Fallen from the Top Group Due to Cheating and False Accusations. The Only One Who Stood by Me Was My Little Sister’s Best Friend, Who Had Always Adored Me.

Chapter 34: Encounter with the Clumsy Student Council President.

Arata’s POV.

I sit in a chair in the library and open a small paperback. Immediately after arriving at school, I had a meeting with Inagaki-sensei. Until his interviews are finished, I’ve been granted a certain degree of freedom on the condition that I “stay out of sight.” Now, I’m using the library as my hideout.

Time is steadily approaching the end of the fourth period. Naturally, there isn’t another soul in the library; the silence is so heavy that the sound of my own breathing and the rustle of turning pages feel obnoxiously loud. In the dead center of the hushed room, I flip another page. There is something remarkably fresh about being the only one leisurely reading in a library while my classmates are hard at work in their lessons. Actually, for a while now, my internal sense of time hasn’t been matching up with reality at all. The flow of time feels several times slower than usual.

It’s the same school and the same hours as always, yet it’s strange how just changing the location makes the world look so slow-motion. Eventually, perhaps because I’ve been reading for over two hours, my eyes begin to feel dry and scratchy. I pinch the corners of my lids.

“…I’m sleepy.”

Since no one is watching, I let out a massive, unreserved yawn. Honestly, in this situation, I feel like no one would scold me if I took a little nap. However, Inagaki-sensei is currently skipping his own classes to conduct hearings and prove my innocence… It would be beyond disrespectful for me to just idly snooze away.

Don’t sleep! At least wait until school is out! I keep telling myself sternly. Every time the sandman attacks, I pull my cheeks, slap myself, or pinch my arms. Somehow, I manage to endure until the very limit. The moment the bell finally signals the end of the fourth period, I let all the tension drain from my body and collapse onto the desk. It’s becoming difficult to even keep my eyelids open. Just as I am about to finally lose consciousness—

Rattle-clatter!

The door right in front of me swings open, and my heart nearly leaps out of my chest.

“It’s not what it looks like, Sensei…! I wasn’t napping, I swear!?”

I snap my head up, ready to blurt out an excuse, when a girl clutching an armful of thick dictionaries bursts into the room with incredible momentum. She trips over her own feet right before my eyes and takes a spectacular spill. Head-first, no less.

(Crap, it’s not Sensei. Also, that looked like it hurt…)

“Ow, ow, oww…”

She crouches there, clutching her forehead where it hit the floor. I rush over to her, my sleepiness already vanished into thin air.

“Hey… are you okay?”

As I kneel down and ask, the girl looks up with teary eyes and shouts toward the ceiling, “Uugh… I am not okay at all…!” Then, she glares at me grumpily.

(Eh? She’s the one who fell on her own, so why does she look at me like it’s my fault…?)

Since she makes no move to get up and continues to hold her forehead in pain, I decide to start gathering the dozens of dictionaries scattered around the area. As I move my hands, I steal a glance to check the injury on her brow, and our eyes meet.

“…Hey, what are you looking at?”

“No… I just wondered if you were hurt.”

“…Mind your own business. I have no reason to be worried about by the likes of you.”

Perhaps the pain has finally subsided; she slowly pulls her hands away and answers bluntly. The next moment, her bright red, swollen forehead is exposed. Taking a clear look at her face from the front, I finally realize who this long-black-haired girl—who carries an air of refinement despite the fall—actually is. She’s a third-year and the current Student Council President: Seto Rin-senpai. I’m pretty sure she was the one who delivered the congratulatory speech on behalf of the upperclassmen at the recent freshman entrance ceremony. This is the first time I’ve spoken to her directly, and her strangely intimidating aura makes me a little nervous. Moreover, I wonder why she isn’t showing even a hint of surprise at seeing me. Does she not know about “that” incident? Well, if she doesn’t know, that works out in my favor. Developing this into a complicated conversation would be a pain, so I should leave this place quickly.

“I see. But you really should have it looked at in the nurse’s office. If you don’t cool it down soon, it might turn into a bruise from internal bleeding. That’s all I wanted to say. Well then…”

I stack the collected dictionaries into a pile and turn to leave, but I’m stopped by a sharp, “Hey, wait a minute…!” I thought she might be saying thank you, but when I turn around, Senpai is still glaring at me with that same curt expression.

“Is there something else?”

“Now that I think about it, you mentioned a teacher and napping a moment ago, didn’t you…?”

“Uh… did I say that?”

See? Just as I feared… This is turning into a mess.

“Yes, you certainly did. I came straight here the moment the bell rang to return these dictionaries I used in class, yet you were already here when I arrived. I don’t suppose… you’ve been here since the start, skipping class, have you…?”

“………”

“I’m not letting you take a single step out of here until you tell me how long you’ve been here and who you mistook me for.”

She closes in on me with a suspicious gaze, cornering me step by step against the wall. This has truly become a troublesome situation… With my hand pressed against the wall behind me, I desperately rack my brain for a way to escape this predicament.