Student Council

The moment the girl crashed into him, time seemed to slow down.

A flurry of white pages exploded into the air, catching the hallway light before fluttering to the floor.

Sato Arata blinked, momentarily stunned, as the girl who had bumped into him landed in a clumsy heap at his feet.

“Ah—! S-sorry!”

Her voice was small and breathless despite her elegant look. She scrambled to gather the scattered papers, her hands moving fast, almost desperately.

Arata-kun crouched down instinctively and began picking them up.

Up close, he noticed the details.

Her smooth red hair shined in the streak of sunlight from the window. Her uniform was perfectly neat, but her eyes carried a deep exhaustion that no amount of smiles could hide.

A few strands of hair had escaped from her tidy style, clinging stubbornly to her forehead. She looked like someone who hadn’t slept properly in days.

Yet she looked like someone who wouldn’t seem out of place among idols on a stage.

Arata-kun glanced at the paperwork in his hands.

[Student Council Budget Proposal… Event Schedule Draft… First-Term Activity Report…]

“Student Council..?” he muttered to himself.

He stacked the papers and stole a quick look at the top sheet. In crisp, precise characters, a name was printed at the bottom.

{Kyousei Academy Student Council President}

Arata-kun’s eyes widened as he realized who had bumped into him.

“President…?” The word slipped out before he could stop it. He still couldn’t believe such a beautiful girl was the student council president.

He looked back at the girl in front of him. She reached for the last page with a tired but determined expression, as if she were holding herself together through sheer willpower.

“S-sorry, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” she said, bowing her head slightly as she clutched the collected papers to her chest. “Thank you for helping.”

“N-no, it’s fine,” Arata-kun replied, flustered by the contrast in her polite words and dishevelled, pretty appearance.

He asked, “Um… are you okay?”

She hesitated at that question, then forced a small, polite smile.

“I’m fine. Really.”

The smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Before he could say anything more, a voice called out from the far end of the hallway.

“President! There you are! The vice principal is asking for the revisions!”

Another student hurried toward them, panting lightly. The girl straightened her back, the exhaustion in her expression vanishing behind a practiced, composed gaze.

“I understand. I’ll be right there,” she responded calmly.

She turned back to Arata.

“Thank you again.”

With that, she gave him a graceful bow, far more elegant than her earlier stumble and hurried down the corridor, paperwork in hand, the other student trailing behind her.

Arata-kun went back to the school’s notice board as he saw the same posters of clubs as he looked down. It was a page marked with careful notes, corrections neatly written in the margins in small, tidy handwriting.

At the bottom, in the same clean characters as before, was the name:

[ Tsukiko Rei ]

Later that day, Arata walked side by side with Hiro-kun, his only real friend so far at this still-unfamiliar academy.

“So, uh, Hiro,” Arata began, clutching his old notebook, “there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

Hiro turned to him with his usual lopsided grin.

“What’s up, Arata? You look like you saw something crucial.” 

“Stop making it sound like I’m a detective,” Arata-kun said with a sigh. 

“There was this girl in the corridor earlier. She bumped into me and dropped a ton of papers.” Arata recalled.

“Ahh, sounds romantic already.” Hiro wiggled his eyebrows teasingly.

“It wasn’t like that!” Arata-kun snapped back automatically, his ears warming.

“Anyway… the papers were all student council documents. At the bottom, it said ‘Student Council President.’ And the name was… Tsukiko Rei.”

Both of them stopped walking.

“Oh.” His easy grin shifted into something more serious.

“So you met her, huh? Rei-senpai.”

“Yeah. She seemed exhausted,” said Arata-kun.

“Yeah. Tsukiko Rei. Second year. She’s the current student council president of Kyousei Academy.”

Hiro-kun shoved his hands into his pockets as they started walking again.

“She’s kind of famous around here,” he added.

Arata-kun glanced at him. “Famous how?”

“For being a total... monster,” Hiro-kun said flatly.

Arata-kun’s shoulders jumped. “Wait..what?”

Hiro-kun snorted. “Academically, I mean. Top of her year.

"Rumour is she scored near-perfect on the entrance exam last year. Teachers love her. Students are kinda scared of her.”

Arata remembered that tired smile, the way she’d forced it to appear, the heaviness in her eyes.

“But she’s not from one of those fancy families, you know?” Hiro-kun explained.

Arata-kun looked at him in surprise. “She’s… not?”

“Nah. I heard she got in the same way you did,” Hiro-kun said.

“Through the exam. She also comes from a pretty poor family, from what people say. She works part-time outside of school,l too.”

“Still somehow manages to keep the highest grades and run the student council on her own.” Hiro-kun added.

Arata-kun slowed his pace, his mind replaying the brief encounter in the hallway.

The mountain of paperwork.

The dark circles under her eyes.

The way she’d said, “I’m fine. Really.”

It didn’t feel fine at all.

He heard his parents’ cheerful scoldings echo in his mind.

“Arata, don’t forget this, okay?. Once you get into that Academy, you’re guaranteed to lead a better life.”

“This is your chance. Work hard and get into Kyousei.”

“Don’t... you ever end up like us, Arata. Mom and Dad are struggling to cover the rent…”

Their voices overlapped with the image of Tsukiko Rei’s strained smile.

Arata-kun clenched his fist at his side.

“Hiro-kun,” he said quietly, “doesn’t anyone help her?”

Hiro-kun raised an eyebrow. “Help who? Rei-senpai?”

“People keep their distance. Some admire her, some are intimidated, some are jealous.” Hiro-kun replied.

“Most importantly, the other members of the council are... rich douchebags who don't do any work at all.”

He gave a half-hearted shrug.

“And I mean, what can anyone really do? She’s the one who chose to take all that on, right?” Hiro-kun said nonchalantly.

Arata-kun stayed silent.

“Chose to take the work on…?” he thought.

‘Maybe. Or maybe she just didn’t have the luxury of saying no.’ Arata-kun realized.

Later that day, Arata entered the council room to confront Rei-senpai.

“No..one’s here?..” Arata said, confused as he looked around the spacious,s empty room.

Arata-kun stepped in front of the president’s desk and saw her timetable of duties.

Most of the meetings and paperwork duties seemed fine until he saw one line, which made him stumble back in disbelief.

“CHECK EVERY CLUB ON CAMPUS… EVERY DAY?!” he shouted instinctively.

Arata’s voice bounced off the empty walls of the student council room, sounding far louder than he intended.

For a moment, all he remembered were the endless rows of club posters he saw that crowded the notice board.

A stern commanding voice abruptly cut Arata off,

"What are you doing here?” she inquired.

Arata-kun turned to see Rei-senpai looking as if she had just returned from a marathon as his eyelids twitched in confusion.