Previously, Fang Li had sensed that Hirata Yosuke and Karizawa Kei were not as close as he had imagined.
Hirata Yosuke had never called Karizawa Kei by her name, only addressing her as "Karuizawa."
Although such things varied from person to person—some people did not necessarily call each other intimately by name even after becoming a couple—there was still something off about Hirata Yosuke's attitude toward Karizawa Kei.
It was not the attitude one had toward someone they loved.
In Hirata Yosuke's eyes, Karizawa Kei seemed no different from any other classmate. He showed no excessive intimacy toward her, nor had he ever favored her in any way. He simply treated both his classmates and Karizawa Kei fairly, gently, and equally.
That made Fang Li sense the same thing from Hirata Yosuke and Karizawa Kei that he had sensed from himself and Ichinose Honami.
In other words, they were pretending to be a couple.
"At first, I found it a little strange. Why were you pretending to be a couple?"
Right in front of Karizawa Kei, Fang Li revealed the secret she had hidden.
"I suppose you wanted to use Hirata Yosuke's standing in class to bolster your own?"
After all, Karizawa Kei was a powerless weakling, someone at the very bottom who had always suffered bullying. Being able to rise from the shadows of her past and resolve to escape the fate of the weak had already been no easy feat.
But with Karizawa Kei's meager strength, accomplishing that was far from easy.
That was why Karizawa Kei had chosen to pretend to be Hirata Yosuke's girlfriend.
"If you stay close to someone with status, you can gain a status second only to theirs."
Fang Li looked at Karizawa Kei.
"You used that method. By becoming Hirata's girlfriend, you