The President Only Wants to Live in Peace

Chapter 9 The Student Council's Stance

"That's good. Thank you for visiting her, Inaba," Asagi replied. For some reason, he felt guilty he did not accompany him even though it was Sunday. Asagi was too busy cramming math and science in his home after realizing that he almost failed to understand everything the teacher had been explaining in class during his first week being a high schooler again. He was so worried he could not think of anything else that day. If the original Asagi was not bright and was not a student council president, he might not feel too worried, but the problem was exactly the opposite. The original was a student council president and although math and science were not his forte, he was still able to get passable scores for exams. Asagi was so worried because he had to maintain the original's achievement to avoid any suspicion. Even now he was still worried about those subjects and had been considering asking his parents to hire a tutor for him.

"Is there anything else about Ueda that we need to discuss?" Asagi asked his friends and when he saw all of them shaking their heads, he moved on to the next topic. "Let's talk about the rumor then. I've told you to warn your clubs. How's the progress?"

Yoshino, Asakura, and Inaba answered that they had warned their clubs. All of them had confirmed that it was true the student council had warned the students to hide anything related to Kudo. Inaba even added that he was supported by the basketball coach, Araide. While the girls were quite surprised with Araide's support-because the choir and the journalist club had yet to receive the same support from their coach and advisor-Asagi did not have the same reaction even though his own club also had not received any support from its advisor. To him who had read the manga, Araide's support was still within his expectation. After all, that man knew that someone had tried to kill him and later used his identity to infiltrate Teitan High School. He must have been aware of how important Shinichi's case was even if he did not exactly know the detail.

"Hey, is this going to be effective?" Yoshino asked during the discussion. "I mean, we did warn our clubs and classes, and we also warned every student through the class representatives, but according to my observation, not all of them have been taking our warning seriously. Will this be enough to control the rumor?"

"This is the only solution I can think of since the rule hasn't been established," Asagi answered, recalling the time when the student council finally decided to gather all the student representatives to warn them about the danger of Shinichi's rumor after the agreement of Asakura and Yoshino backed with the support from their advisor. That time, Asagi knew he should not have had too much expectation. He knew he should not have had hoped for all of the students to take the warning seriously. And he never did. He had neither expectation nor hope, not so much. After all, the fact that Ran and Sonoko had never been worried about Shinichi remained and Shinichi himself never did anything about it. It was not easy to get rid of the false impression. And since the rule had not been established yet, Asagi had to accept that he could not force them to keep quiet about Shinichi. "Do any of you have a better idea?" he turned to ask them.

"Unfortunately, no," Inaba said, followed by Asakura and Yoshino shaking their heads. "I guess this is our limit then?"

"It seems so," Asagi replied.

"Then it means we can only depend on word of mouth to warn the entire school regardless of whether they will take it seriously or not," Asakura concluded. "Not the best method, but I guess this is all we can do."

"Yeah, well, this method is like a double-edged sword. It may clear any doubt, but at the same time, there's still a possibility it will only create more confusion, but at least we have warned all the classes here, so hopefully, this can minimize the confusion," Inaba agreed. "But just like you said, Asakura, this is all we can do."

"Can't we let the others know through our SNS? I mean, to give the impression that we are really serious?" Yoshino suggested.

"No," Asagi rejected immediately. "Letting them know through our SNS is the same as letting the whole world know that we're purposely hiding Kudo. It will only make our school look suspicious and attract unwanted attention to Kudo."