☆ 2023 Watty Award Winner ☆
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Cutthroat campus drama and politics with make-believe relationship mixed in!
Due to his serious attitude and intimidating aura, Priam Torres has become the most unpop...
A/N: Our manipulative boi Castiel enters the tiger's den!
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CASTIEL
I FELT like I was entering an enemy territory. I stood firmly before the door of the other villa, my left hand steady on my cane's handle. Fabienne and that wretched campus journalist went this way, so I was a hundred percent sure that they were inside. I was not the type to play the hero, but I had to rescue our First Lady from the lion's den. Or in this case, the tiger's.
The relationship between the University Student Council and the College Student Councils was quite complicated. Karamihan sa nanalong chairpersons ay hindi namin kaalyado. Teka, baligtad yata. Kami ang hindi nila kaalyado. Priam and Valeria ran under one ticket as independent. May tatlong tandem na tumakbo noon—the admin tandem, the opposition tandem, and Priam-Val. We tried to win as many votes as we could from vote-rich colleges, but my pair was only second in terms of number of votes. The admin tandem got the most.
We should have lost the election, right? But not so fast! I found a way to have the first placers disqualified before the university's Commission on Election could proclaim them. Kahit sila ang nakakuha ng pinakamaraming boto, invalidated na ang lahat ng iyon. By the rules of elections here, if the first placers were disqualified, the second placers would emerge as the victors.
And that was how Priam became the president with Val as his vice president.
Out of nine colleges, five are were dominated by the former admin party, three were oppositionists to the previous USC while one was independent. I cemented an alliance with the former oppositionists as we both did not want the former admin party to rule again. 'Yong nag-iisang independent, sinusuyo namin na kumampi sa amin. At most, we could have four colleges backing as up.
This proved to be a challenge, as any university-wide policy that we wanted to implement would need to be supported by majority of the Legislative-Executive Committee or LEXECOM. We only had four out of nine votes. Kulang ng isa para ma-meet ang simple majority rule. Sadly, that one vote would not be easy to win over because the former admin party always voted as a bloc.
So far, only one out of our five proposals—declaring a "wash day" every Wednesday when students may choose not to wear their uniforms—was approved by the committee. Only three to four chairpersons always voted in favor of us. Five would always vote against.
Guess who was the biggest obstacle in that committee? None other than College of Business and Accountancy's student council chairperson Alaric the Prick. He was also the chair pro tempore and the majority leader, since five out of nine CSCs were under his control. Kapag wala si Val sa meeting, siya ang nagpe-preside nito. He could steer the discussion to whichever direction he wanted, and always not to our favor.
Ugh. I bit my lower lip hard that it almost bled. Heto na naman ang sakit sa binti ko. Whenever I thought of that person or that incident, I would always feel a surge of pain. I had already drunk some painkillers tonight, but they seemed to be not working.
