CH 80

Chapter 10 – A piece of memory (5)

Translator – Vodka

Been making two mistakes. One, remember the junior who likes Kaede? He is called Hino-kun. For some strange reason, I had been calling him Kasai-kun. No idea, how it came about. Anyways, my bad, my mistake. So, not Kasai-kun, Hino-kun. Sorry for the possible confusion. Two, I for some reason had never been providing the closing punctuations inside the quoted lines (other than the question marks). I think the closing quotation had been messing with my mind, but how the heck did I not notice it for so long? Hah……

Also, one more thing. Sorry to say this, guys, but there won’t be any chapter next week. After an eternity, I am finally going on a vacation with my family. So, ya, sorry fellows.

And, early chapter here. Damn, I write essays all the time. Sorry.

When the classes were over, the students hurriedly departed from school.

Students who didn’t have any club activities were walking fast. It was as if they didn’t want to be beaten to the race of who could reach home the fastest.

Most of the students would want to go home right away and enjoy games, hobbies, or their after-school lives with friends.

I held a similar kind of opinion.

I’d like to go home early, take a bath, rest myself on the sofa, and have fun, conversing with my sister.

However, here I was, in the student council room, looking out of the window, the sight of students leaving the school grounds entering my field of vision.

The performance of the brass band club resounded throughout the school, and even though I could feel that the day was over, I couldn’t go home.

For the student council officers, including me, the day wasn’t over yet.

It had been only been the tutorial until now. The real show was yet to begin.

In the student council room, Koizumi, Miura and Hino-kun were setting their hair in front of the mirror.

Hino-kun, who usually didn’t pay much attention to his hairdo, was for some reason, going for ‘all-back’ today.

[TN – “all-back” is well, having your hair completely combed backwards]

You will scare the students around you, you know……

Seriously though, today’s Hino-kun was scary. He was like a delinquent from out of a painting.

The sharp glint in his eyes, his expression, his all-back hairdo dyed in the colour of red.

If he was to glare at someone, there was a possibility that that person would break into tears, reflexively.

It had been thirty minutes since the president had entered the staff room to talk to the student council advisor, Sudo-sensei. In the meanwhile, these three were engaged in a relentless battle to look prim and proper for the upcoming photoshoot. Every time it looked like it was final over, they would seem unsatisfied with a certain part. They were locked in a never-ending staring contest with their reflections in the mirror.

My hair was a tad bit dishevelled when compared to how it was in the morning. However, if I tried to fix it by myself, it would become even more so. So, I just left it alone and waited for time to pass.

Still, it was very boring to just watch the students go home.

If I had acquaintances, then I could have called out to them and talk to them for a while, but unfortunately, I had none.

After classes were over, I parted with Shizuku, Kirasaka and Yuuto in the classroom. I haven’t seen them since then.

Usually, I would have caught glimpses of them leaving the school grounds by now.

Supplementary class was the last thing that could happen to them.

It was possible that Shizuku and Yuuto were being detained by our classmates.

As for Kirasaka……it was no use predicting her actions.

She might have been doing some reading in the library, or maybe, she was somehow able to return home, unnoticed.

She could even be loitering inside the school building, aimlessly.

I was aimlessly looking outside the window. Then, suddenly, I stopped my gaze at a certain point.

“……Hino-kun, could you come over for a bit?”

“What’s it, Senpai?”

I immediately called out to Hino-kun, who was behind me.

He stood next to me and asked me why I had called out to him. I posed to him, a single question.

“……What do you think, that is?”

“That’s……what is that, indeed?”

The student council room was located at the end of the second floor of the school building.

From the student council room, we had an unbroken view of the school grounds, and we could also see that today’s shooting location was going to be in this part of the school campus, where this student council room was situated.

What I and Hino-kun were looking at, was the shooting location. There should have been six chairs lined up, underneath the big tree.

However, what caught our attention, were the countless cameras that could be seen to have been set up.

“We don’t need that kind of setup for the student council’s shooting, right?”

“You’re right……they would need only one camera, right?”

What is this? Is there gonna be some kind of a press conference now?

Maybe, someone had complained about Hino-kun being too scary?

The excessive arrangement threw us off a bit. Then, Miura replied to our query, from behind.

“It seems that today, we have a different photographer. Apparently, they had requested to take all kinds of photographs from different angles, or something like that.”

“Be that as it may, that is just overkill……”

“It indeed is.”

They were going to be photographing students. How high did they need the quality of the equipment to be?

Besides, how do you even know about all this?……

Miura had a tense expression, and Koizumi’s face was pale. He seemed like he could collapse any moment now. I thought about how the photoshoot this time, might be different from how it usually was, and let out a sigh.

“Everyone is here? Well then, shall we get moving?”

The president, who had come back less than five minutes later, opened the door to the student council room, and said so, as soon as she saw the four of us. She seemed excited.

Finally, it was time for the photoshoot.

She should be aware of those cameras.

However, she seemed to be in high spirits. Was she looking forward to today’s photoshoot?

We followed the president. We were headed for the shooting location.

As expected, there were only a few students inside the school building.

The student council, with all its members, walked down the corridor. This sight attracted the gazes of the students around us, but no one called out to us.

It would have been different if it was only the president or Koizumi.

However, today, we had the bodyguard, aka Hino-kun, with us.

With him in our group, anybody would hesitate to call out to us, at least once.

Today, save the president nobody had the room for exchanging pleasantries with the students we came across during our march.

That was because we all knew about the fate that awaited us. The fate to be photographed by a large number of cameras.

I too had unpleasant sweat flowing down my back.

As we stepped out of the building, we could see the figures of a few people at the place where the cameras have been set up.

We couldn’t see their faces, but there were about four of them.

They are the people who requested for this elaborate setup, the cameraman and his companions, right?

“Oh, I haven’t introduced to you guys our cameraman for today.”

The president confirmed the figures of those four people and raised her left hand to introduce the cameraman and his companions to us.

Wearing a gentle smile, and clad in a black suit, the gentleman who had age-appropriate wrinkles on his face, was……

“Special cameraman, Kuroi-san.”

“And, I am the director of the photoshoot, Kirasaka Ren.”

“It was you?……”

My shoulders stooped grandiosely.

I desperately endured collapsing from my knee.

No wonder such expensive-looking cameras were lined up.

The unpredictable woman, Kirasaka, had already changed into a one-piece. She had a microphone in her hand.

In her other hand, was a booklet that had the word ‘Script’ written onto it, in large letters that emphasized the word. It told the tale. She had it all prepared in advance.

“I am the assistant director, Kanzaki!”

“I am the assistant, Ogiwara.”

What the hell are you guys doing?

I was wondering why you guys were nowhere to be seen, but ain’t this quiet the fun thing you guys cooked up.

These three were so having the time of their lives. Behind them were equipment for lighting, tripods, and other stuff I didn’t have a clue about, as to what they did.

The commemorative photoshoot of the student council, unprecedentedly supervised by a female student, had thus started.

Or rather, the school actually allowed this?……