Chapter Text
The night of Gehenna’s long awaited Valentine’s celebration, all was quiet but all was not well. For once, the usual trouble makers of the district were either too incapacitated, too tired, or too giddy from the festivities to cause any commotion.
However, Hanuma Makoto sat in purgatory - otherwise known as the floor of her office. She was unable to bring herself to go to a dorm room where she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Instead, she found herself propped up with her back against her priceless mahogany desk, clutching a bottle of contraband liquid in her hand. The silver-haired student couldn’t seem to stave off her nausea, but the alcohol certainly gave her something to blame it on. If she could be honest with herself, she’d know that her myriad of physical and mental symptoms were rooted in the events of the night and stemmed from her own selfish actions.
But she wasn’t quite there yet in terms of whiskey intake. Makoto knew she was at least two drinks or so from opening that can of worms. She put her lips to the opening of the bottle to choke down another swig. She was in one of her rare, unexplainable moods again; One that almost permitted her to take an objective look at her position in the world.
Hina. Ever since she’d first laid eyes on her, Makoto found herself unable to breathe properly when she was around. It started when Makoto watched the white-haired stranger get offered a coveted position in the Pandemonium Society on a whim. It deepened when Hina had rejected it, also on whim.
Makoto was aware she was digging up feelings she usually wouldn’t dare to scrape the surface of. No, it was far easier to attempt to bully the whole lot of them into submission or blame them for everything that went wrong. Every passing day she could feel herself scrambling and stretching to link Gehenna’s failures to the Head Prefect. At first, it had been calculated. It was a controlled means of securing her own reputation as the sole authority in Gehenna. But now, Makoto was unsure who she was trying to convince.
Because somehow, Hina was untouchable. Makoto realized it as she had watched Hina’s fingers dance across those piano keys; An instrument she had allegedly never touched before the start of the week yet mastered before the day of the recital. The memory of Hina and her beautiful serenade both mesmerized and sickened Makoto in a symphony of feelings she couldn’t reconcile.
Hina had taken it with the grace and elegance Makoto strived every single day for. Maddeningly, it was like a second nature to Hina; An instinct she’d always possessed in the same way spiders knew to spin webs. Makoto could feel the conflict swirling inside her, like a storm she couldn’t quell with even the strongest of drinks.
The jealousy, the sadness. The insecurities. The admiration. The self-loathing…
Makoto didn’t touch those things sober and she couldn’t organize them drunk. They were just there, inside of her, like an ugliness she would never be able to hide beneath her title and accomplishments.
And that’s why she really hated Hina, everything Makoto had ever wanted seemed to be woven into Hina’s very being. Every trait, every movement, every thought. Hina was inherently powerful, Makoto was inherently weak.
Makoto slipped a pill onto her tongue, swallowing it with the next splash of liquid fire and letting herself fall into a dreamless sleep.
Hina stared at the clump of hair in her hands blankly. She was accustomed to losing sleep and appetite, but hair? Her eyes felt uncomfortably heavy and difficult to keep open.
Chinatsu had given her vitamins for her hair and medicine for sleeping. The vitamins didn’t seem to make much of a difference and she never took the sleeping medication. Even if it was effective, Hina seldom had enough time in her schedule for more than 6 hours of sleep. Sena had once given her a stern diagnosis of too much work and stress, but the only cure for that seemed unattainable. Hina had stopped bringing her troubles to the Emergency Medical Club after that.
At least the piano recital had gone well. At what cost, though? To what end? A hopeless voice in the back of her head echoed. Lately, work had become a heavier and heavier burden on her and she was unsure of how to remedy it.
Hina’s eyes and nose burned with the threat of tears as she thought of her dream of retiring. To just be a Gehenna student. She wondered what it would be like to spend hours decorating her notes while watching the training Blu-Rays instead of devouring them in double speed between Prefect tasks. She imagined leisurely strolls on campus, studying for exams with early morning coffee in cafes…
It hurt to not have that, and it hurt even more for it to feel so out of reach. For Kivotos’ sake, it hadn’t even been a necessary task that had made the entire week a headache. Nobody would have died if Hina had simply declined playing the piano. In fact, everyone would completely understand if she didn’t accept Makoto’s outrageous demand.
In the end, it wouldn’t have even mattered. Makoto falsely declared Hina a no show, Hina took care of all of the resulting chaos, and everyone fell neatly back in line. Piano recital or not, the outcome would have been virtually identical.
It was as if the entirety of Gehenna rested on her shoulders, and it was her ever present responsibility to act in their best interest 100% of the time. If that meant a piano recital for Sensei and the student body, so be it.
Hina wiped a lone tear from her eye. This couldn’t continue. This felt like her genuine breaking point. The entire week had wrapped itself up nicely, but every single day had been a battle of the body and the wits. She’d had to sacrifice sleep to practice the piano because every time she had an opportunity to slip away, another disaster would appear.
No use crying when there’s still doing to be done, Hina reminded herself. What would she tell Ako and Iori to do when they were stuck?
A year ago, there had been a Problem Solver disaster in the Millenium district. What seemed to be a small incident had turned out to be a huge one, and that was only discovered after Ako had been sent on a solo mission to handle it. Ako had called Hina, stressed to the point of tears at having to handle the situation by herself.
Hina remembered telling her to make a list of all the individual things that needed to be handled, because it was easier to divide and conquer a situation in parts sometimes. And once the problem was split up, individual solutions and priority values could be developed.
Perhaps that was what Hina needed now. Yes, a list of problems that needed fixing before her retirement. Even if they took all year to get through, she had to make some progress towards her dream.
If I can find time to teach myself piano in a few days, I can find the time to work towards this. No matter how long it takes.
And with that, Hina pulled out her notebook and began to write. There were several problems in Gehenna, but many of them couldn’t be solved without disrupting the culture of the school. Clubs like Problem Solver 68 and Gourmet Research Society could be forcibly disbanded for continued misconduct, but that could prove entirely futile or add fuel to the fire of Gehenna students’ disregard of authority. And honestly, her beloved school wouldn’t be the same without their regular trouble makers.
That shortened her list of things to do before retirement by a large margin. She could single out four areas that needed smoothing over: Ako, Iori, Pandemonium Society, and Trinity.
Ako and Iori would either be the easiest or the hardest task on her list. Ako was talented, capable, intelligent, and a formidable leader, but she often broke under pressure in Hina’s absence and relied on Hina heavily to complete tasks. Ako needed to be able to stand on her own and recognize her own strength if she were to take Hina’s place as Head Prefect.
Iori’s headstrong and determined nature had proven to be extremely valuable in battle, but was also the source of her mistakes. She needed to find a balance between her determination to carry out orders and being able to see beyond the task at hand.
And the Pandemonium Society’s issues with the Prefect Team were largely because of Makoto. Hina was actually on decent terms with Iroha, who seemed to hold no ill will towards anyone except possibly Makoto, ironically. The other members, Chiaki and Satsuki, never went out of their way to cause the Prefects grief unless Makoto ordered them to. Ibuki actually liked Hina despite loving Makoto more than anything in the world.
So there was really just Makoto. Why she had such an issue with them could be for several different reasons, Hina sensed it was a combination of an inferiority complex and jealousy. Whatever it was, Hina couldn’t retire if the two main authorities in Gehenna didn’t have a working relationship. Before she left, she needed to ensure the two clubs worked as separate parts of the same machine.
And then there was Trinity. One of Hina’s goals as Head Prefect had always been to smooth things over between the two schools. She’d been mulling over the events of the Eden Treaty for a while in the back of her head, and had ultimately concluded that perhaps an official treaty was the wrong way to approach it. A binding agreement would certainly be part of the end goal, but the real problem between Trinity and Gehenna lay in the students' relationships with each other. Nagisa and Hina were reasonable enough to work together whenever needed, but the average Gehenna student held Trinity in very low regard and the same was true vice versa. Nothing could be done about Trinity and Gehenna relations on paper until the student bodies weren't at each others throats at every opportunity.
In conclusion, several plans would need to be set in motion for this to work. Hina was willing to indulge herself in her own ambition and attempt to carry them out at the same time. For now, she just needed to push a little harder through the night. She had several messages that needed to be sent before morning.
The heavy-eyed Prefect stifled a yawn and sat back down at her desk to begin drafting. The days ahead would be long and hard, and she could only hope they would pay off in the end.