Narrator: I'm telling you, she's a little devil!
Leaving the student council office, Shirogane and Sakayanagi, who were from different classes, had both accomplished their respective goals.
So, logically, they should have gone their separate ways as soon as they walked out the door.
Logically speaking.
"Shirogane, do you know who those two standing outside the door just now were?" Sakayanagi suddenly asked, gripping her cane.
"The blond-haired boy is a second-year student from Class A and the current vice president of the student council, Nagumo Miyabi. As for the girl, if you paid attention during the entrance ceremony, you'd know that she's the student council secretary, Tachibana Akane. She and Horikita, the president, are both from Class 3-A."
"Nagumo-senpai is a tricky person to deal with. The students who were sent to gather intel on the second-years came back empty-handed. Even when they raised their price to 500,000 points, no one would spill any information."
"That's because the school doesn't allow it—and neither does Nagumo."
Sakayanagi's voice was pleasant to listen to, and as she spoke, she smiled playfully at Shirogane.
"..." Shirogane's expression remained unchanged.
Shirogane didn't speak right away. Wasn't Sakayanagi supposed to be really capable?
He had thought she wanted a printed student list just to prepare in advance after learning about the class battles.
But now, it seemed like she had actually hit a dead end.
Meanwhile, Shirogane acted as if he already knew the inside story.
So did Sakayanagi think they had found out the truth about this school through some kind of rule-breaking method?
Well, she was absolutely right.
Ryuen got his information by breaking the rules—using brute force.
But Shirogane had nothing to do with that. It wasn't him using violence; it was Ryuen. He was just "passing by" and happened to "hear" something.
"The school doesn't allow us to talk about it, and Nagumo-senpai doesn't either," Shirogane said shamelessly, dodging the question. "So does that mean Nagumo-senpai holds a lot of power in the second-year students' eyes?"
"Nagumo-senpai's current Class A wasn't originally Class A. He climbed up from Class B."
"So basically, it's a successful case of an underdog rising to the top."
"It's normal for someone like that to have influence over his year."
"And to hold onto his victory, I think Nagumo-senpai might be using his position as vice president of the student council to strengthen his control even more," Sakayanagi said.
"…" Shirogane.
So she already figured everything out? Not just about the class battles, but also the current state of the second-year students?
If that was the case, Shirogane suspected that Class A already knew about the behavioral exam in the first month of school.
And if that were true, they probably wouldn't lose too many points this month.
Which meant their Class C would be facing an even tougher opponent than previous years.
That was scary.
As for Sakayanagi's way of gathering information, it was probably by throwing money at the problem.
She mentioned increasing the offer to 500,000 points, yet the second-year student still refused.
The key word was "increasing the offer."
Did that mean as long as the price was high enough, even things that weren't supposed to be allowed could become possible?
Not to mention, the student council president had already seen Sakayanagi openly offering money to the teacher in class. And the teacher did say that in this school, as long as you had enough points, you could buy anything.
So if Class A used a large sum of money to get the truth about this school, the school might just turn a blind eye.
Thinking about it that way, a question came to mind.
"Sakayanagi, is it true that the student council president mentioned you tried to buy information from the teacher during yesterday's homeroom?" Shirogane asked.
"Oh, that? Of course, it's true," Sakayanagi replied. "But this school is really interesting. As long as you have enough points, you can buy anything."
"Although the teacher refused to answer, I then turned to the second-year students, and finally, I found some third-years. In the end, I still got the information I wanted."
So she had planned for both outcomes. If she could buy information directly from the teacher, great—it would be legitimate if the teacher accepted.
And if the teacher refused, she could always go to the upperclassmen.
Since she made the deal under security cameras, it was technically acknowledged.
And in the end, since the third-year students were willing to sell her the information, it became a "legal" transaction.
With that result, Sakayanagi quickly secured her position in the class and even recruited some useful people.
It was all connected—hitting multiple targets with one move.
Shirogane was sure that when Nagumo-senpai was still in Class 2-B, the Class 2-A he had to face was nowhere near this strong.
There was no way the old Class 2-B could have surpassed an A-class of this level.
"What's wrong, Shirogane?"
"You suddenly went quiet," Sakayanagi noticed his change in expression.
"…It's nothing," Shirogane shook his head.
After meeting the big boss of Class A, Shirogane decided to go back and study properly.
…
"You look completely worn out again today, Shirogane."
The next morning, when he arrived in class, Shiina—who sat in front of him—greeted him.
When Shirogane looked up, he saw her delicate, elegant features and her smooth, straight hair.
Yeah.
Shiina still had that refreshing presence.
It felt like she could ease any complicated emotions just by being there.
"I put in some extra effort yesterday," Shirogane said, taking out his math textbook, already marked up to page 77.
[You seem a little scared,] a voice echoed in his head.
It had been three days now. Shirogane was getting used to its presence.
That comment came out of nowhere, but he knew exactly what it was referring to.
"She's terrifying, isn't she?" Shirogane wrote in his blank notebook.
He had realized something—this voice only existed in his mind. If he tried to respond through thoughts alone, it wouldn't hear him. But if he spoke out loud or wrote something down, it could hear and read his words.
That meant this was a form of communication.
The voice in his head responded.
[If we're talking about how scary she is, she's like a T-Rex—small, but extremely aggressive.]
[She also holds grudges, and she doesn't get revenge right away. She lets them pile up first.]
[And when she finally gets mad, it's truly terrifying. She forces slackers to study, makes you do things you're bad at, and the worse you are at something, the more she makes you do it.]
[She's basically a demon!]
Wait, wait, aren't you even more scared of her than I am?
Shirogane was about to keep writing when he suddenly noticed a commotion at the classroom entrance.
"Someone from the student council is here."
"Looks like they're looking for someone."
"What? No way, is Ryuen finally getting caught—uh, I didn't say anything."
A student sitting in the front row seemed eager to report Ryuen, but the moment he realized Ryuen was glaring at him, he immediately backed down.
It was only the third day of school, yet Ryuen's use of force to control the students hadn't stopped.
When he arrived this morning, Shirogane noticed Ryuen had a bandage on his face. He had probably been in another fight yesterday.
What a rough life.
Even though Ryuen had silenced that student, his own expression looked a little serious too.
There were way too many cameras in this school. Even though fights usually happened outside their view, if they happened too often, someone might report them.
So, did someone report him?
"Is first-year Class C student Shirogane Miyuki here?"
A student council member stood at the door, but the name they called out belonged to someone else.
The students around them turned to look.
Some were curious about who this "Shirogane" was, while those who knew him glanced over with interest.
"Are you Senpai Tachibana Akane?"
Shirogane immediately recognized the student council member standing at the door.
She had purple hair and looked pretty cute.
She was the secretary who always followed the student council president around. Shirogane had learned her name from Sakayanagi—Tachibana Akane.
"Looks like I found the right person." Tachibana Akane stepped forward. "The report you filed about the store clerk in the electronics shop secretly taking photos has been confirmed. That clerk has been fired."
"I'm here to update you on the case."
Oh.
The students around them had already pieced everything together.
So Shirogane was the one who reported it.
Speaking of which, was that clerk from the first electronics store? Some students recalled that he did look kind of creepy—he gave off an unsettling vibe.
Originally, everyone had been talking about other things, but now the conversation had shifted entirely to the store clerk incident.
At the same time, a bright and confident-looking senior with short blond hair appeared at the entrance of Class 1-A's classroom.
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