The plan.

“Oh, by the way,” Sarah continued. “Alice and I were talking on the phone last night and we had a pretty amazing idea.”

“Hm? And what idea is that?”

“We were brainstorming for a while. I was in the hot tub and we were talking for so long that my skin got all wrinkly. But it was worth it. I think we have a pretty solid plan, save for some caveats…”

I nodded. “Okay, but what’s the plan about?”

Sarah grinned. “We want to start a new club.”

“Oh. That’s… Huh.”

That was a pretty good idea, actually. At our school, students could start their own clubs so long as they met some conditions and filled the necessary paperwork. In fact, there were probably more after-school clubs at our school than in any other around simply because groups of friends would start one as a way to hang out and kill time.

“I asked Alice what we’d need to start one,” Sarah said. “Turns out it’s even less than I thought. For starters, we need four people. Alice and Noelle can’t technically join, since they’re in the student council, but Mila, Grace and I aren’t in any clubs and neither are you. And if we start a club…”

“We’d get our own club room,” I said, guessing Sarah’s main goal with this.

“Exactly.” She smirked. “I want to talk about it with the others, but I’m sure they’ll agree. What do you think?”

“...” I held my chin as I pondered. “It sounds like a good idea, but there are too many issues we’d have to work around.”

Sarah shrugged. “What do you think we have Alice and Grace for?”

“I’m hearing my name already, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” Grace said, entering the classroom all of a sudden.

“Speak of the devil…” Sarah said.

Grace ignored that comment in favor of walking up to me to peck my lips as a morning greeting.

“She’s saying you’re the smartest person she knows,” I told Grace.

“Well, duh.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t say that.” Sarah pouted and crossed her arms. “If I had to bet on who’s smarter between Grace and Alice, I’d bet on Alice.”

“Oh? On what grounds?” Grace asked.

“She’s nicer to me.”

“She’s got you there,” I told Grace.

“Please, I little banter never hurt anyone. But that aside, what do you need my brain for?”

“Alice and I had the idea of starting a club,” Sarah told her.

It seemed like those words had a huge impact on Grace, because she looked completely stunned for a moment. She blinked, looked down at the floor, then at the ceiling. She crossed her arms in thought and tapped her foot. My mind reading decided not to work right now, but it didn’t need to. I could almost hear Grace’s brain running on full power.

“You’re a genius, Sarah,” Grace praised, casually nodding her head. “And what’s the club going to be about?”

“We… didn’t quite get there,” Sarah admitted, her shoulders dropping.

“Any preferences, Oliver?” Grace asked me. I shook my head. “Alright. Give me until next recess.”

Sarah looked at me and shrugged again. “Told you.”

That recess, Grace grabbed me, Mila, and Sarah and dragged us to look for Alice and Noelle. Isabelle was with them in their classroom, so she ended up tagging along out of curiosity.

It was a big, weird group, but somehow, with Alice and Grace leading the way, it seemed to make some sense to those watching.

“So four people to start,” Grace said. “Recruiting isn’t obligatory, right?”

“It’s not,” Alice answered. “People CAN still submit an application, but the club president is free to refuse them. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you shouldn’t have troubles with that.”

We went down the stairs, from the fourth floor to the third and were making our way down to the first.

“What’s necessary to keep the club going?”

“You need to show some sort of proof that the club is working on its intended purpose. For the sports clubs it’s easy since they go to tournaments. The music club puts on a performance, and the theater club does the same.”

Grace nodded. “The club room… Does it need to be one in the west wing?”

Alice smiled. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

It was honestly kind of amazing to watch them bounce off each other like that. It was like they were in sync, or like watching professionals having a meeting.

“What got into you all?” Isabelle asked me, almost whispering. “Why start a club at this time of the year?”

“Not my idea, but I think it’s a good one. You wanted to make one too, didn’t you? But since Alice and Noelle ended up in the student council…”

“I was doomed from the start,” Isabelle said, turning to look at Noelle. “She was going to join the arts and crafts club if Alice didn’t win the elections.”

“Arts and crafts? To build model kits?”

Noelle flinched. “H-How did you know!?”

I chuckled. “A wild guess.”

We followed Alice to the first floor, then to the courtyard, then to the back of the school, some good distance away from the gym, all the way to a storage shed.

Mila poked Noelle on the shoulder and pointed at the roof of the shed. “That’s where the bullies threw my backpack back in freshman year.”

“Ah. Where Oliver got it from?”

“Yeah.”

“See, there’s this thing you can do when applying to form a new club,” Alice told us. “If your club requires some sort of special equipment or space, you can request a different room as your club room instead of those in the west wing. For example, the science clubs have theirs close to the labs, and the sports clubs have theirs in the same building as the changing rooms.”

“Aha!” Grace smirked. “So if we come up with something good, we might be able to ask for this shed as our club room.”

“Precisely.” Alice giggled. “It’s practically empty, it’s big enough to use and it’s… far enough from prying eyes.”

Next to me, Isabelle swallowed a gasp, but her eyes went wide. I made the very conscious decision to ignore it, as did everyone else.

“Yeah, this works,” Sarah agreed. “But what reason could we give to request this? It could still potentially be used as a storage room if they need it, so they could easily tell us no if we don’t have a good enough reason.”

“Hehehe,” Grace laughed mischievously. “How about telling them it’s to avoid troubling our schoolmates?”

I swallowed. “G-Grace…?”

“I have the perfect subject for us,” Grace said. “This will be the meeting place of the new Occult Research Club.”

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