Chapter 2 - Kinoko RusubanMonday, October 16thAs I was saying, cordyceps – if cordyceps get to you, that’s when you know you’re screwed in the most thorough sense of the word.

  You would usually find them in the odd woodnd or two, growing on the grassy forest floor, winding across the fallen trees, sometimes even infiltrating the vegetation of an unsuspecting agriculturist.

  In the case of the tter, perhaps we should dismiss the unfortunate repercussions such an event entails for another time.

  In the case of the former, the fungi exhibit a fascinating and somewhat gruesome parasitic behaviour.

  They infect their host organisms, typically insects like ants, beetles, or caterpilrs. Once infected, the fungal spores penetrate the host's body and begin to grow.

  After infecting the host, Cordyceps fungi grow within the body, eventually taking over the host's central nervous system. This control over the host's behaviour forces it to move to an optimal location for the fungus to grow and spread.

  Just imagine it – your mind and body slowly being gnawed at, gorged on until you’re nothing more than a husk. A hollowed out puppet. How would that feel?

  I had the slightest urge to ask these girls that very same question, though I soon concluded their noggins would surely begin to explode if they began to contempte anything other than oh, ehm, gee, I have that exact same sweater and he’s so, like, weird but it’s kinda hot.

  So I opted to raise the corners of my lips into my standard, winning smile instead. It was like a system reset for the drones, and it had yet to fail me.

  “How did you dies find css today? As much as I enjoy mathematics, it’s like Inoue wants us to doze.” I began, dropping my pitch into a low, silky smooth ripple. “Guess I have a date with the library ~”

  They began to aww and coo as if I was a kitten licking my testicles.

  “You’re so diligent, Rusuban-senpai,” warbled the one who’s name I’d forgotten, the one in the volleyball team with the nice legs.

  “That’s our future prez!” decred another jauntily, her sizable chest bouncing up and down with the rest of her body energetically.

  “Geez, enough already.” I moaned after the praises had gone on for just long enough, ruffling my turquoise locks in the standard I know you’re in love with me but I’ll feign ignorance manner, ensuring my palms stayed open.

  The tter was a visual body nguage signal that spoke to our ancestral roots; an open palm meant that the person wasn’t holding any weapons, thus likely meant no harm, increasing your perception of their trustworthiness.

  Why else do you think cops insist that you put your hands up? Though, if I may nitpick, this little trick doesn’t account for the fact that, in the here and now, the unseen bde is by far the deadliest.

  “Anyway, I’m off to the council room. You girls take care now ~” I winked, before sauntering down the hallway.

  Whatever they replied with didn’t matter; I could practically feel their hungry eyes digging into me, mentally undressing me, melding me into their most desirable fantasy like a ball of cy being given form.

  Returning to my earlier train of thought, I concluded that I’ll likely never know what it feels like to be corrupted, invaded, maniputed in the way that cordyceps is capable of.

  Perhaps because that power already belongs to me.

  The council room always felt slightly quaint to me, adorned with aged oak furniture that bore the marks of countless meetings.

  Sunlight filtered through the slender square windows, casting elongated shadows that danced along the walls, a silent audience to the discussions that unfolded within.

  The air carried a faint scent of polished wood, mingling with the subtle aroma of aged paper from the stacks of documents neatly arranged on the mahogany meeting table at the room's center.

  In other words, it was a space steeped in heaps and heaps of utterly pointless decisions made by children who wanted to rolepy the politicians they saw on TV.

  “Good afternoon everyone,” I greeted, pushing the door shut quietly behind me. Before me stood council members from the first year all the way up to our third year president, Minoru Ryousuke. He was as wishy-washy and ineffective as they come, though as you can imagine, that equally made him a trivial target.

  My position as his successor was all but guaranteed. The elections ter in the year would be a formality and nothing more.

  “Nice of you to join us,” spoke a dark voice from the other side of the room, leaned against the window, blocking out the sun.

  The colour of Daisuke’s eyes resembled his sorry excuse for a personality perfectly; a dull, unnuanced maroon.

  In truth, I found him to be an insufferable bundle of self-pity and angst; over what, a run-in with some bone-headed ruffians and a stolen crush? How juvenile.

  Regardless, he was assigned to me as my vice-rep, with myself as the overall representative for the cohort, thus, I had to py my role, and py it I did.

  “My apologies, I was speaking with some of the first years about some problems they were having with the curriculum.” I lied.

  At my invisible mind your own damn business retort, he raised his back off the wall and gave me a knowing look.

  “Yeah, I bet you taught them how to unzip their skirts real good, eh Prez?” he jeered, smirking in a way that almost made my right hand ball up into a fist.

  “That’s enough,” spoke Mizuko, her voice carrying the complexity and emotion of a punctured tire on a desert road. She gave the both of us a hard, icy gre before shifting her attention to her superior, who had, as expected, been looking in the other direction sheepishly, pretending not to see anything.

  “Ahem, that’s right,” spoke the coward. “No fighting. You two are a team – as are we all – and thus, it’s imperative we function as one.”

  I was almost impressed by his dispy – it seemed to me that he finally went and picked up a thesaurus.

  “Back to matters at hand.” Ryousuke continued. “I simply wanted to congratute you all on your efforts over the st two weeks regarding the smoking in the bathrooms. Thanks to us, the appropriate signage has been pced, and the perpetrators in question have been reprimanded accordingly. Thank you once more for all of your hard work.”

  I nodded, and began to cp, my winning smile prompting the rest of the sheep to follow suit.

  Except the resident edgelord, of course, who instead opted to turn around and stare out of the window, as if searching for the answer behind his acutely meaningless existence.

  “Our next meeting will occur here at the same time as usual. That will be all.”

  Now free from that absolute snoozefest of a meeting, I was preparing to begin my favourite portion of the day when I felt Daisuke’s obsidian gre boring into the back of my head. I was getting tired of this guy.

  “Yo.” he began, not moving to increase the canyon of space that y between us.

  “How may I help you, Kurogane-kun?” I managed after taking a sharp breath. He paused for a moment, as if appraising me before continuing.

  “The smoking thing. That guy – Liu Katoru, or whatever his name is. He didn’t deserve suspension all of st week. That cig clearly wasn’t his.”

  Was that… sympathy I was beginning to hear? From him, of all people? I suppose there’s some secret pact of solidarity between miscreants.

  “I’m afraid we have no way of proving that,” I decred, logical and measured as a leader should be. “With nobody able to corroborate his cims of innocence, and the damning evidence provided, it was only rational to assume he was among the guilty.”

  “Whatever.” Kurogane replied, seemingly as exasperated by the interaction as I was.

  As he turned around to disappear into whatever pitch bck cavern he crawled out of, I took notice of something in his hand, the glint of it still familiar.

  “Wait,” I commanded in spite of myself. “What’s that thing you’re holding there? I received one too.”

  I dug into my own breast pocket, revealing an identical, circur looking badge with the dark purple backdrop.

  The green illustration of a fungi revealed itself back at me. In fact, it was what began my train of thought on cordyceps to begin with, though nobody should’ve been aware of my expertise in botany. Had I been more careless than I thought?

  In response to my interest, he smirked and shrugged flippantly.

  “Heck if I know – found it in my locker this morning. Who knows, maybe someone’s after us?” he mocked, before finally taking his leave. Did his badge have the image of pnt too, perhaps? It was all so strange.

  Shoving the mysterious object back into my pocket, alongside the anxious thoughts it had given birth to, I was spinning around in the direction of the library when I felt a soft, fleshy impact behind me.

  “Woops!” spoke the man, wearing a gray polo and cargo trousers, mop and bucket in hand. “Watch where you’re going there, sonny!”

  “Ah, pardon me, I wasn’t watching where I was going.” I admitted courteously. The man’s rugged face was unfamiliar to me. What happened to the old janitor? And when had this new one appeared behind me?

  “No problem, just be sure to keep your eyes open, eh sonny?” He advised, before preparing to clean up after the mess of a few hundred teenagers.

  Shaking off the hysteria this entire badge business had enveloped around me, I instead opted to head to my next engagement, or more accurately, my next conquest.

  I still felt the janitor’s eyes on me, however, as I began to walk.