Enduring

Her fingertip hovered over the call button for several seconds before Horikita Suzune finally pressed it.

The gesture exhausted some stubborn resolve, and her knuckles turned faintly white with the effort.

"Hello? Oh, Horikita? What a surprise!" Kushida Kikyo's sweet voice came through the receiver, tinged with just the right amount of surprise. "What is it?"

She naturally knew that her classmate had just given Horikita Suzune her number, and she had been waiting for this call.

"..." A brief silence.

Horikita's voice seemed to scrape out of her dry throat, deliberately flattened in tone.

"It's about Hirata's study group. Sudō, Ike, and Yamauchi didn't attend."

She skipped all the small talk and went straight to the point.

"Ah, that," Kushida said, her tone immediately shifting to one of concerned warmth.

"It really is a headache, isn't it? You're worried their exam scores will drag down the class, right?" She spelled out what Horikita meant.

"...Their grades will affect the Class Points," Horikita corrected stiffly.

It was still difficult for her to admit that she "cared," but she forced herself to continue. "I..." The words caught between her teeth for a moment. "Need your help." The last three words came out heavily.

"You want me to help?!" Kushida's voice shot up, unmistakably delighted. "Really? You're coming to me for help, Horikita? That's wonderful! Leave it to me!"

Her enthusiasm sounded genuine. "You want them to join the study group, right? I promise I'll handle it! Oh," she added, changing tack, "let's exchange LINE IDs! That way, we can get in touch more quickly!"

The excitement in the receiver tightened Horikita's jaw.

That excessive enthusiasm did nothing to ease her discomfort. Instead, it made the humiliation of having asked for help all the more vivid.

She could almost imagine the thoughts hidden behind the friendly smile on Kushida's face.

"...Fine." Horikita's reply was mechanical and cold.

She gave her ID.

The call ended with a busy signal. Horikita leaned against the cold door of her dorm room and slowly slid down to the floor.

At last, the breath she had been holding in her chest escaped in a long, silent exhale, leaving her utterly drained.

Asking for help from Kushida Kikyo, whom she instinctively disliked and suspected on a gut level, felt even more bitter than she had expected.

But her older brother's icy mockery and the glaring reality of Class D's "zero" score had left her no choice.

She closed her eyes.

This wasn't surrender. It was a necessary action.

To achieve her goal of reaching Class A, there were some things she couldn't do alone.

The atmosphere in a corner of the library was rather tense.

Kushida Kikyo's social skills were indeed impressive. With a few well-aimed words of "praise"—

telling Ken Sudō, "Your basketball skills must require excellent judgment, Sudō. I'm sure you can make a breakthrough in your studies, too," and telling Kanji Ike and Haruki Yamauchi, "You two are such loyal friends. You wouldn't leave your friend to struggle alone, would you?"

—she finally got the three reluctant boys into the chairs opposite Horikita Suzune.

Ken Sudō sat with his arms crossed, rocking back on the front legs of his chair, his gaze stubbornly fixed on the window.

Kanji Ike and Haruki Yamauchi fidgeted in their seats, nervously tapping their fingertips on the table. The crumpled covers of their workbooks revealed how little attention they were paying.

"Okay, let's get started!" Kushida clasped her hands together, beaming as she tried to lighten the mood. "Horikita is one of the top students in the year. If you follow her lead, you'll definitely pass!"

Horikita didn't respond to her deliberately friendly overture.

She silently opened her workbook.

"We'll start with the basic formulas. Solve a linear equation in one variable, for example—" Her voice was steady, and her pen tip rested on the math chapter.

"Wait!" Yamauchi abruptly looked up, scratching his head in bewilderment. "A-a linear what? What does that mean?"

Horikita's explanation came to an abrupt halt.

She closed her eyes for half a second. When she opened them again, her gaze was calm. "An equation with one unknown, whose highest exponent is 1." Her pen tip marked the scratch paper. "2x + 3 = 7. Solve for x."

Kanji Ike stared intently at the equation, gripping his pen so tightly it was almost bent. "Is x... 3.5? No, wait... two times 3.5 is 7, and then you add 3, so that's 10... but the right side is only 7?"

Clearly, he hadn't even grasped the basic logic of moving terms from one side of an equation to the other.

Horikita's knuckles turned faintly white as she looked toward Sudō. He had buried his entire face in his arms. His muffled voice came from underneath. "Don't look at me... I can't even recognize all the letters of the alphabet."

A sense of absurdity washed over her like ice water, but it stirred no emotion.

The vast gap between the three boys' lack of basic knowledge and her goal of reaching Class A loomed before her. Her older brother, Horikita Manabu's, taunt about a "Zero Score Class" echoed in her mind, while the memory of having to turn to Kushida for help still made her uncomfortable.

The words "What right did you have to get into this school?" nearly escaped her, but she only pressed her lips together.

This was a matter of strategy, not an outlet for her emotions. That realization bound her churning disgust like a steel cable.

She had to find an effective approach.

When she looked up again, her gaze was calm. "I misjudged the situation."

Turning to Kushida, who looked a little surprised, she spoke with unquestionable resolve. "Find a few first-year middle school math textbooks.

"Given the situation..." Her gaze swept over the three boys. "We need to start again from the very basics and work out a new teaching plan."

Her pen tip gouged a deep line into the blank page.

That line meant she had to completely change her strategy and let go of her unrealistic expectations.

The air grew still.

Kanji Ike's throat bobbed silently. Ken Sudō's nails dug into his palms, and Haruki Yamauchi instinctively hunched his shoulders.

The pressure radiating from Horikita Suzune wasn't anger. It came from the cold, factual way she stated the truth—and the risk of "expulsion" implied by her words was unmistakable to all three boys.

They exchanged glances, understanding the consequences of resisting or slacking off.

In silence, the three lowered their heads and reluctantly opened their first-year middle school textbooks.