When Kaguya Shinomiya's knees fell to the floor.
Kobachi Osaragi felt her world collapse along with them.
Though she still kept her head down, that scene of humiliation was branded onto her retinas more clearly than any high-definition image.
That was Kaguya Shinomiya.
Kaguya Shinomiya, who, despite her difficult personality, was still the unreachable "princess" in the hearts of every Shuchiin student.
She... had knelt.
Kobachi Osaragi felt her throat being squeezed by an invisible hand, almost unable to breathe.
She wanted to immediately turn and flee this hellish room, but her feet, as though filled with lead, were nailed to the floor by fear, unable to move.
Kaguya knelt on the ground, her whole body rigid.
Vast shame, like lava, scorched every inch of her skin.
She could hear Kobachi Osaragi's breathing, gone ragged from extreme shock, and she wished she could find a crack in the floor to crawl into.
She stretched out a trembling hand, picked up the stack of documents from the desk, and pretended to flip through them in earnest, trying to numb herself through "work."
Just then...
Three crisp knocks rang at the door.
The sound, like a thunderbolt, exploded without warning in the deathly silent room.
Everyone in the room except Seiji flinched violently.
Kaguya's shoulders shuddered hard, and she nearly dropped the documents in her hand. Kobachi Osaragi shivered so hard she nearly cried out.
"Enter."
Seiji's voice still carried that languid tone, as though he had long anticipated this sudden visitor, even with a trace of expectation.
The door was pushed open.
An ordinary male student walked in carrying a stack of activity application forms, his face holding a hint of nervousness and excitement.
He was the captain of the basketball club, here to apply for a venue for the school festival.
"Um... excuse me! I'm from the basketball club, this is our school festival activity application..."
His words cut off the instant he took in the scene inside the room.
His eyes widened to the limit from shock. His mouth fell open unconsciously, wide enough to fit an egg.
What was he seeing?
The Ice Princess Kaguya Shinomiya, kneeling at the feet of the new chairman, still holding a stack of documents, like a female slave reporting on her work to her master.
And the Public Morals Committee member Kobachi Osaragi, frozen in place like a stone statue, her face deathly white.
The visual impact of this scene was simply too great.
Great enough to crash, in an instant, his young brain that still resided in the everyday life of youth.
The application forms in his arms scattered across the floor as his arms went limp, the white papers fluttering down like snowflakes.
"Ah! I'm... I'm sorry! I... I didn't see anything! Sorry! Excuse me!"
He didn't even dare pick up the documents on the floor, bowing frantically in apology, scrambling and crawling, fleeing the Student Council Room and even forgetting to shut the door.
Kaguya's face went pale as paper in an instant.
It was over.
She had been seen.
By a completely unrelated, ordinary student, seen in this posture of hers... like a slave's.
The last fig leaf called "appearances" had been torn away mercilessly.
Shame, humiliation, despair...
All kinds of emotions, like floodwaters bursting a dam, instantly drowned her.
Her body swayed unsteadily, almost fainting. She could feel her blood rushing, a buzzing in her ears, the world spinning.
Just then, a light laugh came from above her.
The laugh was soft, but like a poisoned dagger, it stabbed precisely into Kaguya's already riddled heart.
He bent down, leaned in close to her ear, and in a voice that only the three of them and Kobachi Osaragi beside them could hear, like a demon's whisper, said with a soft laugh:
"You see, everyone saw."
"An unrelated person saw it too."
"Do you think, in this current state of yours, you still have any 'appearances' left to speak of?"
He deliberately enunciated her name, syllable by syllable.
"Kaguya... Shinomiya?"
These words completely shattered the last pillar of "fantasy" in Kaguya's heart.
Right.
What appearances were left to speak of?
In front of the entire school, she had been stroked like a pet.
And now, in front of a friend's friend and an outsider, she was kneeling at his feet.
Everything that the name "Kaguya Shinomiya" represented, pride, dignity, glory, all of it was already dead.
Dead at this man's hands.
Looking at Kaguya's eyes, which had lost all their luster in an instant and turned the color of dead ashes, Seiji knew the moment was ripe.
He sat up straight, and from the fruit plate Ai Hayasaka had at some point prepared beside him, picked up a sliced piece of apple.
The slice of apple had been cut as thin as a cicada's wing, almost translucent in the sunlight.
Then he reached out and, with two fingers, gently lifted Kaguya's chin, forcing her to raise her head and meet his eyes.
The motion carried no trace of lust, only the teasing manner of someone handling an object.
He activated [Voice of Order]. Though he hadn't used words, that unquestionable mental force was injected directly into Kaguya's chaotic mind, smoothing over her struggles, leaving only the pure, cold directive to obey.
He brought the apple to her lips.
"Now..."
In a gentle tone, yet one carrying supreme authority, he issued the final command that would completely destroy her will.
"...open your mouth. Feed it to me."
This command had completely left the realm of "work."
This was pure, undisguised toying, under the gaze of an "outsider" (Kobachi Osaragi).
It thoroughly destroyed Kaguya's last conviction of being a "person" rather than a "thing."
Kaguya's body trembled violently.
Tears finally burst forth uncontrollably from those dead-ash eyes, sliding down her pale cheeks and dripping onto the bow tie of her school uniform, blooming into a small dark stain.
But her expression, under the effect of [Voice of Order], became unnaturally calm, even one might say... placid.
Her body, under the dual effect of the fear long since carved into her bones and the irresistible mental command, reacted without her control.
Kaguya trembled, slowly parting her lips.
Then, like a tamed pet undergoing routine training, with utter submission, she bit down on the apple the man held out to her.
Her movements were precise and meticulous, as though this were a task that required careful completion.
In that moment, Kobachi Osaragi, standing to the side, felt her spirit being "killed" along with it.
What she saw wasn't resistance, wasn't struggle, but a clear-eyed obedience ten thousand times more terrifying than struggle or resistance.
...
The basketball club boy who had fled in panic from the Student Council Room came scrambling and crawling all the way back to his own classroom.
He plopped down in his seat, his face deathly pale, his whole body shaking like a sieve, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
"Hey, Takahashi, what's wrong with you? Chased by a ghost?" His companion next to him patted his shoulder curiously, trying to crack a joke.
"I... I saw it..." Takahashi's voice carried a sob, trembling beyond all coherence. "I saw it... hell... I really saw hell..."
He incoherently told the several friends around him about the terrifying scene he had witnessed in the Student Council Room.
Describing Senpai Kaguya's humiliating posture, the chairman's teasing gaze, and the Public Morals Committee member's deathly pale face.
At first, everyone thought he was joking, and some even mocked him for whether he'd been watching some strange movie.
But seeing his face twisted with extreme terror, and the trembling that came from the depths of his soul, utterly impossible to fake, none of them could laugh anymore.
A cold silence called fear spread among them.
That night, on the Shuchiin Academy campus forum, an anonymous post detonated quietly like a depth charge.
[Title: The Student Council Room isn't the place we knew anymore]
[Content: I saw it... I really saw it! Senpai Shinomiya... she was kneeling at that man's feet... like a dog... This isn't a school... This place is hell! Run! Everyone run!]
This post, the instant it appeared, was deleted at millisecond speed by some unseen force, fast enough that most people didn't have time to react.
But that flash of content was still seen by countless lurking students and, in the form of screenshots, spread virally and frantically through private chat groups.
In an instant, tsunami-like panic swept through the entire campus.
If the earlier "coronation" ceremony had only made students feel awe and fear, like watching from afar something unrelated to themselves.
Then this time, through this post's glimpse of the larger picture.
For the first time, they had directly, bloodily, glimpsed the terrifying truth of the new world order beneath the iceberg.
The princess of the Shinomiya Family was being publicly humiliated in a manner beyond their imagination.
Then what about them?
The "everyday" of Shuchiin, at this point, had completely died.
What remained was only endless, suffocating fear, and the deeply oppressive silence adopted for self-preservation.
Kobachi Osaragi didn't know how she had left the Student Council Room.
She only remembered that the moment she saw Senpai Kaguya submissively bite into that apple, and calmly, carefully chew it as though it were some delicacy, she could no longer endure it. She gave a sharp bow, and at the fastest speaking speed of her life, said "I... I'll take my leave!" and rushed out without looking back.
She ran all the way home and locked herself in her room.
She didn't turn on the lights, letting the darkness swallow her.
But the moment she closed her eyes, the scene in the Student Council Room played in her mind beyond her control.
The new chairman's teasing smile.
Senpai Kaguya's humiliated, yet terrifyingly calm gaze.
Senpai Hayasaka's numb profile.
And... her own pitiful figure, from beginning to end like a coward, not daring to lift her head, not daring to speak.
A strong nausea surged up from her stomach.
Kobachi Osaragi rushed into the bathroom, knelt before the toilet, and retched violently, the sour stomach acid burning her throat.
She was sick.
Not a sickness of the body, but of the spirit.
That "Student Council" she had yearned for was now... completely transformed into the demon king's lair.
Kobachi Osaragi thought of Miko, her dear friend with such a strong sense of justice that her eyes couldn't tolerate a grain of sand. If Miko had seen that scene, what would she be like?
Kobachi Osaragi didn't dare think further. Just imagining that picture made her feel suffocated.
That night, Kobachi Osaragi developed a high fever and slipped into unconsciousness.
Through this method, she instinctively fled from this reality that had become unbearably cruel.
...
The next day.
A strange new sight appeared on the Shuchiin campus.
Seiji Fujiwara walked down the central avenue of the campus, hands tucked in his trouser pockets, his pace leisurely.
A step behind him, Kaguya Shinomiya followed with her head down, matching his every step.
There was no expression on her face, and in those red eyes, no struggle could be seen anymore.
It was as though everything that had happened yesterday in the Student Council Room had completely crushed the last thing in her called "the self."
She no longer distinguished between "public settings" and "private spaces."
Because she finally understood that the entire world was nothing more than that man's private space.
She was now merely a possession of his that could walk and speak.
Every passing student, on seeing this scene, retreated in terror to either side like antelopes seeing a lion pride, lowering their heads, not daring to spare a single extra glance.
Seiji was very satisfied with this effect.
[Ding! Congratulations, Host, on fully conquering Kaguya Shinomiya.]
[Third-Stage Reward Received: Passive Skill [Pressure Aura]. Your existence will carry an inherent, powerful aura of pressure. Non-allied units within three meters of you will feel inexplicable tension and fear. Those with weak willpower will instinctively want to obey your commands.]
Seiji felt this pressure field centered on himself and silently radiating outward, and the smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.
With this aura, in the future he wouldn't even need to use [Voice of Order] to easily dominate most people.
His gaze settled in the direction of the Student Council Room.
He knew that the pink-haired girl should be there today as well.
...
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