Chapter 4

—Everyone, I loathe to say that our greatest fears have been realized.

First, time has run out, and thus Leo-san and Sena-senpai have temporarily withdrawn.

They’ll be appearing in the event in Europe from today until the end of the SS Qualifying Rounds.

Even if they rush, it will be difficult for them to return before the end of the Qualifying Rounds.

More like, it’d be bad if they caused problems and got kicked out early, right?

At the very, very least, they need to do well in that event.

I want them to sparkle and shine from start to finish, and for them to show everyone what Knights is made of.

Yep yep. And obviously those of us stuck here are going to do whatever we can to win the SS Qualifiers.

If I’m being honest, our chances of winning are pretty slim to none.

But even if we end up with disappointing results in the Qualifiers, we can still come back from it based on how they do overseas.

Even if we’re eliminated here, we can just make excuses and say we didn’t have our best members with us.

That’s just as frustrating. Especially because ever since spring rolled around, those of us still enrolled at Yumenosaki were supposed to be at the center of our activities.

But in the end, if we hadn’t relied on Izumi-chan and Leo-kun even after they graduated, we wouldn’t have made it this far—

Wouldn’t people mock us for stuff like that? But well, it’s not like I can really argue against them.

That really ticks me off. It’s bad enough that everyone already thinks we’re always relying on the old guard.

But at present, we have no alternative options. Let us hope that Leo-san and Sena-senpai can at least gain favorable results overseas and become our lifeline in case of emergency.

That way, even if we lose, we can claim it was not a true loss. We must not allow anyone to deny that we are monumentous people.

Well, I’m sure we’ll be fine in that regard. It’s pretty obvious what we’ve been accomplishing up to this point, and now we’re in no position to win.

If we lose the Qualifiers, I’m sure they’re just going to feel sorry for us and insist there was no other way around it.

We will not lose! It’s true that we’re in a tight spot, but…!

Yeah. Well, it’s not like we can’t win. But even still, we can’t be absolutely sure that we will win either, so we need to be prepared for the possibility of losing.

It’s a shame we have to rely on our graduates just to “be prepared” for this.

To claim that Knights couldn’t show off its true strength in the Qualifiers here because we were too focused on something overseas—

Even if it’s not exactly the full truth, it really grinds my gears just saying it like that. It feels like we’re lying to the whole world.

And after SS is over, Secchan is gonna be so full of himself. Like, “Can you guys really not do anything without us after all?!”

Eep, probably. Actually, I’d be shocked if he didn’t say something like that.

Yes. However, I do not intend to be in the debt of our senpais in such a manner.

We must not give up. Let us make every effort to win the SS Qualifying Rounds.

Obviously. It’s the most annoying thing ever when people treat me like a kid who can’t do anything without relying on grown-ups.

But still, this whole situation is looking really bad…

Like first off, we broke the travel ban rule thanks to Secchan and Tsukipi~ leaving.

The Administration hasn’t reacted to that yet, but they did violate the rules. Of course we’ll be punished.

It looks like everyone else in other regions was pretty obedient and didn’t break that rule—We have no idea what kind of punishment we’ll face.

We’ll probably be fined. And we’ll have to forfeit a good chunk of our SSL$ that we’ve been steadily building up while avoiding live showdowns.

Fortunately for us, we have a good rep with the Administration since we’re at NewDi.

It looks like a bunch of guys from our agency like Switch have been cozying up to them.

So the Administration might go easy on us, since Knights is the breadwinner of NewDi.

Fufu. It’s nice to have other units help us out once in a while, since we’re always the ones being worked to the bone ♪

That is true. However, it is possible that the Administration will not take such a situation into consideration, and that we will be stricken with a heavy punishment.

Should that happen, it might mean the end for us. But we must do what we can in order to anticipate that this possibility will not come to fruition—

In order to turn the “worst outcome” into a mere “bad outcome.” And, if possible, to make it a “good outcome.”

And so we will not give up. We will keep putting in effort until the bitter end.