169. The Trap (4)

Minato rushed towards the corner of the bottom floor, where some classrooms had been unused for a couple of years and remained pretty much empty.

The wide grin on his face and the glint in his eyes betrayed his excitement, let alone the fact that his heart was working overtime because of how worked up he was.

He checked once to confirm that no one was around before entering the room on the far right, closing the door behind him firmly.

"Holy fucking shit, that might just be the coolest thing I've ever done!! Wait...Scratch that, it's the coolest thing I'll ever do! PERIOD!"

Reiji let out a chuckle at how pumped up he seemed to be, giving him a nod of appreciation.

"You honestly did way better than I expected. You might have a talent in this field, you know?"

"You really think so?" Minato exclaimed with wide eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous," Arata snorted. "It's a miracle he didn't notice how robotic you sounded. Where was the finesse? I thought you practiced the lines all night, so why was this the best you could do?"

"....Oh. I'm sorry."

Reiji shook his head wryly at Arata's firm retort.

Though there was some truth to it, the outcome was still far better than they had initially been hoping for.

He had no doubt that this could be attributed almost entirely to the panic Kahawara Sensei must've felt after the public announcement, which played perfectly into their plan.

Minato walked over and peered at the screen in front of Arata, which was now replaying the footage that had been recorded to ensure nothing was missing.

"This camera is really fucking cool. Can I keep it?" he asked, adjusting his belt buckle.

"Sure, just pay me the 500,000 yen it cost and it's yours."

"...Never mind."

If looked at closely, one could see a small black circle beside the metal clasp of his belt, which was the smallest camera+microphone combo that Arata had.

They were considering just using a mic at first for safety purposes, but actual footage would be far more convincing.

So Reiji suggested placing it in Minato's belt buckle.

Because there was no reason for Kahawara Sensei to stare at his crotch that closely.

Unless....

Either way, Minato had extended his tie to cover the belt buckle and then made sure to move it out of the way at certain times to get Sensei in the frame when he wasn't looking, just to prevent any problems.

".....It's not bad at all," Reiji muttered.

The audio was quite clear, and even though the tie was blocking part of the video for the majority of it, Kahawara Sensei could still be seen.

"What do we do now? Send it to the Principal and President immediately?" Minato asked, his voice still highlighting how much fun he was having.

Reiji leaned back in his chair and took a second to think about it.

"We'll do that, but only after we make the second post."

"Huh? You want me to go through with that dude's evil plan?"

"Not exactly. Sending it to the Principal may let us off the hook completely, but they likely wouldn't release the actual evidence so that they can retain the reputation of the school. They might even cover it up and just say that Kahawara Sensei was fired for other reasons, or he simply resigned. Either option would mean that there'll still be a good number of people who will continue to look down on the President even if she's cleared of everything."

"But.....Would the Principal really do that?"

"Maybe not the Principal, but there are still a lot of people above her in the hierarchy, like the Chairman of the school. There's no reason for us to take that risk. Plus, don't you want to see him getting fried by the students once they know the whole story?" he smirked.

"Hell yeah? That would be sooooo funny! So.....you want me to put the video up using the same throwaway account?" Minato caught on.

"That's part of it. But you can also include other things, such as the reason you decided to defect and backstab that asshole. Of course, you can't reveal my involvement. Just make up some bullshit about you being remorseful or finding his purpose disgusting. You also need to include why Sensei even did this in the first place," Reiji explained slowly.

"Oh, right! Why did he do it? I can't think of a proper reason!"

"Because the Prez reported him to upper management about how he's been treating students in class, amongst other things. It could very well cost him his job if the investigation goes through."

"Ughhhhhh! Blah blah blah blah! I don't care about any of this! Can we just get to writing the post and putting it up??" Arata suddenly spoke up, breaking his silence.

He collapsed onto his chair like a puppet that had lost its strings.

".....You know you can leave, right? Your job is done," Reiji sighed.

"Fuck you! No shot I'm leaving until I see this through!"

"You're a grown ass man hiding inside a school with cameras and microphones. Are you sure you want to stay and risk getting caught?"

"....Uhhhh. Good point, but I'm still not leaving."

"Tch."

Reiji had only been in the room with him for less than 10 minutes and already had a headache with how much he kept complaining about everything, even before Minato arrived.

"God, I should've turned off my private DMs! There are so many troll messages," Minato cut in with exasperation while scrolling through his phone. "Look at this one! This dumbass is saying he has extra evidence against the President and wants to meet up!"

He handed Reiji his phone, pointing at one of the messages that had just been sent.

***

[New DM]

thegreatgamergod: Hi.

thegreatgamergod: I have something that can be of help with your plans

thegreatgamergod: I obtained some evidence from the President's desk that you will LOVE

thegreatgamergod: When can we meet?

thegreatgamergod: this offer won't last long, and you know you need this.

thegreatgamergod: choose carefully, the clock is ticking

***

Reiji narrowed his eyes.

At first, he thought it might be a troll, because Minato had previously shown him a bunch of ridiculous DMs he'd gotten ever since he made the first post.

But that tag seemed familiar.

GamerGod, and other variations of it, were Riku's go-to usernames for a bunch of different platforms.

And he wouldn't believe that this was a coincidence.

'But.....Why would he do this?'

Shouldn't he be helping Noa instead of pointing his sword at her?

"What should I do?" Minato asked.

".....Ignore it. Focus on the post right now, we don't have much time until break is over, and I want you to put it up along with the video as soon as lunch begins."

Whatever nonsense Riku was up to, he didn't quite have time for it right now.

"Right, right. Let's do this."

***

*KNOCK KNOCK*

".....Come in."

Reiji opened the door and stepped into the office, breathing a sigh of relief when he confirmed that Tadano wasn't there.

Behind the desk sat Noa with her usual stern demeanor, but this time her actions could only be described as adorable and nothing else.

Her cheeks were puffed up as she chewed slowly, the sandwich in her left hand doing its best to hold the contents in, as her concentration was completely on the paperwork she was finishing with her right.

She looked up when he entered, and Reiji could see a few crumbs on her chin that made him want to take a picture to tease her with in the future.

But he held back.

Barely.

After taking a few seconds to swallow, she tilted her head slightly with confusion.

"Why are you here?"

".....It's lunchtime, why are you in the Student Council all alone? And why are you still working?"

Reiji genuinely couldn't understand why the management gave so much responsibility to the Student Council, to the point where the stuff he saw in anime was no longer an exaggeration.

"I need to work extra hard to regain the students' trust. So I'm going over all the paperwork I completed recently to see if I made any mistakes, just in case."

".....Oh."

All the desire to mess with her vanished, replaced with a hint of pity when he remembered why she was such a workaholic in the first place.

Well, at least in her case, she enjoyed doing this.

"Okay, forget that. You don't need to do all this anymore," he said, sitting down across from her.

".....Why? Wait, did you find out who was behind the post?"

Noa's eyes widened slightly, but there was also a bit of excitement within them.

"Yep," he chuckled. "But I also went the extra step and got his confession."

"Really? That's great!"

She put down her sandwich and leaned back in her chair with a tired expression, the melancholic scene only marred by the crumbs still on her face.

"Wait.....You didn't.....beat them up, did you?" she suddenly asked.

"Huh? Is that seriously your first question instead of 'who was it?'"

"I'm doing it for your sake. If you really did use force, it might get you into trouble and, worst case, invalidate your discovery."

".....Don't worry, I didn't need to do that. At least, not exactly," he added sheepishly before she could sigh with relief.

"...What did you do?"

"Check the forum. The poster should have made the second post by now."

Noa froze in confusion.

"S-Second post?" she asked with a rare tinge of nervousness. "What do you mean?"

"Open the forum and see for yourself," Reiji shrugged cryptically.

Noa instantly opened a new tab on her computer and navigated to the forum, refreshing the school's page as fast as she could.

And a post that had only been up for 4 minutes was already at the top of the Hot section.

Her eyes constricted with shock when she read the title and looked up at him in disbelief.

***

BREAKING: THE PRESIDENT WAS FRAMED?? THE REAL MASTERMIND BEHIND THE CONSPIRACY IS REVEALED!!

***

"...How?"