At high noon in July, the sunlight outside the window was bright and beautiful, the droning of cicadas as persistent as ever.
Horikita Suzune furrowed her brows slightly, staring in puzzlent at Ryuen Kakeru, who stood several ters away.
Just from answering a single phone call, his face had begun to contort violently. His chest heaved like a blacksmith's bellows. A grinding, crunching sound issued from his mouth, as though he wanted to say sothing, yet simply could not force the words out.
Why had he stopped laughing?
Ti seed to stretch. In the span of just a few short seconds, Ryuen's complexion first drained of all blood, turning a sickly iron-blue. Then the blood rushed violently back, transforming it into a boiled liver-red. Next, it oscillated between red and black. He clenched his teeth at so tis, his fists at others.
After a mont of hesitation, Horikita also took out her own mobile phone.
The forums?
She had no habit of wasting ti on such things. But under the present circumstances, it was best to first understand exactly what had turned that "sunny and cheerful" Ryuen so reticent and mute.
Her fingers slid nimbly across the screen. After swiftly registering an account, the very first thing that caught her eye—she tapped straight into the thread with the highest heat index.
[I Really Am Not Anonymous 6457: On Wednesday evening, the week before last, a blood-boiling, bare-knuckle brawl erupted in the first-year dormitory building. A trainee reporter for the Advanced Nurturing High TV Station risked life and limb to secretly record the footage. For details, please view the content below.]
[I Really Am Not Anonymous 6457: 1V3 Heated Combat.MP4]
Horikita's pupils abruptly constricted. She instantly raised her head and cast a startled, uncertain look toward that cara which Ryuen had blasted with a paintball. There really had been a hidden cara that recorded everything?!
And that ID...
Was it the very mastermind that Ryuen had been hunting for all along?
Their information-gathering activities over the past few days had been conducted openly across the entire grade. That mysterious mastermind would surely have known about them as well.
In other words, while Ryuen had seen straight through their plan, there had simultaneously been yet another student, quietly lying in wait in the shadows for Ryuen to expose his own weak spot?
Horikita half-lowered her eyes. Her fingertips continued to slide downward on the screen.
[It Must Have Been the Duck-Neck Guy: I'm here to report on the scene first thing! WTF, why is it you again? Why is it always you? Why is it STILL you?!]
[Class A's Highest Combat Power: Every vice sweep has you there. Crap-Eating King, just leave the group chat already.]
[With You, Could I Be Buried: Ara, so it seems Hirata-kun was wronged. How cunning, Class C's Ryuen-kun, to fra our classmate like that.]
[Student Council Vice President Nagumo Miyabi: My, my, so it's this restless kouhai again. It seems the truth has co to light. Framing a classmate—even if the school doesn't expel him, Class C's class points will likely be docked by at least 150 points.]
[Class C's Strongest Academic Brain: NANI?! Ryuen-shi, you bastard! If Class C gets screwed over by you any further, we're going to hit zero points!]
[Versatile Genius Prodigy (Recruiting Girlfriend): If you ask , trash like this should just drop out sooner rather than later. The school can just hand all the points over to . A genius as outstanding as myself will surely shine brilliantly in the future, y'know.]
...
The corner of Horikita's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. She had spotted a certain familiar ID among the comnts.
That guy... hadn't he sworn up and down that he was currently so busy he barely had a mont to spare? What was with this image of him surfing the web and dispensing judgnt like so armchair general?
"I'm looking for a student who used the restroom in the eastern teaching building within the first few days of school. Ring any bells?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about!"
"Really no idea?"
"None."
The sound of a question-and-answer exchange suddenly erged within the stairwell, interrupting Horikita's train of thought. Then, as if realizing sothing, the volu abruptly dropped.
Ichinose Honami and the several Class B students held their phones with slightly awkward bearing, facing Ryuen, embarrassed smiles surfacing on their faces.
Unlike Ichinose, Horikita had no intention of sparing the enemy's dignity. After roughly skimming through the comnts below, she did not hesitate for even a mont. She extended her index finger and pressed play.
A mont later.
"Big talk's cheap. Komiya, Yamawaki, get him!"
The very next second.
"Clang! Oohoo! Oohoo! Awoo—!"
Agonized cries, intermingled with the muffled thuds of fists striking flesh and the rustling friction of clothing, emanated from the phone's external speaker. They echoed with startling realism through the stairwell, which at this mont felt especially vast, hollow, and silent. The sounds rebounded off the walls, forming lingering echoes that refused to dissipate for a long, long ti...
"..."
The intermittent cries of pain snapped the final thread of Ryuen's sanity. Following the Flying Attack from last ti, his ntal defenses had once again been utterly shattered. What shattered him even more was the fact that both incidents had been perpetrated by the very sa person!!
"AAAAAAARGH!"
With nowhere to vent, he could only deliver a devastating kick to the stairwell guardrail!
"CLANG—!"
The trendous impact echoed throughout the entire stairwell. The silver-white stainless steel guardrail shuddered violently. Before the buzzing hum of the vibration could even fully resonate, it was struck by yet another kick.
"Let test the caliber of this Class D leader— WHAM!" Another sound of himself taking a blow rang out.
The lava-like, surging, churning fury was incinerating his reason. After kicking the guardrail, he swung his fists again, pounding them again and again with thunderous crashes against the stairway handrail, as if envisioning it as a certain soone and beating them to death on the spot.
"..."
Seeing this, Horikita discreetly attempted to lower the volu. It wasn't that she was afraid of him, but rather that if Ryuen were to faint from sheer rage right here and now, she would have to go explain things to the Student Council and her brother.
However, in the next instant, Horikita's finger, out of sheer habit, swiped across the screen—and the phone's volu abruptly skyrocketed...
"Ryuen-aniki! The opponent's kind of fierce! Let's pull back for now and plan carefully! We can bring more people next ti to take him out!"
"You two useless pieces of trash! Can't you see he's barely holding on, about to collapse?! If we keep fighting, the one who wins will definitely be — GUAH!"
"..."
The entire group of Class B students silently glanced at Horikita, whose expression remained perfectly unchanged.
Horikita-san, is this really okay? He looks like he's about to explode from rage, you know?
Finally, under the twin assaults from both the real and virtual worlds, Class C's delinquent boss Ryuen spiraled into a state of utter frenzy. Last ti, he at least had the concrete target of Yamada Albert. This ti, unable to even identify his target, he could only vent his fury emptily against the air.
"AAARGH! GODDAMMIT! Co out if you've got the guts! You trashy, shaless, scum! Baby villain! Mastermind! Advanced Nurturing sliball! Circus monkey! Gutter-dwelling stinking rat!"
Ryuen, whose Japanese Literature proficiency was abysmal to begin with, was now exhausting every single filthy, obscene term he could conjure up in his entire life.
He seed to want to bite the mastermind into pieces with his own teeth and swallow the chunks down one by one. At the sa ti, he began swinging his fists at the empty air, as if that bastard were standing right before his eyes.
But to an outside observer, this behavior looked like...
A monkey with disheveled, flying hair, dancing a jig?
In the upper right corner of the stairwell, beneath the black cara whose lens was sared with paint from the paintball, a miniature cara—disguised as a part of the cara itself—swayed gently along with the black cara. It glinted with a faint flash under the sunlight.
Not far away, in a room separated by a few doors from the scene of the incident, inside Fuyuji Mikage's dormitory room—
The mastermind who haunted Ryuen's dreams and soul was currently gathered in front of a computer screen with his two companions, watching this spectacular performance with rapt, concentrated attention.
Fuyuji marveled, "What kind of despair could possibly produce such a frenzied, hysterical dance routine?"
Morishita Ai cupped her chin. "This... Ryuen-pilepsy?"
Yamamura Miki earnestly corrected them, "No, this may be a psychological issue. He needs to visit the school infirmary for an examination."
Fuyuji silently stuffed a few kernels of popcorn into his mouth. "He'll probably return to normal pretty soon. It was the sa last ti—vent for a bit, then bounce right back, full of life and energy. That guy is practically an unkillable cockroach."
Morishita slowly set down Fuyuji's phone. She turned a cool, expressionless gaze toward him, her eyes flowing with a long, aningful look. After a sigh, she shook her head in disappointnt.
"Fuyuji Mikage, you've changed... In the past, whenever you made decisions like this, you would always ask for my opinion and Yamamura Miki's. Now, you hide things from us. As expected..."
"..."
"Ha? What exactly am I hiding from you?" Fuyuji was startled by the sudden gentleness and deliberation in Morishita's tone.
"Spill!"
Morishita's volu suddenly spiked. Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, she spun around and straddled Fuyuji's lap. Both hands latched onto his neck and shook him violently up and down.
"Did you get carried away by lust?! You saw those two pretty girls from other classes about to be forced to their knees, and you couldn't wait to post that video, thinking to be the hero saving the beauties and earn their favor! Fantasizing about doing those... those kinds of things that all guys want to do—the dirty, perverted, h-horrible things?!"
"Cough, cough! How could that possibly be?!" Fuyuji tried to pry her hands away.
"That won't do, Fuyuji-kun." After a mont of hesitation, Yamamura clasped her hands before her chest. Her small face was faintly flushed, yet she spoke with insistent determination. "That kind of thing is absolutely not allowed!"
"I already said it's not that." Fuyuji defended himself.
"Morishita-sama grants you three seconds to state your reason for doing this!" Morishita glared down at him from her lofty position.
"Wasn't it you who said to throw this video right between them and make them fight again?"
"Hm?"
The movents of Morishita's hands ca to an abrupt halt. She released her grip with a suspicious look. "What do you an?"
Fuyuji rubbed his own throat and took a breath. He explained, "To summarize, it's about directing Class C's attention toward Class D, letting them fight it out first, while we sit back and reap the fisherman's gains. You'll understand in a while."
The leak of their operational plan this ti had been, one hundred percent, Cha-Cha's doing. However, she had most likely passed it along through an interdiary, handing the information to Sakayanagi Arisu.
The evidence was that the frequency of her cursing out Sakayanagi had skyrocketed these past few days.
That scummy loli Sakayanagi had, in all likelihood, cooperated with or egged on Ryuen to falsely accuse Hirata Yosuke.
From Ryuen's perspective, once he cooled down a little, how would he interpret today's incident?
Soone had encouraged him to file a false accusation against Class D's current leader. And in the end, he discovered that it was actually a trap designed to get him expelled.
The evidence just so happened to be released the very mont he was about to force Class B and Class D to kneel.
If, just monts ago, he hadn't been verbally crushing Class B and Class D with a purely mocking attitude, but had instead resorted to the usual thug tactics of physical intimidation, the thing he'd be facing right now with one hundred percent certainty was expulsion.
Therefore...
That mastermind was, with extrely high probability, one of the people who had known about this plan. And naturally, the one bearing the heaviest suspicion was the very person who had encouraged him to falsely accuse Class D.
A grin of eager anticipation for a good show spread across Fuyuji's lips.
Perfect. That scummy loli Sakayanagi was bored and idle anyway, wasn't she? You two go ahead and duke it out. Whoever wins, I'll reward them with a clue about the mastermind.
"Really?"
Morishita swatted Fuyuji's hand away. Her little hands rubbed his neck, checking to make sure no marks had been left.
"You weren't scheming to deepen their affection for you, deceive their feelings, and then, first do this and then do that, all to satisfy your depraved, perverted psychology?"
"Please, this isn't a galga. How could sothing like this possibly raise affection flags just like that? Besides, you saw it yourself—I posted it anonymously, didn't I? They don't even know who I am." Fuyuji rolled his eyes.
"You pass, barely." Morishita muttered a couple of words, climbed off Fuyuji's lap, and sat back down beside him.
Fuyuji shifted his gaze back to the computer screen. He slid the mouse and saved this brilliant performance.
Mm... this here was Horikita-girl's crowning mont of glory. Could sell it to Horikita Manabu for a good price later.
By this ti, Ryuen had finished venting and regained his composure.
"Ryuen-san, let it go, let it go. Next ti, we'll definitely catch him next ti."
"Yeah, Ryuen-aniki, calm down. He's just a rat hiding in a gutter. He's definitely only hiding because he's terrified of you, aniki. Once we uncover his true face, he'll be so scared he'll piss his pants."
Komiya and Yamawaki, at his side, desperately tried to soothe the raging Ryuen, continuously patting him on the back. The clamorous stairwell once again returned to silence.
"It seems the outco of this engagent is our victory. Although it was not a victory won openly and honorably, as far as the result goes, triumph appears to have swung to our side."
After swiftly replaying the video once, Horikita placed her phone back in her pocket and spoke with dignified resolve.
"Student downloads of this video are not prohibited. In other words, we have obtained the consent of the video's owner and acquired ownership of this footage."
"As such, nothing we said earlier can be considered a lie."
"..."
Ryuen said nothing. He closed his eyes and slowly lowered his head. His entire being was so eerily calm it was as if he had transford into a completely different person, as though deep in contemplation.
Seeing that the tide of offense and defense had now completely and utterly reversed, Horikita intensified the force of her attack.
"Not only that, your testimony will be completely overturned. Class D will, in turn, file a complaint against you for falsely accusing Hirata-kun..."
As she spoke, Horikita's pace of speech began to slow. A note of doubt crept into her voice.
Was it a coincidence? The timing of this video's appearance... Even more coincidentally, this video perfectly matched every single thing they had just said earlier?
No. Now is not the ti to dwell on that!
Horikita restored her earlier overbearing, imperious stance and swept her gaze across the three from Class C.
"Added to that, you just now threatened to make Ichinose-san and kneel..."
"Ryuen-kun... if we decide to pursue this to the fullest extent—never mind those two—you... will absolutely be expelled!"
"In that case, Class C will be dealt a devastating blow. It might very well lose all capacity to be a threat."
Thud—!
The mont her voice fell, the stairwell was left with only the muffled hum of the air conditioner's external unit and the increasingly grating screech of cicadas outside the window.
Under the astonished stares of everyone present, beneath the incredulous gazes of Komiya and Yamawaki, Ryuen, with shocking, absolute finality, dropped to his knees before Horikita and Ichinose. His entire body pitched forward, his forehead touching the ice-cold floor.
"I'm sorry. All of this was my fault. Please... let us go."
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