Fujita Mion came from a prestigious medical lineage. Her mother was the director of a hospital and her father was a surgeon of no small degree of fame, at least within his field. Her two older brothers and her older sister all worked in her mother’s hospital, and they all expected her to come work with them as well. But Mion quite frankly hated the idea. Because she knew that the moment she found employment at that hospital, every unmarried male doctor anywhere close to her age would be after her like a swarm of flies. She’d seen it happen three times. Her brothers and her sister had all been snapped up within months of going to work at the hospital, and all three of them had been married within a year of their employment. To Mion, who was deeply uninterested in the entire subject of romance and downright repulsed by the whole matter of the reproductive act, being aggressively pursued by a bunch of unfamiliar men seemed like a perfect nightmare. She had been able to put it off for some time already. After finishing her medical studies, she had gone on to also acquire a nursing degree, arguing to her mother that it would be beneficial to her as a doctor to have a full, well-rounded understanding of a nurse’s work situation. She’d even managed to follow that up by becoming a licensed physiotherapist, taking advantage of the fact that her father was a huge medical nerd to get his approval to immerse herself in her ‘new medical interest’. But following that up by studying to become a psychiatrist had clearly been the last straw. She’d gotten away with it by pointing out that her siblings each had their own specialist fields, but it was clear that her mother was getting rather impatient. She was well into her thirties by the end of those studies, after all, and her mother was pushing her incredibly hard both on the matter of working at her hospital and the matter of finding a husband. Facing a future of only bad choices, Mion had been incredibly relieved when representatives of the Nekoyama Group had reached out to her and offered her a role in the peculiar production that was Nekoyama Michiru’s high school life. Apparently, the girl’s father was very keen on having a highly educated medical professional on the premises, and Mion was certainly very highly educated. Her mother had complained, of course, but her mother’s hospital had numerous business arrangement with various subsidiaries of the Nekoyama group, and she had fully capitulated under just the tiniest amount of financial pressure. And so, Mion had managed to secure another three years of freedom from her mother’s machinations by becoming the school nurse. She had honestly expected the job to be fairly boring. A lot of sitting around in the infirmary punctuated by occasional bits of administrative work and even more occasional treatment of actual injured or sick students and teachers. But that estimation had turned out to be a little off the mark. She simply hadn’t taken into account just how intense… “Excuse me, Miss Fujita!” She looked up from her work and saw Nekoyama Michiru entering the infirmary with Mikawa Atsuko in tow, both rather sweaty and dressed in their gym clothes. Judging by the large, bleeding scrape on Atsuko’s knee, the young athlete had a bad fall during PE, and Michiru had accompanied her to the infirmary. Michiru was the Health Representative of her class, after all, so she ended up escorting a lot of injured students. “That looks like it hurts.” Mion said calmly. “Come here and I’ll take a look at it.” Atsuko was limping a little as she walked over and took a seat, and Mion was briefly worried that the athlete might have injured herself in some way that might impede her club activities, but an inspection revealed nothing more serious than the scrape and a bit of bruising. “It should be fine. The scraped knee is the worst of it. I’d recommend taking it easy for the rest of the day, but unless it gets any worse you can do your morning training tomorrow as usual.” As she carefully cleaned and bandaged the scraped knee, she noted how Michiru was holding Atsuko’s hand throughout the process, and Atsuko was clearly deriving some amount of comfort from it as she winced at the sting of the disinfectant. It had not escaped Mion’s notice that the young athlete had been subtly pursuing the heiress since the very first day of school, but as she regarded the way Atsuko was looking at Michiru, she found herself pondering just who was charming who. As the two of them left the infirmary, Mion quietly had to admit to herself that her disinterest in the topic of romance was not nearly as complete as she had first thought. Sure, she might not care one whit about romance when it came to herself, but ever since coming here she had found a certain degree of fascination in observing the romance of others. “Sorry to barge in like this, Nurse! It’s an emergency!” Mion looked up and found Yamamoto Kyoya, one of the school’s delinquent characters, rushing into the infirmary pulling Matsumoto Taro, who she thought was meant to be some manner of nerd character, along by the arm. They both seemed somewhat out of breath, and Matsumoto was holding a hand up to one cheek and looking extremely awkward. “Mr. Yamamoto, Mr. Matsumoto, what happened? You said it’s an emergency?” “We were just in cooking class, and Ta-chan got hot oil on his face when a pan got flipped over.” “A burn? You should cool the area imme…” “Nah, I rushed him over to the sink to cool it off, and it wasn’t that hot to begin with. The pan had been off the heat for a while when it got flipped. But it ruined his make, so I had to get him out of there before the young lady could notice.” Still looking extremely awkward, Matsumoto removed the hand from his cheek, and Mion was honestly a little taken aback. The contours and complexion of the right side of his face looked completely different from his left side. She hadn’t realized Matsumoto attended school in costume makeup, let alone costume makeup so capable of utterly transforming his face… Shaking herself from her reverie, she went up to properly examine the young man’s cheek. There was a little bit of redness, as expected after something like this, but no sign of an actual burn. “Well, it looks fine. Feel free to reapply your makeup.” The young man thanked her and hurried over to the mirror by the sink to once again don his gaunt, pale guise. And Mion couldn’t help but notice the way Yamamoto hovered over him like some sort of bodyguard. As the two thanked her once again and left, something else niggled at her brain. “Since when does Mr. Yamamoto refer to Mr. Matsumoto as ‘Ta-chan’?” The cutesy, effeminate diminutive was hardly suitable to the character Matsumoto was playing. She supposed it might make sense as a sort of teasing jibe. That sort of light, mostly harmless bullying might fit the relationship of a delinquent character talking down to a nerd character, but she hadn’t detected any hint of malice or superiority in Yamamoto’s tone… “Did I miss something in the character settings? Where those two supposed to be childhood friends or something…?” “Mio-Mio! I need more rubbers!” The nurse shot Imai Akari a completely undisguised look of distaste. “What happened to the ones I gave you three days ago, Miss Imai?” Akari stuck out her tongue teasingly. “What do you think happened to them, Mio-Mio?” “I gave you half a dozen.” “It’s been a busy three days, Mio-Mio.” Mion sighed deeply, trying to ignore the implications of that statement as much as possible. “Look, I know it’s not my place to get involved in your private life, but…” “Does this even count as my private life? I mean, I am playing a role, and all.” “Just because your role is that of a ribald young woman with a reputation for promiscuity doesn’t mean you have to…” “Of course I don’t have to. It says so in my contract and everything. But I want to, and it’s fully sanctioned by the production staff. Besides, it’s not like I’m hurting anybody, and it’s way safer than when I used to do compensated dating.” “You used to what?” “Look, my family is flat broke, and a girl has to get by somehow. This job is basically a dream come true. I make much more than used to, and I know for a fact that the boys are all clean and won’t try to force anything on me, because they went through the same screening and signed the same contract that I did. Compared to the creepy old men I used to…” Mion tossed the young woman an entire box of condoms. “Here. Use them responsibly. And please refrain from giving me any details whatsoever.” “Whatever you say, Mio-Mio. I’ll be back again when these run out.” Mion sighed as Akari left the infirmary. There were plenty of students in the school she wouldn’t mind getting to know a little better, but there was definitely at least one student she would have very much preferred to know a little less. It was late in the afternoon when the door to the Infirmary was opened in a slightly awkward manner. “Excuse me, Miss Fujita.” Mion looked over and saw Nekoyama Michiru fully carrying a smaller girl in her arms. She thought that the other girl, who appeared to be sleeping, was Nonohara Rie, another first year, but she wasn’t completely certain. The young woman had never visited the infirmary before, after all. “Miss Nekoyama, and…?” “Ah, this is Nonohara Rie, a fellow member of the Manga Club.” “Is she feeling unwell?” “I suspect she’s been up all night working on character designs. She has confided to me that she sometimes ends up doing so entirely by accident. When I arrived in the club room she was quite literally falling asleep where she sat, so I thought that maybe she could rest here for a moment.” “I suppose. All three beds are free, so, it shouldn’t cause any problems.” “Thank you. I will return to wake her up once club activities are over.” Mion watched as the heiress gently deposited the sleeping girl atop one of the beds, removing her slippers and slightly loosening her clothing to allow the girl to sleep more comfortably. Once she was sure that Nonohara was comfortably positioned, the heiress smiled softly and gently brushed a stray strand of hair away from the girl’s face. Something about the gentle care with which she handled the smaller girl made Mion feel almost wistful. “You’d make a wonderful mother, Miss Nekoyama.” The heiress looked up with a startled jolt. “A… A mother? What brought this on, Miss Fujita?” “Oh, just a thought that struck me. I apologize for startling you.” “Not at all. It was just… surprising.” A somewhat awkward silence descended, and Mion was honestly quite grateful when the heiress left to return to her club activities. Mion was a little surprised when a student came to the infirmary in the middle of lunch break, especially since she didn’t look injured in any way. Mion recognized the girl as Hirano Rin, a classmate of the Heiress, although she couldn’t recall the girl’s role off-hand. “Can I help you, Miss Hirano?” “Ah, I wasn’t feeling very well, so I wondered if I could maybe rest here for a moment?” Mion immediately noticed the strained quaver in the girls voice. With a small huff of breath, she motioned to a chair. “Please, sit down. I’ll make us some tea.” “Oh, you don’t have to go to any trouble…” “It’s no trouble at all. Please, sit.” The girl sat down in the chair, looking somehow lost and small despite being almost as tall as Mion. As the tea steeped, Mion pulled out her favourite blanket and draped it over the young woman’s shoulders. It was honestly quite warm in the infirmary, but it was meant more as a comforting gesture than anything else. And Rin did seem to relax just a little bit as she pulled the blanket around herself. Once they both had a mug of tea in hand, Mion sat down in front of Rin. “So, Miss Hirano, would you like to talk about why you are here?” The girl looked away, clearly struggling to hold back her own emotions. “It’s… It’s nothing, really.” “You wouldn’t be here if it was nothing, Miss Hirano.” “I… I just… Umm…” “It’s fine. Take your time.” “There’s this girl in class 1-C… We’re… Umm… We’re supposed to be childhood friends, according to the storyline. We’re both in Choir club, and the setting is that we came to the same high school to join choir club together, because we always loved singing together. But… Umm…” “Do you not get along with her?” Rin’s fingers tightened around the handle of the mug until they were almost white. “I’m trying! I’m trying so hard! I go to her classroom every day at lunch to eat together with her, but she almost completely ignores me and just talks to her friends in class! And even during club activities, she barely says a word to me the whole time! I’m trying so hard to act out my role, but it’s like she doesn’t even care! Am I… Am I really…” Tears started welling up in the corners of Rin’s eyes, and the tea started spilling onto the floor as the hand holding the mug began to shake. “Am I really so boring to her that she can’t even talk to me when it’s her fucking job!?” Mion sighed softly and got out of her seat. Very gently, she freed the mug from Rin’s grasp and set it down on the desk. Then, she bent down and wrapped her arms around the crying girl in a gentle embrace. “It all right. You did your best. It’s not your fault.” Rin sobbed and wrapped her arms around Mion, burying her face in the crook of the older woman’s neck. As the tears slowly soaked through the fabric of her coat, Mion began rubbing gentle circles into the girl’s back. Frowning thoughtfully, she decided that she really needed to have a quiet word with the girl who was supposed to be playing the childhood friend role. And depending on how that conversation went, maybe a word with the producer about a potential change in creative direction.