When Yukino saw how conflicted and hesitant Miura looked, and remembered how Miura had given her all those candies that morning, she finally realized what was going on.
Miura was... worried about her?
With a helpless sigh, she took Miura's hand and led her downstairs. "Have a little faith in me, too."
As Miura was led along by the hand, she felt as if she were walking on clouds.
Faith? What faith?
She felt heat spreading through her whole body. She was so light-headed, it was as if her soul were trying to squeeze out of her body and into her head.
Something in her chest swelled, leaped, and surged, as if it were about to overflow through her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
She couldn't think about anything else anymore.
This is terrifying.
Terrifying, terrifying, terrifying, terrifying!
These feelings were so intense they were terrifying...
Yukino led an unusually well-behaved Miura downstairs. When they reached the bulletin board, she saw that, sure enough, a huge crowd had gathered around it.
She couldn't see anything. All she could hear were occasional cries of amazement—"Wow!"—or dismay—"Oh!"
At the same time, she noticed that when she walked over, some people were looking at her rather strangely, almost... with admiration?
Was it because she was holding Miura's hand?
Yukino quickly let go, only then realizing that she was a little embarrassed, too.
In Japan, holding hands between girls was considered quite intimate. Yukino hadn't thought much of it, but Miura might have been startled by her sudden gesture.
Thinking that, she turned to see Miura beside her, still looking a little dazed.
Just then, the petite and adorable Onozawa Kaho finally squeezed her way out of the crowd.
"Yukinoshita!"
She pushed through the crowd and trotted over to Yukino, her face alight with excitement. Even her eyes seemed to sparkle.
"Yukinoshita, you came in second!!!"
Many of the people who had already been paying attention to them turned to look.
Ono was so excited that she even grabbed Yukino's hand. "You're second in the whole school! That's incredible! How did you do it?"
Second?
Yukino was a little surprised, too.
She'd thought she wouldn't make the top three in her grade this time. If she were being pessimistic, she hadn't even expected to make the top five.
Ono kept talking like a machine gun. "Hasegawa is still first in the whole school, but he's a genius specially recruited by Sobu High School. He's a monster who competes with other monsters like Shijo Tei and Shirogane Miyuki. He's practically not even an ordinary human, so he doesn't count!"
At Sobu High School, grades were an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly important measure of worth.
She excitedly shook Yukino's hand. "If you round up, Yukinoshita went from studying for just one month straight to coming in first in the whole school! That's amazing! Let me soak up some of that top-student aura!"
Rounding up: one of humanity's greatest inventions.
Yukino remembered that she had a side quest to come in first in the whole school, right?
[System, does rounding up count as coming in first in the whole school?]
The system didn't respond.
Rounding up was the most useless invention in the world. No contest. Get lost.
Kamizawa had just squeezed her way out of the crowd, too. She helplessly hauled Ono back and noticed Miura beside Yukino, still looking bewildered and unaware of what was going on.
A bunch of useless teammates!
At a time like this, it was up to her, after all.
Kamizawa cleared her throat and said, as if it were nothing special, "Yukinoshita scored two points higher than Hasegawa in math. That's amazing!"
She was mainly saying this to head off any rumors someone might deliberately spread claiming that Yukino had cheated.
But it seemed Kamizawa didn't need to say a thing. The people gathered around them were already looking at Yukino with eyes that sparkled just like Ono's.
All those things that certain people had secretly mocked her for saying countless times—"Yukinoshita is doing practice problems," "Yukinoshita is memorizing vocabulary," "Yukinoshita is working through test papers"—had now become proof that she really had worked hard.
"She's amazing..."
"I heard she only studied hard for a little over a month... Yukinoshita, are you a genius?"
"Come to think of it, Yukinoshita hasn't been flirting with that boy at all this month, has she?"
"She was serious about studying all along. Kouko even bet me the other day that Yukinoshita was just pretending. That was so mean!"
"Hehe, forgive her, will you? After all, the boy she likes, Matsumoto, just got rejected by Yukinoshita~"
"Yukinoshita is smart and pretty, and she's great at volleyball, too. If I were Matsumoto, I'd pick her, too."
Haruno Yukinoshita, a current university student who had just finished class, took out her phone to check a message and burst out laughing.
The chat showed only a picture of the rankings that had just been sent. There wasn't a single word, but Yukino's smugness practically spilled off the screen.
Haruno: [You're bragging about this, too? Your big sister hasn't dropped from first place once since high school, you know.]
Yukino: [You can't even recognize your own little sister, you idiot. And you still have the nerve to talk? (smile.jpg)]
Was that joke really never going to die?
Haruno thought for a moment, then sent a message.
[On the drive back from the party that night, did I say anything weird after I got drunk?]
Yukino was probably busy. It took a long time for her to reply:
[You did. You said there was something wrong with your brain and asked me to be patient with you from now on.]
[Get lost!]
Haruno put her phone back in her bag, got into the family car, and smiled at the driver. "Yes, let's go to the office again today."
She leaned her head back against the rear seat, closed her eyes, rubbed her forehead, and silently let out a soft breath.
As expected.
That night had only been a dream.
Toyogasaki Academy.
Kasumigaoka yawned and slumped over her desk, messaging under it despite the teacher's murderous glare from the front of the classroom.
She'd come first in the school's mock exams again, so no matter how angry the teacher got, all she'd do was lecture her for a bit.
[My foolish disciple, have your mock exam results come out yet?]
[If they're too embarrassing, don't cry in front of your teacher like a loser, okay? (smile.jpg)]
The childish way she bickered with Yukino always made her happy so easily.
Though she liked to be cutting, Kasumigaoka guessed Yukino had probably done pretty well this time. As Yukino's private tutor, Kasumigaoka knew very well how much ground she'd covered over the past month.
Probably somewhere around the top forty in her grade?
But Yukino definitely wouldn't be satisfied with a result like that. That girl never said so out loud, but she was terribly arrogant deep down. She'd surely consider such an astonishing improvement a disgrace.
Kasumigaoka had even planned out how to respond if Yukino got stubborn and acted tsundere about it.
The good student who never looked at her phone during class finally replied to the message Kasumigaoka had sent half an hour ago.
The picture she sent showed Yukino Yukinoshita in second place in her grade, crystal clear.
Kasumigaoka: ????????
This made no sense!!!
She knew Yukino was both smart and hardworking, but it had only been a month. How was this possible?!
Yukino: [Next month, I'm taking your happy home away from you in the mock exams. (smile.jpg)]
Kasumigaoka pressed her lips together.
An inexplicable panic and sense of being caught off guard quickly crashed over her.
Kasumigaoka was happy for Yukino when she did well, but when Yukino did unexpectedly well, Kasumigaoka couldn't feel quite so carefree about it.
For an instant, an utterly awful, dark thought flashed through her mind.
If only Yukino hadn't done so well this time...
If Yukino had reached second place in her grade after just one month of hard work, would she still need a private tutor?
Then, without the private tutoring as a bridge between them, she and Yukino would have no more reason to stay in touch.
Wouldn't she be plunged back into that twisted, painful swamp of confusion all over again?
Compared to the pitiful girl who once needed medication just to sleep, Kasumigaoka hated herself even more when her mind filled with such dark thoughts.
And besides.
Didn't this make it seem as if she couldn't live without Yukino?
It was probably just Yukino's imagination, but she felt that after the mock exam results came out, the atmosphere surrounding most of the students at Sobu High School had become completely different.
It wasn't just the others. Even in her own class, the difference was obvious.
The classmates who had barely ever looked at her before, as if they were afraid of catching something terrible from her, now treated her like some kind of genius celebrity.
Yukino, who had spent several years studying abroad, found this sort of reaction rather unfamiliar.
The whole Asian sphere seemed to pay lip service to the idea of fun, easygoing education, but deep down, the belief that exams came first was deeply ingrained.
Miura's friend Onozawa Kaho even came over during break, hoping to soak up some of the so-called aura of a genius.
Then Kamizawa Junko dragged her back with a dark expression and gave her a talking-to.
Yukino was still reviewing the questions she might have lost points on. After going over every major problem from all five subjects in her mind, she had to admit the truth: she hadn't given it her all on this exam.
Apart from when it came to her older sister, Yukino had always been a little arrogant—whether she showed it or not—about her talent for studying.
She'd had only a month to prepare, but in that time she'd gained all sorts of mental attributes. Her speed of thought, ability to absorb knowledge, and memory had all improved several times over.
And even then, the student ranked first had beaten her by nearly thirty points overall.
How humiliating.
Yukino looked serious as she wrote Hasegawa Jutaro's name on a sheet of scrap paper.
Next time, she'd take first place in the whole school away from him.
[System, system, what's the surprise reward for the [First in the Whole School] achievement? Can you give me a hint?]
The system was like an excellent ex-girlfriend: completely silent, as if dead.
After quickly planning out her study schedule for the coming month, Yukino couldn't help glancing at Miura, who sat beside her.
Miura propped her head up with one hand and seemed to be listening attentively to the teacher at the front of the classroom, but Yukino knew she was absolutely daydreaming.
Ever since the results came out, she'd been acting as if she were suppressing some kind of emotion.
At last, school let out. Miura grabbed Yukino's hand and ran out of the classroom, drawing a string of gasps from behind them.
The two of them stopped behind one of the school buildings, breathing slightly hard.
Miura grabbed Yukino by the shoulders. "Second place! Yukino came second in the grade!!"
Uh, what?
Miura, are you only realizing that now?
And the way you're emphasizing it so much is really embarrassing. You sound as excited as if I just won the Nobel Prize.
Maybe because she was so excited, Miura spoke at top speed. "That's wonderful! Wonderful, Yukino!! Now everyone knows how amazing you are!!!"
Before you continue