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Darkest Before Dawn - 97
🕑 Added 2025-02-27 17:51:58 +0000 UTCChapter 97
“Nezu thinks he’s funny,” he commented, looking more thoroughly through the paperwork that he’d been given in regards to the agency-club. He hadn’t even gotten past the first page before raising an eyebrow. “And he’s really, really not,” he added, unimpressed, as he read the title of the documents once more.
“Is this about the name of the club? Because I think it works,” Nagashira commented absently before jumping a little when Kazuki turned to look at him. He wasn’t sure why he was so scared. The Management kids were doing a lot better as the days passed, after all. Was he particularly scary looking at that moment? “But I’m sure we can change if you want, Boss!” he squeaked.
Kazuki just stared at him before sighing and dragging a hand over his face.
“It’s fine,” he mumbled, not even sure he meant it. However, he needed to make an effort and, well,... “This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to do, right? See if these kinds of decisions are good or not. I’ll hear you out if you think it’s good,” he explained as patiently as he could before casting an annoyed look at the document.
“You’re exaggerating, honestly,” Chikuchi said, and it was their turn to be on the receiving end of his gaze. However, the General course student wasn’t quite as frightened as their friend. Kazuki was a little relieved to notice that.
“Pharos,” Neito said, tilting his head. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s Greek for a tower with a light that gives warning of shoals to ships,” Masu answered absently, checking over the texts. They had to be doing that on purpose though. “Otherwise known as a lighthouse or-”
“A beacon?” Neito finished, seemingly amused.
Great.
Were all of them going to be fine with that ridiculous name?
“Pharos Agency Club,” the sole 1-B student in their group read out loud consideringly. “I mean, having it say Agency Club sounds a little… you know? But having it just be Pharos Club would be weird too, right? Like it’s missing something. And we can’t take out the club part, I imagine,” he considered, almost as if he were talking to himself.
As if those things were the main problem when Nezu wanted to basically slap his hero name on the club.
“These numbers look good, but I think we could try to make some arguments to raise our budget,” Keage commented, ignoring their whole conversation entirely. “I do believe they won’t let us use any of it for your guy’s equipment… and equipment projects in Hatsume’s case. However, we should be able to get a little more for the club itself,” the boy said, blinking when he noticed that everyone was staring at him. “Did I say something weird?”
“What’d we even need more money for?” Kazuki asked, deciding that he might as well go with the random topic change. A break from the club name madness sounded nice anyway.
“Well, we’ll have the club space, but we’ll need to fill it, I’m sure. Hatsume will need equipment for her tinkering, I imagine, even if we likely won’t have enough to cover much on that front. We could use some ourselves to facilitate our own work too,” Keage listed and Kazuki leaned in, interested. “It doesn’t say what our room would come with, if anything at all, so we might need to get everything and we need money for that. I rather doubt we can get that much added to our budget, but any increase would be good, right?”
“Right. Go over it and see what you can do then. You guys want to go do the final talk with Nezu?” he offered, because they were the ones that knew what was what in regards to what they were talking about. If Nezu decided to throw him a curve ball, they’d be pretty much screwed.
“No, no, we can’t make the choices. You’re the president,” Masu said and Kazuki wasn’t even surprised. Instead, he just sighed and gave them a defeated look. “Don’t look so gloom, Boss. We’ll make sure to explain everything to you and prepare you. This will be exciting.”
‘Exciting is a word for it, I guess,’ Kazuki thought to himself.
“Do you think we could do some projects to earn money? Because I don’t think our budget will be enough to run the club. Besides, if we gather the money ourselves, we might be able to use that for your equipment and that kind of thing,” Keage chimed in, joining the conversation once more. It seemed that Nezu had sparked something in the Management kids and Kazuki didn't know if he should be as excited as them or scared.
“Maybe we can use that for our image. I can talk to the newspaper club… maybe we can hire other General Education and Management students?” Nagashira asked, almost bouncing where he sat and Kazuki definitely was starting to lean towards the scared front.
“You do know this isn’t an actual agency, right?” Chikuchi asked wryly, but she was ignored. The Management students weren’t going to be stopped, evidently. They were definitely on a roll.
“Do you think we should prepare for other hero students wanting to join?” Masu asked, suddenly a little concerned but no less energetic. It was a weird mix. “Because then we need to get started on the paperwork we might need to keep track of things. Boss, do you think we can hold off on recruitment for a bit while we get things in order?” they asked, turning towards him as if the whole thing hadn’t been their idea in the first place.
“What have you done, Boss?” Neito asked and Kazuki had absolutely no answer to that.
“Yes, we can definitely hold off recruitment, guys,” he said instead, deciding to try and keep things under control. “We’ll keep it to just us for now, alright? First we need to get the club paperwork out of the way. How about we work through that and worry about the rest afterwards?” he suggested, trying to buy himself some time.
“Good idea. Right…” Masu replied, turning thoughtfully towards the stacks of papers he’d brought, one copy for each member of the still prospective club. “We’ll have something worked out for tomorrow, Boss, but we might need more time to be sure.”
“Take all the time you need,” he reassured, almost sighing in relief at those news. “You need to teach me what I need to know for this meeting anyway, so we’ll need time anyway.”
“... Good thing you’re the Boss and not us,” Chikuchi commented, patting his back.
“Yep, better you than me, that’s for sure,” Neito agreed.
Kazuki just groaned.
[}-o-{]
“A-1: Beacon, I am search ready; I am transport ready,” Penny said, floating beside him.
Escaping the Management students for a bit, Kazuki had approached Mei. Not like he had to be convinced to do so, really. It was always an interesting time to hang out with the tinkerer. She was… peculiar, but she was also a good friend all the same, despite her oddities. And her creations were just like her, so things were bound to be anything but boring around her.
“So you are,” he commented, looking as the drone circled around him. “And you’re fashion ready too, huh?”
“I’ve been aesthetically modified already, yes. Thank you!” Penny chirped and he almost thought there was a little cheer to her floating around. He wouldn’t put it past Mei to create actual artificial intelligence, to be honest. It sounded right up her chaotic alley. “Mother thought this design would be pleasant.”
“It is,” Kazuki agreed, looking over the drone as it all but modeled for him. Mei had polished all the imperfections from the prototype Penny had been before, for one. For another, she’d given the drone a paint job too. The lids on top of the storage areas – future module sections too, apparently –, that Penny herself controlled, were painted a coppery orange. The rest of the drone’s body was mostly a cream, almost white color, but there were details of shiny, metallic green, and a little of matte black sprinkled here and there. It looked great, if anyone asked him, but he wasn’t the one that actually knew what looked good. “What do the Management studen-”
“Management Team,” Mei interrupted, looking as if he’d committed a grave breach in protocol of some kind, lips pursed and brows furrowed. He just stared at her for a long moment and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to argue. Besides, this was hardly something to argue about. They were the Management Team of the group – very soon to be club too, provided nothing weird happened –, so he guessed he could roll with that.
Less unreasonable than the Boss thing, and they’d very easily gotten him to go with that.
“What does the Management Team have to say on the design?” he finally finished saying, raising an eyebrow at her.
“They approved, of course,” Mei answered, as if that were a matter of fact. To her, it probably was, but some of her designs were… questionable. She was chaotic in all aspects of her life, he supposed. “They didn’t let me use the same color scheme as you though. That sucked,” she added, to which he shrugged.
It was probably for the best. His colors weren’t all that reassuring for people. They were what he had though. Not like he could go with something else without having it clash horribly with his eyes or his skin or other things. Well, Hina had mentioned options but he honestly didn’t see it, so he’d gone with what he had.
She’d said it worked just as well anyway, if in a different aspect.
Kazuki couldn’t say he was a fan of looking good to the goths and edgy people of the world, but a niche was better than nothing. Besides, even regular people seemed to think his style worked. Even if he’d avoided going full Gang Orca, he couldn’t completely avoid who he was and what it meant for his style choices, evidently.
“We thought an artificial intelligence might be a bit much for people, that it’d unnerve them,” Masu commented, apparently having being eavesdropping a little… or maybe they wanted to ask something? “So, we thought it’d be better to have colors that’d help, something softer, warmer, more friendly and inviting. It would counter things a little.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Kazuki said, turning back to look at Penny. “Great work as usual, Mei. I’m guessing we’ll have to wait for the combat and rescue modules?”
“Ah, yes. I’m still working on Chikuchi’s and Neito’s stuff like you said, Boss. And we’re basically out of money. But if you really want to, I’m sure I can-” the girl said, her eyes starting to dart around just as erratically as her mind worked.
“Mei,” he interrupted, a smile on his face as he patted her arm. “No need. We’ll see how we get the money. Keage was talking about getting money from club activities. If not, well, we’ll have to wait until the budget reset.” Which shouldn’t be that far off, really. Budgets reset every trimester and they were bound to get their second allowance whenever they got back from the break.
‘I’ll have to ask if I can use personal money for this stuff or if we have to earn it through the school club or something. If Keage brought it up, then it most be possible that way, I’m guessing. Hm, maybe I can ask Keage, actually,’ Kazuki mused to himself.
Ultimately though…
“How are the blueprints looking though? Do you have what you need or do we need to do more brainstorming?” he asked, leaning on her work station and crossing his arms.
“Oh, Boss, you say the sweetest things!” Mei exclaimed, apparently extra excited because of what he said. Immediately afterwards, she dove under the workstation, pulling out a worn out notebook with wrinkled and grease-stained pages. “There’s never enough brainstorming, let me tell you!” she said, eyes turning into stars as she looked at him.
Idly, he noticed that her notes were a mess, but he didn’t expect anything different.
“Well, let’s get to it then,” he said with a slight smile.
[}-o-{]
Back at his apartment, Kazuki was… feeling pretty good, actually.
He’d just gotten back from a bit of a long day, but he was content. His weekend had been good and his start of the week had gone well too. Sure, the talk with Nezu had been heavy and there were a few curve balls here and there, but all in all, it actually didn’t do much to dampen his mood, even with his mother’s stuff thrown into the mix.
Kazuki was kind of surprised with how well he was holding up, really.
He was doing so well that he’d actually told the Management stude- the Management Team to send him some of the stuff from his social media debut. That’s what he was checking while leaning back on his chair with some of his favorite songs being played.
‘Pretty good,’ Kazuki mused, reading through several of the comments. Sure, he knew there was a huge amount of filtering at play, of course, but he was still rather surprised with how much positive stuff the Management Team had managed to scrounge up. They’d even said that it wasn’t all since they were still working on filtering the stuff. So, he might get a second batch of stuff dumped on him.
And he was even going to need to start replying to some of those people.
Well, the Management Team had said he “probably should”, but he’d just taken that as them urging him to do so.
‘We really might need to recruit people. I might have underestimated how much work this would take,’ he thought, a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of interaction his one post seemed to cause. Although, maybe it was because it was the first one? He’d have to wait a bit and see, he supposed.
‘Speaking of, is there anything new I could share?’ he mused idly, looking away from the screen of his phone for a bit. The things that came to his mind the most were related to his friends, but he wanted to wait a bit before getting them mixed in his mess. That left things from his life that only involved him…
Which weren’t many, really.
“Saved by the bell,” he commented, looking towards the door of his apartment when he heard someone knock. After cracking his neck, he left his phone on the table and went to check who it was. He was hardly surprised when he noticed that it was Nemuri. “Hey there. Things going alright?” he asked with a smile after opening the door and making way for the woman to come in.
“Good evening,” she greeted with a beaming smile of her own. “And things are going well,” she added and Kazuki could have told just by the fact that he was feeling next to nothing from her, actually. “How about you?”
“I’m actually doing great, not gonna lie,” he replied and he was happy to see that Nemuri was… Well, happy with those news. It was turning out to be a good day, maybe even a good week. He didn’t have many of those, so he decided to try and make the most of it. “I was reading comments on my post, actually.”
“Good?”
“I mean, they have to be, considering I’m having them filtered,” Kazuki pointed out, but she just raised an eyebrow at him. “But yeah, good. It’s actually really nice to see. I might use it to cheer myself up whenever I need a pick-me-up.”
“Glad to hear. Anything in particular that caught your attention?” Nemuri asked, looking like she genuinely cared. He was really never not going to be in awe of that when he saw it. “And anything in particular you want to eat for dinner?”
“There’s actually many comments saying that I play really well, comments from actual musicians. There’s stuff that they’ve recommended and asked and suggested. It all sounds very interesting,” he explained, following after the woman as she moved to the kitchen. “I can’t wait to try some of those things out or look them up, especially since I have my own violin to practice and such. Oh, don’t worry though, I won’t bother you with the screeches while I get things down.”
“Not a bother at all,” Nemuri reassured him instantly and actually looked rather excited at the prospect instead of like she was being polite. Furthermore, Kazuki couldn’t pick up any negative emotions from her either. “I do need to know what you want for dinner before you continue telling me about that though.”
“Whatever you feel like cooking, honestly. You haven’t prepared anything I didn’t like so far,” he commented, moving to sit on a part of the counter he rather doubted she’d use. If it came to that, then he’d just have to clean it, he supposed. “Anyway, other than that, I like the people that seem to gain hope with my… relative success. There’s a lot more people than I thought that just… don’t seem to have a good lot in life.”
“The world is like that, yes,” Nemuri commented, her expression shifting into something sadder. “And don’t think that you’ll get anywhere with flattery, young man,” she added, pointing at him threateningly. The effect would have been much better, maybe, if she hadn’t had barely a token amount of annoyance.
Thus, he just grinned at her.
“You’re such a brat,” she said, shaking her head, but he paid her no mind. His Quirk sucked, in general, but at that moment it was helping him realize that there were people that actually liked him. Not something precisely new, but just as perpetually amazing as the fact that there were those who cared.
“Thanks,” he replied cheekily, feeling like he was almost a different person. Was that how it was to just… feel well? Or was he having a particularly good day even by normal standards? He didn’t know, but he also didn’t much care. The fact was that he was happy, so he’d just take the win and try to keep the ball rolling.
“So, what are these things you want to try with your new violin?”
[}-o-{]
He ended up finding his next social media post material fairly randomly.
“Woah, that’s…” Nemuri commented breathlessly. “Amazing.”
They’d just had dinner – which was even better than usual, the woman clearly had made something she liked – and they’d just been sitting around after washing the dishes. Kazuki hadn’t even been allowed to do that by himself, but he hadn’t complained much. He knew better by then than to argue with Nemuri about that kind of stuff.
After that was done though, they’d just been chatting a bit about random stuff. She’d told him about what she’d done during the weekend, like some of the jobs she’d had to go on – not nearly as bad as the time that brought them closer – or what her cat was up to at her place. In turn, he’d told her about his own weekend, with the interview and his visit to the Uwabami’s PR department.
And in the meantime, he’d gone to check on his plants and his aquarium.
“It is, isn’t it?” he commented, looking with a slight smile at the very pregnant looking shrimp. It was quite the sight, to see the mother carrying all those eggs in her, for anyone to see. He didn’t quite know what it was that impressed her so much, but it did all the same.
Thus, he recorded a little video as best he could, which turned out pretty well, and then sent it to the Management Team with an apology for the extra work. He didn’t think they’d reject the idea, but maybe it wasn’t quite what he should use for a second post? He even sent them some ideas of captions he could post with the video, for good measure.
“Look at you go, posting everything on social media like a normal teenager,” Nemuri commented and he grinned at her. “Although, this isn’t a hobby you’d expect in a normal teenager. Nothing wrong with that though,” she added quickly at the end, in case he was offended. He wasn’t though. It stung a little, but he knew she didn’t mean anything bad by it. “I think it’s beautiful,” she added, a soft smile on her face as she reached to touch the glass of the aquarium, gazing inside as if mesmerized.
That look alone was more flattering than any compliment, as far as Kazuki was concerned.
“Well, it’s not going to be so beautiful when those shrimp are born. This fish tank can’t home a hundred or so more of those. It’s gonna get crowded fast,” Kazuki commented, already thinking of what he’d do with those. “I’ll have to sell them or give them away.”
To that, Nemuri just hummed, but it didn’t sound like she was actually hearing what he was saying. At least, not completely. Her awed gaze had turned into something more thoughtful, he noticed.
“Do you think I could have something like this?” she asked in the end, to which he perked up a little.
“I think? You can make some that are very low maintenance. The biggest trouble for you would be to keep your cat away from it,” he commented, his mind already going through what he knew and what she’d need to set up an aquarium. “One just like this? Smaller, bigger, with the same things? Less, more, different?” Kazuki shot at her quickly, trying to figure out what, specifically, she’d need and if it’d work.
“That’s a lot of questions,” Nemuri pointed out, amused. “Hm, I think I’d like something smaller and I have to say I’m a big fan of the shrimp.”
“Hm, that’s good, because if it’s too small, then I’d suggest not to put fish in it. Shrimp are fine unless the tank is really tiny. Snails do well in smaller tanks too, unless you think they are gross. They make for great cleaning crews though and the population self-regulates depending on food availability,” he started explaining, looking at the tank. “Floating plants will be your friend, since there’s some that don’t occupy too much space, but we can put a few normal ones too and… what?” he asked, interrupting himself when he saw the look on Nemuri’s face.
“It’s just nice to see you being excited about something,” the woman answered, a kind, soft smile on her face. “So, about that tank. I think I want it to be small, but not too small and I think I’m fine with the snails if they can keep the thing clean for me. I think you said shrimp help with that too?”
“Yeah, if you set it up right, you shouldn’t have to do anything other than add some water and drop a bit of food every so often. You’d still need the water testers just in case though. Other than that, I can make you a list, but…” and off he went, listing everything Nemuri would have to get in order to set up her own tank. He could give her plant cuttings, shrimp and snails, so she’d only need to get some dirt, some sand and whatever rock or piece of wood she wanted to use to decorate.
No plastic decorations though, he strongly suggested. She didn’t seem to be one for artificial stuff though, thankfully, so he didn’t have to convince her. He knew she was a good person for a reason.
Kazuki was kind of surprised though, when after half an hour of explaining and listing stuff, the woman didn’t seem bored or annoyed at all. Instead, she was listening as intently as she had at the start of it all. She wasn’t as into it as he was, he knew that much, but she still paid attention all the same.
It was… he didn’t know how to describe it, but it was nice.
“I might have gone a little overboard,” he couldn’t help but say when he finally snapped out of his rambling state. “I can help you set it up, just let me know when, yeah?”
“Nothing wrong with being excited about stuff, Kazuki,” Nemuri told him warmly. “And I’ll definitely let you know. For now, I think I should be going. Tomorrow is a school day though so-”
“Yeah, I’ll do my homework. I know,” he told her with a grin that she returned.
“That’s my boy.”
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How’s it going?
A day in the life, as it were. Not a normal one, by Kazuki standards, but a day all the same. The club thing is, quite honestly, the unexpected thing I like the most. Is it because the PR and showbiz plotlines are absolute pain? Yes, yes it is, but still. I guess I’m just happy to have something that’s not going to be suffering for my mentally challenged self.
I hope you guys liked the chapter.
Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ
Random Question: Any ideas of what’s going to happen with the club? In case you were wondering, yes, I’m trying to pick your brains here, blatantly at that.
See you.
