On the next day after the elections the results were ready.

The same stage, the same people, the same huge crowd of exasperated students waiting to go on the lunch break. The only difference from the debates was my speech being about the responsibilities of the new Student Council president.

When I was done, the head of the elections committee gave me an envelope with the final result.

‘Tear’

I extracted the piece of paper, and after a short pause proclaimed the winner.

“The next Student Council president will be… The current head of the home economics club. Congratulations!” Albeit I was dumbfounded, I maintained the neutral façade.

Meanwhile, the usually-noisy crowd of students turned speechless. Furthermore, even the elected president was completely frozen by this turn of events.

A minute later the shock passed, and everybody started looking around, but nobody could understand what exactly happened.

I too was not hurrying to rush the events, as the students were not ready yet to continue.

However, I also let go of the best moment to catch the crowd’s attention.

“HE CHEATED!” What I missed was used by another student.

Instead of the organized ceremony, we suddenly had the audience spiral out of control with one part claiming that the newly-elected president cheated on the elections, and the other part defending him.

The cacophony was foreseen, so we placed an ultimate mean of drawing the attention.

‘SCREECH’

I scratched a blackboard, conveniently placed at the back of the stage. The disgusting high-pitched noise restored the order, allowing me to continue the event.

“Cheating is nigh impossible. The Student Council, the Disciplinary Committee, and the elections committee put a lot of efforts into ensuring that there will be no cheating and no fake voting.”

The same student shouted back: “I saw how members of the home economics club were distributing some papers yesterday, while it is forbidden to advertise during the elections day!”

[Meanwhile, one girl with twin tails started sweating buckets…]

I glanced at the director, and he immediately started waving me ‘no’, meaning that I am not to continue this discussion.

After some short, completely non-binding words about looking into this, I proceeded with the ceremony. I invited the winner to the microphone, and was wrapping up my congratulations, when my phone started bursting from the amount of messages I was receiving.

Simultaneously, I had Minami-san start waving like crazy and trying to draw my attention, even resorting to using the glowing sticks that were brought a long time ago.

“Excuse me…” I said through my teeth, and turned away to finally start checking the messages.

Almost all of them directed me to a @witter post made by one of the gyarus, where were several images, allegedly showing the cheating. The director seemed to receive them too, effectively forcing us to start investigating, as well as suspending the results of the elections.

The director walked on the stage and gave orders for some of the students, namely the SC and the home economics club to head to his office. I followed him, but when we left the gym through a backdoor, the director suddenly stopped me by grabbing my shoulder.

“What is it?”

“Please, call Toshiba Tomoko too…” He gently patted my shoulder, and sighed.

After all people in question gathered, I started with reading the @weet.

“Home economics are doing promotion. Elections day. High school. Y.

Pictures attached.” Every person pictured was already here, and all have read the post.

I couldn’t understand only one thing: how the hell has Tomo-chan ended up on one of them.

“Let us start with the post itself. Minami-san, are those pictures genuine, and were they taken yesterday?”

“I guarantee that. Even if we were working like crazy and couldn’t help with monitoring the situation, my friends were still there, doing what they know best.” (M)

“It is impossible! We did nothing like that! Our curator can vouch for us!” The club members started arguing, but the images were not in their favor.

All of them had a leaflet or two in hands.

But only one person had an entire stack of them.

“Toshiba-kun, can you explain us what were you doing yesterday?” (D)