His angrily tensed shoulders relaxed a bit. I gave him my usual, slightly uncertain crooked smile and pointed past him at the vending machine. "You're getting anything?”

I wasn’t going to invite him. Paying something for him in this setting would definitely send the wrong message and I wasn’t risking that. Under normal circumstances, inviting someone for something as inexpensive as a drink was something that I’d do, I guess.

“You decide”, he mumbled, still steaming a bit, and handing me the coins. He crossed his arms and looked away into the open courtyard. 

I bought two cold sodas for us, holding one out for him. Looking down, I could see his hair moving under the gentle breeze and stared for a moment before speaking up.

“Don’t let stupid people like that destroy your mood. We’ve got three weeks where it’s just our group, we will hardly be at school.” I tried to make myself sound soothing, but who knows whether I succeeded. 

He tilted his head up at me and exhaled in a sigh. The sight of his creased brows relaxing was a wee bit dangerous from this angle, so I looked away.

“I don’t understand why they’re so obnoxious”, he complained. 

[Please decide on what to do.

• (Explain)
• (Don’t answer)]

Oh geez. Oh geeeeeeez. Why that choice. I really...

I fidgeted for a while, then decided to tell him another part of the very uncomfortable truth. I felt terrible that things were just going past him like this.

“...Trophy.” My voice was barely above a whisper and my lips were pursed.
“Hm?” He heard me, frowning at me.

I sighed and explained.
“I mean that you’re popular because of the reasons you already know, but… there’s also the thing that… well…”

Ugh, can’t someone else take this over for me? That was a bad decision, but my body didn’t let any words to switch the topic out of my mouth. Why did I want to be the one to tell him about this again?

“Some of them probably see you as a trophy… A contest, about who can manage to wrap you around their finger first. Because, you know, since you already rejected so many people, the one who does it is better than the rest.” I paused, then stuttered in a panic. “I-I don’t a-agree with that! Just s-saying, okay?! It’s ridiculous, but-”
That’s how some people think. But I’m not playing that game, I didn’t want him to think I had approached him with that in mind!

His face fell and my heart plummeted along with it. “I’m a trophy, huh.”
You’re not! Please don’t speak in that scary tone!

“All the more reason.”

Huh? For what, exactly??

I was circling him like a frightened puppy, worrying that I was part of the people he was directing that frosty snarl at. My imaginary ears and tail were drooping when Mizuki turned to look at me again, all frost gone from his face.
“Go back in?”

Oh thank god. He’s not mad at me. “Y-yeah…”

I was still holding his drink but didn’t really notice as I trailed behind him like an obedient servant. I liked walking behind him, I could stare at him if I did. To be precise, stare down at him. I still found the fact that he was smaller than me terribly cute.

The only thing I had to thank my genes for was my height and maybe the fact that I looked about as harmless as I was, which at least didn’t create a creepy gap between my looks and behaviour. I wouldn't look weird trailing after him like this. With how peaceful I looked, even the shyest girls didn’t avoid me.

Eh, maybe they just didn’t consider me a man? I hope that wasn’t it, cause even if I didn’t want to go out with one, that still poked my already small ego.

Kaoru and Tarou were showing their mischievous grins when we settled down while Prez had a wry smile and Yuji was rolling his eyes. I cocked my eyebrows at my friends and they explained.

“Heard Taizou snap at that idiot. Well done.” Kaoru was praising him, but I winced.
“Let’s talk about another topic…”

They got the hint, thankfully, and waited until we sat down to form a circle. Prez laid down our notes in the middle, explaining. I gave Mizuki his drink and opened mine.

“Alright, we have a place we want to work with and a general idea of what we want to do. The first thing would be to contact the orphanage and ask if they’re alright with working with us. There’s always the possibility some other group contacted them first.”
“We should be able to call them right now, I think? The teachers said we are allowed to use our cellphones.” 

“Who is going to call?”, I asked into the round, although all of us were already looking at Prez. Let the eloquent guy with the nice voice do the work.

Prez looked around the group, saw that everyone was staring at him, and then gave a tiny shrug. As he smiled and took out his phone to dial the number, I took a moment to open my menu and scroll down to check his entry.

He was at 6 points. Barely anything.
It wasn’t like I had interacted with him a lot, and I didn’t really like him, either.

But that was the point. 
More than hate or love, indifference is the emotion that is the cruelest to someone else. Not even caring about someone's existence was a different thing than hate.

Hate means you care, in some way. And I was irritated.
I didn’t want to be friends with him exactly, but I was envious and in the end, there is still the desire to get along with perfect people like him. I didn't want to think about the fact that I'd like that guy to have some sort of reaction to interacting with me several times already.

I was bitter, thinking about that. Had he been the person with Mizuki that Risa saw?

I pulled up my knees and leaned my head on them behind my arms, hoping to hide my expression even just a bit. My friends glanced up at my posture. Of course, they knew this behaviour. They recognized it.

Mizuki looked over for a moment with uncertainty appearing in his eyes, although he was immediately distracted by Prez returning.

Mr.Perfect was looking like he was in a good mood. “Seems we are first to ask. They’re alright with it, we can set up a date for making and selling the cookies.”
Yuji’s eyes lit up. “We should let the children draw posters we can hang up in the city. That way, everyone will know when to come.”

We nodded to show our agreement.
“How about we meet up tomorrow and go to the orphanage? We can talk to the director about how we want to plan everything.”

In fact, we didn’t have three weeks because we were expected to do projects spanning three weeks. It was because we needed time to contact a lot of people, in our case the orphanage’s director and also people who would help us transport the set for the playground. The point was using your time wisely, which was part of the grade. 

Those that tried to take a break for days and then push everything last minute would see what they’d end up with.

I didn’t have a doubt that Prez being here would keep us all in order, he was student council president for a reason. Time management was his thing.

“Is there anything else we can do today?”, Kaoru asked into the group, looking around between us. We weren’t nearing our usual time for the end of our lessons but no one would say anything if we left. I personally felt a bit weird about it. I was that kind of tame, obedient student after all.

“Go home and make a list of tools we have? We probably need a lot of different stuff for the playground.”

Yuji threw his opinion at us. “I think we should keep it simple. There’s a lot of things we wouldn’t be allowed to build, for safety. Also, we need a professional to look over everything in the end.”
That was a good point - we couldn’t ignore safety.

“My uncle should be able to do it”, mused Tarou. It would make a lot of things easier if we had someone close by to take over the task. “I’ll ask him this evening, then we can talk to the director about it tomorrow.”

“We already searched for some sets, but we’ll need his help in sorting which ones are suitable.”
“We also need an easy recipe for cookies? One that the children will enjoy without it being too hard.”

Everyone talked over each other excluding Mizuki, who was just sipping at his drink and watching, and me, who was still pouting and kept his participation low.

We discussed for another while but couldn’t really continue without tomorrow’s appointment and stopped. Tarou instantly created a chat group for us all, where we could talk at any time and share information.

Prez was beaming at Mizuki, telling me one thing - he hadn’t had his phone number before. Now he had. I went back to pouting.

Call me childish, I admit it. To be completely honest, I’ve been crushing on that guy for even more than a year and had never dared to even think about talking to him. Now we talked and things were even looking up for the possibility of dating him.

I was getting greedy. That’s bad.

Owl

Everyone, please don't hate Prez right now, alright? xD
Btw, if anyone remembers me saying arc2 is tame, I take that back. It does, uh, get... ....... a bit.... sweats fliiiirtyyy aaaand maybe a bit physical  uh anyway. i'll put up a warning. it's just a short-ish part towards the end of arc2....... It really does get me wondering whether my r18 parts are alright to read? they might be so uncomfortable, you'll all feel the story is ruined xD 

Mizuki's theater:

Mizuki (laughing darkly)
Riku: "(He's whispering something...)"
Mizuki (mumbling): "Those little, disgusting, sons of..."
Riku: "Iiiiii heard nothing."