"Phew... phew..."
Ishikura let out a heavy, labored breath, his face looking absolutely awful.
"Come on, let's decide the order."
Miyabi Nagumo held out his hand.
Rock Paper Scissors.
In this memory game, going second gave you a huge advantage.
The first player's incorrectly flipped cards would be turned face down again, giving the second player a chance to confirm their position and rule out wrong choices.
"Scissors, rock, paper!"
Fate didn't seem to favor the older player this time.
Ishikura threw scissors, while Kazehara Tetsu and Miyabi Nagumo both threw rock.
"Tch..."
In the Rock Paper Scissors that followed, Kazehara Tetsu lost to Miyabi Nagumo.
The order was set.
Ishikura, Kazehara Tetsu, Miyabi Nagumo.
"Then I'll give Senpai Ishikura a challenge."
Kazehara Tetsu sat cross-legged, his voice so calm it sent a chill through the room.
"Your target is ten. Find the '10s' in the box, then shift them back ten places."
Ishikura reached out with a trembling hand.
His fingers hovered a few centimeters above the floor as his eyes wandered over the red patterns on the cards' backs.
"This one... I think I saw it just now..."
He flipped over the first card.
It was a fragment of the upper-left corner of the Club 10.
"Phew..."
Tsunoda, a third-year student watching from the sidelines, breathed a sigh of relief.
Ishikura kept searching.
With a little of the information he'd desperately memorized still lingering in his mind, and luck on his side, he flipped over five fragments in a row.
They were all fragments of the 10.
"More... There's more..."
Cold sweat covered his forehead.
The memory of that one minute was already starting to blur, and the fragments began to overlap in his vision.
"This one!"
He gritted his teeth and flipped over the seventh card.
As