The afternoon sun cut a sharp, golden blade across the floor of Class 2-A, but its warmth could not penetrate the chill settling in Nagumo Miyabi's core. Throughout the lectures, his attention was fractured. His eyes kept darting to the classroom door, his body taut with a predator's wariness—except he was the one feeling hunted.
The temporary reprieve Asahina had secured at lunch was just that: temporary. A superficial calm that did nothing to quiet the alarm screaming in his gut. He knew Sakamoto's pattern by now. The boy was not someone you dismissed; he was a force you endured. His vow of "complete obedience" was less a promise and more a terrifying natural law, to be enacted with a brutal, literal precision.
The grotesque "candlelight luncheon" and its humiliating cleanup sequel were not service. They were a social assassination, meticulously planned and publicly executed. He turned my authority into a punchline, Nagumo thought, the sting of it fresh and corrosive.
"He has a next move."
The certainty was absolute. "Lunch was that spectacle. What will dinner be? What fresh, outrageous iteration of 'service' is he engineering for tonight?" The mere possibility sent a jolt of primal dread down Nagumo's spine. This wasn't reverence; it was suffocation. It wasn't obedience; it was a form of psychological warfare that twisted his own commands into weapons. In a direct contest of wills with Sakamoto's brand of relentless, literal-minded "devotion," Nagumo was forced to admit a devastating truth: he was outmatched. Any conventional rebuke would only be fuel for the other boy's next, more extreme performance.
Direct confrontation is a dead end. I need leverage.
His mind flew to his planted seed—the midterm exam leaked under Sakamoto's name. Yet, the first year remained curiously, unnervingly quiet. The expected chaos hadn't materialized. The half-truths he'd crafted waited, a dormant minefield, but for now, they offered no deliverance from his immediate, pressing hell.
The core problem remained, agonizingly simple: how to instantly, permanently sever Sakamoto's cling-film presence?
To publicly renounce the "interview" as a lie? Unthinkable. It would shred his credibility and hand Sakamoto a legitimate grievance.
To declare the interview a stunning success and hire him? Impossible. Horikita held that power, and the last thing Nagumo wanted was Sakamoto anywhere near the Student Council.
To criticize the "service" as unsatisfactory? A catastrophic blunder. It would be an open invitation for Sakamoto to escalate into truly unimaginable territories of attentiveness.
Every path led back to the same inescapable trap. The game he'd started on a whim, the hole he'd dug to amuse himself, had become his own prison.
The bell rang, a merciful sound. Nagumo seized the escape, a more urgent physical need overriding his strategic paralysis. The rich, excessive lunch demanded its reckoning. He barely registered his surroundings as he strode quickly from the room, down the corridor, and into the men's restroom.
He entered a stall, locked the door, and the world briefly narrowed to a moment of simple, uncomplicated relief. A long, slow breath escaped him.
Then, habit took over. His hand reached automatically for the toilet paper dispenser on the wall.
His fingers brushed empty space.
Nagumo froze. The relief vanished, replaced by a cold, dawning horror that seeped into his veins. In that stark, sterile silence, the trap snapped shut with a quiet, absolute finality. He was no longer the hunter, the strategist, the vice president.
He was just a boy in a bathroom stall, out of toilet paper, and with a terrible, perfect certainty about who was responsible.
He hadn't brought tissues. In his haste, he'd thought of nothing but escape.
It's over.
The realization crashed into him with the force of a physical blow. Nagumo Miyabi, architect of the second year's unity, sat frozen in a tide of utter, profound helplessness. Humiliation, hot and searing, crept up his neck. To be brought low by something so base… He fumbled for his phone, a desperate plan forming—
Then, the impossible happened.
There was no warning. No shift in light, no sound, no disturbance of air. It was a discontinuity in reality itself.
One moment, the space before the cubicle door was empty.
The next, a tall, black-clad figure knelt there in perfect, reverent silence.
Sakamoto.
He was on one knee, posture impeccably formal, as if attending a state ceremony. In his outstretched hand, he held a single, pristine roll of white toilet paper, presented like a holy relic.
"Vice President Nagumo."
The voice was calm, clear, and utterly, devastatingly neutral in the tiled silence.
"The item you require."
Nagumo's mind shattered.
His blood ran cold, then hot, his face oscillating between pallor and flush. How? The door was closed! No one had entered! How did he know? Had he been listening? Calculating? Was there no depth to this surveillance, no boundary this creature would not violate?
This wasn't service. It was a metaphysical horror. A haunting.
Every strand of Nagumo's cunning, every ounce of his pride, unraveled at the sight of that offered roll. The chain of future horrors flashed before his eyes: Sakamoto materializing beside his bath, Sakamoto standing vigil by his bedside, Sakamoto forever there, a monument to unbearable attentiveness.
The dam broke.
"P-passed!" The word was a ragged gasp, torn from a place of pure survival instinct.
Sakamoto tilted his head a fraction. "Vice President?"
"Your probation! It's over! You're hired! Officially!" Nagumo's voice climbed, stripped of all control. "Now stop! Stop all of it! Every single 'service'! Disappear! Do you understand? Never—ever—let me see you like this again!"
He was panting, staring wild-eyed at the placid figure before him.
Sakamoto observed him for a long, silent moment. Then, he gave a slight, deferential nod.
"As you command."
With the same unnatural grace, he leaned forward and placed the toilet paper on the floor within Nagumo's reach. Then, seamlessly—as if erasing himself from the very film of the world—his form blurred and was simply gone.
Silence rushed back in, thick and absolute. The restroom was empty.
Alone, Nagumo Miyabi slumped, his breaths coming in shallow tremors. His eyes were fixed on the innocent white roll on the floor, an object that now seemed to radiate a kind of terrible, cosmic mockery.
In that moment, he knew two things with absolute certainty.
He would, forevermore, have a profound and deeply personal phobia of the word "service."
And the first-year student named Sakamoto was a force of nature best observed from a very, very great distance. He was done. Utterly and completely done.
Patreon Rene_chan