"A six letter lettered word for failure?"

"Kasumi," I said.

Kakeru whistled, marking that down on his crossword puzzle sheet. "A little harsh don't you think?"

My chin on the table didn't raise the slightest. I closed my eyes, taking in the peaceful twinkles of the bells, and the chirping of birds. The calming aroma of the flowers were nice also.

In my attempt to escape from the bombardment of Shuuhei's smothering behaviour, plus the girls and boys who'd read about my current situation from that newspaper, here I was now hiding away inside the SC sanctuary. Not long after my arrival, both Kakeru and his brother arrived also, complaining that Juuna disallowed them to have lunch in the cafeteria for not finishing their obligations.

And yet here Kakeru was, fooling around with a crossword puzzle while Wateru was happily doing both workloads, typing up some of the documents on his laptop.

"Ah," Kakeru said, eyes sliding to me. "A fourteen letter word for disappointment."

"Kasumi Yonamine."

He chuckled as he set his puzzle down. "It's like I'm not even following the rules. Everything you've given me has been your name."

I briefly peeked at the sheet, scrawled with Kasumi in ten different vertical and horizontal rows, and heaved another sigh.

"That one's Kasumi, too," I murmured, tapping at the remaining column.

Hands positioned flat on the table, Kakeru brought his face at a close proximity to mine. The grin he wore was as bright as day. "You all right?"

"A-OK," I mumbled.

"Doesn't look that way to me."

"Does anyone ever look the way they are inside?"

Kakeru retreated with a boisterous guffaw, gripping his sides. "True! Gosh, you kill me!"

"I kill myself, too," I groaned, burying my face into the marble. "First with Shuuhei and Upperclassman Anzai's one-eighty, and now Ashikaga hates my guts? Even the principal is out to get me. Flubnuggets. What did I do to deserve all this ostracizing?"

"Oh yeah, Shuuhei!" Kakeru cackled. "The guy's such a masochist! He always tried to act tough in front of you, Kasumi, but he fell right through! It's hilarious!"

"He even asked to borrow a collar and leash from me this morning," Wateru sourly said without tearing his eyes away from the screen. "As much as I like to be bossed around by my master, Juuna, I do not want a repeat of our parrot Kasumi."

That damn pet... "You seriously had a pet named Kasumi?"

"Shuuhei brought it in one day three months ago because it was injured," Kakeru explained with a nod. "It was little brown robin he insisted reminded him of the new girl who'd recently enrolled."

Colour drained from my face. "He was stalking me from back then?"

"Not necessarily 'stalking,'" Kakeru said. "He'd bring up how often she'd get into trouble..." He turned to Wateru. "Wasn't there that one time Shuuhei was cornered by a bunch of jealous guys and Kasumi stepped in?"

It was as if I was jolted by electricity. My mouth fell. Wait... that day I...

"The day she dislocated a guy's shoulder?" Wateru offered, poking his head out. "After that day, Shuuhei was charmed by Yonamine's strength and admired her."

"So that's the story!" Kakeru turned to me and grinned. "See? And he's just been acting tough in front of you on purpose."

I ran my fingers through my hair, clasping at strands in wide-eyed disbelief. No way... Hell no... That kid's butt I saved that day at the back of the school was Shuuhei? I wasn't too focused on him and more on the idiots and their disgusting bullying, but...

"You shouldn't hold this all against yourself," Kakeru said, seizing my attention. "This submission and dominance stuff aside, you can be yourself, Kasumi. A little more behaved version of yourself, but yourself. Wateru and I even learned a little thing or two since our punishment."

Though offended, I didn't let the last of his sentence slip by. "Punishment...?"

He nodded and leaned back in his seat. "You may not believe it, but this entire Student Council isn't the bright place everyone thinks it is."

"You don't say," I spat.

Kakeru laughed. He was always laughing. He tried again, "I mean, it wasn't founded like other schools. All four members of the Student Council are just like you and Ashikaga."

I blinked rapidly. I shifted my eyes to Wateru who was frowning at his brother.

"Kakeru, should we really be telling her?"

Kakeru waved it off. "Why not? Kasumi is one of us now."

"Wait," I said, slapping the table. "What do you mean I'm one of you? I do not want to be lumped together with lunatics like you all!"

Kakeru's eerily sweet smile didn't fall from his face. "Your insults are always so funny, but please keep them at a minimum. Master Kakeru is speaking so if you know what's good for you, you'll shut up and listen."

My lips downturned bitterly, but I relented anyway. Kakeru brightened straightaway, producing another lighthearted chuckle.

Then, he leaned forward over the table until we were staring into each other's eyes again. "The Student Council has a secret, Kasumi."

My breathing hitched in my throat. Secret...?

"Wait!" Sakura Kayano was breathless. "Please tell me the Student Council's secret! They cannot be that perfect. I know they're hiding something."

Wait, there was more to the Student Council than their S&M fetish?

Kakeru bobbed his head at my surprise, holding up his index finger. "A secret even our vice president isn't aware of."

"Juuna—" Wateru's glare from his seat was enough to send me shivering. "I mean, Master Juuna, isn't aware?"

"Master Juuna was the last to join our ranks," Kakeru enlightened me. "Three months ago? Around the same time you enrolled here, actually."

I couldn't hitch back my surprise. Juuna was that new to the SC? If anything, I believed these psychos knew each other longer considering how well they wreaked havoc together.

Kakeru sniggered at my surprise. "Shocking, right? Juuna—" He turned to his defensive brother. "—excuse me for not saying honourifics—fits in so well with us. When she ran for Vice President, she got the job in a heartbeat. And when she met us for the first time and learned of our... obsession, she embraced it wholeheartedly with us. Juuna's a team player, so she even helped enforce our passion a bit."

Was that why she carried that frightening whip? By the look on Wateru's starry-eyed face, I didn't even want to consider what else that witch had done prior to my arrival.

"But nobody except the superintendent knows of our past deeds," Kakeru stated. "The reason the Student Council was formed was for mere discipline."

I scrunched up my brows, but even still I was drawing blanks. "You're gonna have to be a little more specific, Kakeru. My brain's not too advanced."

Humoured, he relented with a nod then stretched his words. "Shuuhei, Wateru and I were once delinquents."

My mouth plummeted. "Wh-what?"

"Wateru and I were partners in crime," he went on, almost proudly. "We used to live in Chiba, where we were the biggest names in the city. Nobody messed with our turfs, and if they did they had hell to pay. We'd taken up boxing, judo, karate—we even learned some cool ninjutsu from our Naruto marathons—so knocking out the people we didn't like was a pretty easy task." He got up and wrung his arm around his younger brother's neck. "Plus, Wateru's a smartass so on top of physical strength, we were also the smartest in our middle school."

The words buzzing past my ears were incredulous fantasies, and I was speechless.

"Which reminds me," he went on with a sudden twinkle, "we even forced the education board to rename our middle school to 'Horie Middle.' I think the students who go there are still quaking in our memory to this day. Amazing, right?"

"Kakeru." Wateru was blossoming flowers from his head in joy. "Y-you're choking me."

"Hold up!" I shouted, lurching to my feet. "You mean to tell me that you two are delinquents?"

"Were," Kakeru corrected, releasing Wateru. Despite that, in that moment, both brothers shared the badass edge they were implying. "But because of that, we weren't allowed any privileges into any high schools in Chiba, so our parents were really pissed at us. Said they were going to disown us."

Wateru, almost as if in disappointment, rubbed his neck. "That's why they sent us to live with our aunt here in Tokyo."

"And a promise to not get into any trouble in our next high school, or Rokura High," Kakeru finished. "We did our best to wipe our habits but it wasn't so easy. I'd always accidentally slug somebody in public for giving me a nasty look, then Wateru would send them to the hospital for ever disrespecting me." He chuckled as he confessed to this. "But that's when we were randomly summoned here to this SC sanctuary on the first day of school where we first met Shuuhei who gave us our roles."

My insides were grinding their gears, but the only fathomable sentence in my mind was, "Wait, you mean to tell me that you two were legitimate delinquents? Ones with similar predicaments to mine?"

Kakeru digested my words and shared a look with Wateru. Then, he faced me with a thumbs up.

"You are correct!"

Holy crappity. "A-and you mean to tell me Shuuhei's a delinquent, too?"

"Shuuhei was a different calibre of troublemaker," Kakeru informed me, palm on the tabletop as he shrugged one shoulder. "Likewise, he went to a middle school in a nearby prefecture and always possessed such a manipulative personality. He'd always get involved in gangs, or black markets—I even heard he got some strings in the mafia—to get back at people who dared to cross him. And those very people cease to exist today... if you get what I'm saying."

"Holy fuck," I shouted. "And we have this insane lunatic with us now? Running the school? Rolling around by my feet like a puppy for scraps?"

Kakeru snorted. "It's a fact nonetheless that when the three of us settled down in the Student Council at Rokura High, we softened up. We gained a common interest—a mutual respect for dominance, and a soft spot for submission. It's how the world went round, and how everything always conceded, and we realized that. We admired it." He leaned forward so we were eye to eye. "Until here we are now, with two adorable pets and an oblivious school and students to our secrets."

My mind swirled like cotton candy—spinning as wildly as a rollercoaster up a loopty loop. But when the crash and shattering of pottery filled the room, it didn't go unnoticed. All of our heads snapped towards the entrance of the sanctuary, and there, crouched behind a flower bed and a shattered pot with dirt splayed out on the floor, was a girl.

We went stricken.

She had dressed in a mask, but that didn't hide the pink strands of her hair poking through from her Sherlock's hat. The tape recorder and notepad and pen didn't slip by my sight either.

Complete awe and fear was slapped across Sakura Kayano's face. She'd finally uncovered what she wanted, after all.

"Holy moly!" she exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Then, with a grip to her hat, she went racing out the front doors, exclaiming at the top of her lungs, "I-I found it! The Student Council's secret! The Student Council isn't who they say they are!"

Her voice faded out the further she ran.

Anger surged through my veins at once. "That witch! How the heck did she get in here?"

"Kakeru, you forgot to lock the door after yourself didn't you?" Wateru said, giving his brother a pointed look.

Kakeru sucked in a breath, running his fingers through his spiky hair. "Oops?"

"Don't 'oops' me, Kakeru." Wateru frowned. "Now Master Juuna will yell at us." Though he said that in disappointment, it hit him in a new light and he immediately brightened. "Master Juuna will yell at me. She'll whip me..."

"Shuuhei won't let this slide either; he swore us to never speak of this to anyone, much less the News Department of all groups." Kakeru puffed up his cheeks, most likely after imagining the potential craziness this entire slip-up could escalate to. "Any chance she heard us wrong?"

"I'd say zero," I answered, crossing my arms over my chest and staring at the wide open doorway. "You guys better prepare yourselves for the repercussions."