Class 1-20 Without Leopin

While Leopin was spending a friendly lunch break with beautiful girls…

His former classmates from Class 1-20 were also eating lunch in the same courtyard.

But no one’s appetite moved along.

Weiss, the class representative, kept taking off his glasses to wipe them with a handkerchief, rubbing his eyes again and again.

“It seems I’m unusually tired from this new environment and the consecutive days of hard labor.”

Several meters away on the lawn, Leopin was there—surrounded not by one bouquet of flowers, but by three beautiful girls.

“It appears I’ve finally begun seeing hallucinations. Monaka-san being beside Leopin must be because she pities her childhood friend, Leopin. It is certainly not affection, but rather the compassion a princess would feel for a homeless man. However, there is no explanation for why Akemi-san, the alchemist said to be one of the academy’s greatest beauties, is beside him. Which means this must indeed be a hallucination. The biggest proof of all is that even Shinobuko-kun—whose proper role is to protect Monaka-san from unsavory men—is with them.”

As if trying to convince himself, Weiss muttered the same things over and over.

On either side of him sat the brawny Monsoon and Shibusu the thief.

Both stared at Leopin with eyes full of rancor.

“Grrrr… that trash bastard is getting cocky…! He’s getting all lovey-dovey with Shinobuko-san, the woman I admire…!”

“G-g-g… and why is Akemi-san there too…! No matter how much I approach Akemi-san, she never gives me the time of day…!”

And at last, even the girls in their class started acting strangely.

“That Leopin… when he was in our class, he was totally obsessed with me…! Seriously, I can’t forgive this…!”

“Oh? Cyaruru-an’ne-san, are you jealous, yeah?”

“Hell no, idiot! Like I’d ever be into that guy! I’m just pissed my errand boy Leopin is getting full of himself!”

“Cyaruru-an’ne-san, you were always teasing Leopin, yeah. Like fake-confessing to him, or giving him fake love letters…”

“Yeah, because he was my toy! And those girls just went and—!”

“Enough pointless chatter. We’re going.”

Weiss cut in.

“Huh!? Weiss, it’s still lunch break! Where are we even going…!?”

“To search for the Flying Dragon Leather, obviously.”

“But Weiss! Didn’t the vice principal just say it’s magically disguised, so nobody can find it for a week!?”

“Monsoon, that only applies if ordinary people like you are searching. If it’s me, a Sage, it won’t even take one day.”

“That’s our Weiss-boss for ya! I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, yeah!”

“Leopin was trying to pass off some random cloth as Flying Dragon Leather and become student council president. A method that’s evil yet foolish—very like him. He probably thinks we’ll come begging, ‘Please come back.’ But he fails to realize just how stupid and shallow he truly is.”

Laughter burst out from the classmates.

Weiss had pulled the class back together again, just as it had been on the verge of falling apart.

He stood up briskly and declared to everyone.

“From here on, Class 1-20 will unite and search for the Flying Dragon Leather! Until we find it, Class 1-20 will skip all classes and suspend all pioneering work! Got it!?”

“Oooh!”

The classmates shouted as they stood.

They didn’t know.

They had no idea that what they were searching for was already in Leopin’s hands.

The members of Class 1-20 ran all over the school building, ignoring classes entirely as they searched for the Flying Dragon Leather.

But they didn’t find it.

Eventually night fell, and they were finally locked out of the school building.

They were exhausted from running around all day, but Weiss, the class representative, refused to give up.

“Even if we can’t get inside the building, we can still search! We’ll check the outside walls and the perimeter gardens!”

At that moment they were standing in front of the school gate, completely slumped over.

Cyaruru flopped down onto the ground like she’d fallen on her butt and groaned.

“I can’t walk anymore, Class Rep. It’s late… let’s call it a day…”

“Cyaruru, what are you saying!? By tomorrow morning, the Flying Dragon Leather will be in our hands…!”

Monsoon barged into the conversation with an

“Hey, hey!”

“Weiss! Don’t tell me you’re planning to make us search all night!?”

“Since we haven’t found it, of course.”

Weiss replied as if it were obvious.

“Hey, didn’t you say we’d find it in a day?”

“You said it, yeah!”

“That was assuming your search efforts met my expectations. I never anticipated you would be this incompetent.”

“Hey! That’s messed up! We searched exactly how you told us to!”

“Yeah! And we didn’t even eat a proper lunch!”

“Then allow me to impart a noble teaching of the Sage: ‘Those who do not work shall not eat.’”

“Why you—!”

Weiss’s tone cast a hostile mood over the class.

Shibusu the thief hurriedly spoke up.

“T-then let’s make it dinner here, yeah! Once we fill our stomachs, good ideas will surely come, yeah!”

“Huh? What are you saying, Shibusu? There’s nothing to eat anywhere.”

“Yeah! We’ve been getting dragged around by Weiss all day—we didn’t even go get food!”

“I thought this might happen… so I prepared ahead of time, yeah!”

Shibusu flipped over the backpack he had been carrying.

With a wet plop, blue lumps about the size of fists—each with a cap—tumbled out.

“That’s… mushrooms.”

“That’s right, Cyaruru-an’ne-san.

Yesterday, I went into the forest and picked edible mushrooms, yeah.

There are plenty, so let’s have ourselves a mushroom party, yeah!”

“Nice one, Shibusu!”

“Hmph. If everyone were as competent as Shibusu-kun, we would have already found the Flying Dragon Leather…

In honor of Shibusu-kun’s quick thinking, let’s take a short break.”

They didn’t know.

They had no idea that what they were about to eat was the poisonous mushroom that Leopin had stopped them from eating yesterday.