The meeting proceeded quite smoothly without any unexpected events despite Haruno's sudden intrusion.
However, because of Haruno's excessively outstanding temperament and looks, she attracted the attention of many people present, including quite a few female classmates.
It could only be said that in terms of appealing to both men and women, Haruno indeed had something.
Of course, it would be better if she didn't sit next to him.
Shinra helplessly turned off his phone screen. Because of Haruno's existence, his presence in the conference room was much higher.
If it were just this, it would be fine; just being stared at didn't hinder him from playing on his phone. After all, having held so many meetings, the executive committee members in the same group as him more or less knew about his little habit.
As long as there were no mistakes in work, actually very few people would interfere. Not to mention that Shinra himself had a close relationship with the vice chairman, Yukinoshita Yukino, so no one would risk offending Yukino to trouble Shinra.
The kind of plot that often appeared in novels, where someone actively finds fault with the male protagonist because of admiration for the female protagonist, would ultimately only appear in novels. The vast majority of people would at most just grumble behind their backs.
Confronting someone face-to-face required too much skill.
But the key problem was that Haruno wasn't just sitting next to him simply. She would also poke his arm with her finger from time to time, asking what he was looking at, if he was going to Yukino's house for dinner tonight, and...
"That Sagami-something chairman seems very afraid of Yukino. Do you have any clue about this?"
"Maybe because Yukino is quite serious when working?"
"Isn't Yukino quite cute when she's serious? How can she be scary? For people like Chairman Junior, seriousness is the most useless thing."
Haruno considered herself quite accurate in judging people. Just chatting a few sentences and observing the friends around the other party, she could roughly understand what kind of person the other party was.
Therefore, in Haruno's view, her sister Yukino could never make someone like Sagami Minami feel so fearful. On the contrary, the possibility of jealousy was greater.
"That's not wrong." Shinra agreed.
"Right~" Seeing Shinra agree with her statement, Haruno immediately revealed a 'you understand too' expression.
Then, this big sister turned sideways, one hand supporting her chin, the other holding the armrest of the chair, and asked with a somewhat playful look in her eyes: "So do you think there might be some misunderstanding in between?"
"Misunderstanding?"
"For example, a certain Mr. Knight cleared possible traps and obstacles for the princess, leaving the villains' schemes with no place to be implemented."
"Isn't this quite good? Why call it a misunderstanding?"
"In terms of results, it's certainly good. But if this makes the princess mistakenly believe that all things can be solved by relying on the knight, what then?"
"I think a smart princess should learn the knight's way of doing things, so similar problems in the future will no longer be problems."
Facing Shinra's answer, Haruno sighed lightly: "A smart princess might not necessarily be willing to learn..."
If Yukino could learn Shinra's methods, Haruno wouldn't have to worry about her being isolated and hurt in the future.
"How would you know if you don't try?" Shinra didn't have as many feelings as Haruno.
In fact, Shinra felt that Yukino should be much stronger than Haruno thought. Even without his help this time, she would still be able to get out of the predicament eventually, just a bit bumpier.
"True." Haruno nodded, then smiled again: "Originally, I was thinking about whether I could help my cute sister. Now it seems completely unnecessary, after all, there's already a better candidate, isn't there?"
Shinra felt that with Haruno's nature, whether she planned to come over to help or to cause trouble for Yukino was a big question mark.
In the center of the podium, Vice Chairman Yukino was listening to her subordinates' progress reports, but her gaze involuntarily drifted towards the back row.
When Yukino saw Haruno constantly 'harassing' Shinra with her fingers, forcing him to put down his phone and start chatting with her, Yukino found that her attention could no longer be focused on work at all.
What exactly does Nee-san plan to do?
If possible, Yukino wanted to separate her sister from Shinra right now and figure out what schemes she was plotting, but unfortunately, she couldn't.
There was still work to be processed at the moment. Even without work, she couldn't do anything to her sister in front of everyone.
After all, nominally, her sister was everyone's senior here.
Annoying. If I had known, I shouldn't have agreed to let her come to school.
However, Yukino also knew very well that even if she didn't agree, her sister would come anyway.
From the beginning, it had always been like this. As long as the other party made a decision, she could never make a change no matter what. All she could do was adapt and endure.
"Yukinoshita-san?"
"Hmm?"
"I have finished reporting."
"Mm, I know. Very good. Next."
Perhaps surprised to hear the words 'very good' from Yukino, this group leader went down as if injected with chicken blood (extremely excited), becoming radiant, looking as if he wished to work overtime for another two days.
What he didn't know was that Yukino barely listened to his report just now; her attention was all on her sister and her good neighbor.
Of course, Yukino didn't completely ignore it. She listened somewhat. Judging from the current project progress, time was quite ample. If smooth, all preparatory work could even be completed several days in advance.
The results were quite gratifying.
Each group leader reported the progress in turn. Although there were more or less some small problems in between, they were quickly pointed out by Yukino, and corresponding solutions were given. Finally, under Sagami Minami's announcement, this regular meeting successfully ended.
After the regular meeting ended, the executive committee members didn't leave the conference room in twos and threes as before but started working on the spot.
As the school festival approached, the work of executive committee members could no longer be 'done from home' as before. Many times, cross-group joint actions were required.
For example, the Media Publicity Group needed to obtain the program list of school festival activities from the Personnel Coordination Group to announce on the school festival website and arrange corresponding publicity work.
And the Personnel Coordination Group needed to communicate with the Item Management Group, asking them to transport the equipment and tables and chairs needed for the performance.
In short, except for the Record and Miscellaneous Group, other groups more or less had areas needing communication and cooperation.
Since communication and cooperation were needed, it meant that differences were inevitable.
Normally, if differences arose between different groups, they would choose to report directly to Vice Chairman Yukino for her to decide.
However, today's Vice Chairman's mind didn't seem to be here. Facing the group members who came for help, Yukino instructed Sagami Minami: "You handle this first."
"Ah... me?" Sagami Minami pointed at herself, not expecting this job to fall on her head.
According to past practice, shouldn't she only need to do some account checking, work that didn't require much brainpower?
Giving ideas to this bunch... does she have the capability?
Sagami Minami felt unsure, but under the public gaze, she couldn't ask Yukino to find someone else, so she had to bite the bullet and start planning for the group members.
Don't say, although Sagami Minami's ability was inferior to Yukino's, her grinding these days wasn't in vain. After understanding a large amount of activity situations of past School Festival Executive Committees, she really had some unique insights into the differences encountered by group members.
Actually, these differences weren't major issues. Many times, both paths were viable. What was needed was just a voice that could make a final decision.
Previously, the one making this decision was Vice Chairman Yukino. Now replaced by Chairman Sagami Minami, who had a higher status on the surface, there would be even fewer problems.
Leaving aside other things, Sagami Minami, who could grind herself until dark circles appeared, still had quite good prestige in the entire Executive Committee.
As Sagami Minami began to handle the differences between groups, she gained a deeper understanding of the chairman position and a clearer recognition of Yukino's ability.
Can't compare, absolutely can't compare.
Don't look at her barely managing to handle it now. In reality, Sagami Minami knew her own situation. Those group members were actually not satisfied with her judgment. It was just that due to her identity as the chairman, it wasn't easy to say it directly. Plus, it wasn't a big deal, so they didn't dwell on it too much.
It was completely incomparable to Yukino's analyzing problems, clarifying pros and cons, and convincing everyone.
It was also at this moment that Sagami Minami truly realized the huge gap between herself and Yukino.
Sometimes a gap in ability does trigger an emotion called jealousy, but when the gap is too large making comparison meaningless, Sagami Minami only had envy and admiration left for Yukino.
Uh... admiration was probably because Yukino had arranged too much work for her before, tormenting her quite a bit, thus causing Stockholm Syndrome.
Yukino didn't know that her temporary decision made Sagami Minami completely submit to her. She had more important things now, that is, to pull Shinra away from her sister (crossed out), to stop her sister from interfering with her subordinate executive committee members' work.
As for what work Shinra had... don't worry about that for now.
"If Nee-san is still here hindering work, please go back." Yukino walked to the two, and her first sentence stunned Haruno.
Hindering work? Me?
Haruno blinked, looking at Shinra on the side table who had nothing but a phone.
He doesn't even have work; how can I hinder him?
A bit creating something out of nothing, making trouble without reason, imagining out of thin air, fabricating out of thin air.
Perhaps feeling that Haruno 'made sense', Yukino also couldn't hold it together somewhat. She turned to Shinra, thought for a moment, and said, "You, go verify the accounts."
"Wait, this doesn't seem to be within my scope of work, right?"
Facing this undeserved catastrophe, Shinra tried to struggle, indicating he was in the Record and Miscellaneous Group. No matter what, he shouldn't be verifying accounts. Wasn't that something the Financial Audit Group should do?
"Your group is..."
"Record and Miscellaneous Group."
"Verifying accounts is also a miscellaneous task."
Yukino indicated that as the Vice Chairman, her power was unlimited. She actually classified verifying accounts into miscellaneous tasks, directly staging a modern version of calling a deer a horse for Shinra.
"What kind of miscellaneous task is this?" Shinra complained.
"Consider it a punishment for playing on your phone during meeting time." Yukino found another reason. Compared to the previous one, this reason was passable.
And to prevent Shinra from sneaking away, she even applied a patch.
"Because it's a punishment for you, don't think about dumping the work on Hachiman."
Hachiman, obviously not even an executive committee member himself, paid so much for the Executive Committee. He really... I'm crying to death.
"Regarding this point, I think you are completely unqualified to say anything about me."
Dumping work on Hachiman wasn't something only Shinra did. Because Yukino became the vice chairman, the Record and Miscellaneous Group had one less person than other groups. Therefore, strictly speaking, Hachiman actually undertook the work content of both him and Yukino.
Yukino looked away, pretending not to understand, and handed the ledger that should have been verified by Sagami Minami to Shinra.
Does this count as Sagami Minami's curse?
"Do you need Big Sister's help? verifying accounts or whatever, I'm also very good at it!" Haruno leaned forward again.
Didn't you, Yukino, say I was hindering work? In that case, helping is fine, right?
Let's see what reason you use to stop me now.
Hearing this, Yukino raised her eyebrows slightly, ignored her sister, and said to Shinra: "The content of the accounts is confidential and not convenient for outsiders to know."
Eh? Why does this rhetoric sound familiar? Seems like the template used to force Sagami Minami to comply before?
Using the move I taught you against me?
Facing Shinra's incredulous gaze, Yukino's pretty face felt slightly hot.
"Confidential? Why don't I remember such a rule?"
Unfortunately, this rhetoric was useful against Sagami Minami, but it had no power against Haruno, who had served as the School Festival Chairman.
"Maybe because Nee-san never cared much about rules."
"Eh, how can you say that! I follow rules very strictly."
"If you really followed rules, Nee-san should be at university now, not appearing here."