We've already earned 150,000 points?
Sayo Ando and the others watched in bewilderment as the upperclassmen handed over their points. For a moment, they didn't know whether to marvel at how easy it was to earn points or at Kono's skill.
If they'd known that Kono had easily won a three-on-one match yesterday, they would have understood why he could earn 150,000 points so effortlessly: his shogi skills had won their recognition.
"We have to go to the club fair later. Can you start teaching us now?" After paying, Takuya seemed a little impatient.
In just two days, he'd spent more than 200,000 points.
If he weren't already a third-year student with quite a few points saved up, he really couldn't have afforded to spend them so freely.
Dokuho Kouya nodded. "No problem. Let's start by teaching the club members."
Unlike ordinary club members, the club president had to give a speech and recruit new members.
The president had to go to the gymnasium soon to prepare for his speech, and then stay there to oversee recruitment. He wouldn't have much time to learn.
So it made sense to teach the club members first, while there was enough time for a proper lesson.
"Then I'll go first." Takuya sat down and helped set up the shogi board.
He didn't feel comfortable putting on airs as an upperclassman in front of Dokuho Kouya.
Once the board was set up, Takuya leaned forward slightly and said respectfully, "I look forward to learning from you."
Fifty thousand personal points seemed like a lot.
But outside of school, it wouldn't be enough to hire a high-level Go player to teach them.
In other words, Takuya and the others were the ones getting a real bargain.
Once Dokuho Kouya sat down too, the shogi lesson began.
Sayo Ando blinked her lovely eyes, her pretty face full of confusion. In a low voice, she told the others around her, "I can't understand a word Kono's saying."
Mako Amikura nodded, looking a little embarrassed. "I don't even know the rules of shogi. I heard you can take the pieces you capture and use them as your own?"
The boys, Tetsuya Hamaguchi and Norihito Watanabe, knew a little, but only a little.
Norihito Watanabe scratched his cheek. "I could follow the beginning, but after that I had no idea what they were talking about."
After thinking it over, Tetsuya Hamaguchi said, "Kono and Takuya-senpai both know shogi really well, so even when they leave out a lot of details, they still understand each other."
But for beginners like them—if they could even be called beginners—it was like listening to a foreign language.
Noticing how his friends were doing, Dokuho Kouya stopped explaining and smiled at them. "Sayo, if you're bored, you can try playing shogi yourselves."
"Tetsuya and Norihito know a little. You can ask them to teach you while you play."
The Shogi Club members were all focused on listening to his lesson, so they couldn't take the time to teach newcomers like Sayo Ando.
If he left them sitting there with nothing to do, they'd get bored, so he found something for them to try.
"Kono, you can just call me Sayo." Sayo Ando seemed less resistant than she'd been yesterday. "It's weird to call me by my first name and still add an honorific."
"You can call me Mako, too," Mako Amikura added.
They cared more about what people called them than about learning shogi on the sidelines.
"Sure, little Sayo, little Mako." Dokuho Kouya didn't dwell on it and switched to the nicknames right away.
To be honest, when he called someone by their first name and still added "classmate," he had a reason for it.
Calling someone by their first name showed warmth.
Adding an honorific like "classmate" afterward created a bit of distance.
Simply put, it was part of the image he was cultivating.
Still, there was no harm in calling classmates by their first names. For students from other classes, he'd stick with "first name + classmate," which wouldn't interfere with his carefully cultivated image.
After teaching the two Shogi Club members, Dokuho Kouya got up and looked at his classmates. "We still have some time. Let's go check out the gymnasium."
The club fair had already begun, and the Shogi Club president had gone to the gymnasium early to prepare for recruitment.
If they left now, they should arrive just as the speeches ended and the clubs began recruiting.
"Huh? Are we still going to the club fair?" Mako Amikura asked, taken aback.
"Didn't you want to join the Volleyball Club, Sayo?" Dokuho Kouya said with a light smile. "You can join a club later, too, but then you'll have to go find the president and submit your application. It'll be easier to do it now."
"Oh, right." Mako Amikura clapped her hands. "Sayo wants to join the Volleyball Club."
They'd only met today and didn't know each other well yet, so it was only natural to forget what the others liked.
"You don't have to worry about me," Sayo Ando said with a smile. "I can just do what Kono said and go find the Volleyball Club president to submit my application."
She'd feel bad if her friends had to change their plans because of her.
"But then you'd have to go find an upperclassman by yourself, Sayo. That'd be pretty awkward, wouldn't it?" Norihito Watanabe scratched his cheek with his index finger, as if remembering an unpleasant experience.
Having the upperclassmen stare at her over and over would feel awful.
"Everyone wanted to check out the club fair anyway, so don't worry about it, Sayo," Tetsuya Hamaguchi said, skillfully guiding the conversation.
"Yeah, I was just thinking I wanted to see what the school clubs are like," Mako Amikura said, clapping her hands and picking up where the boy had left off.
Realizing that none of her friends minded, Sayo Ando nodded slightly, her guilt fading. "Then thanks, everyone."
They left the Club Activity Building and headed toward the school gymnasium.
As Dokuho Kouya chatted with Sayo Ando and the others, white comments began appearing before his eyes.
"Feels like the vice principal is watching me from behind."
"Is the student council president really that powerful? They didn't even say a word, but still managed to silence the whole place."
"It's anime, so just enjoy it. In real life, who'd pay attention to a stranger?"
"Forget strangers. When our school administrators give speeches, they try this too. We students kept talking for half an hour, until one of them couldn't take it anymore and told us to be quiet."
Reading the comments, Dokuho Kouya realized this was a classic scene from the original story: the student council president had silenced the new students in the gymnasium without saying a word.
But judging by what was happening now, the student council president was still using the "silence" skill and hadn't started speaking yet.
If they went into the gymnasium now, would they interrupt the student council president's big moment?
Before you continue