Revealing the Correct Answer!

Now that things had come to this, the situation was crystal clear. If this were a Case Closed movie, this would be the part where Conan shoots Kogoro with a tranquilizer dart and starts his deduction.

As the person in charge of the stage play, the girl I liked, Rei, had first approached Saber, hoping she would play the part of the Sealed Dark Dwarfs Exodia. Saber had misunderstood, thinking she was going to be the Prince or the Princess. Imagining a kissing scene, she’d laid down the condition that all the main roles had to be cast from within our dorm.

Rei agreed and went to ask Exusiai to be the Prince.

I have to say, Exusiai’s train of thought was exactly the same as Saber’s. She also laid down a condition: she would only play the Prince if I played Snow White.

And that just left our dear Yukinoshita Yukino. Because of Saber’s demand, she had to be a main character. Obviously, the only major role left without an actor was the evil Queen. And so, Yukino became the evil, milk-less Queen.

Looking at it this way, Yukino and I were just collateral damage, victims of Saber and Exusiai’s filthy desires.

I sighed and buried my face in my hands. I definitely wouldn’t be losing out by kissing Exusiai, but having to wear a dress in front of Rei… that was just too much for me. I’m no Jedi wizard, after all; I can’t just hold my breath and snipe with an 8x scope like in PUBG.

But just then, our counselor, Yanagi-sensei, said something completely unexpected.

Her eyes, intoxicating as sweet wine, looked up at me on the top bunk. “Kiriko-chan, Rei told me a long, long time ago that you wanted to play Snow White,” she said, her voice husky and sexy. “Why do you look so surprised? Did you forget…?”

“Huh? She told me a long, long time ago?”

That threw me for a loop. Then, a long-buried memory slowly resurfaced in my mind.

It had happened not long after we started school. I hadn’t even run for class president yet. I remembered meeting Rei on the very first day. We hit it off so well that for the first week of school, we were closer to each other than to our own roommates. A lot of our classmates thought we’d known each other in high school, and more than a few assumed we were a couple who had ended up at the same university.

Then one day, Rei shyly asked me to meet her under the cherry blossom tree on campus.

My heart started pounding. I’d heard plenty of rumors in those first few days. The bad one was about a senpai who’d fallen from the roof of the girl’s dorm. The good one was about this cherry blossom tree, the “confession tree.” Apparently, a lot of couples on campus had successfully confessed their love under it.

I was young then, and I still believed in love at first sight. When Rei, the girl I’d gotten along with so well, asked me to meet her at the cherry blossom tree, I thought something wonderful was finally about to happen to me.

Filled with daydreams of a blissful university life, I swaggered over to the tree. Not long after, Rei came running up. Her twin-tails bounced as she ran, and she was clutching a princess dress that looked like a wedding gown.

I was so excited I could barely breathe, my heart racing like a six-barreled Gatling gun. I thought she was going to change into the dress and confess to me! I was even caught in a dilemma, wondering whether I should hesitate before accepting, accept without hesitation, or just smash my lips against her face.

Rei was clearly excited too. She was panting, her pretty face flushed, but her big eyes were sparkling. She looked up at me, held the “wedding dress” out, and made her sweet, blissful confession in a sweet voice:

“I… I have a request! I hope you’ll put on this princess dress and play Snow White!!”

Her sweet, blissful confession made me… wait, what did she just say? Play Snow White? What happened to the confession?!

My gaze slowly shifted to the intricately made princess dress in her hands, my eyes widening…

…So you weren’t going to wear this dress, you wanted me to wear it?!

I can’t even begin to describe the look on my face or the feeling in my heart at that moment, but it was probably pretty similar to the first time I saw one of those super-cringey viral dance videos on Tikt*k.

Rei easily noticed the dumbfounded look on my face. Thinking I just didn’t understand, she patiently explained, “I want to organize a class stage play of Snow White, but a cross-dressing version. Guys play the female roles, and girls play the male roles. I think you’d be perfect for Snow White!”

I felt like the dog from that meme with the room on fire, caught in the merciless grip of fate, unable to utter a single word. My mood plummeted from heaven into a pitch-black abyss where you couldn’t even see your own toes.

Of course, I didn’t agree. For the next few days, I walked around like a zombie. People who haven’t experienced it probably can’t imagine the psychological shock of that kind of letdown. The girl you thought was going to confess to you in a wedding dress actually just wanted you to wear the dress for a cross-dressing play. In the days that followed, I was even afraid to talk to girls, terrified that I would misunderstand their intentions again.

This fear grew worse and worse, to the point where I couldn’t even interact with women. For example, if a girl asked me before class if I had my textbook, my first instinct would be that she forgot hers and wanted to share. But then, I’d immediately flash back to the incident with Rei and start doubting myself. Maybe she wasn’t asking to share my book at all. Maybe she just needed to go to the bathroom, didn’t have any tissues, and wanted to borrow my textbook to… use.

Waves of fear washed over me. I didn’t know how to respond. Should I just generously rip out a few pages and give them to her, or thoughtfully tell her that this kind of paper would be really rough?

This condition of seeing through appearances to the “true” nature of things got worse and worse. I even started avoiding women altogether. I knew I couldn’t go on like that; avoidance would only make the fear worse. The best way to eliminate fear is to face it, to dominate it. So I decided I couldn’t hide from women anymore. At that moment, I made a secret resolution. That was—

To dominate all the women in the class! Including the teacher!!

And that was the entire reason I ended up running for class president.

This whole incident had been buried deep in the hairy recesses of my memory, but now it had been dragged out into the open again.

I nodded solemnly and said to Yanagi-sensei, “Yeah, I just remembered. That’s right.”

As soon as I finished speaking, Yukino-san’s soft, tearful voice rang out, “So the three of you knew all along that we were going to perform Snow White? I’m the only one who was dragged into this and kept completely in the dark?!”