"Could this have something to do with Classmate Sakayanagi?"
Ichinose approached the question differently from Hiyori. Hiyori had considered it from my perspective, while Ichinose was looking at the situation itself.
"It does, but Sakayanagi isn't very involved. I mainly need to report a few things to her father through her."
I had Chairman Sakayanagi's phone number, too, but if I contacted him directly, it would change the nature of the matter. Besides, I wanted to buy some time.
As I took Sakura the long way back, I could already feel that almost tangible malice. I only needed to provoke that guy a little more, and he'd surely lose control.
"Classmate Sakayanagi's father?"
Ichinose hadn't understood. Could this really have stayed a secret from so many people?
After all, Chairman Sakayanagi had spoken at the opening ceremony. Sakayanagi wasn't exactly a common surname, so wasn't it only natural to connect Sakayanagi to Chairman Sakayanagi?
"Sakayanagi Arisu. Her father is this school's chairman, Chairman Sakayanagi. While we're still running ourselves ragged, she's already sitting at the finish line, sipping tea."
My own situation wasn't all that different from Sakayanagi's. Hiyori's family wasn't exactly poor, either, and Sakura might even debut someday. You couldn't pursue that path without money. This wasn't Korea, where trainees had to go into debt to train.
Come to think of it, of the four of us here, only Ichinose came from the weakest family.
"So, Masaryu, you still haven't told us what this is all about."
As Hiyori applied ointment to Sakura's wounds, she steered the conversation back on track.
"Sakura, can I make this decision on your behalf? What I can promise is that I'll do everything in my power to keep the attention on you to a minimum. Apart from those who need to help with the arrest, the only people who'll know are the few of us here and Classmate Sakayanagi from Class A."
The words I'd said to Ichinose earlier had come back to hit me like a boomerang. To maintain my image, I had to go around in circles and act with Sakura's wishes in mind. At the very least, I had to show Ichinose that I respected her.
"I, I actually..."
To my surprise, Sakura chose to explain her situation to Ichinose and Hiyori herself. But because she was so socially anxious, her words came out haltingly. She kept circling around the point, unable to get to it.
"Actually, Sakura is extremely introverted, so she has trouble expressing herself.
"As everyone knows, students in Japanese schools can be divided into several tiers.
"At the top of the pyramid are groups made up of delinquents and members of popular sports clubs like baseball and soccer. They're practically treated like royalty at school. They're the ones who bully others, not the other way around—unless their own group has a bad habit of turning on its members.
"The next tier consists of delinquents who aren't doing so well, students with broad and complicated social networks, members of literary clubs or other unpopular clubs, and the followers of the people at the top. These people make up the majority of the student body.
"Even when many of them aren't as sociable as they seem, they'll still do everything they can to fit into a larger group and protect themselves.
"At the very bottom are the shut-ins, the students without friends or any social life. They're usually the ones who get bullied.
"Sakura is actually at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. Fortunately, she's very good at hiding who she is, so she's avoided trouble with the other students. Or rather, before anyone could pick on her, someone else had already been made an example of."
First, I explained Sakura's place in the school's social hierarchy. I needed her to start out as a member of a disadvantaged group, standing on the moral high ground. That way, what came next would stir people's emotions more effectively—especially Ichinose's.
"Unfortunately, luck and misfortune don't always cancel each other out. Sakura was lucky enough to avoid being bullied by other students, but she had the misfortune of attracting the attention of someone much more disgusting and despicable.
"Today, when I bumped into Sakura, I discovered someone who had been following her and secretly photographing her. That person wasn't a student, but a member of the school staff!
"If I were the only witness, I wouldn't have immediately believed what I'd seen. But after Sakura showed me the messages she'd received on her phone, and I considered some private details about her, I became convinced that she'd been targeted at school by a stalker who'd had his eye on her for some time.
"Considering how vile his methods were and how many compromising pictures of Sakura he might have, any leak could have devastating consequences for her.
"So I'm preparing a plan. To protect Sakura's reputation, we need to eliminate any chance of her private information being leaked. Once we make a move, we have to take him down at once and give him no chance to handle the evidence.
"We also need to stay away from crowds and keep him from panicking and lashing out. To meet these conditions, I need the school's help. But once I report this to the school, the Student Council will find out. The Student Council knowing wouldn't be a problem, but the people in it knowing would be a serious one.
"Our second-year vice president, Miyabi Nagumo, would never pass up such a good opportunity to expand his fleet. We can't let Sakura escape the tiger's jaws only to fall into the wolf's den. If we go straight to Chairman Sakayanagi and bypass the Student Council, we can ask Sakayanagi for help."
Because Ryuen and I had gotten ahead of the Sudo Incident and changed it beyond recognition, Ichinose's desire to join the Student Council had dropped considerably. And without any dark history, Nagumo hadn't managed to manipulate her into doing what he wanted, so she hadn't used a back door to get into the Student Council this time.
Even so, to guard against Nagumo, I still needed to trash his reputation as thoroughly as I could. Though it wasn't really trashing his reputation. I was simply describing him exactly as he was, without exaggerating a thing.
"Vice President Miyabi Nagumo? His fleet?"
It seemed my terminology was still a little too advanced for Ichinose. A purehearted girl wouldn't understand this kind of thing, even though sex education in Japan was genuinely advanced.
"Based on reliable information and reliable audio and video recordings, we can say that, in his first year, Vice President Miyabi Nagumo was involved with his childhood friend while also dating a girl from his own class and a girl from Class D.
"Later, the girl from Class D came forward and posted an accusation about Nagumo's behavior on the forum. But it didn't make much of a splash. By then, Nagumo had already joined the Student Council, and he used his influence to suppress the post. Then, during a Special Exam, he got the girl from Class D expelled.
"If you want to find the post now, you can still look for it on the forum. I think it was somewhere around page eighty.
"On top of that, Nagumo spent his entire first year dating one girlfriend after another, while maintaining improper relationships with several girls at the same time.
"These are the highlights compiled by the upperclassmen. They're all buried in the forum, and you'll have to spend some time digging them up."
What could I say? That was curiosity for you. I'd been bored on the first night after enrollment, so I'd gone through all the forum posts. At first, I was only looking for useful information. But then I got hooked on Nagumo's romantic history and ended up gossiping instead.
Before you continue