"Politics" (cont.)

It turns out that if you try to gather 40 fifteen-year-olds (a few of them sixteen) for a non-compulsory meeting related to school, a good number of them won’t show up.

It also turns out that even for those who do, they end up not taking it seriously with no teacher around to supervise them.

Then again, these were ‘elite’ students. They weren’t the type to start screening videos on the projector or start doing this or that. Rather, they merely gave up on Sakura’s initial idea, split into their own groups, and happily chatted amongst themselves on a Saturday morning.

Sakura’s original plan had been to give everyone a 2 minute speech to outline reasons they should be voted for—essentially taking the idea of a poll and playing it straight.

The only issues were that: A, that got boring real quick once they moved past the hot people, and B, there was no one willing to be the policeman who told people to stop talking during others’ speeches.

In other words—there was no way it was going to work.

Still, all things considered, it was a good outcome. I worked better in small groups and in 1-to-1 conversations rather than addressing an entire room of people, and anyway, I tended to dislike the spotlight.

I preferred to subtly manipulate.

For now, the room was mainly split across three big cliques.

Clique A was what I ironically dubbed the ‘Sakura Fanclub’, though that title was born from a previous iteration of my personality where I 'knew' Sakura Emi and no one else. It would probably be more apt to call it the Alpha Clique—the strongest personalities in Class F and their orbiters.

Clique B was where most of the girls were, led by queen bees Kagawa Ayase and Sugihara Junko, though Sugihara didn't show up, and Clique C was a bunch of guys who felt too cool to be orbiters in the Sakura Fanclub but still desired a group of their own.

The remainder sat around the function room and did their own thing—one of them a boy named Ueda Yuji who was playing a gacha game on his phone.

If you have a good memory, you’ll remember that Ueda placed 39th in the popularity contest with a score of (0). Affectionately (perhaps) called ‘The Researcher’, the man had lenses as thick as double-insulated drinking glasses and enough grease on his face to deep fry stuff—and also happened to be one of the guys who didn’t use both exemplary votes.

I walked up to him and attempted a greeting.

“Hello, Ueda-san.”

“......”

No reply.

Maybe he couldn’t hear me over all the chatting in the background, so I repeated myself closer to him.

“Uh. Hello, Ueda-san.”

“I heard you, normie.”

...Normie.

He was tapping away on his phone as he spoke—his voice sounding even sweatier than his appearance.

“Um, I was wondering if you needed help for this Special Project?” I asked, even going so far as to use a polite tone.

“No. I don’t accept help from normies.”

“…But you came to this class meeting.”

“I m-merely had free time on my schedule.”

Right. Of course he did.

But an obvious social reject using his free time to come to a social gathering? Eh. He clearly wanted something from this.

“...Anyway, Ueda-san. I see that you gave me a deplorable vote. Is there anything I can do to change that to an exemplary vote?”

“Hee hee hee. No, there is not, unfortunately.”

His laugh sounded repulsive.

Also, the grease from his face must’ve rubbed off on his spectacles, because they looked cloudier than… half-cooked egg whites. That was definitely the description I was looking for.

“Okay,” I said, realising that this was still easier to look at than Yukimura. “What if I vote for you?”

“No. I refuse to vote for other men—I will not sully my morals.”

“...What if I pay you?”

“Do you take me for a fool, normie? That’s just one step away from being a sell-out,” he snorted while playing Fire Gambler Heroes.

I was fairly certain that he was just trying to point out that point transfers were disabled, so I proceeded nonetheless.

“Listen, buddy—”

“I am not your buddy, you normie scum.”

“...Classmate. Do you like manga and light novels?”

“Y-yes, I suppose I do,” he grinned.

Jesus Christ, I thought to myself in English.

“So your collection must be quite dry right now, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what, I’ll go to the department store after this and buy you 10,000 points worth of figurines and other stuff.”

“Grunt.”

“Did… did you just say ‘grunt’?”

“Do you suffer from a lack of hearing, normie?”

“No… it’s just that where I’m from, people may assume that you’re making a grunting noise rather than actually saying the word ‘grunt’ in dialogue, so I had to find a way to clarify… ah, nevermind. You wouldn’t get it.”

“You confuse me with your social hijinks, normie. Give it to me straight and to the point! No hussy-fussy! No beating around the bush!”

“......”

“The deal, normie. I was talking about the deal.”

If I don’t acknowledge it in narration, that definitely means I didn’t notice it. I learned that from literature class.

“...Right,” I said. “You don’t want to vote for guys, so I’ll buy you 10,000 points worth of stuff—and then you’ll vote for a girl. How’s that sound?”

“It sounds like BLASPHEMY, you normie scum. I am not changing my vote from Ayase-sama.”

“...No, like a deplorable vote. I’ll buy your deplorable vote in exchange for anime goodies.”

“Oh,” he snorted, which reminded me of the fact that he desperately needed sinuplasty. “That depends. And who might you be looking to vote for, my dear?”

“My… dear…”

“Huh? I didn’t quite hear you there.”

“...Uh, just vote for Mino Ruri.”

“Mino-who?”

I pointed in the direction of the Sakura Fanclub.

“You see the girl with green hair, square spectacles, and—”

“Oh, that ugly broad? Sure, I don’t mind,” Ueda Yuji spoke. “Anyway, aside from Ayase-sama, most 3D girls are too passé for me.”

……

You see, this is why I only named Sakura Emi as a character in Class F and no one else.

“...Okay, I don’t think you understand what passé means, but nevertheless, thank you. Just text me your shopping list and I’ll get you the stuff on Monday.”

“No problemo,” he snorted. “Heheheh. Heheh. Figurines… schhlrp. It was a pleasure doing it with you… I was wrong about you, normie.”

Do not comment.

Walk away—do not comment. Do not acknowledge.

“Yes,” I said, completely unbothered.

"Hyuk," he replied.

I made my way from The Researcher to the other side of the room. Where was this ‘other side’, exactly? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I moved away from The Researcher.

After eavesdropping on normal conversations (no ellipses) for a few minutes to reset my mental state, I went back to do more ‘politicking’.

The process was simple.

I’d first offer to swap votes. Failing that, I would ask if I could buy their exemplary vote, and if they weren’t keen on that, I’d ask if I could buy their deplorable vote.

I’d initially thought 10,000 points was a lowball offer, but people were more willing to accept bribes than I’d initially thought—and so I ended up blowing through all my points by the end of the first ‘class meeting’. Not like there would be a second.

At 12pm, the ventilators shut off, and Sakura walked to the front of the room to speak.

“Hey everyone, that’s all the time I’ve booked the room for. Thanks for coming! We’re having an after-party, so feel free to join us if you’d like.”

It went from class meeting to party to after-party, huh.

Instead of joining the rest who were congregating at the front of the room to merge with the Sakura Fanclub, I decided to leave silently.

I had shopping to do.

“Hey, Mizuhara-kun. You’re not coming?”

Once I’d reached the front door, Sakura decided to break away from the huge group to speak to me.

“Uh… I don’t really like parties,” I said.

“I see,” she smiled. “I’m glad that you were talking to a lot of people. Hard at work, I suppose?”

“Ahaha.”

Please don’t fault me for stealing her signature laugh. After spending a good hour or so striking deals with social rejects, it gets to your soul. It really felt like the time I tried to offer critique swaps on a web novel site.

“Don’t forget what you said earlier,” Sakura mentioned. “At the end of this Special Project, you’re going to transfer all your points to me. Right?”

“Of course.”

Not even I would cheat someone of their hard earned money.

Satisfied, she flashed me a disarming smile, then slinked back to her now 25-strong group.

I made a mental note to try and come up with more synonyms for smile in the future.

People in this school seemed to do it a lot.