With a small yawn, Hifumi's eyes flew open.
The moment she had been waiting for, the morning when all of history would begin, had finally arrived.
"Ehehehe..."
Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, Hifumi made her way to the mountain of presents she had collected. Pushing aside the largest gift box, she began to open the others one by one.
She blushed at the unmentionable item Hanako had sent.
She carefully set aside the handmade pressed flower bookmark from Atsuko.
She let out a scream upon receiving the Peroro beret that Azusa had secretly visited the Black Market and spent a fortune to acquire.
After receiving a plethora of smaller gifts like candies, cookies, grenades, and flashbangs from her wide circle of acquaintances, Hifumi's gaze finally landed on the last two remaining presents.
'Hifumi-ssi.'
For some reason, she heard an auditory hallucination that sounded like Nagisa calling her name. Hifumi opened the gift. A small memo and a container of handmade cookies were revealed.
[Hifumi-ssi, thank you for remaining a good friend to me and Mika-ssi... especially Mika-ssi. I hope we can continue to count on you in the future.]
"Ah, ahaha... Nagisa-sunbae, really. You're saying such embarrassing things..."
Completely unaware of the significant role she played in keeping Mika's stress from rising above a certain level, Hifumi laughed awkwardly and scratched her cheek.
Although the time they spent together had decreased after Nagisa's birthday, as Nagisa made new friends and Mika became busier...
Hifumi was still one of the students Mika found relatively easy to be around. Of course, that was only when they managed to exclude Momo Friends from the conversation.
Putting down Nagisa's gift, Hifumi finally turned her attention to the grand finale.
Looking at the gift box, which was at least the size of Azusa, Hifumi believed that this would be the thing to open a new path for her. It was the very key that would unlock a new world.
"Wh-Whoo. Calm, I have to stay calm... Hnngh!"
In the end, unable to hold back, Hifumi tore off the wrapping and opened the box. Then, she lifted its contents high.
With that, a single shriek echoed.
"Gah...!"
Falling backward, crushed beneath a giant Peroro plushie, Hifumi's eyes slowly closed.
Ajitani Hifumi, aged 15. She died a happy death.
***
"Hmm."
If Millennium had its super-genius frail beautiful girl, Trinity had its prophet frail fox girl.
Yurizono Seia woke from the dream that had continued every time she slept for a while now and stared blankly at the ceiling.
The dream certainly continued, but she couldn't remember the details. To be precise, she could only infer the passage of time within the dream from fragmented pieces of information.
But if there was one thing she remembered for certain, it was the hopeful scene at the end of every dream, where the clouds would part and light would shine through.
At present, the three factions that made up the Tea Party were, in terms of political inclination, equivalent to a single unified government.
However, there were slight differences in how each faction treated its leader.
The Pater Faction had once considered their leader, Mika, to be their idol and spokesperson. But with her current incarnation, they no longer dared to assign her the role of a mere spokesperson.
With the exception of a few extreme hardliners with virtually no voice, the entirety of Pater now looked up to and followed Mika as their godmother.
This was more or less the same for the Filius Faction.
But the Sanctus Faction was different.
To Sanctus, their leader, Seia, was not a godmother-like figure, but a being they had to protect at all costs, something to be enshrined like a sacred relic that could shatter at any moment.
As proof of this, Seia was the only student council president whose face remained largely unknown, even now that the Tea Party's legendary secrecy had become a thing of the past.
In other words, it meant she had no friends.
The Christmas gifts, few enough to be counted on one hand, excluding those from her own Sanctus Faction, were proof of that.
...In truth, this was an excuse Seia had recently started using. An excuse that the original Mika would have scoffed at.
Seia let out a small sigh. Then she began to check her gifts one by one.
"This is..."
Seia's eyes widened as she looked at a drawing of herself, sent by Sanctus. It was the same kind of drawing that Mika and Nagisa had received from their respective factions.
Containing the earnest efforts of so many students, it had a way of tugging at the heartstrings. Seia stared blankly at the drawing for a long time before carefully storing it away.
Other than that, Mine from the Relief Knights had sent nutritional supplements. Seia, who remembered receiving the same gift last year, felt a bit awkward. Her congenital frailty was, after all, rooted in the mystical.
Then, upon seeing Nagisa's gift and the enclosed letter, Seia smiled faintly. The meaning of the ornament, which added forget-me-nots to the decorations she usually wore around her fox ears, was clear.
"...Nagisa, you are far too soft-hearted for your own good."
The Tea Party's relationships were divided into the time before and after Mika's change.
Before, it had been a bit noisier, a bickering but appropriately distant... a literal tea party of three.
Now, it was much calmer, more cohesive, and politically unified around a single person, with no room for conflict.
Of course, the former might have been more politically sound. But for the peace-loving Seia and Nagisa, it was hard to deny that they preferred the current Tea Party.
However, this was only when excluding the changed relationship between Mika and Nagisa.
From the moment the amnesia incident occurred, it was plain for Seia to see that Nagisa and the changed Mika were drawn to each other.
At first, she was bewildered and amused, teasing the two of them mischievously, but after a certain prophetic dream, a hint of jealousy crept into her actions.
After losing her memories, Mika, aside from her occasional and excessively reckless tendencies, carried a mature air that set her apart from them. And as she witnessed Mika's attention focusing heavily on Nagisa, the dream she had urged Seia to try and turn some of that attention towards herself.
"But Nagisa, there is a great difference between the way Mika looks at you and the way she looks at me."
Seia had realized it at some point. She realized that the feelings Mika showed her were quite distant from romantic affection.
She knew that Mika saw her as a child to be cared for and cherished, even if she sometimes made snide remarks.
And so, she had resolved to be content with that relationship. She decided to believe that the dream back then had been just an ordinary dream, not a prophetic one.
[A Tea Party of Three.]
But there was one fool who shook her resolve with strange words.
A fool who had once been wary of her, but was now trying to embrace her.
After a moment's hesitation, Seia decided not to place the gifted ornament on her head.
And then, upon checking Mika's gift, Seia let out a dry laugh. This time, a tea set painted with lilies emerged.
It was as if the two of them had conspired together, wanting her to grow closer to their side.
"...At this rate, my resolve to refuse is fading."
Ultimately, reversing her decision, Seia placed Nagisa's ornament on her head. She smiled faintly and accepted the invitation to the Tea Party.
Without the slightest inkling of the bomb that awaited her, Seia thought to herself.
The Trinity Tea Party is only complete when the three are one.
***
Lately, Hanako was thoroughly enjoying her school life.
Had someone asked her the same question about six months ago, she would have given a completely different answer.
If one were to search for the reason for this change, it would all come down to a single person.
During the period when various factions and clubs, commonly known as Trinity's upper class, were sending her "love calls," Hanako was feeling disillusioned with Trinity. At a time when everyone was desperate to recruit her, her dream of a normal school life had vanished, and she was only accumulating stress in the midst of insidious vipers.
Ironically, the person who had given her a breath of fresh air was the one sitting at the very top of Trinity's power structure.
She had put an end to the parade of snakes that had only seemed to wear Hanako down, and had even introduced her to friends so pure they seemed to heal her very soul.
To Hanako, Misono Mika was nothing short of a benefactor, and at the same time, an object of admiration.
The Misono Mika she saw was the epitome of sincerity. While there was a possibility that she was just terrifyingly good at hiding her true intentions, at least from Hanako's perspective, she was a person whose inside and outside were perfectly aligned.
That's what made her all the more fascinating. A person who used a direct approach—a weapon so far removed from the typical Trinity methods of beating around the bush, hiding one's intentions, probing the other's, and exploiting weaknesses—had achieved results worthy of being recorded in Trinity's history books.
"But even a sunbae like Mika isn't completely perfect."
"Huh? Hanako-chan, why are you suddenly talking about Mika-sunbae...?"
"Hifumi-ssi. I've... made up my mind."
"Awoo... Whenever Hanako-chan says she's made up her mind, I can't help but feel anxious...?"
"Fufu. In what way are you anxious, Hifumi-ssi?"
"Awoo... Hanako-chan, it's troubling if you ask things like that."
"You're right... my apologies. Hifumi-ssi has a right to her privacy, and I suppose I was prying too much. By the way, did you like the gift I sent you?"
"Awooooo..."
Chuckling at Hifumi, who had blushed and lowered her head, Hanako gazed out the window.
Mika probably still thought that Hanako's only form of deviance was occasionally taking swimsuit pictures to send her, based on her playful advice. After all, she had thoroughly hidden her usual self. She still wanted to show only her best side to the sunbae she admired.
Perhaps that's why the gifts she received were a book containing Millennium's Thousand-Year Problems and other similarly difficult questions, as well as various hair and scalp care products. They were so pure and normal that it felt wrong to even compare them to the gifts she had given Azusa, Hifumi, and Atsuko.
But... something was missing. It would be more accurate to call it a lack, a void.
What kind of reaction would her sunbae show if she were to drop little hints about her true self, to finally be discovered and reveal everything? Hanako was curious. In either direction, the mere act of imagining the outcome sent a chilling thrill through her.
And to do that, she needed more points of contact with Mika.
Mika was far too busy a person; it was impossible to secure enough time with the current sunbae-kouhai distance between them.
"Hifumi-ssi, I've decided... I must join the Tea Party."
"Wh-What? But, Hanako-chan, you said you didn't want to belong to any club..."
"Fufu. That's why I said I've made up my mind."
What kind of reaction would Mika show when the girl she had personally pushed away from Trinity's upper class came back into it for her sake? And how would she feel upon seeing her kouhai, transformed 180 degrees after taking her half-joking words to heart?
Imagining this, Hanako felt her masochistic and sadistic urges being satisfied simultaneously deep within her heart. It would be fine to make her admired sunbae feel guilty for leading her kouhai down the wrong path. It wouldn't be so bad if she came to despise her, either.
Either way, that kind, kind sunbae would never be able to hate her.
Hanako, unfortunately, did not yet know... that the sunbae she admired had known her true nature from long ago, and had simply been pretending not to notice her transformation all this time.
***