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After the situation in the library, Ryoko and Kugie came here, to the classroom on the fifth floor, with the latter of the two currently reading the light green book. Kugie was sitting on one of the desks meanwhile Ryoko read the aforementioned book.
“...‘I’ll tell you the weakness of the strongest obstructer here, Maple!’” the dark-haired girl repeated aloud from the book.
“Maple?” her partner questioned, raising an eyebrow, although it goes back down a second later. “I don’t think we’ve seen that one,” she hops off the desk she was sitting on, approaching Ryoko. “...hey can I see that for a moment?” she asks, snatching the book out of Ryoko’s hands a moment later.
“No—what are you doing?” she looks at the other girl confused.
“What? I wanna read it too,” she replies, reading what else the book had to offer. “Hmm… oh that’s how we do it? Huh, that’s… really simple.”
“What’s really simple?” Ryoko hadn’t been able to read that part yet, since had Kugie quite literally stole the book from her.
“Oh, Maple’s weakness! Didn’t you read it?”
“No, I didn’t. You took the book from me before I even got the chance.”
“Oh yeah… I did,” she shrugs her shoulders. “Oh well! Guess you’ll never find out!” she adds, giggling a little.
“Kugie… we’re supposed to be partners here, which means working together,” Ryoko mentions.
“Yeah, but just because we’re partners doesn’t mean I can’t mess around with you right?” Kugie says, a somewhat mischievous grin on her face.
“Just please let me have the book,” the other teenager states.
“Let me think about it,” she thinks for a moment, making a “hmm” sound whilst she does. “...nope!”
The dark-haired girl groaned. Is Kugie even trying to help? “Okay then… how can I get the book?”
Right before the other girl could reply, Sara and Ranmaru enter the room, with Sara holding a red book, and Ranmaru carrying a yellow one.
With her and Ranmaru approaching the other two, Sara greets them, “Oh, hey Ryoko, Kugie. What’re you guys doing here?”
Kugie, again, shrugs her shoulders, then replies, “I dunno. Ryoko wanted to come in here for some reason after what went on in the library.”
Sighing, Ryoko explained herself, “I wanted to come back here because… I wanted to look around here more.”
Clearing his throat, Ranmaru looks at the brown-haired high schooler, asking, “Hey Kugie, can you give us that book you have?”
“Nope!” the questioned girl quickly replies, the mischievous grin still on her face. “Not unless Ryoko can get it from me first.”
“Wait what?” that comment caught the mentioned girl off guard.
“You heard me!” with that, Kugie runs over to the door.
“Kugie wait—you can’t get that far from me, remember??”
“Yeah yeah, otherwise my head blows off,” she stops at the door of the classroom, giggling a little. “I’m not that dumb, Ryoko.”
Once Ryoko got closer, Kugie jogged out of the room, but still kept a distance to where she wasn’t in any particular danger. This forced Ryoko to leave the room so she could keep up with her, though she knew she was going to be able to catch up to her eventually. Right before she left, she turned to the other teenagers in the room, and told them, “We’ll be back.”
This somewhat chase thing didn’t last long, as they were back in the computer room, the information about Sara still on one of the computer screens.
Pretending like she was caught in the act, Kugie put her hands up. “Uh oh! Looks like you got me,” she says, slight sarcasm in her voice.
Ryoko approached her, and promptly got the book from her. “Alright, now we can go give this to Sara—”
“Actually can I ask you something first before we go do that?” the dummy interjected, looking at Ryoko with an inquisitive look.
She sighs, looking at Kugie, and responds, “Go ahead.” She tucks the book under her arm.
Kugie gets herself sat on top of a desk, and asks, “Do you think Sara is a good leader?”
Ryoko looked at her baffled for a moment. “What?” she wants to confirm what Kugie had just asked her.
“Do you think Sara is a good leader?” the short-haired teenager repeats. “It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.”
It takes her a moment, but the other teenager does answer Kugie, “Yeah, I think she’s a pretty good leader. Pretty great at that.”
Her expression goes from playful to serious, “Don’t you think it’s kind of ridiculous how she of all people is leading us? Don’t you think one of the adults should be doing that?”
“She’s probably doing a better job than anyone else probably could’ve.”
“Yeah, ‘probably’,” Kugie puts “probably” in air quotes.
“Do you doubt her or something?” Ryoko questions, raising an eyebrow.
“As a matter of fact… yeah, I do,” she answers simply.
“Why?”
“...” the other teenager doesn’t say anything at first. It takes her a few moments for her to reply, “I just doubt her. Doesn’t mean I have to share my reasoning for that. Not like you can force me to, anyways.”
Kugie was right on that part. After all, like Ryoko herself mentioned earlier that they did have to work together, not against each other.
“Okay… you don’t have to tell me then.”
After that there was silence in the room. Neither of them said anything, and there was no noise for a little bit. They weren’t looking at each other, at least, not for a while.
Kugie finally looks up at Ryoko and says something, “Let’s just go ahead and give the book to her. She’s probably worried about what happened to us by now.”
“R-right,” she feels like she could’ve said something else, but if Kugie wanted to, it was probably best to leave the conversation at that.
With that, they both leave the room in search of Sara and Ranmaru, wherever they may be at this point.