The classroom was silent, with a heavy air rampaging crazily.
Class 2-B — the class Riku and Mei studied in. But neither of them were here right now.
It was 3:26 PM. The time when most students would be home by now, but not here.
Near the window seats, around a cluster of six chairs, a group of students sat—some cross-legged, some slouched, others just... confused.
Like Shun, the soft-spoken, perma-anxious guy who sat at the very edge, awkwardly clutching his bag.
"Um... sorry, but why... am I here again?" Shun whispered for the third time. Once again, no one responded.
His question faded into the thick, chaotic silence.
Then, a sharp click of heels.
Arisa stood from her chair — she'd been sitting there the whole time, silently watching them like a queen surveying her peasants. Her perfectly tied ponytail bounced slightly as she spoke.
"I'll say it since no one else will," she began, flipping a page in her notebook — purely for drama.
"Mei and Riku. What's going on between them?"
That one sentence dropped like a lit match in a room full of gas.
Hana leaned forward, fingers laced on the desk like she was about to pitch a war plan. Her lips curled into a smirk.
"So you've noticed too, huh?"
"No offense," Daichi muttered, resting his cheek on his fist, "but everyone in class has. They're acting... weird. Not in a 'we hate each other' way. More like—"
"'We broke up but forgot how to stop caring' kind of way," Aika finished, adjusting her glasses.
"Do we have the same brain? How about we get married and ask our baby what he thinks about this?" Daichi said with a straight face, turning to Aika.
She didn't even blink. "We'd get divorced in three days."
"Better than most couples these days," Daichi shot back, grinning.
Yuto let out a snort-laugh. "Can we focus before this turns into a romcom side plot?"
Shun, still gripping his bag like a lifeline, tried once again. "Shouldn't we be... studying instead of Riku and—"
"Anyway," Hana cut in, completely ignoring him.
Then she turned and locked eyes with Shun.
"Shun, you are very important to me."
Shun froze. Then blushed. Hard. He squirmed in his seat like a worm under a spotlight.
"I-Is that a confession...?" Yuto groaned, already regretting everything.
"No, dumbass," Hana said, rolling her eyes. "He's important for the mission. You know he reads manga, right?"
"...Wait. What does that have to do with anything?" Shun asked, quietly panicking.
"A lot," Hana said, grinning. "Because to fix Mei and Riku... We will either need to make them hate each other or fall in love again."
Shun, calming himself down and gaining some courage spoke.
"Shouldn't we just leave them alon-"
"No" Hana glared at him.
"...I sincerely apologise" Shun once again went back to his orignal form.
Aika sighed, pulling out a pen and flipping her notebook to a clean page. "Alright, let's be methodical about this."
"Wait, we're actually doing this?" Yuto blinked.
"You're still here, aren't you?" Arisa said sweetly.
"So... what's the plan?" Daichi asked, cracking his knuckles. "Do we lock them in a storage room? That works in manga, right?"
"No no no," Shun spoke up again, hesitant but trying. "That's like... trope number 5. And they'd kill each other."
"Perfect," Hana said. "Enemies-to-lovers speedrun."
"Hold on," Aika raised a hand. "Before we decide the trope, we need to assess the genre of their relationship."
"…The genre?" Daichi echoed.
"Yes. Are they in a romcom? A tragic slow-burn? A second-chance healing arc?" Aika listed off seriously, pen poised.
"They're in the 'two idiots who clearly still like each other but are too stubborn to say it' genre," Yuto deadpanned.
"So every manga ever," Shun muttered.
"Then we go with classics," Hana declared. "Accidental hand touch. Fake dating. Maybe a jealousy arc if things don't work."
Arisa muttered looking down at the table. "I kinda hate jealousy troupe. Imagine the person you love talking sweetly with someone else.. it feel bad."
Daichi comforted her. "Don't worry, i won't do something like that."
"Hmm...?" She looked up.
"So, let's get marrie-"
Aika slapped his head. "Focus, clown. You already proposed to me five minutes ago."
Daichi rubbed his head, still grinning. "Harem's cool, you know."
"...I also don't like jealousy troupes..." She crossed her arms, looking away from him.
Daichi's eyes widened, just for a second. It was easily broken by the heartless Yuto.
"F. O. C. U. S." Yuto repeated, slowly and firmly like he was teaching toddlers how to spell. "I refuse to be part of a love polygon with background music."
"I already picked your OST," Hana said without missing a beat. "It's just thirty minutes of a dramatic violin loop."
"Great," Yuto groaned. "I'm being emotionally manipulated by anime fans."
Aika ignored the chaos and scribbled a rough plan onto her notebook. "Phase 1: Natural Proximity. We need Riku and Mei in situations where interaction is unavoidable."
"Like lab partners?" Shun asked.
"No," Hana shook her head. "Too boring. We need meaningful proximity. Like…" She paused, then grinned. "Paired cleaning duty."
Yuto whistled. "That's evil."
"Already checked the rotation," Aika said, tapping her pen. "I can switch their names before it's posted tomorrow."
"Did we just become villains?" Daichi asked, kind of excited.
"We were never the heroes," Arisa muttered, leaning back.
Hana turned to Shun again. "You'll be our observer. I want timestamps, facial expressions, hesitation pauses, all of it."
"No". That rejection took half of Shun's life expectancy away, just for it to be countered.
"30 buc-"
"Deal"
"He didn't even let her finish."
The rest of them just stared.
Shun, now very broke but also very trapped, pulled out a notepad from his bag like a retired detective returning to the field. "Do I also get a cool nickname? Like... Agent S?"
"No," Aika replied immediately.
"You'll be called Bag Boy," Yuto added.
Shun sighed. "...Fair."
"Okay," Hana clapped her hands once. "Here's the plan. Tomorrow, Riku and Mei will be on cleaning duty. Alone. Unsupervised. With mops. The tension will do the work for us."
Daichi raised his hand. "What if one of them skips?"
Aika smirked. "Already asked the teacher to be strict on attendance. Said it was for moral development."
"Didn't that teacher cry over her dog's birthday last week?" Yuto asked.
"Exactly," Aika nodded. "Emotional people are easy to manipulate."
Arisa leaned forward, finally speaking again. "What happens after they're forced to clean?"
"Observation phase," Hana replied. "Shun reports everything. If progress is slow, we escalate to Phase 2."
"Which is...?" Daichi tilted his head.
"Stage incidents," Hana grinned. "Fake confessions. Sudden rumors. You know. High school."
"I'm... starting to worry about all of you," Shun mumbled.
"We all are," Arisa said quietly, "but this is fun."
Aika flipped her notebook shut. "Then it's settled. Operation Rekindle is go."
The group slowly broke up, grabbing their bags and heading out one by one, a mix of chaotic evil and well-meaning nerds.
As Shun walked alone down the corridor, notebook pressed against his chest, he sighed deeply.
"…I'm gonna die before graduation."
---
The Next Day – 4:12 PM
Cleaning Duty – Class 1-3
The sound of mops dragging. A broom tapping. Two people, silent.
Riku stood by the blackboard, erasing slowly, methodically. Like it personally offended him.
Mei stood near the windows, wiping them with a cloth, occasionally glancing back at Riku and then quickly looking away.
The tension was real. Not anime-level, but dangerously awkward. You could butter toast with it.
From the window near the door, Shun peeked through the tiniest gap, breathing softly.
"Agent Bag Boy," he whispered into a walkie-talkie (it was just his phone with a voice recorder), "Subject Riku is currently... mad at chalk. Subject Mei keeps wiping the same glass. Tension is at code it's complicated."
He paused.
"…They're not talking. I think we're gonna need Phase 2."
From the other side of the school building, Hana's voice played back from a recorded message:
"Then begin escalation. Deploy emergency gossip."
Shun swallowed hard.
"Bismillah.."
"You ain't muslim!" Yelled Yuto.