Behind the Mask

Exhausting Decisions (Part 1)

On Monday Mary had stated that it would be a fun week for her where she would be interacting a lot with Ririka, yet in the last two days, Mary's plans had been quite impeded because of some unexpected reasons. Mary did know that this week would be a little different than other weeks because it was a testing week, however she had not thought a lot about the impact that it would have on Ririka who didn't act like one but indeed still was a member of the student council. Mary was just coming from one of those big exams which took around two hours to finish in general. "Puhh... They definitely made these tests a lot harder than last year, didn't they?" concluded Mary out loud. Proof of that was that Mary's wrist was still slightly hurting from all the writing she had to do in the language exam. All around her there were students in the hallway complaining about how ridiculous hard some of the exam questions had been. Mary had to admit that the questions were definitely more challenging than usual, but the blonde girl was still certain that she got almost all questions correct. "Honestly if you ask me, it's pretty unfair that you council members don't have to take these exams." said Mary out loud in a little resentful tone. Mary was still walking but after a few steps of silence she stopped and turned around with a confused look.

"Ririka?"

asked Mary, who was confused why Ririka wouldn't answer any of her comments. It was then that Mary noticed that she had been walking through the hallway alone without the vice president following. Mary was just standing in the middle of the hallway trying to figure out what was going on. All of a sudden Mary remembered the reason for Ririkas missing. "Ohh right, she told me that she would have to go again to one of those council meetings." Mary had completely forgotten about it. The truth was that in the last two days Ririka had been to these council meetings quite often. "Now that I think about it, I really shouldn't be complaining about the exams when there is Ririka who is continuously working like crazy." acknowledged Mary before continuing walking. While walking Mary thought about the weird situation the student council was in. Kirari had dispatched the student council until a new president was to be found through the election, who then could, if they wanted to, found a new student council. It was very easy to forget that the student council had some responsibilities other than bullying individuals, but the thing was that they all were still going to an academy which had to meet some requirements, so things like the testing week still had to be organized by someone. Which meant that right now the student council was existing while not really existing. "Most people in the student council are geniuses, yet they couldn't even organize the elections without messing up the complete school system." claimed Mary who already disliked the system.

Because of the combination of a technically non-existing student council and members just not showing up anymore, Ririka had been overloaded with work coming from the student council. Therefore Ririka wasn't able to be around Mary all the time and when she was, she always seemed extremely tired. Not being followed by Ririka had it's perks, but Mary would have preferred for her gambling partner to be with her right now. Mary hated seeing Ririka this tired out and also worried a little about her. Mary actually had been looking forward to teasing Ririka this week, but because Ririka was so busy Mary had decided to go easy on her as she didn't want to add a lot more stress than necessary. That's why Mary only took off Ririkas mask every once in a while but nothing more. "I really hope this week is over fast." wished Mary before arriving at the bench in the schoolyard which had become the place where Ririka and Mary would always meet during lunch time.

Another thing was that normally Mary would just distract herself from all these problems by just gambling with people, but the student council had even taken away that fun from Mary's life by unofficially prohibiting official gambling. That annoyed Mary a lot, but the lack of gambling had one singular positive effect. As much Mary did not like the rule there was one person who was almost tortured by not being able to gamble as much anymore. Yumeko had been dying for any type of gamble in the last two days and definitely had been miserable. Even though Yumeko was a good friend, Mary was still a little salty at her since Friday so she was more than fine seeing Yumeko suffer a little. Mary sat down on the bench and tried to predict how much longer they would be able to sit outside before the colder becoming days would force them to stay inside the building. Mary pulled out her lunch as she watched a video on her phone to keep herself occupied during lunch.