My morning within the walls of the familiar classroom was decidedly normal, as far as such a word could even be applied to this weird little world I lived in at the moment. Our classes were all held by Mrs. Applebottom, as usual, and the curriculum was mind-numbingly boring, also as usual.

If there was one thing that might have changed, it was that the placeholders seemed to be just a tiny bit less vacuous than before, but considering that I have already seen a similar development in the average passersby on the streets, it was by no ways surprising. It wasn't until the brunch break (which, as the designated snack-time, was a few minutes longer than the rest of the breaks) that things started to proceed down in a pretty damn weird direction.

Right at the beginning of the break, the princess and Judy conspicuously left the classroom to discuss something between the two of them. If I had to make an educated guess, it was probably Judy laying the foundations to the anti-harem countermeasures we discussed the day before, or at least the parts we managed to agree upon before I got fed up with her making fun of the real and tangible threat of me being squeezed into the template of a battle harem protagonist and I chased her home.

Josh also left the place with Angie in tow, ostensibly to see how Snowy was doing. I didn't really see the point, as I have already entrusted Ammy to deal with the paperwork on the school's side of things the day before, and as for the social side, since she had the same cover story as us about catching a nasty flu, I didn't see how him checking on her would affect that in any shape or form. But then again, Josh seemed to subtly favor her over the other members of his entourage, so maybe it was just an excuse to see her again?

Speaking of Ammy though, she was apparently forced to 'take a day off' (her words, not mine) to rest, on her grandfather's orders, because she only finished dealing with my sister's paperwork late last night, even though I told her it wasn't particularly urgent at this point. Maybe she was a bit of a workaholic, I wondered? Anyways, that explained why I haven't met her in the morning, and I hoped she would get some actual rest and would be slightly less cranky by the next time we met.

Anyhow, I was just about to put my English books away and take out the science ones in preparation of the next, no doubt absolutely riveting lesson, when I became aware of the fact that someone was standing by my chair. In actual fact, there were multiple someones; a grand total of four of them, if I wanted to be precise. I reflexively straightened my back in my chair, a little apprehensive of the fact that I was suddenly surrounded by a small mob.

On closer look, all of them seemed to be my placeholder classmates; four guys with almost identical builds and simple haircuts denoting that they weren't particularly important in whatever grand scheme of things were pulling the strings of this world (if my dear assistant's insistence of such things to be believed at face value). Still, seeing them gathering around me like that was highly unusual, so after the first surprise wore off, I cautiously asked, "Can I help you with anything?"

"Say, Leo?" the guy on my right with unkempt, slightly greenish hair asked me in a very familiar tone, though for the life of me I couldn't remember if I ever talked to him in the past.

Still, after a bit of consideration, I prompted him to continue with a cautious, "Yes?"

The members of the small group shared a somewhat nervous look between each other, which incidentally managed to get me nervous as well, until the same guy took a shallow breath and asked, "Are you and the new girl, like… an item?"

For the longest moment I could only blink at them in baffled silence, but at last my brain finally rebooted from its incredulity-induced blue screen of death and I answered with a flat, "If by 'the new girl' you mean Elly, then yes, we are."

"You see, I told you," another of the guys, this one sporting a brown-ish bowl cut, elbowed his comrade in the side with a somewhat robotic motion.

The lips of the target of said jab were bent in a smile that didn't really reach his eyes and he muttered a seemingly disinterested, "You did."

To be frank, I was getting really, really freaked out by this blatant deviation from placeholder behavior, but I somehow managed to keep my expression in check and only awarded them what I called a 'Single Eyebrow Raised in an Intrigued Manner; ver. 0.7.2'. In the meantime, another member of the group, this one with a short crew cut, grabbed hold of one of the empty chairs nearby and pulled it over so that he could sit down next to me.

"You lucky son of a bitch," he told me with a toothy yet at the same time wooden grin. "I can't believe you managed to nab one of the four goddesses of the school."

"Five goddesses," the last member of the troupe, a guy with short, spiky hair interjected with what I presumed was an indignant huff.

"Oh, right, she's there too," Mr. Crew Cut agreed immediately.

"Hold on for a moment," I awkwardly wedged myself into the slowly budding conversation and asked, "What exactly are we talking about again?"

"You don't know about the four goddesses?" Mr. Bedhair asked me as if I was the weird one.

"Five," Mr. Spiky automatically corrected him, but he didn't respond to him.

"Everybody knows who the goddesses are!" Mr. Bowl Cut asserted with rock-solid conviction, then he began to explain, "As we all know, the members of the photography club and the journalism club create the monthly rankings of the most popular girls of our school."

"Yes," Mr. Crew Cut agreed while mechanically nodding over and over again.

"It is common knowledge," Mr. Bowl Cut continued unabated, "that after collecting the votes, they are handed over to the dependable and entirely unbiased analytics club, who then hand the final results back to the journalism club. As we are all aware, any of the girls whose popularity reaches the threshold of 45.326% amongst the male population are considered to be one of the goddesses of Blue Cherry High."

"Indeed," Mr. Crew Cut agreed again.

It took me about this long to realize that I was on the receiving end of an honest to goodness infodump about the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my… well, maybe not life, but the last couple of days, I'd reckon. Anyhow, since this little gaggle of placeholders went out of their way to share this vital and not at all banal information with me, I decided I might as well humor them a little further.

"Sorry, but I wasn't really keeping up with this… um… ranking-thing? You mean to tell me Elly is on it?"

"Of course she is," Mr. Bedhair confirmed with unenthusiastic fervor.

"And who are the rest?" I probed a little further, mostly out of a sense of bile fascination.

"As we all know," Mr. Bowl Cut started again while counting on his fingers, "We have the new girl, Eleanor, who took the rankings by storm and propelled herself to the top in record time! Her natural beauty, her demure temperament, and her high-class upbringing is a definitive hit with the voters."

I wondered just when the situation turned into a sales pitch, but for the time being I decided to just go with the flow.

"The next one would be Angeline," Mr. Spiky asserted himself with a still wooden grin. "Her natural, tomboyish charm and upbeat personality is a definite hit with the target demographic."

"Then we have Amelia," Mr. Bowl Cut spoke without leaving even a second of breathing space in their explanation. "She single-handedly brought back the academic type into popularity with her outstanding beauty and shy temperament. She is also popular with the crowd in love with the level headed, sisterly type."

I wanted to point out that I really didn't think she was either shy or particularly sisterly, but before I could do it, they dropped a minor bombshell.

"The fourth goddess is naturally Mrs. Applebottom," Mr. Crew Cut stated like it was obvious.

"Really?" the incredulous question slipped out of my mouth before I knew it, and the gaggle of sentient haircuts around me all nodded in unison.

"Of course!" Mr. Spiky exclaimed with something that I could be best described as dull indignation.

"Yes," Mr. Bowl Cut seconded with a serious nod. "Her mature charm and the excitement of a forbidden student-teacher affair naturally propels her to the top so that she can take her rightful place among the goddesses."

"And as for the fifth goddess," Mr. Spiky cut in before I could voice my nuanced opinion on the matter and said, "She is naturally no other than the true rising star of our school, the one and only Neige from class 1-A! She took the rankings by storm and propelled herself to the top in record time!" Under normal circumstances this would have been the point where I injected a snide comment about them using the exact same words to describe Elly, but considering it was a group of unusually animate placeholders we were talking about here, I decided it would have been wasted effort, so instead I let him continue, and he said, "Her pure, innocent charm and her natural grace and beauty immediately stole the hearts of all of her classmates, and the number of her fans swells by the day! Even if you don't pay attention to the rankings, you must have heard about her."

"Actually," I finally elbowed my way back into the conversation, then flatly stated, "She is my sister."

"Really?" Mr. Crew Cut asked in an astonished voice that didn't show on his face at all. "You are a lucky man! You are not only dating one of the goddesses, but you can also bask in the glory of another! How enviable!"

"Truer words have never been spoken," Mr. Bedhair said in a, dare I say, profound voice before he let out a theatrical sigh. "Alas, once we also considered ourselves lucky, by being in the same class as three of the goddesses and taught by the fourth one. Oh, the folly of youth!"

"… Okay, let's put the community theater dramatics aside and just tell me what happened," I cut in, getting steadily more exasperated by the second.

"Joshua Bernstein happened!" Mr. Bedhair told me with a still needlessly theatrical scowl. "He single-handedly monopolized two of the goddesses from the very beginning, and rumors say that he already sank his fangs into the innocent flesh of Neige as well! He is the enemy of every single warm-blooded boy in our school!"

I gave the disturbingly enthusiastic 'warm-blooded boy' a Judy™ brand deadpan look and asked, in a strained but polite voice, "You are aware that I am friends with Josh, right?"

"Of course," Mr. Spiky confirmed with a nod. "That's why we want you to become our ally!"

"Your what again?"

"Our ally," Mr. Bowl Cut repeated with a meaningful nod. "Since you are close to the fire, metaphorically speaking, we want you to ensure that Joshua doesn't monopolize all our goddesses by himself."

"… By that same logic, shouldn't you also dislike me for going out with Elly?" I asked the obvious question, but the four of them only shook their heads in unison.

"That is different," Mr. Bedhair explained, "We are not so petty as to stand in the way of true love."

"Everyone could see that you two had a thing for each other from the beginning," Mr. Spiky added without eliciting any reaction from the previous speaker, as he continued:

"So long as you do not intend to hog all the other goddesses too, you are okay in our book."

"If you do, then you are going to become the next number one public enemy of all boys in the school," Mr. Crew Cut added off-handedly.

"Think about it," Mr. Spiky concluded, and all of them seemed to agree with him, as they unceremoniously scattered without as much as a 'bye' or something, leaving me sitting all alone, and more than a little confused by the entire encounter.