495 Video (5)

Luke couldn't close his mouth. His eyes were round, not believing the results on the screen. It was my first-time seeing Luke ever this surprised. With a huge landscape of votes for the one in first place, Haruka decided to announce the next fraction leaders. I tightly squeezed the edge of Luke's shirt, wondering why he couldn't let me sleep through this. I had to believe the results in front of my eyes since I saw how it all happened.

"Our fraction leaders for the next school year will be Luke de Impalia Roselia with his partner, Rika de Impalia Roselia," Haruka slammed the final decision down.

"We decline!" I tried to escape from my fate.

"This is why they should be the next fraction leaders. Having no interest in power while being excellent in fraction work," Charles took the chance to support Haruka.

"He's from the powerful Lumiere family! One of the main families leading the fraction for years!" I shouted at the crowd.

"You're from the powerful Roselia family," Haruka wasn't willing to change the results.

"Your grandmother, which is my grandaunt, comes from the Lumiere family," Charles added.

From reminding everyone of this fact, there was no one who disagreed with the final decision. I had totally forgotten that Luke and Charles were distant relatives. They would have the same great grandparents, who were supposedly still alive with their long lifespan. I did think that Charles had agreed with Ethan too easily when admitting us into their fraction.

"You traitors!" I turned to Oili and Ethan.

"I don't have the time," Ethan wasn't willing to pull the time out from doing his club activities.

"The new song needs lots of practice," Oili agreed with Ethan.

This was how more piles of work were added onto Luke's desk inside the clubroom. Alex was stunned from hearing how we became the next fraction leader for his rival fraction. Both Oili and Ethan felt no guilt for Luke, immersed in recording the sidetracks for the new album.

"I'll try to convince the people in our fraction to vote for me," Alex tried to comfort Luke.

Luke soullessly started working on the piles of documents filling his entire office space. Our president was the only person who pitied him other than Alex. With Luke determined to not become another next fraction leader, I woke up from his loud voice, "it is unfortunate that I may not be eligible as a candidate anymore. If you have not heard yet, I was chosen as the next fraction leader for our rival fraction in addition to the neutral fraction."

With Shelly filling me in that it was the last day of voting, I found the last sets of votes coming in. Unfortunately, Luke's desperate attempts, saying that it was a conflict of interest to choose him made all the remaining votes go to him. My shoulders slumped as I could tell the voters were wondering how capable Luke was to persuade those in their rival fraction to choose him. Luke's jaw almost dropped from seeing how we won by another landslide again.

Luke looked like he was about to cry from imagining more work piling on top of his current ones. His body slightly trembled, hugging me even tighter in the process. I wondered if there was anyone who had been a leader for four fractions before, directly hearing from him that it was rare for someone to be in more than one fraction. Alex, who pitied his cousin, suggested an alternative, "can we have co-leaders? I'm afraid it will be hard for my cousin to handle the mass workload."

"Does anyone disagree?" Yulee also pitied Luke.

With no one disagreeing, we were officially announced as the next fraction leaders alongside Alex and Shelly. I looked up to face Luke, "is it normal to become a leader for four fractions?"

"It isn't Rika. We may be the first ones," Luke sadly brushed my hair with his hands.

Running into the club room, I slammed the door open to find the traitors inside the room. Since I knew Ethan was inside the tent, I shook it to make him come out. Ethan unzipped the tent, wondering why I was bothering him from gaming. I cracked my knuckles, taking the chance to lightly kick him for revenge, "did you think I wouldn't come after you?"

"You're not doing the work anyways," Ethan knew Luke would be doing everything in my place.

"Thanks to you, we're going to be leaders of four fractions next year," I crossed my arms.

"Four?" Ethan briefly froze.

"You also pushed the work to Luke too?" Delia turned to him.

"We did," Oili nodded his head, finding it a bit unexpected.

"Luke won all the votes in our fraction too. But Alex decided to become co-leaders," Shelly added.

With Luke opening the door, all of us froze, finding a wall of documents, blocking the entire door. Alex helped Luke to move all the documents into his office, taking more than one hour to organize everything. By the time they closed the door, half of our large room was filled with fraction work. All of us were stunned, wondering how Luke would do this all alone. Feeling some guilt in trying to push most of the work to Luke, Cillian stepped into the office, "I can help with some of the work from the neutral fraction."