An Invincible Team... Or So I Thought
Once the midterms were over, classes settled back into the same old rhythm—lectures, note-taking, sparring—nothing that really changed direction. Nothing, that is, except for one single subject. And that one subject was enough to set the entire first-year class buzzing.
“All right. For the second half of the first semester, you’ll be doing a group project. Class 1 has thirty students, so… we’ll divide into six groups of five. You all know each other well enough by now, so form your own teams and submit the lists to me after class. Anyone who can’t find a group, don’t worry—I’ll assign you myself.”
A group project.
Honestly, the words didn’t land with much weight. The kids who were friendly with the upperclassmen seemed to have heard the stories already; they reacted like the inevitable had finally arrived. Me? I didn’t have any seniors to spill those secrets, so I had no idea why everyone else already looked miserable.
Just from the name, though, I figured a group project would be way easier than it sounded.
How hard could a first-year assignment really be? With five people, anything one of us couldn’t figure out, the other four could cover. Pure math said five people meant five times the speed. And no matter how much work they piled on, it couldn’t possibly be five times a normal homework load—so we’d finish way faster than solo work.
Besides, a five-person team… the roster was basically already set. Me, Celian, Anne, Yuri. The four of us had stuck together all semester and prepped for midterms as a unit. No reason to start splitting up now. The only question was where to find that fifth member…
“Ian! We’re short one—want in? Purely by notes, this group’s got three of the absolute top ranks!”
The “top ranks” Anne was bragging about were Celian, Yuri, and me. Why she was the one sounding so proud, I had no idea. At least she had the decency not to include herself—maybe that deserved a little credit.
“What? If I join you guys I’ll just get dragged down by you, guaranteed. Besides, I already got a team~”
Ian brushed off Anne’s invitation and headed straight for the cluster of guys he usually hung with. We had to hold Anne back from charging after him to get even, then started debating who to take as our last member. A quick look around showed most of the class had already clumped into fives. A few stragglers still wandered here and there. We needed one of them to make five. While I was scanning the leftovers, someone spoke up.
“If you’ve still got a spot… mind if I join?”
The first thing that caught my eye was the black horn-rimmed glasses. Only after that did I notice the violet hair tied to one side and draped over her shoulder. Not many students in our class wore glasses, and the girl in front of me was one of the few I actually had a connection with—our class president.
Her name was…
“Huh? The class president wants our group? That’s fine, right?”
Her name was…
“If it’s the class president, we’re more than happy! Right, Seli?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Her name was…
“Then our team’s got Seli, El, Yuri, and the class president—we’re invincible!”
What was it again? I’d only ever called her “class president,” so the actual name had completely slipped my mind.
“Okay! Let’s write up the list and turn it in! The list is… ah! El’s got it. Just add the class president’s name! I’ll submit it.”
I looked down. On the desk sat a sheet with my name, Celian’s, Yuri’s, and Anne’s already written. All I had to do was add the class president’s. Easy. Except…
“……”
This was bad. What was the class president’s name!? To buy time I flashed her a bright smile and slowly reached for the pen.
Work, brain. Remember the class president’s name.
The pen settled into my fingers. I guided the tip toward the blank space with deliberate care, while my mind frantically ransacked every memory for the missing name.
Finally the ballpoint touched paper. A tiny dot appeared.
But I couldn’t move the pen. I still hadn’t remembered.
My eyes darted wildly. And those wildly darting eyes finally scored a hit.
Lena.
A name tag sat right on her chest. Most professors never bothered enforcing the things—they were basically decorative—but our class president wore hers every day as an example to the rest of us. She could be so diligent it bordered on rigid, but right now I wanted to praise that personality to the heavens. Hallelujah!
I neatly wrote Lena on the list. Anne snatched it up and delivered it to the professor.
A few bumps along the way, but we’d formed our team without disaster. Celian, Anne, Yuri, Lena, and me. With these five, our group was definitely invincible.
There was a time when I believed that, too.
“Um, El?”
“Yeah? What’s up, Seli?”
“That… there’s an awful lot of text on the screen, isn’t there? Maybe we should cut it down a little?”
“But if we’re explaining this to the class, isn’t it better to show everything we researched?”
“…No, it isn’t. I’ll tidy this part up.”
With that, Celian ruthlessly deleted the long passages I’d written, leaving only a few sparse lines.
“El! Why on earth did you put a puppy in here!?”
“But isn’t it cute? I figured it’d grab everyone’s attention.”
“Wow~ It’ll grab attention, all right! That’s our El!”
Anne clapped enthusiastically, cheering me on. Sliding in a photo of a puppy with its tongue lolling out as the background was, in my opinion, a stroke of pure genius.
“Take it out right now!”
“El?” “El…” “El!” “Haaah…”
For some reason, every single time my hands touched anything, someone called my name without fail. And every time, whatever I’d just touched vanished. Eventually they stopped even saying my name—just heaved a deep sigh and reverted everything to the way it was before I touched it.
Why!?
“Uh… hmm… El, how about you handle the research instead? I’ll make the presentation video.”
They even stripped me of my original role. At this point even the densest person would realize something was wrong.
Am I… useless…?
In the end I was banished from video production—the job I’d originally claimed—and sent to the library to hunt down reference materials. While I was searching the shelves dedicated to labyrinths for the books I needed, someone stepped right up beside me and pulled a volume free. Hey, that was the one I was looking for…
“Here. This is what you were after, right?”
The person who’d retrieved the book and held it out was the class president.
“Huh? Weren’t you supposed to be making the video in my place? Why are you here…?”
“Research was my original job, remember? I figured you might get lost, so I came along to show you where the good materials are clustered.”
Lena said that, then led me all over the library, patiently pointing out every section packed with useful sources.
“This one has a weird title, but it’s actually packed with labyrinth info. Worth knowing about.”
“Whoa~ I never would’ve even touched this book. Who names something like that? How did you even know, class president?”
Lena stayed glued to my side, opening the book and explaining. Just as she’d promised, despite the bizarre title the contents on labyrinths were thorough and solid.
While she was handing over the research baton, I finally asked the question that had been nagging at me.
“But Lena, why’d you want to join our group? The other teams must’ve been all over you.”
“Well, yeah. But your group looked like it had the best shot at a high score. And—”
The girl who’d been pressed close suddenly threw her arms around me in a full hug.
“Thanks to that, I got to become friends with Elicia too. Win-win. Though I had no idea you were such a scatterbrain.”
I hadn’t realized it before we got close, but Lena was surprisingly good at making friends. I’d worried she might feel awkward squeezing into our tight little circle of four, but she slipped right in without any of the friction we’d feared.
“Ah, El! There you are! And… Miss Lena?”
Celian’s voice drifted down the aisle between the shelves as she spotted us. What was she doing here?
“You two were taking forever, so I came looking… What exactly were you doing?”
Celian’s tone was colder than usual. Fair enough—while the rest of them were grinding away on the project, the person who’d left to do research was down here goofing off with the girl who’d come to help. She had every right to be annoyed.
Unlike me—a professional Celian-reader—Lena didn’t seem to notice the shift in temperature at all.
“Oh, Celian. We already found everything we need, so we were just about to head up… Hm?”
Lena started to release the arms still wrapped around me, then stopped mid-sentence as if she’d spotted something. She tilted her head for a second, then—
Whump!
She hugged me again.
?
And just as quickly let go.
“Class president?”
But she acted like she hadn’t heard, wordlessly pulling me into another tight hug before releasing me just as fast. Over and over, Lena hugged me and let go, hugged me and let go.
“Heh-heh~ So that’s how it is between you two?”
After her baffling performance, Lena flashed a knowing grin and said something completely incomprehensible.
“Huh? How what is?”
“Th-that’s—what do you mean by that!?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but Celian buried her face and practically shouted. Did Celian actually understand whatever Lena was implying?
“Hmm~? What, was it one-sided?”
Still speaking in riddles, Lena walked right up to Celian and this time pulled her into a full hug instead of me.
“I don’t really have any prejudices about that sort of thing, you know? Well? Well? I might even be able to help you out.”
Whatever it was, Lena seemed determined to help Celian with it.
Whether Celian accepted the offer or not, the two of them soon pressed close, heads together, whispering so quietly I couldn’t catch a single word.
I felt a little left out… but if the two of them were getting closer, that was a good thing, right?