School, as always, remained a constant stake anchoring us into our everyday lives, whether there were any annoying tournament-arc shenanigans or not. Speaking of which, since I just reminded myself of the source of my current headaches, I let out an obligatory sigh and slouched even further down in my seat.

The class just ended, and I honestly couldn’t tell what subject we had. Not because I was so out of it, but due to the whole class being worked up into a pre-school-festival fervor, at least as much as that was possible for placeholders. Because of this, every class had been just Mrs. Applebottom coming in, discussing individual roles and plans for the concert, everyone would get moderately excited, then the class would end, she’d leave, only to return after the break and continue where we left off.

"Why the long face?"

I glanced over at the princess sitting in front of me and shrugged.

"Lots of things on my mind. I’m also getting a little burned out by the school festival talks."

"Now that you mention it, is it just me, or was the discussion going in circles?"

"Not just you," Judy commented the moment she arrived at our desks. "The class discussed the concert plans three times, the advertisement campaign four times, and the Christmas ball six times."

"Wow... I kind of zoned out, but I didn’t think it was that bad," Elly whispered, and then gestured for me to lean closer and asked, "So, are things always that repetitive when placeholder people are involved?"

"More or less," I whispered back.

"Was... I also that bad?"

"You’d never been a placeholder," Judy pointed out as she joined our conspiratorial huddle.

"But I’d been chatting with the girls in the past, and I never noticed going in circles, but I must have, or I would’ve noticed that we were going in circles."

"That’s circular reasoning, but in any case, I don’t remember you ever doing that."

"If anyone should be worried about that, it’s me," Judy followed me up, and after some thinking, I shook my head.

"Actually, I don’t remember you ever doing that either. You were pretty weird in the beginning though."

"So I’m weird," she repeated after me a touch peevishly.

"Past tense, past tense. You were," I stressed.

"So what am I now?"

"Eccentric?" I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, and my dear assistant imperceptibly narrowed her eyes.

"That means the same thing," Judy responded flatly.

"No, it’s not. Being eccentric is endearing. Being weird is just weird."

Elly let out a giggle at our expense, but then she cocked her head to the side and asked, "What about me?"

"You’re a dragon-blooded princess of a rich record magnate family living in a mansion with a steward and a chambermaid. You’re eccentric by default."

"Which means I’m endearing," the princess concluded with a smug smirk, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

"You sure are."

"Sometimes, I’m almost jealous of your positivity," Judy noted on the side, and I had to agree with her. Then she glanced at her phone and said, "Thirteen minutes until next class. Restroom?"

"Restroom," Elly proclaimed and stood up at once, and while at first I thought it was some kind of codeword, the two of them excused themselves and left the classroom in a hurry.

Now, I knew there was a joke here. Or was it just a trope? Meme? In any case, there was this old thing about girls going to the restroom in pairs or groups being mystifying to boys, and this situation reminded me of it. I don’t think I’d ever heard a proper answer to it either. Though again, if I really wanted to, I could always just find it out with my Far Sight, but I really didn’t want to violate my girlfriends’ privacy over something silly like that. Being left alone on the toilet was one of the less talked about inalienable human rights, but it was one all the same.

To take my mind off the mystery of the girl’s toilet time, I turned around and tried to strike up a conversation with Josh, but the guy was nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was met by a group of four staring down at me.

"Leonard S. Dunning!" the guy in the front exclaimed with a dramatic flair only hampered by his flat delivery.

"Oh, come on," I grumbled as I faced the four amigos. "I’m really not in the mood for this right now."

Mr. Bowl Cut completely disregarded my objection and crossed his arms.

"We are here to stage an intervention before you walk down the path of the loathsome Joshua Bernstein!"

We locked eyes for a while, but they refused to get the message, so I exhaled hard and prepared myself for yet another non-sequitur infodump courtesy of the four creepy weirdos. These guys had been doggedly following Sahi as of late, roleplaying as her lackeys (or at the very least I sincerely hoped it was just roleplay), and so I adopted a live-and-let-live approach in regards to them, precisely to avoid situations like this.

"Playing around with the hearts of innocent girls when you’re already in an enviable relationship with one of the goddesses of Blue Cherry High is unforgivable!" Mr. Spiky burst out with indignation, and his comrades nodded in unison.

Could this be about Judy? While we didn’t exactly announce our polyfidelitous triang relationship to the whole wide world, we weren’t exactly subtle about it either, so if someone were to notice, it had to be these relationship-obsessed bozos. However, before I could directly ask, Mr. Bedhair stepped forth.

"Leonard S. Dunning!" he echoed my name, still using my nonexistent middle initial. "What is your relationship with the school’s new goddess, Penelope Pendragon?"

"Oh, you meant Penny?" I blurted out, but after a moment of thinking I had to admit, "Yeah, now that I think about it, it’s obvious she’d show up on your radar sooner than Judy."

"Answer the question!" Mr. Bowl Cut warned me with an extended finger, and no matter how I looked at it, he could’ve learned a thing or two from his new idol when it came to accusative pointing.

"Sister," I stated a touch dourly, and the group shared a confused glance.

"You have different surnames," Mr. Bedhair pointed out, and I rewarded him with a shrug.

"We have different fathers."

My technical truth dealt a big blow to the guy, but Mr. Spiky took his place at once.

"Then how come you never come to school together?"

"She’s not living with us at the moment."

"Then... Then..." Mr. Crew Cut opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water, but then he suddenly raised a hand and declared, "Tactical meeting."

With practiced motions, the four huddled together by bending down and linking their arms. It’s the kind of thing hand-egg players would do on the hand-egg field when discussing how to best slam into the opposing team next round. Did that have a name? I figured I’d look it up later, but it wasn’t exactly pivotal information, so I pretty much expected I’d forget about it.

Anyhow, while the four amigos adopted the pose to keep things confidential, they neglected to tone down their voices, so I could hear everything they said.

"Do you think she’s really her sister?"

"Goddess Penelope gets along really well with goddess Neige. If they were sisters, it would explain much."

"Indeed. We must continue our observations to make sure."

"I agree. Does it mean Leonard S. Dunning is off the hook?"

"He’s the luckiest bastard on Earth, but that’s not a sin."

"A concur. Being related to two of the goddesses is truly lucky, but so long as he doesn’t monopolize them, it’s too early to brand him just yet."

"Are we all in agreement?"

The four of them nodded at the same time and broke their circle to face me again.

"You are hereby granted probation. Make sure you don’t become another enemy of every red-blooded male in this school," Mr. Bedhair declared, and Mr. Bowl Cut nodded along.

"We don’t need another Bernstein."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." I waved them off, and after another glare, the creepy cohort left through the door at the back, more or less in lockstep.

With them gone, the classroom suddenly felt empty. Probably because it was, as I was sitting in it by my lonesome. Well, okay, technically there was a placeholder girl cleaning the blackboard, but besides her, totally empty. This state of affairs lasted for a grand total of fifteen-ish seconds, as after poking her head past the doorframe to look around, Elly came back and made her way over to me.

"Is everything all right?"

I blinked at her question and responded with, "Sure. Why?"

"I saw there was a small crowd at your desk."

"Oh, that? Nah, those were just the weirdo squad. You know; the guys who were selling panty shots and stuff a while back?"

"What did they want with you?"

"Nothing serious. They just annoy me sometimes with awkward exposition. I’m used to it, and they left quickly this time around."

Elly glanced back and forth between me and the rear entrance, and asked, with one hundred percent sincerity, "If they’re bothering you, do you want me to rough them up?"

The offer caught me off-guard, and after the first surprise, drew a chuckle out of me.

"Nah, that would just cause more trouble than it’s worth."

"Never say that! Standing up for your family is never too much trouble! It’s the Dracis way!"

To punctuate her words, Elly took up a fighting pose and jabbed at the air a couple of times. I’m sure she wanted to seem intimidating, but no matter how I looked at it, her shadowboxing like that was closer to cute. Kind of like a puppy trying to intimidate a bigger dog, except in her case, I knew for a fact that she could break someone in half if she was serious. Didn’t make her one iota less adorable though.

"Easy there, princess. No need to get so worked up."

"I’m not worked up," she denied it with just a hint of a pout. "If anything, you’re not worked up enough!"

"About beating up annoying side characters?" She didn't respond, so I gave it some more thought. "The tournament?" I ventured another guess, and she firmly put her hands on my desk.

"Of course I’m talking about that! It’s been ages since so many clans participated in one, and this is going to be the biggest in recent history! Why aren’t you excited?"

I sent a sideways glance her way, then looked around, and since the classroom was still mostly empty, I let a shallow sight slip and told her, "It’s a meta thing."

"Is it? How do you know?"

"Mostly because it’s a cliché, but..." I paused for a moment and decided to quickly summarize my out-of-body experience to her. Elly listened to me attentively, and I concluded with, "In other words, this not only has the Narrative’s grubby fingerprints all over it, but it also means it was totally planned out by some shadowy star-people or what have you."

"Was it?"

"Well... yeah? They talked about it even before the Chinese Draconians came to the island."

"That doesn’t mean they planned it, only that they knew about it ahead of time," she pointed out, stopping me in my tracks for a moment.

I tried to recall the discussion I've witnessed, and while I was a little fuzzy on the details by this point, so I shrugged.

"Okay, I’ll give you a ‘maybe’, but that still doesn’t change the crux of it. It’s still a cliché and a forced development."

My draconic girlfriend eyed me for a while, and when I didn’t respond, she stifled a groan and put her forehead in her palm.

"I’ve noticed this before, but you’re way too focused on this ‘meta’ thing and tend to miss the forest for the trees."

"Ouch, princess. You hurt my pwoor wittle fwe—"

"No! Don’t make a joke out of this. I’m serious."

"Erm... Sorry?"

My girlfriend nodded, only to then bury her face in her palm again.

"This is like the ninja clan situation all over again! You're too focused on viewing things through the lens of these tropes and plot devices, and once you identify one, you just automatically try to avoid or sabotage it before you even consider it from a practical standpoint. I mean, you already have that thought experiment thing you do with Judy. You know? That Sherlock Holmes one."

"... You mean the Doylist and Watsonian interpretations?"

She snapped her fingers and exclaimed, "Yes, that's it! Why don't you apply that to this situation?"

I tried to refute her on reflex, but held back and closed my eyes to organize my thoughts instead. She might be onto something. Because of what I’d overheard in that not exactly dark not quite a room place, I only viewed the upcoming tournament arc as a nuisance forced on us by the Simulacrum and its shadowy machinators, and I completely forgot to interrogate the trope in our context.

So, from a Watsonian perspective, how did the tournament fit into the web of people and motivations?

This question required some pondering, but the break was almost over, so I looked Elly in the eyes and told her, "You gave me some food for thought. Thanks, princess."

"Don't even mention it!"

She flashed me a silly grin, and seeing that our classmates began streaming into the room like clockwork, she took her seat. I was just about to start rethinking my approach in earnest, but then she turned around in her seat and waved to get my attention.

"So, have you changed your opinions on tournaments yet?"

"Still considering things, but I sincerely doubt it'll happen."

"Sooo... Does that mean you're still not going to watch?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Not even my matches?"

My initial reflex was a hard ‘No’, but seeing the upturned gaze she was giving me, I softened it into a much less definitive, "Maybe the semi-finals."

"Do you think I'll get there?"

"Obviously."

My princess beamed a blinding smile at me, but by this point, Mrs. Applebottom also arrived, and so she faced forwards. By the looks of it, things were about to continue in the same, repetitive manner as before, but I no longer minded it.