All she did was take a single confident step into the school grounds. Not a word was uttered. Not a sound was made. All conversation died on the spot, and all eyes turned towards her. And why wouldn’t they? Their days had surely been brightened by her very presence. The presence of the charismatic, beautiful and endlessly charming Hanae Tamazaki would surely send chills down their spines! Every girl wanted to be friends with her. Every boy wanted her to date with them. So little time to spend with the masses, but Hanae absolutely did her best. She would never settle for anything less.
She brushed aside her long, luxurious hair which was as yellow as the sun. An unusual natural feature that made her stand out even more from the numerous darker hair tones. Even though her eyes were closed, she could almost hear the breaths of the onlookers catching in awe and reverence. Her bright green eyes snapped open and she took a practised step forward. Just like a model. In moments two other girls appeared on either side of her. Her “entourage” of sorts. The envy of the school, her own personal handpicked best friends: Rui Okazaki and Mihoko Shinko. Selected by her to be her closest, most devoted friends.
“Schedule,” she requested as she coolly reached out towards Rui. The girl used one hand to push her glasses back up her nose, grinned to herself and handed it over. Hanae glanced over it while Rui nearly swooned when their fingers brushed against one another. Good, she was developing a little more self control. Anyway. Rather a mundane routine by all appearances. Class. Class. Gym. Lunch. Class. Class. Student council meeting, with an attached agenda…
Hanae stopped in her tracks and both Rui and Mihoko stopped right next to her.
“Something wrong?” Mihoko asked, in that tone of voice that indicated she was more than eager to put paid to whatever dared to put a frown on Hanae’s forehead. That was her role in the trio. Problem solver. A certain saying applied to this girl. When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well. She had the whole toolbox at her disposal <i>except</i> a hammer, therefore to her no problem ever looked quite like a nail.
“A meeting with the chess club to discuss their budget being slashed?” Hanae sniffed. “Surely that is beneath our attention.”
“Unfortunately not,” Rui replied. “They have been… badgering the council for some time due to some perceived slight. I fear that we have put them off as long as possible. The chess club is rather insistent that their case be heard, and will speak to nobody but yourself.”
“Sounds like they need to be taught a lesson about their place in school…” Mihoko said, adopting her sweetest and most devilish smile. With anyone else, they might assume she meant something particularly vicious or intimidating or even humiliating but - “Maybe if someone taught them how to make more efficient use of their balance?” she thoughtfully mused.
“Oh, don’t you worry about it, you adorable creature,” Hanae soothed, patting Mihoko on the head. She mewled like a kitten. “I’ll handle negotiations personally. By the time I am done they shall be eating out of my hand.”
“I love you!” yelled an unidentified voice from behind her. Hanae glanced over her shoulders and saw a rather handsome athletic boy blushing and holding out a single red rose. “Please go out with me!”
“Excuse me one moment,” Rui said, gripping her clipboard, tapping her pen on the surface and scanning through the papers attached. “Teijo Okasawa, the rising star of the basketball club. Dear me. You had an appointment for a confession tomorrow morning. I say ‘had’, because clearly now it will have to be cancelled.”
“But I-”
“Shhh,” Rui pressed her pen firmly against the much taller boy’s mouth. “This is not open for discussion or negotiation. Miss Tamazaki is a very busy young woman, and has not the time nor the inclination to subvert her schedule on the whims of some hormonal boy that has fallen for her natural charms. Attempt to speak with her again within the next week, and you will spend the rest of the year on the bench.”
Teijo turned white and the rose fell from his hands. He was already hurrying back along the corridor by the time Hanae plucked the rose out of the air and took a long sniff.
“Shame,” she said. “If he had only followed the rules, he might have had a chance.”
“If a shy little brat like that ‘had a chance’,” said another voice. Hanae turned around to see her self-described male equivalent. “Then I, Tamotsu Uoya must be a shoo-in! How you doin’, babe? Come to your senses yet?”
“That depends,” Hanae answered, staring him down. It wasn’t hard to see why the girls wanted him as much as the boys wanted her. He was a sculpted god of muscles and had a smile that made even her legs feel weak the first time she saw it. Alas for his sake, the law of diminishing returns… “Have you come to yours?”
“Why you gotta be like that, Hanae?” he sighed. Cool as ever. “You know we’d make the best couple. Period. Between the two of us we already own this school. Mix our talents for a common purpose, and -”
“Oh, would you look at that?” Mihoko said, peering past Tamotsu’s shoulders. “That poor girl’s water bottle just exploded all over her nice, white shirt!”
“Huh? Where?” Tomatsu asked, wheeling around like the pervert he was. Funny thing was, most girls in the school would probably try that sort of stunt on purpose if it got their attention. “I don’t see - Huh? Where’d they go?”
The correct answer was: The classroom right next to them. Which happened to be their class in the first place. Hanae rolled her eyes and took her seat, making sure to sit up nice and straight. Time for another day of boring lessons, punctuated by having to talk to some unhappy geeks about their stupid chess club. Ugh.
<hr>
There he was, running around and trying to make the room presentable, and the others were just sitting there. Playing chess. Which, you know, was sort of the point of the club and all, but come on, guys! Look at those pieces they were playing with! The black rooks had been replaced with a bottle top and a screwdriver, three of the white pawns were replaced with blobs of bluetack and the board itself was so old that half the white squares looked the same colour as the black!
“Could do with some help here,” Mitsuo Itagaki said through gritted teeth. He wiped some sweat off his brow and ran his finger along the windowsill. It came back more dust than flesh. Then again, dust was generally dead skin cells to begin with, so - Ugh! He reflexively coughed. “I hardly think the student council president is going to be particularly impressed enough to extend our budget!”
“Big deal. Who needs a budget so long as we can play chess?”
Mitsuo slammed some reference books down on the table next to the board. “That attitude is exactly why the school hasn’t won a game against any other in the last ten years!”
“Yes, exactly,” said a voice by the door. A girl’s voice. It rang rather melodic in his ears. “And because you haven’t won in ten years, your budget was cut.”
His clubmates very nearly fell out of their chairs but Mitsuo stood his ground and folded his arms across his chest. While they were rather transparently drooling over the most popular girl in school, he was content to just glower at her - admittedly stunningly sexy - face in an expression of pure rage. She strode across the room like she owned it, and gave him a sexy wink that made him sort of regret that his libido was practically begging him to find a way to kiss her and get away with it.
She glanced down at the board. “Mate in ten,” she mouthed. Huh? Mitsuo cast his attention back to the board and did some mental calculations of his own. Ten moves ahead? Well. Given this position, the likeliest next ten moves would be -
He had to take a seat. Even with the replaced figures and faded board! How could she tell that at a glance? A reevaluation was necessary. If she was that intelligent and observant it would only serve to make negotiation even more of an uphill battle!
“Can I get you anything? Anything at all?” one of his clubmates asked in far too cloying a manner.
“Some water?” the other chimed in. “Perhaps something from the vending machine?”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Hanae said, fluttering her eyelashes at them. “Now, why don’t you boys tell me all about this budget complaint you have?”
It suddenly struck him. She was trying to flirt her way out of this! Someone with that much intelligence, that much strategic capability was trying to use something so - Insulting to get what she wanted? It made Mitsuo see red. It made him see past the stunning external creature to the - To the downright succubus she was on the inside. Manipulative, heartless and seductive.
Of course, it never occurred to Mitsuo that among the reasons he had so few friends in his school was his tendency to overexaggerate the first impression he had of others to rather ridiculous extremes in his own imagination. Still.
“I’ll tell you about the budget complaint we have!” Mitsuo snapped, slamming his hands down on the table. He felt a little satisfaction in making her smirk. “Look at our board. We’ve needed a new one for years and have never been able to afford it! The club is dying out, because all but the hardcore new applicants take one look at this room and our equipment and run fleeing, turning it into a vicious cycle of failure and shame!
“I have plans for this club,” Mitsuo said. “But I can’t accomplish it on this budget! If we accept such a budget then it might as well be the last nail in the club’s coffin, when I know! I know that we can do better than this!”
There was a strange look in the girl’s eyes now. No doubt attempting to calculate a new way for her to manipulate him into getting what she wanted. After a long moment of neither one looking away from the eyes of the other, she finally spoke.
“And you’d have it,” she said, a little less confidence in her voice than before. Almost as if she couldn’t believe she said that. She cleared her throat. “I mean that you would have it if there was any money left to be allocated. Yours is not the only club that has been needing maintenance work.”
“Is that so?” Mitsuo sarcastically replied. “In which case you leave me no choice. We’re going to take on the Trial of the Seven Mysteries.”
A hush fell over the room. In fact, a distinct chill could probably be felt throughout the entire school. He’d gone for the nuclear option and gone for it early. The reward for solving the school’s seven mysteries would be more than enough to save the club. But the risks involved were so great that this time it was the girl that very nearly fell out of her chair.
“The Trial of the Seven Mysteries…” she whispered. “No! You can’t! You’ll be -”
“Shoulda maybe given us that money then,” he wagged his finger. “Here’s how it’s gonna be! I’m gonna beat the trial, then I’m gonna take this club to the national championships! And I’m gonna win every! Step! Of the way!”
<hr>
Hanae stared at her reflection in the mirror and splashed more water in her face. What was wrong with her? Why did it feel like her heart was about to explode out of her chest? She closed her eyes and saw it. That fearsome expression, that messy hair, a handsome face that didn’t look like it was trying to be handsome in the first place -
She slapped herself. No! She fidgeted in place and tried to concentrate. That handsome boy was a stubborn idiot. Taking on the Trials! That was insane! She’d tried to talk him out of it. She’d all but thrown herself at him, hell! She’d have even dated him if it meant being sane and staying away from that hell!
He’d had none of it. He’d resisted her advances, and at some point she had stopped trying to seduce him for reasons other than wanting to seduce him. Even now, an hour later, her thoughts kept drifting back to him. But he was a nobody! He was a zero on the social ladder -
And he was <i>hot</i>. Nobody had ever made her feel this way before. Nobody had ever said <i>no</i> to her before. Hanae ran her hand through her hair and gave herself a sexy pout. Even she couldn’t say no to that. So why was it that the first boy she’d ever had a real crush on -
“Dammit,” she whispered, realizing what she’d just thought. “This… could make things complicated.”
- Hanae tries to deal with her crush.
- Meanwhile, what is the first mystery?
- The underlings have their own events going on.
- Tamotsu makes a play for Hanae.
- Mitsuo considers the encounter.
- Something else
I really enjoyed this, and I think there's a great deal of potential here. If you have time, I might suggest giving one of Mitsuo's clubmates a name, simply to give him someone to interact with in the future.
ReplyDeleteOption #3 could be really interesting, and might even steal the show.
Love the story so far. Just one thing though, the tile is PERVERTED Popular Girl, so far we've seen Hanae develop an instant crush on a random guy, which is a unique experience for her. Now maybe she has a closet full of sextoys back at her house or something but we have yet to see anything that really defines her as perverted.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm not complaining, I actually think I prefer her to succumb to sexy shenanigans for the sake of helping her new-found crush (and wacky scenarios created by the "Trial of the Seven Mysteries") than because she was perverted to begin with, I just felt that it was a bit of a misnomer is all.