I Reincarnated as the Counselor NPC in a Dating Sim, and Now Every Heroine I Treat Becomes Obsessed with Me - Chapter 05: “The Crack in the Perfect Smile—The Student Council President Who Doesn’t Need Counseling”

Chapter 05: “The Crack in the Perfect Smile—The Student Council President Who Doesn’t Need Counseling”

Tenth day after assignment.

That day’s visitor came without warning.

Right after school, just after Shizuku left.
I was cleaning up when there was a knock on the counseling room door.

Three times. Even spacing. Even pressure.

Saying you can tell someone’s personality from how they knock is a counselor’s bad habit—but this knock was clearly the kind born from strict manners training.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

Standing there was a girl wearing her uniform with flawless precision.

Her long black hair was neatly arranged, shining.
Her posture was straight as if a ruler had been placed along her spine.
On her chest, the student council president badge gleamed quietly.

Midori Hojouin.

One of the heroines in Bloom Garden.
The student council president of Hanazono-gaoka Academy.
Daughter of the powerful Hojouin conglomerate.
Top grades. Perfect conduct.
Kind to everyone. Respected by everyone.
A “perfect human.”

In the game, she was the heroine of the “Ice Queen President” route—you helped her with student council work, and she slowly fell in love.

And—ever since I played the game, she had been the one whose hidden side I was most curious about.

“Excuse me. I am Midori Hojouin, the student council president.”

She smiled.

A smile so perfect it could be printed in a textbook.
The curve of her lips, the softness at the corners of her eyes, the slight tilt of her head—every detail looked carefully calculated to be beautiful.

“I’ve come to confirm the current usage of the counseling room. I apologize for visiting so soon after your assignment, but as the student council, we need to understand how school facilities are being used.”

Her polite language was flawless.
She spoke so precisely it was like you could see the punctuation marks in the air.

“Ah, of course. I’m Ren Asagiri. Nice to meet you.”

I gestured to a chair.
Midori gave a small bow and sat down.
Her posture didn’t break. She didn’t even use the backrest.

(…I thought she’d be like this. But seeing it in person is on another level.)

She took out a binder from her bag and began asking questions briskly.

Number of visitors.
Visit frequency.
Operating hours.
Shortages or excess of supplies.
Annual activity plans.

Each question was clear and efficient. No wasted words.
She wrote down my answers neatly in the binder.
Her handwriting was probably beautiful, but from my seat, I couldn’t see it.

“—Thank you very much. This has been very helpful.”

The questions were done in about five minutes.
Midori closed her binder and began to stand.

A purely administrative visit.
Once her business was done, she would leave immediately.
Efficient. Logical. Perfect.

—Too perfect.

“Midori-san.”

She paused mid-rise and looked at me.
Her smile didn’t change.

“Yes?”

“May I ask you one thing?”

“Of course.”

“Do you always smile like that?”

The air didn’t shift enough to call it dramatic.

Midori’s smile stayed in place.
Her eyes were gently narrowed, her lips curved softly.
Nothing changed.

At least, that’s how it looked.

But.

My counselor’s antenna picked up something else.

Her right hand—the one holding the binder.
For just a split second, her thumb pressed into the cover.
A tiny bit of force.
Then it returned to normal.

Most people wouldn’t notice.
She herself might not have noticed.

But I’m a counselor.
For three years, I’ve read the language of bodies that words couldn’t express.

That brief tension—

That was a “caught off guard” reaction.

“Yes. A smile is the foundation of human relationships.”

Her answer flowed smoothly.
A model response.
So perfect it felt copied from a template.

That’s exactly why I asked the next question.

“And is that because you want to smile? Or because you have to smile?”

This time, I saw it.

Midori’s smile disappeared—for 0.3 seconds.

Her facial muscles loosened.
All the performance drained away.
For that brief moment, her face was completely bare.

There was nothing there.

No joy.
No sadness.
No anger.
No confusion.

Blank.

A face without emotion.

That wasn’t the same as being expressionless.

An expressionless face still carries intention—the choice not to show anything.
Midori’s 0.3 seconds were different.

It wasn’t that she chose not to show emotion.
It was that the process of creating an expression stopped.

It wasn’t like there was another mask beneath the first one—
There was nothing.

Alexithymia.

A state where recognizing and putting your own emotions into words becomes difficult.
It doesn’t mean there are no emotions.
They’re there—but the circuit that lets you feel them properly isn’t working.

In the game, she was just the “perfect upperclassman.”
If you cleared her route, she would confess, “I was actually very tired.”
The protagonist would say, “It’s okay to rest,” and boom—affection maxed out.

—Give me a break.

This wasn’t just “being tired.”
This girl might not even realize that she’s tired.

The 0.3 seconds of blankness were quickly repaired.
The perfect smile rebooted.

“…You ask quite interesting questions.”

Her voice was perfectly controlled. No shake.

“Of course I smile because I want to. —If you’ll excuse me, Asagiri-sensei. I have student council duties to attend to.”

Midori gave a flawless bow and left the counseling room.

Her footsteps faded away.
Even rhythm. Steady to the end.

After the door closed, I leaned back into my chair.

(…………)

Those 0.3 seconds.

That was everything.

Midori Hojouin had probably been expected to be “perfect” ever since she was born.
As the daughter of the Hojouin conglomerate.
As the top student.
As the student council president.

She was never allowed to show weakness.
Never allowed to fail.
Forced to always be someone “worthy of the Hojouin name.”

And as a result—

She had kept suppressing her emotions until she no longer understood what she was feeling.

She smiled.
But she might not be able to tell whether she was smiling because she wanted to—or because she had to.

She was tired.
But she might not even realize she was tired.

After wearing perfect armor for so long, the inside of that armor was starting to hollow out.

In the game, her “problem” was solved with a single choice.

In reality—
This was something that would require years of care.

(And the most troublesome part is that she doesn’t realize it herself. Midori doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her. To her, the “perfect version” of herself doesn’t need counseling. If anything, she’d see “receiving counseling” as proof that she isn’t perfect. There’s no way she’d come on her own.)

That meant I had to initiate contact.

But if I directly suggested, “Would you like to try counseling?” it would backfire.
She would refuse with a flawless smile and say, “There’s no need to worry. I’m perfectly fine.”

(So what do I do. The Lunch Box Strategy worked on Akane. “Accepting silence” worked on Shizuku. What works on Midori?)

I didn’t have an answer yet.

But there was one thing I did understand.

In today’s conversation, I had put a small crack in Midori’s mask.

“Do you always smile like that?”—that question must have caught her off guard.
No one normally asks the student council president something like that to her face.

Those 0.3 seconds of blankness—
That was what leaked out through the crack.

An empty inside.

When I saw that emptiness, I thought—

I can’t just leave her like this.

Behind that perfect smile, she was quietly suffocating.
Without anyone noticing.
Not even the game’s protagonist—
Because the protagonist falls in love with her “perfect form.”

He falls in love with the mask.

Without ever realizing the armor might be hollow inside.

(…Haruto Hanasaki. By the time you transfer to this academy—I’ll have already punched a hole through that armor. You probably won’t even see it.)

I opened my notebook and recorded today’s observations.

『Midori Hojouin. First contact. On the surface, perfectly controlled interpersonal responses. However, observed a 0.3-second emotional blankness in response to a direct question about feelings. Possible alexithymic tendency. Requires continued observation. Approach strategy—undetermined. For now, maintain a consistent stance of not demanding ‘perfection’ from her.』

I set down my pen.

Out of the five heroines, I had made contact with three.
The remaining two were Rin Kagurazaka and Mio Kujou.

Ten days since my assignment.
Thirteen days until the game’s protagonist arrived.

Managing time for three girls was already pushing it.
And there were still two more.

(…In my past life, I died from overwork because I took on too much. Am I really doing the exact same thing again, even after reincarnating?) 

With a self-mocking smile, I sipped the tea that had already gone cold.