V1C2 Part2

Translated by Damian's TLs Edited by Schwarzel

And so, the assembly came.

I was student council president, and Mitsuki was vice president. When there was an event like an assembly, the student council members would also stand in front of the school, not just the school staff.

“ーAnd one last thing. There are three weeks until exams, so we will be opening up the two student council rooms for everyone to use. Please use them if the library gets too crowded. ーThat’s all.”

That’s why Mitsuki and I were standing in front of the whole school. Speaking of Mitsukiー

“ーThank you, Toba-kaichou. Now, we have a message from the disciplinary committee.”

TN: Kaichou = president (of a society, in this case the student council). You’ve heard it in Kaguya-sama.

From the side of the stage, Mitsuki took the lead. Her hair was down, and she was in ‘proper lady’ mode. And unlike the party from before, she had an atmosphere of someone that holds an important executive position.

…It’s hard to imagine that just before, she was drooling while sleeping like a log.

ーReally, it’s amazing what she manages to pull off…

I casually looked over at Mitsuki as I walked off the stage and thought to myself about it. With some light makeup and a different hairstyle, her facial expressions and behaviour turn her into a different person. Our grade knows how she usually is, but… The first years don’t, so most of them are completely in awe.

And so, as I was thinking about this, a girl from the disciplinary committee started talking onstage.

“ーWe apologize for the incident that happened last week. We will notify you of what will happen later, but for now… rest assured that the school regulations won’t be modified and there won’t be any strict supervision. We will be discussing this matter further with the student councilー”

…Actually, the two of us had to come to school yesterday because of this very incident. We’re going to have a meeting about it after school, so I won’t say much right nowー Well, I definitely think it’s going to be annoying to deal with. While I was thinking of how to properly deal with the issue, I looked over at Mitsuki.

She was lightly moving her head from side to side with a happy smile. Her eyes met mine, and she hummed cutely in acknowledgement.

She stealthily showed me a peace sign behind her back, so that only I could see. I looked back with a strained smile and for a moment, Mitsuki did the same, then went back to a dignified expression.

…Looks like the stress from being in her ‘proper lady’ mode is building up. She didn’t mess up in front of everyone, and she went to class after this just fine, but…

ーGood thing I made her lunch today.

ーーーーーーー

Lunch break. I’d just finished packing up after class ended and was setting out our ‘lunch for two’ when I felt a weight on my head and my back.

“Yuu~ yaa~, I’m~ so~ ti~re~d~…”

The one that draped herself over my back and shoulders like a piggyback ride was none other than Mitsuki.

…Her tone and attitude had turned completely lazy. Well, I expected it, so I didn’t look over at her and instead opened my bento. I held up a bite-size piece of hamburger meat.

“Yeah yeah, good work today. ーSay ‘aaah’.”

“Yaa~y! ーNom, …nomnom. Mm~, I feel better already!…”

She ate the hamburger meat I held out for her with a happy expression and her face muscles relaxed.

”That’s just normal frozen food, isn’t it?”

“Yuuya’s putting so much in my mouth~”

“I’m not some monster of a man.”

As we had this back and forth, I alternated putting a piece of the bento in my mouth and in Mitsuki’s.

“A-, ahaha… You’re still the same as always, aren’t you, Mitsuki-chan.”

“…Well, it’s a normal sight by now, isn’t it?”

Yukina and Taiga greeted us like so as they came up to us with tired smiles.

“But I’m ti~red…”

“…Well, the Mitsuki you’re wearing like a cat is pretty big, isn’t she heavy?”

I held out another bite of the burger while we talked. Mitsuki bit it with a nom and chewed it happily. Those around us watched with conflicted smiles, casually turning heads toward our unfiltered little show. And among them, only one girl had the courage to tell us something about it.

“But Mitsukiー if it’s that stressful, why put on that act in the first place? It’s not like you need to hide how you really are anyway, right?”

I asked her about it because I was genuinely just curious, but also a bit worried.

“Yeah, but like… I’m going to be putting on this act a lot in the future, so I might as well get some experience with it while I’m doing this, you know?”

And so, she told us the reason she pushed herself so hard. She wasn’t lying, butー I knew the real reason, so I concentrated on chewing so that I wouldn’t have to keep talking about it.

…Mitsuki’s omelette was really good.

While I was trying to escape from reality, one of our male classmates spoke up.

“But you get so exhausted every time you do it… Is it really fine?”

“A-, ahaha…”

It wasn’t only Yukina and Taiga that were worried about us, a few of our other classmates had concerned looks on their faces. In response to his worry, Mitsuki could only laugh awkwardly. The girl that was our childhood friend could be very caring, but also… very judging.

“ーActually, Mitsuki-chan wasn’t even all that tired after today’s speech, you know…”

“““““ーHuh?””””” (Everyone in unison)

Everyone’s heads turned in surprise at Yukina’s comment.

Mitsuki and I kept eating, awkwardly ignoring everyone’s surprised gazes. I could guess what was about to happen, so I held out a big piece of side dish to Mitsuki.

…The two of us filled up our mouths and chewed in silence to avoid talking to them. Taiga saw the two of us sitting awkwardly like that, so he stepped in to help explain.

“Both Yuuya and Mitsuki-san have been taught things like etiquette and how to act politely from a young age. Please keep that in mind. They’ve had to go to a lot of work parties because of their parents’ jobs… Between that and today’s assembly, which do you think was more tiring?”

“““““ーAh.”””””

All our classmates looked like they understood what Yukina was saying, so she kept going.

“So it’s true that she’s tired. But… if there’s something you can compare it to, it’s like your phone being almost fully charged, but you think to yourself, ‘there’s an outlet nearby, so might as well’, you know?”

“ーSo in other words. That act of theirs is…?”

At the words of one of our male classmates, Taiga looked over at us and clearly said what he thought.

“They’re just using it as an excuse to flirt.”

The room was completely silent.

Everyone looked at us warmly, but unlike before, it looked like they were a bit unhappy.

…This was as far as our halfhearted escapism in the form of stuffing our mouths would take us. I thought he’d probably say something nobody expected, and I was spot on.

“Ri-, right. There was something I wanted to talk about.”

It wasn’t really something that I thought of just now. I’d actually wanted to ask them about it before.

“…It’s rare for you to ask for advice like this, Yuuya.”

“Is it just something about you, Yuuya-kun, or is it about Mitsuki-chan too?”

Taiga and Yukina looked at each other, then asked me about it, thinking it might be something serious.

“ーYeah. You’re probably talking about ‘that thing’, so… it probably involves everyone else, too.”

Everyone else in the class listened in, curious because of what Mitsuki said. But Taiga and Yukina looked like they had a bad feeling about it, but let me keep going.

“ーWe want to flirt like this more than we have been, do you think it’s a good idea?”

Everyone stared at us in silence.

Our classmates kept staring at us with dead-serious looks on their faces. Their clouded expressions seemed to yell at me, ‘the hell are you saying, you bastard’.

“What on earth are you talking about, Yuuya?”

“Uh-, uhhー Are you okay…?”

And so. There was Taiga, who said ‘Are you okay?’, and then there was Yukina, who looked like she wanted to add ‘In the head?’ after his question.

“…Do we really flirt that much?

“““““Have you not noticed the way you two are sitting?!”””””

ーDid they mean how Mitsuki was hugging me from behind while resting her chin on my shoulder? There was practically zero distance from my face to hers, and as we looked at each other, we finally realized what they were trying to say.

…The position we were sitting in and me feeding her was just ‘us being comfortable with each other’, not ’flirting’.

ー‘We’ll have to come up with a good way to explain this’, the two of us thought.

“Uh, so this happened yesterday, and…”

ーーーーーーー

TN: Notes about who’s talking: Yukina refers to Yuuya as Yuuya- kun and Mitsuki as Mitsuki-chan, while Taiga calls them Yuuya and Mitsuki- san . Similar, but this is the main difference. Both Yuuya and Mitsuki call each other by the other’s first name without honorifics, and their classmates mostly call them by their last names (with rare exceptions like Mitsuki-san).

“““““…”””””

Everyone listened to Mitsuki as she explained what happened yesterday, an enlightened smile on their facesー And yet, it felt like there was this angry atmosphere in the room.

“…Why does it look like you guys want to say ‘That’s really cute, but go explode already’ and ‘I’m cheering for you., but also, go fuck yourself, you idiots’?”

“It’s because we do !!!”

The whole class basically jumped at us again. But those with childhood friends of the opposite gender were an exception.

“Ahー …I can kinda see what you mean.”

“I’m not convinced yet, but… I don’t think it’s all that weird, either. ーBut still, you two have always been like this, Mitsuki-san.”

Two of our other classmates seemed to at least somewhat understand how things were.

“Oh yeah… Ookubo-kun and Sawatari-san, I heard you two are childhood friends of this married couple right hereー How long have you guys all known each other for?”

One of our classmates called us a ‘married couple’ without a second thought while asking Taiga and Yukina about us.

“Hmm. Mitsuki-chan and I have been close to each other since pretty much as far back as I can remember. Ookubo-kun and Yuuya-kun, you guys have known each other for even longer, right?”

“Ah, yeah. The Ookubo family is distantly related to Yuuya’s, so we get treated like a branch family. We used to visit his family’s house for celebrations for as long as I can remember, so we probably first met at one of those, I guess?”

“But still, we’ve all known each other pretty much since birth, right, Mitsuki-chan~?”

After Taiga finished telling everyone about how we met, Yukina looked at us with a teasing smile and added on in a playful voice.

Mitsuki and Yukina’s mothers are close friends. Mitsuki’s dadー He manages my dad’s company, and Yukina’s dad is his trusted partner. Taiga and I are distant relatives, and we treat his family like it’s a branch of our own. And on top of that, Taiga’s parents and many of our other family members work in administrative positions at my family’s group of companies.

But we don’t really make anyone from our family work in the group, and neither my father nor I are overbearing with the branch families.

Because of our families, Taiga and Yukina have known each other for a very long time, but Mitsuki and I have known each other for even longer. Our dads were really close friends, so were born in the same hospital, not to mention on the exact same day – so we’ve literally been together since barely a few days after being born.

“And so, because of all this family stuff, Yuuya-kun and Mitsuki-chan became fiancéesー”

“ーAfter that, in the upper years of elementary school, Yukina and I had to watch over Yuuya and Mitsuki-san to make sure they were fine. So the four of us ended up getting closer to each other.”

…When we were in grade 5, Mitsuki and I had a certain ‘incident’. Our relatives decided to put in preventative measures, so they sent Taiga and Yukina to watch over us. We were the same age and we’d known each other for a long time, so we hit it off wellー This was also in part because that was around the time they started showing talent in their strong areas.

“I’ve wanted to ask you this for a bitー Was the reason they were asked to watch over you and Mitsuki because of… the branch family’s status?”

Someone that was listening to our exchange asked us about it.

“Hm? Yeah! Yukina and Taiga-kun’s fathers asked them ‘Please do it’. Of course, they were given the option to say no, but we were already good friends in the first place, right, Yukina?”

“Yeah~ It was because of our fathers’ statuses, but aside from work, they were also just friends, you know?”

“ーBut Yuuya and Taiga… They have a main family-branch family relationship, don’t they?”

This time, our classmate turned his attention to me and Taiga instead.

“Well, it’s actually more like… It doesn’t usually feel like we have that kind of relationship?”

“Yeah. It’s true that my family is a distant branch of Yuuya’s, we still support their group of companies just the sameー We’re not forced to do it though, and we’re also treated just like normal family members would, so it’s really not what it looks like.”

To be fair though, when you hear ‘we support their group of companies’ and ‘main family-branch family relationship’, the best image doesn’t come to mind…

“In the end, it’s not like our group of companies is a family business, though. It’s not confirmed that I’m the successor or anything yet, you know?”

We do hold a lot of stock in it for now, so it should be fine. Though if I was to be judged as incompetent or was to keep messing up over and over, I’d be replaced pretty quickly. In this day and age, even having connections wouldn’t guarantee you a nice life.

“My family has been helping out their group of companies for generations, but that’s only because we’re good at what we do. They’re not dumb enough to think that laziness or incompetence would lead to anything good, I’d say.”

“ーEh? Then why is there even a main family-branch family relationship at all…?”

From the way he said it, the misunderstanding should’ve been resolvedー

“If you’ve been able to get good jobs at a large company for generations, why would you want to break off an arrangement like that?”

“““““That’s awfully realistic?!”””””

That’s just life.

Well, a fair number of people from branch families do work at other places too, of course.

“…Huh? Toba-kun and Fushimi-san, Toba-kun and Ookawa-kun, Fushimi-san and Sawatari-san, how they know each other I understand, butー Ookawa-kun and Sawatari-san aren’t really have anything connecting them to each other, right?”

A girl from our class pointed out an issue with what we’ve said so far.

It’s true that going off of their parents’ relationship, Taiga and Yukina don’t have any connection, but it’s actually pretty simple.

“No, there is, though? We live in the same neighbourhood, so we’ve both been going to the same school since preschool.”

“Y-, yeah. We’ve known each other even before we watched over them…”

Taiga and Yukina looked a bit embarrassed as they said that.

In a sense, all of our parents had some sort of connection to each other, and where they didn’t, our own close friendships brought them together. They’re now all good friends, even going on trips without the four of us.

…Well, it’s actually a bit of a problem when your parents talk that much.

There was a group of guys I could hear saying stuff like, ‘Tch, here’s another winner…’, and ‘He won the childhood friend gacha, must be nice… Agh!”, but I ignored it. This innocent childhood friend couple, though, blushed when they heard it.

“ーSo. Because of the whole ‘watching over us’ thing, the Ookawa and Sawatari families moved closer to us. When Mitsuki and I moved out, they also did, so now they live in the apartment below ours.”

Speaking of, their respective families would pay rent for their apartments, but my and Mitsuki’s families covered their moving expenses, along with paying them for watching over us. I don’t know how much, though.

“…Huh? The four of you live in the same apartment building? With Yuuya and Fushimi it makes senseー But Taiga and Sawatari cohabitate too?!”

“Eh? …Uhh… That’s-…!”

A male classmate pointed out what he realized, which made Yukina blush and try to deny it, but Taigaー

“Nope, it’s not like that. We’re just neighbours. Each of us has our own apartment, we have separate finances, we eat and sleep separately, and so on… What’s wrong, Yukina?”

“…Nothing?”

Taiga told the truth plainly, but… it made Yukina regain her composure. It was a bit hard to tellー Yukina was pouting a little, and when Taiga noticed, he went ‘Ah, shit’, and quickly realized why.

“It’s like he said for us too, we don’t actually live together either, you know?”

“Mhmm~ We do our finances and meals together, but we don’t sleep together or anything~”

She sent Taiga a lifeboat just in time. Mitsuki and two of our classmates went ‘Right~?’, and our words seemed to work.

“…So you’re saying you ‘almost live together’, then?”

“What’s it called when… 2 people make money together, combine their finances and budgeting, and each togetherー But more or less live separately, I guess?”

We sleep in different apartments, but we eat together unless there are special circumstances. And also, our living expensesー We’re able to make enough income for the two of us from our investments. Starting from junior high, we learned how to do that from an expert with our parents as intermediaries. So by now, thanks to our investments, we were financially stable, so long as we weren’t careless or spent money excessively. That wasn’t something we had to hide, butー That probably wasn’t what they wanted to hear, though.

“No, I wasn’t talking about how you guys live your life. I’ll say it outright, do you guys get along better because you two live separately?”

“Oh, this is interesting! There aren’t many young couples that live alone together.”

“Actually, maybe we don’t want to know too much about the private conversations of fiancées…!”

Everyone around us quickly came to an agreement.

“Hmm? Well, if I was to say whether or not we got along better because of it… It just feels normal?”

“Right~? Usually it doesn’t really change anything between us, I think?”

No matter what everyone around us thinks, I’ve never noticed myself being ‘self-conscious about our relationship in front of others’ or being ‘indulgent in our desires because we’re alone’.

“Yuuya and Mitsuki-san are really always like that? …Well, they always seem to be that way, even when they’re doing student council work.”

“ーAhh, you mean the thing we had to do over spring break? …I guess they were like that even while we were figuring out how to use the money.”

Taiga and Yukina said so in a dumbfounded toneー Actually, it might have been more of a resigned tone. That ‘thing we had to do over spring break’ Yukina was talking about happened at the end of March, during spring breakー

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