Chapter Text
The room was frustratingly cluttered. They had tried to clean it out many times, but no one had the heart to throw any of it away. There were the things that were easily divvied up to be returned to their respective owners. There were things that could not be dealt with so easily. Kojirou’s scrapbook of fashion magazine clippings. Yousuke’s emergency sewing kit. The spare Nintendo controller that Renji had brought in for video game night.
They had tried to keep in touch with the former members but time and distance wore away at their relationships. They lost touch. There was no way to return everything to the graduates. Or to tell them that Fudanjuku was being disbanded.
Kouki had come to the clubroom during lunch to try and weed though some of the junk, but he ended up sitting at the desk by the window staring off into the distance. This was the president’s desk; a position Kouki had only occupied for a short time. The members of Fudanjuku knew they were in trouble. Club president, Kojirou, was graduating, along with the last of the original members, Uramasa. Since interest in joining a club like Fudanjuku was low at a school where most students chose to spend their time with athletics, they had little luck recruiting new members.
The year after Kojirou and Uramasa’s graduation, the year that Kouki became president, the faculty gave them three weeks to get one new member to join, so that they would meet school criteria for an official club. In three and a half weeks, they had two first years interested in signing up, thanks to Leo and Light’s tireless campaigning.
It was too late for Fudanjuku, though. The faculty had been itching for an excuse to disband the club since Yousuke founded it. A club that does anything to help people is pointless when no one wants help from a ragtag group of mediocre high school students. They mostly just hung out after school. It was a waste of a perfectly good clubroom, the faculty argued. Kouki wondered why it was considered so wasteful for Fudanjuku to use the closet sized, mold infested room when no one else wanted it when it became available. Still, the staff insisted that they clean it out as soon as possible so another club could move in.
“Kouki?” Kouki turned around. Kensui had entered the room, having seen the door ajar. “Here again?” he sighed. “You don’t have to force yourself to come here outside of the scheduled clean up times. It’s bad for your health to dwell so much.”
Kouki did not respond. Instead, he ran his fingers along the top of the plaque on the desk. It read “President”.
“You should take that home with you,” Kensui said, noticing the contemplative look on Kouki’s face.
“No,” Kouki replied. “It should go to Yousuke. Or Kojirou, at least. They were the real presidents of Fudanjuku.”
“Don’t look down on yourself, Kouki. You are—were—a real Fudanjuku president, too. I mean, to Masaki and Sora, you’re the only Fudanjuku president.”
Kouki’s gaze returned to the window. “I feel bad for those two. They never got to experience Fudanjuku the way we did. The way it was supposed to be.”
Kensui crossed the narrow room and placed a hand on Kouki’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
Without meeting his friend’s eyes, Kouki nodded and rose from his chair. He slung his bag over his shoulder and began to follow Kensui out of the room.
As Kensui and Kouki made their way back to the third-year classrooms they overheard the excited chatter of one of the second-year classrooms. They had passed by the open door at first, but then Kouki began to recognize the voices.
“Wait,” he called to Kensui.
“Huh? What is it?” Kensui asked.
Kouki had already returned to the door of the second room classroom and was staring through the opening.
“Kouki, you really shouldn’t—” Kensui’s words were caught in his throat as he approached the doorway.
Inside the second-year classroom, Leo and Light sat huddled together with Masaki and Sora who were gazing intently at their seniors. Light and Leo were sharing the stories about how they joined Fudanjuku.
“And then,” Leo said, “he punch the guy right in the jaw. And I said to myself, ‘I never wanna be on his bad side!’ Oh, but he’s actually really sweet once you get to know him.”
Kouki chuckled, imagining how Uramasa would react to being called “sweet”. That’s when the others noticed the two third-years standing there.
“Setou-senpai, Aiba-senpai!” Light waved. “We were just talking to Sora and Masaki about Fudanjuku.”
“We heard,” Kensui said. “I hope they aren’t boring you,” Kensui said to the two first years.
Masaki shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “We love hearing these kinds of stories. Right, Kusakabe-kun?” Sora nodded silently. “We actually decided to come find Kariyase-senpai and Fujimori-senpai because we wanted to hear more about Fudanjuku. I wish we could have been a part of it.”
A sadness weighed on the room for a moment. Regrets were breathed out on sighs.
Then Kouki spoke. “You are,” he said. “You are a part of Fudanjuku.”
“But, Setou-senpai—” Masaki began.
“Because,” Kouki interrupted, “Fudanjuku isn't done for yet.”
“Kouki,” Kensui said, “we’ve already been disbanded. There isn’t really anything we can do.”
Kouki spun on his heels and straightened his bag on his shoulder as he strode out of the classroom. “I have an idea,” he declared.
After the final bell rang to signal the end of the school day, Kensui, Light, and Leo headed for the clubroom. They were intercepted on the way by Masaki and Sora. “Setou-senpai said that we are real members of Fudanjuku,” Masaki explained, “so the least we can do is try to help out.”
“Where is Setou-senpai, anyway? Don’t you two usually show up together, Aiba-senpai?” Light asked.
“Yeah,” Kensui said. “But when I went to his classroom to meet him he wasn’t there.”
“Maybe he’s already in the clubroom?” Leo speculated.
“Must be,” said Kensui.
The group rounded the corner and approached the clubroom. Sora nudged Masaki's arm and pointed up at the sign above the door. “Huh? Hey, guys,” Masaki said. The others looked up at the sign as well. The chipping wood had been polished and the fading kanji reinvigorated. Someone had given new life to the sign that read “Fudanjuku”.
Kensui looked at the clubroom door. There was silence on the other side, but he could still sense a presence. He slid the door open.
Kouki sat opposite them as they entered, polishing a metal plaque from his seat at the president’s desk. The others looked around the room as they entered. “Kouki…” Kensui began. “What on earth did you do…?” Everything had been put away, back where it had been before they were ordered to clean the room out. No, it was even more organized than that. The meeting table in the middle of the narrow room had been cleared of the piles of junk to be sorted, and on the chalkboard was a display of photographs.
“Woah,” Masaki said, looking over Sora’s shoulder as he stared at one of the photos. “These are the original members, right?” He pointed at a picture of five young men in soccer jerseys, flashing the victory sign on a green field.
“Yeah, it is,” Light said. “I only knew Akazono-senpai and Seimyouji-senpai, though.” Light pointed to the members he was referring to as he spoke.
“That’s Shijuuin-senpai, right? The one who founded Fudanjuku?” Leo asked.
“Must be,” said Light.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Kensui confirmed. “Kouki, what’s going on?”
“Sit, everyone,” Kouki instructed. He placed the President's plaque he had been polishing on the desk in front of him and turned it to face the others. “Let’s get out club back.”