I had just experienced an unusual situation that resulted in me being in a position that is quite enigmatic. After the conversation with the guy whom I don't even know the name of, I walked out of the room heading towards the classroom as the next period is about to begin.

As I arrived at the classroom and straight to my seat, a question came to my mind

“What in the world had that guy been through?”

The class ended, so I started to pack my things to go home, but a voice called on to me

“Hello, Mr. New Vice President”

It’s Kaichou

“Uhm… about that, I’m not sure what happened.”

“Quickly pack up your stuff and come to the student council room, I will give you an explanation, make haste,” she said and left the classroom.

“Oh is the new kid also the new dog? Hahaha as expected of a lowlife,” one of the classmates whispered to the others.

I just ignored their words and continued packing.

Arriving in front of the student council room, I knocked on the door while greeting “Hello?”

“Come on in!” a voice of that a grown man answered the door.

As I entered the room, there are two other students other than Kaichou herself sitting at her desk. One is a blonde girl with a ponytail and the other is a blue-haired guy with a figure of a bodybuilder with an intimidating face flexing his muscles.

Yup, that’s the guy that dragged me around this morning for sure.

I then walked towards Kaichou’s desk upon entering the room.

“So this is our new vice president, seems like an average guy with glasses to me, not that it matters though,” said the blonde girl.

“Wait a minute there Makino-san, you shouldn’t judge a man from his appearance, you should judge them by their STRENGTH!” said the guy while flexing his muscles non-stop.

“The name of the man standing before you is Sasaki Keito, the treasurer of the council and a true man!” said the musclehead.

“Makino Hina, the secretary of the council, also the hopes and dreams of this high school! A true idol!” claimed the blondie.

Err, they all seemed…unique…

A question appeared in my mind,

“Oh, yeah, is it possible to hand over positions like the guy before me did?”

Kaichou who is appeared sitting at her desk started explaining while still doing her work, multitasking at its finest I’d say.

“In normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be possible, but in Kazu-san’s case, we allowed him to pick anyone to replace him because of a condition we gave him, what kind of condition you might ask? The condition was if he could find one person that is willing to replace him, then the person is allowed to become the new Vice President, what are the circumstances? Kazu-san’s reason to become the Vice President is to have power in the school system for selfish reasons, he knew that there was no way he could beat me for the President’s position, after we discovered his true motive, we devised a plan to corner him into the condition that resulted in him resigning his position”.

That’s quite odd, are they disposing of him under such a vague condition? The explanation also seemed like just the tip of the iceberg, a lot of things are questionable, I don’t think I’d care about it though.

“Keep in mind that we will not tolerate even the slightest malice in this student council, even with the power we attained from being in this position, as long as I am the president, we won’t be exploiting the power towards a despicable goal,”

“Kazu-san’s attitude was also very rude and nasty when he started,” said Makino.

“His obstinacy is also quite difficult to cope with though, nothing I said will get through his thick skull,” said Sasaki.

So there was no one willing to become the vice president, which means that this position doesn’t entitle me to much authority compared to the president. I guess students here don’t care that much about the use of this position when applying to a higher institution.

A small thing stills bothered me a bit, how did that Kazu guy changed completely from how they describe him to what I just encountered?

“You might wonder how he changed, well that is none of your concern, as the new vice president, there are other important things to manage, here is your armband to present yourself as one of us, don’t drag us down,” Kaichou said while holding out the armband to me.

Something tells me not to get to the bad side of Kaichou.

The look on Kaichou’s face expresses a lack of emotion, but somehow all I can see is a mere facade.

Even in circumstances such as this, it would still be quite risky to accept a new vice president without any kind of background check or at least familiarity, after all, I’m just a new transfer student, not a child prodigy or something. They must have a reason to accept me like this, then I shall not disappoint them.

Gallantly, I took the armband,

“Got it, leave it to me,” with a confident face, I put on the armband.

“So, what is it that a vice president does?” Hitori asked with a smile.

“Of course you wouldn’t know, first of all, we as the student council, have power to that of a teacher in this school, which means that it is our responsibility to mold the students into at least a decent human being, especially in their etiquette towards society, as you had noticed, students in this school are highly arrogant as they come from rich families thus looking down on people with a poor fortune in their lives, that is one of our priority, from my judgment, we could easily achieve that if all of the students start to respect you as a vice president despite how low you are on this school’s social hierarchy,” she explained to me.

Wow, that last statement does sting me a little, but this might also be the reason they let me be the vice president, quite a clever method they have here.

“Amazing…” I said under my breath.

“Yes?” Kaichou asked, not hearing what I said.

“Ah nothing, if nothing else then I’ll be heading home, quite a tiring day it is”

“Excuse me? You are to complete these papers by the end of today,” Kaichou said while placing a huge heap of files on the table.

“Already?!”

“Quit whining and get your job done”

“You thought things will be easy, don’t you? Hahahaha,” said the blonde.

“Zip it Makino, you have your own share of ‘problems’ don’t you?” said Kaichou.

Problems?

“I told you I can’t help it!” Makino defended herself.

“What’s this?” I asked Sasaki.

“Apparently, this self-proclaimed idol is a bit of a sadist, the recent case is she got carried away and continued to beat a guy after he admitted defeat in a kendo spar,” explained Sasaki.

“Is the guy okay?” Hitori asked.

“Yeah, yeah just a few minor bruises and scratches,” Makino left the room after saying that.

“Where is she going?”

“Probably to settle the case, don’t worry too much, this happens quite often, you should get used to it,” Sasaki said.

The heap of papers seemed like a mountain from my perspective, never in my life have I ever done this much paperwork….

Not wanting to cause any ruckus, I just went along and complete the task given to me.

Though it was very unpleasant to have me do this on my first day of high school, the atmosphere around the hardworking Kaichou seems very peaceful and somewhat delightful.

I must admit, this doesn’t seem all too bad. Soon I was drowned in the mood and focused like crazy on the papers.

Finishing up the last document,

“Uwahh….that took me longer than expected.”

I looked around the room after a very long session of paper works, I can’t see any of the council members anywhere, maybe I didn’t notice they left.

As I pack my stuff, my eye caught the glimpse of a beautiful hair swaying from behind a pile of books and files. As I move closer to take a peek, a beautiful girl was laying her head on the table seemingly had fallen asleep.

“Why is she still here? Did she waited for me?…..” in confusion, I wondered.

A smile appeared on my face as I look at her sleeping…must be tiring too becoming the president…

I then returned to my seat and faked a loud sneeze “Achoo!!” that woke Kaichou.

“All done! Whewww…..I can go home now,”

I said out loud attempting to wake Kaichou up.

“Well then, thank you for your hard work, u may return home,”

“Aren’t you going home Kaichou?”

“Me going back home is none of your concern”.

None of my concern?

“But it’s getting late”.

She ignored me while continued doing some work on her desk.

I cleaned up the table, and proceed to leave the room. Having decided, I hid and waited for Kaichou outside the school gate. 5 minutes have passed and Kaichou is seen exiting the school gate.

I continued to follow her like a stalker, wait, isn’t that a bad thing? It’s already quite late, I looked at my phone that showed 9.34 p.m.

She suddenly stopped walking.

“You thought I wouldn’t notice I’m being followed? You’re movements make so much sound, you would have died long ago if you’re a spy”.

Did I got found out already? As shocked as I am, I went out of hiding.

“Uhm...Is it that noticeable? I wasn’t planning on stalking you or anything, just wanna observe you from a further distance,” I attempted to explain.

“Isn’t that the very definition of stalking?”

Ah! That seems quite right, I panicked and started spouting nonsense trying to deny her statement.

As I was panicking, Kaichou seemed to be staring at me, is she mad? She continued to leave the place ignoring me, again…

“Wait Kaichou, let me walk you home, it’s getting pretty dark”.

“I would advice you to not waste your time on such trivial matters”

Trivial? How is this trivial?

“I wouldn’t say it’s trivial, as a matter of fact, I see it completely as an obligation to ensure your safety at this time of day, Kaichou”

She’s staring again…did I do something wrong?

“Do as you please,” she replied without even turning her head.

Feeling a bit of relief, I continued to walk her home, more like guarding? Can’t seem to find a word to describe this situation.

As we walked, I tried to spark a conversation, looking at Kaichou being silent along the way, talking to her might lighten her mood a little.

Although I’m not quite sure what her mood is currently….with an expression like that, no one can guess it…

“Say, are you not scared of encountering bad guys this late at night?”

“I believe you had experienced my self-defense first-hand this morning,”

She seems quite confident in her self-defense.

“Well, in most cases where women and even men encountered a real criminal attempting to do harmful actions towards them, their body froze in fear, humans have a built-in safety mechanism which is also known as fight or flight where your body increases in blood flow and breathes rapidly, but because of fear, none of the options are viable as they just stopped from doing anything, when fear has taken control of the mind, our judgment will also sway away from rationality, not that I’m saying that you’re gonna get scared by something like that, but men are undeniably stronger than women, in any case, think carefully before even attempting to confront them…… please”.

“...”

“Ah sorry to break the mood there, my bad eheh”

“This far will suffice, I will proceed alone, if I caught you beyond this point, I assure you there will be dire consequences,” Kaichou said or more precisely threatened me.

“Okay then, have a safe walk, goodnight Kaichou”.

I left her with a smile as I turned around walking towards my home which is not too far but also not too close to this area…

As Hitori left, Kaichou stared at him for a bit before also leaving the area.

…

In Hitori’s apartment,

“My first day of high school….that was quite a weird way to start the semester, the future does look promising enough for an unusual experience, I guess not normal is more interesting hehehe”.

Being quite tired, I immediately dozed off.

The following days, the council, members taught me about a lot of things, a week had passed.

Every day for this past week, I was burdened by the works of the student council, why the hell is there so much work in here. My precious time to watch animes were also sacrificed as the result of this unpaid labor, the only satisfying thing about this is a night of sleep after a tiring work makes me feel like I’m in heaven. The feeling when your exhausted body being laid down on the bed is indescribable.

As I was doing some works in the student council room one day, I just realized that my part-time job was about to start, at exactly tomorrow, I need to inform Kaichou of my absence for tomorrow’s work.

Coming up with a lie is no easy task for me, yes, I’m very bad at telling lies, but I can compensate it with a convincing expression at the very least.

They say that ‘ a key to a good lie, lies in the details ’, throwing in details will make the lie seems more believable.

Nowadays, the most commonly used lie is family issues, it has been used too frequently that made it seem very obvious a lie, but I’m not quite sure about that, family issues refer to problems or issues that involve the family which is a private matter, this means that even though it is seen as an apparent lie, to prove it, the matter must be unraveled and it’s not very possible to do that as it might seem like an insensitive act.

Concluding that, they must accept the lie as to not cause any additional trouble.

“Kaichou, I’m afraid tomorrow I won’t be able to help with the council’s works, I have a part-….I mean I’m busy with some family issues,” I informed Kaichou and nearly told her about the part-time job.

“I suppose I can excuse you for tomorrow,” she replied.

“Ah, as an early notice, we will be having a meeting with the sports club to discuss the preparations for the upcoming sports festival in one month, the meeting will be held here but the date and time are yet to be decided, be sure to free your schedule when the time comes,” Kaichou announced to the council members.

“Sports festival huh, this year’s gonna be interesting, I’ll be winning all of them of course hahahahaha,” Sasaki claimed with a sinister laugh.

This musclehead is for sure going to dominate his sports….

“Oh, I’m sure you will Sasaki-san,” I replied.

Normally sports festivals are held during the second semester but somehow this school’s sports festival is held rather early in the middle of the first semester.

“Isn’t it a bit too early for the sports festival?”

“We don’t know why but that’s just how this school works,” Makino said.

No one seems to know the reason, what a weird school.

“Oh…so Kaichou, are you good with sports?”

“I won’t be participating, but to answer your question, I’m quite confident in my stamina,” she replied.

“Then why not participate in running?”

“Not interested”.

“Why not?”

Kaichou seems silent, does she not like sports? Or is she acting all cool? If so, what a weird way to act…

“Well, I think sports are cool, competing to see who has the better technique and physical capabilities are all the reason it needs to be awesome”

“That’s true bro! Strength is what determines a man!”

Err…that’s not what I really meant, but if that’s how you think, I don’t need to bother explaining I guess…

With nothing else to discuss, everyone continued their work afterward.

At Hitori’s workplace.

Hitori works as a part-timer in a book store near his apartment,

This job is the one helping me pay for the school fees, the pay’s good, my co-workers or senpai here are also very kind to me, there is no other workplace environment that is even close to what I’m having right now, such positive vibes, but there is one thing I’m very worried and aware of, this is a bookstore, which means the customer here are interested in books and perhaps some stationeries, what comes in mind first when you think of those two elements? Students! Students from my school might recognize me and report me to the school.

What am I gonna do when that happens???? Keep calm, keep calm, the probability of people recognizing me is low as I don’t stand out too much in school.

Somehow on the same day, as I was arranging books, a certain customer came in.

The doorbell rang “ding dong!” as the customer entered the store.

When I turned my head to greet the customer,

“Welcome to the sto-” I immediately started to get nervous.

The customer was Kaichou.

“What the hell is this misfortune??!! I can't afford to get caught this early, need a plan ASAP,” I whispered to myself while fast-walking to the counter.

I need a disguise! Fast!

In the drawer at the counter, there appear to be some masks and a cap.

A cap and a mask! The perfect disguise hihihi, this will surely fool her.

She went and looked for some things for a short time and came to the counter to pay. Girls like this are hard to find, coming into a store with a clear objective in mind.

“That will be 1 250 yen”

Kaichou handed the amount, then started staring at me in disguise.

Trying to hold myself together, I started sweating endlessly while screaming inside.

“Do you happen to be related to Hitori Yume-san? The weird boy with glasses” she asked.

So I’m weird huh, that hurts a bit not gonna lie.

“Wha- what are you talking about? I don’t know any Hitori Yume, uhuh yep yep no Hitori Yume related to me at all that’s for sure, hundred percent confirmed,” I answered her while panicking which made it quite obvious that I’m lying.

“Is that so, sorry for disturbing your work”

“No no don’t worry about it”.

She actually believed me, how is this even possible? No no she must be pretending. This can’t be true. But the look on her face, she sure isn’t lying though.

Her face quickly turned more emotionless than before, it’s almost as if her eyes become less bright? I can’t quite explain it.

“Thank you for buying from this store, have a nice day!”

After Kaichou exited the store, I took off the cap and mask as I was sweating so much that they were packed with sweat.

That’s a close one…

“Hitori-san!!”

A co-worker called me from out of nowhere, it made me jump out of the counter out of shock thinking that I got exposed, luckily Kaichou is nowhere to be seen near the store. Later, I told the co-workers to not call me Hitori when working, they then decided to call me Hito instead of Hitori.

…

The meeting day with the sports club has arrived, the sports club consists of other smaller clubs respective of their own type of sports, the four persons in front of me represents all of the sports clubs in this school.

“Let's get this meeting started shall we, I believe there is no need for such introductions,” Kaichou stated.

“Hold on, I guess I require a bit of introduction from them,” I interrupted.

“Oh yeah! You’re the new guy, I’m the president of the sports club, Yamada Taiyo,” the tall happy-go-lucky guy introduced.

“Name, Hayami Chise, position, vice president,” said the short girl.

“My turn, my turn! Hello, nice to meet you! I am Fujimura Rin, the secretary of the club and also the rival of the Student Council President!” said the girl with an overly excited face.

“Adachi Haruki, treasurer,” said the guy with the gloomy face.

“Ah nice to meet you all, I’m the new vice president, Hitori Yu-” my introduction was cut by Kaichou.

“Then we shall proceed on the meeting,” Kaichou interrupted.

Come on…

The meeting went on as the sports club presents their proposal for the sports festival.

It seems that I am now a zombie laying my head on the table.

“This is too intense, I barely understand what your points are”.

“Basically, the sports club demanded to include all the sports in this year’s festival, is that even possible?” Makino wondered.

“It is not our obligation to accept the demands that go beyond our ability but to improvise our actions to fit their demand,” Kaichou stated.

For an instance there, she looked cooler than her normal cool.

An idea struck me,

“There might be a way to accomplish that”.

“From the records of this school’s sports festival’s activities, they all looked very plain and boring, how about we take activities that involve the basics of more than one sport? There are a lot of schools that do that too, we could even copy from them, from what I see all those activities involves teamwork and communication, so we can even give the students a taste of working as a team,”

“That sounds like a fantastic idea, well-done bro,” Sasaki praised me for my suggestion.

“That seems like so much fun!” Fujimura, one of the sports club representatives shouted.

“That might be a good idea mister vice president, I saw my friends in other schools also did the same thing, I wonder why is our school still stuck on boring plain stuff?” Yamada, the president of the club said.

“But doesn’t that sound like we will be altering this school’s tradition? Will the students accept a change like this?” Makino worried.

“Either they accept or reject this idea, they won’t be able to stop it, the student council has the power to do so,” Adachi stated.

“I’m pretty sure that they will find a lot of fun in it, after all, they are at the age of teens, at the very least they should experience fun events like this….. while they can,” I said, but the last part was a bit slow as to not show it as a significant importance.

“Hitori-san? Is there something wrong?” Makino asked of concern.

“Ah! Nothing, just a bit tired, eheh,”

“So are you all in an agreement?” I asked.

Everyone except Kaichou nodded.

“Kaichou, what are your thoughts?” Hitori asked.

“Changing the tradition might enrage some teachers and parents as well, but our top priority is to change the student of this school to better suit society, that being said, it’s been decided, this year’s sports festival will be the first to change the tradition for many years to come,” stated by Kaichou.

So we need to find team-based activities that are well suited to be used in school considering the safety, equipment availability, and application of sports in it.

The team worked hard to make the sports festival successful with the help of all the sports club members. The preparations are done without a single casualty.

While the preparation is made for the sports festival, I noticed as I observed Kaichou doing the preparation seemed quite…how do I say it, glad? Perhaps happy? Working with so many people might actually be fun for Kaichou? The feeling is unclear through the expressions she made…

Well, as long as she’s not unsatisfied or displeased, it’s fine.

Now the only thing to do is hope that the students will have fun in the activities.

The sports festival day has arrived, before the activities started, the principal gave a short speech encouraging the students for the festival. As everyone had expected, the speech is boring as hell, the majority of the student just stared at the sky proving that the plain sky is more interesting than the speech.

As the speech ended, the host which is the student council and sports club is to explain the activities involved, the one to do that was the sports club’s president, Yamada Taiyo, this person happens to be extremely famous in school, all the students cheered on as he explained thoroughly about the activities that are held and changed this year.

“Oh and one thing, this idea was made by the student council vice president,”

The looks on their faces immediately turned to disgust while looking at me who was just standing near the stage, smiling without a care in the world.

“That peasant?”, “Who does he think he is, changing the tradition?”, “whatever, sports festivals are never entertaining,” insults can be heard from the crowd, but my expression remains the same.

“Calm down everybody, the activities are fun I assure you, let’s put our trust in Hitori-san okay?” Yamada tried to calm the students.

“Well then! Let the sports festival begin!”

“Yeah!” the students responded to Yamada’s call.

The activities seem to be giving the students a hard time in the beginning, but they all managed to work together at the same time having fun. Their expressions are very pleased and innocent having fun with their friends.

Even if I’m treated similarly to that of trash, I can't possibly treat these people who are being themselves even with a slight retaliation to their actions.

It’s not that enjoy being treated as such, it’s just I’m used to it and however I think about it, I can’t seem to care about it at all…

After all, they come to school to learn and become a better person, however, you look at it, only those who want to change will show their resolve, attending school is also considered a small step to change for the better good.

While drowning in thoughts, I heard a person calling out my name.

“Hitori! Oy!”

I turned my head to take a look, it was Chiba, it seems like he had just participated in something judging from his sweaty state. But what is wrong with that amount of sweat? It certainly is not normal for a person to be sweating that much…

“Yo Chiba, just got out of the pool or something?”

“Whoa! How did you know?”

Jackpot!

“Look at yourself…I wouldn’t ask if you just got out of a fire if your clothes are wet like this would I?”

“You’re using confusing sentences…I guess..not?”

How is my sentence confusing? Either way, now I need to ask why…

“Why were you in the pool? I don’t think there are any activities involving the pool though…”

“Well I slipped and fell inside”

Man this guy, is he playing dumb or is genuinely dumb?

“Let me rephrase the question, what are the circumstances that lead to you falling into the pool?”

“Oh actually my buds and I were playing tag by the pool”

Playing tag…how old are you again?

“Then this girl came, I suspect that she had been looking at us for quite a while, somehow she saw the perfect opportunity to throw something on my foot and made me fell inside the pool…”

“A girl? What did she look like?”

“Hrmm, she had a ponytail…her face was kind of evil but not really”

Evil but not really? With a ponytail..

“Oh and she was blonde”

Of course…who else if it isn’t the sadist…

“I might know who did it, you wanna know?”

“Eh, not really, don’t really care who did it, it was fun getting to swim though…”

Err…

We talked a bit until Chiba left for another activity participation while soaking wet like that.

Looking around the school area where activities being held, I found a nice spot for a good view and decided to take a seat there, then I spotted Kaichou in one of the activities.

What happened to not participating eh? What a very contradicting person, haha.

“Kaichou! Do your best!” I cheered.

She doesn’t seem to notice my cheer.

…..wait, her team is competing against that self-proclaimed rival, the sports club girl!

They participated in the three-legged race, their partners seems like they already passed out though, Kaichou and that girl seem to have an immense amount of strength to drag another person while maintaining their top spots. Scary….

I stared at the sky while the breeze blew my hair creating a wave-like motion.

“If only…….”

The sports festival ended with a blast. The battle between Kaichou and that girl ended with Kaichou’s team as the victor. The students seem to have fun at the festival. That’s good to see.

After the closing ceremony,

“Another announcement, all students are required to fill in the feedback form and hand them over to the student council before the weekend, thank you,” Yamada announced on the stage.

“Well that was fun wasn’t it?” I said to the council members in the room.

“I agree with you bro, that’s one heck of a sports festival, although I single-handedly defeated the opponents, having a team certainly motivates you,” Sasaki boasted about his victories.

“I had quite a lot of fun with my friends trampling over our opponents as we merge victorious, hahahahaha,” said Makino who looks like a villain right now while reminiscing her actions.

“Kaichou! I saw you having fun as well~” I attempted to tease her.

“I was only doing my responsibilities as a part of my team to achieve victory, that is all,” Kaichou replied with an emotionless face.

From my perspective, that doesn’t seem to be the case though.

“Is that so?” I said.

“How about you? I most certainly didn’t see you participate in any of the activities,” she said as if she was interrogating me.

Crap! I didn’t prepare an answer for that!

“Ah, I- I was just busy helping out my team handling the foo-food, no time to participate I guess,” I tried to answer while panicking.

I can’t let them know….

“Hm, whatever,” she replied and continued her work.

Whew….good thing she didn’t ask further, I won't be able to extend the lie knowing how bad I am at deceiving.

Looking at Kaichou,

I’m sure she had fun at the sports festival just now, even if that face doesn’t show anything, I can somehow feel that she is happy inside. I’m truly glad that this all ended very well. Truly glad….