, she supposed. On the other hand, if she let herself be pulled to everyone who thrilled to be on familiar terms with her, she'd lose her patience rapidly.
She could be very warm, but knew that she could also come off as aloof and even cold. Her habits were all that kept Lilian from being a minefield. She found herself easily distracted, especially in the morning due to her low blood pressure, or so a physician her mother had summoned told the family.
Just that morning, she'd wandered in a daze with nothing to do with her hands, and she'd tied the neckerchief of a first-year - Yumi-something. Saiko was proud that for the most part she'd memorized the names of all the students in the last few years of attendance, even the ones that didn't stand out like - Yumiko. That girl had scurried off, looking as dazed as Ayako felt. Will she even remember this? she wondered.
Well. Unless her memory was failing her, the squeaky noise of whatever was beneath her was quite reminiscent of that same girl's timid voice.
« Has anyone taken you as a sister? » she asked, right after asking and being assured, however dubiously, that the girl was unharmed. And even before, frankly, she rolled off the girl, so she asked the question nose to nose with her, with her body, which she had once heard described by a Hanadera boy as curvy, smothering that of the smaller girl. Thus it was a beet-red Saiko who remedied her error while waiting for the girl's answer.
« N-No? » came the quiet, tentative reply.
Saiko came to herself a bit. « Is it Yumi? »
« I am sometimes called that, » the girl ventured. "First-year Pine Class Yumiko Ikegami," she declared.
For the first part, she was rather exotic-looking. Almost certainly a haafu, like Saiko's brother, and like his ill-mannered paramour. Wouldn't that be an apt way to rub the situation in his face? she pondered. The girl would be completely tractable, too. She seemed almost too timid to believe, but here she was, presumably petitioning the Yamayurikai about something. There was, obviously, more to her than met the eye.
She helped the girl gently to her feet, then turned around, said "Come with me," and grabbed Yumi's hand. A moment's reflection led her to turn back around, say "Gokigenyou" to the other two girls behind Yumiko, and add, "please feel included in that request."