Beauty ranking (unOrdinary one-shot)

Beauty ranking

The end of the school year was the busiest time for the Royals. As the leaders of the school, they were in charge of organizing graduations, parties, trips, and the prom. It was exhausting, but fun. Remi loved thinking of new ideas for these events, and she especially loved to see the students' happy faces when those ideas came to life. At the end, all the work and lack of sleep were worth it.

They had already decided the theme for that year's prom: girls invite boys. Talking to her friends, Remi realized that every year boys were expected to find creative ways to invite girls to prom. They went as far as bringing balloons to school, making signs full of glitter, and even ordering cake; in other words, whatever it took to impress the girl enough for her to accept the invitation. In Remi's opinion, it was unfair that boys were always the ones who were expected to do all of that, and that is why she decided to revert the situation. For that year's prom, girls will be in charge of asking boys out.

The school seemed to like the idea. Soon, with the help of Elaine and Meili, the invitations were ready and available for purchase. But Remi decided to make things more interesting: the tickets to prom were actually a blank letter that the students would need to fill with a nice message. Once they've done that, they'd give them back, and Elaine and Meili would deliver the invitations four weeks before the prom. They'll leave them in the boys' lockers, rooms, or wherever they could find them. Remi thought that it would be fun. Much more interesting than just buying a ticket and giving it to someone.

Everybody was excited about prom. Wherever she went, she heard girls whispering about whom they'd invite and what would they write in their invitations. The boys were excited as well. Isen was having the time of his life. As a third year, he couldn't attend without an invitation, but he was sure that he would receive one. More than one, even.

Turns out, after the prom theme was revealed, many "lists" started circulating around the school. These lists were actually polls where the students decided, for example: which boys would receive more invitations, which boys were the most attractive, or which boy would the girls date if that was actually possible in this universe (because everybody wanted to date Arlo, but was that possible? Nope. The guy was unreachable.)

At first, it was a thing between a small group of people, but it grew fast. The polls went from having a maximum of ten votes, to having thirty, fifty, eighty, and one hundred. They were published on the school tabloids every few days, and they got so popular that everybody talked about them. No one knew who was making those polls or how many students were involved, but no one really cared. In the mornings, the students would reunite around the tabloids, excited to know the winner of the newest poll.

"Guess what!", Isen said happily, barging into an empty Safe House with a sheet of paper in his hand. "I beat Ventus!"

Remi frowned. "I'm pretty sure that you've been stronger than him for a while..."

"Not in a match, I mean in a poll", he said, handing her the sheet. "Remember last week when I was third place and he was second? Well, not anymore!"

Remi and Blyke quickly read the list. For that poll, the students had to choose which bachelor would they go on a date with. First place was for Arlo, which wasn't really surprising since he had been the winner of all the polls so far. Just like Isen said, he was the second most voted, and Ventus was a close third. Other boys from their year were on the list as well. It ended with Holden on the tenth place.

"It's about time until I'm able to beat Arlo", Isen said confidently. "I've always been in the top four so I'm excited to see how many invitations I'm going to receive for prom!"

"You will never beat Arlo", Blyke said, his hands full of dust because of the board games he had been cleaning. "He is more popular than the three of us together".