The Explosion

Matsushita Chiaki felt as if everything she knew had been turned upside down.

In her limited experience, the most daring classroom antics amounted to passing notes or exchanging glances.

But what she'd just witnessed... It had started with writing on someone's back, then escalated to "interacting" with their feet, and finally... taking off a sock? Rubbing the sole of a foot? Kiyona was practically sprawled across her desk now...

It was so much to take in that her brain was struggling to keep up. This was all way beyond anything she'd ever imagined!

Especially... Matsushita thought back to Hoshino Kanade's final, seemingly casual gesture.

As he drew his hand back, his fingertips seemed to brush past his nose, quick and perfectly natural.

And the fleeting look on his face... Was it savoring the moment? Or some other kind of indescribable pleasure?

Matsushita was startled by the thought.

"...Th-this isn't just ordinary fooling around, is it?" she murmured, staring blankly at her desk as her fingers absently rubbed the smooth shaft of her pencil. Her thoughts were in chaos.

"Just how far has their relationship gone? This is definitely..." She racked her brain for a word. "...some kind of perverted interaction, isn't it?!"

As a girl who'd never been in love and whose understanding of romance hadn't progressed beyond pure-love manga, the scenes she'd just witnessed had hit her like a nuclear bomb.

She needed time to calm down and digest this "shocking" glimpse of daily life in Class D.

Matsushita took a deep breath and forced herself to settle down.

But when she thought it over, both of them seemed strange.

Hoshino Kanade's reflexes were far beyond a high schooler's. His move to grab Kiyona's ankle had been so fast it was barely more than a blur.

Kiyona's endurance was even more baffling. An ordinary person would've screamed at that level of stimulation... Were they really ordinary students?

After the class's points had hit zero, even Karuizawa's group had curbed their shopping habits. Yet these two could play this kind of forbidden game in class?

The more Matsushita Chiaki thought about it, the more a chill crept down her spine.

Was Class D a gathering place for "defective products"?

But these two looked like anything but ordinary students.

She instinctively pretended to be taking notes seriously. Through the gaps between her falling strands of hair, though, she tried to sneak another look—to check Kiyona's condition, or catch another sign of Hoshino Kanade's oddness.

But the moment her gaze swept over, it met Hoshino Kanade's.

His eyes were calm, yet like a deep pool, they had caught her spying with uncanny precision.

Matsushita Chiaki's breath caught.

As expected, one more look and she'd explode.

"Are you interested in history, Matsushita?" Hoshino Kanade suddenly asked, breaking the silence around them.

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to Matsushita.

He casually tapped the cover of the history book on his desk, tucked beneath his physics textbook.

Matsushita snapped back to her senses, nearly dropping her pencil.

She gripped it tightly and forced a harmless, slightly puzzled smile. "...I was just curious why you're always reading books outside the curriculum, Hoshino."

She tried to make her voice sound natural, but the cold sweat that had instantly broken out across her back gave away her nerves.

When did he realize I was watching? Was it from the very first time?

Hoshino Kanade looked at her, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. There was no warmth in the smile.

His gaze drifted, apparently without intent, to the pencil she was gripping so hard it had begun to warp. "Because some knowledge—"

Matsushita blurted out almost at once, testing him. "Is beyond the textbook?" She met his gaze, trying to read something in those unfathomably deep eyes.

At the instant their gazes crossed, a desperate wail suddenly came from the back of the classroom. "It's over! This topic's going to be on the final, and I didn't understand a thing!"

The wail was like a drop of water in a pan of hot oil, instantly igniting Class D's long-suppressed anxiety.

Whispers, the rustle of turning pages, and sighs rose one after another. The anxiety in Class D surged like a tide, drowning out every hidden battle.

Hoshino Kanade looked away from Matsushita Chiaki as if their brief exchange had never happened.

Unhurriedly, he tore off a corner of a page from his notebook, quickly wrote a line, then passed the slip bearing his contact information to Matsushita Chiaki's desk.

"Perhaps we should talk," he said calmly, but with a weight that left no room for refusal, "about your 'mediocre' abilities."

With that, he didn't look at Matsushita Chiaki again. He stood and left his seat.

Matsushita Chiaki sat frozen, staring fixedly at the tiny slip of paper on her desk.

The cicadas outside the window shrilled deafeningly, their cries especially grating now.

Under the pressure of having no survival points, Matsushita Chiaki suddenly realized that what she'd just glimpsed might truly have been only the tip of the iceberg.

Thinking back, she remembered the look Hoshino Kanade had given her at the end.

He'd noticed her long ago! Since the first time she'd spied through the gaps in her hair? Or even earlier?

The slip with his contact information lay quietly on her desk, like a silent invitation—and a dangerous trap.

Matsushita Chiaki stared at the new contact on her terminal screen, absently rubbing its cool casing as she tried to dispel the strange flutter in her chest.

What would he do to her?

The image of Kiyona's snow-white bare foot, slightly curled in Hoshino Kanade's grasp during class, surfaced against her will.

His touch had carried a sense of control, yet it had also been strangely... gentle?

No! What was she thinking? Was she going to ask him to take off her shoe and hand him her foot?

The thought made her ears burn and her heartbeat suddenly go haywire.

The thought of Hoshino's handsome yet unfathomable face right in front of her... Just imagining it made her breath catch.

Would he treat her worse than he'd treated Kiyona?

She absolutely didn't want anything like that!

She bit her lower lip, trying to smother her scattered thoughts with pain.

But the cold reality quickly extinguished that impractical fantasy.

He'd probably discovered who she really was.

Her deliberately lowered scores, her maneuvering within Karuizawa's group, her probing observations of her classmates...

If anyone else got hold of any one of those secrets, they'd have enough to use against her. And Hoshino Kanade was even harder to read than most.

If he exposed her, she couldn't bear to imagine it.

In Class D, where survival points had hit zero and everyone was on edge, an "impostor" exposed for what she was would instantly sink to the bottom of the class.

Karuizawa's revenge, Hirata's disappointment, Sato and the others distancing themselves... She'd be ostracized, wouldn't she?

That frightened her more than any "punishment."

Though her thoughts were a tangled ball of yarn after a cat had played with it, she had no choice.

The glow of her terminal screen lit her flushed cheeks and shimmering blue eyes.

With no other option, she nervously opened the contacts search bar and slowly, carefully entered the string of numbers Hoshino Kanade had given her.