At Horikita Manabu's command, the Student Council members sprang into action.
Kondo Reon and Ishizaki Daichi were escorted to another vacant meeting room outside the Student Council office to wait. Someone was stationed at the door to ensure they could not communicate in any way.
Inside the spacious Student Council office, only the first person to be questioned remained—Komiya Yogo of the Basketball Club.
At one end of the long conference table, Horikita Manabu and Tachibana Akane sat silently, like two emotionless statues. Their very presence exerted an invisible pressure.
At the other end, Komiya Yogo sat alone in his chair, facing the three students from Class D. A trace of the humiliation and anger stirred up by the earlier remarks still lingered on his face, but more than that, he was putting on a pretense of composure.
Horikita Suzune stood before him, holding the document Natsukawa Sosuke had prepared for her.
She was nowhere near as calm as she appeared. This was the first time she had taken charge of such an important situation in front of her brother. Nervousness, excitement, and an urgent desire to prove herself—countless complicated emotions were tangled together.
But when her gaze fell upon the document and she saw the clear handwriting on it, an inexplicable sense of reassurance settled her turbulent thoughts.
She took a deep breath and recalled what Natsukawa had told her the previous night.
"Remember, don't ask the core questions they've already coordinated their answers for, like 'Who threw the first punch?' or 'What did he say?' They've rehearsed those questions countless times. You won't find any holes that way. What you need to do is drown him in a huge number of seemingly irrelevant, even absurd detail questions. Don't give him time to think—make him answer by instinct alone.