After adding each other as friends, Sakayanagi Arisu and Dokuho Kouya went their separate ways. Kouya returned to his dorm room and noted the daily necessities he was missing in his phone's memo app.
Then he took the elevator to the first floor and sent Sayo Ando a message.
"Sorry, I'm coming down now!"
A few minutes later.
The girl came running down the stairs, slightly out of breath, sweat beading on her pretty face.
Wiping the sweat from her face, Sayo said, "There are just too many people using the elevators. I was worried Kouya would have to wait too long, so I came down the stairs."
Although only about 480 students lived in the Advanced Nurturing dormitory, the building had just two elevators.
During rush hour, you really could end up waiting a long time for your turn.
"If you're worried, Sayo, you can just let me know. I don't mind waiting."
Kouya spoke softly. "Even if you're taking the stairs, there's no need to rush. If you slipped and fell, that'd hardly be worth it."
At that, Sayo's cheeks turned pink, and she smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. I guess I made you worry, Kouya."
"It's all right."
Kouya led the girl to the convenience store near the dormitory.
The clerk gave a perfunctory welcome, and the automatic doors slid open. As soon as Kouya stepped inside, white comments appeared before his eyes.
"Sakuta-sensei, sub for me!"
"This male lead's hilarious—saying something that wild with that totally blank expression!"
The moment the comments appeared, Kouya realized the story had begun, and that the protagonist, Ayanokouji, was nearby.
"Kouya, is something wrong?" Sayo asked curiously, noticing his strange reaction.
"Sayo, how about we split up and shop separately?"
"I don't mind," Sayo said, looking puzzled. "But why do you suddenly want to shop alone?"
Could it be that Kouya didn't want to go around with her?
The thought left the girl feeling a little down.
"I thought that, since you're a girl, there might be some things you wouldn't want a boy to see," Kouya explained. "For the sake of your privacy, it's better if we split up."
"So that's why." Realizing he'd been thinking of her, Sayo brightened, and her disappointment vanished. "See you in a bit, then."
"See you."
After the girl left, Kouya hurriedly activated the system and watched what had just happened from the anime's perspective.
As it turned out, Ayanokouji Kiyotaka and Horikita Suzune were also shopping at this convenience store.
Hoping to find more to talk about with Horikita, Ayanokouji recommended a hair-removal cream, saying it could get rid of things like underarm hair.
In the original novel, Ayanokouji had only just come out of the White Room and didn't understand how ordinary high school students interacted. As a result, he often put his foot in his mouth at first.
Recommending hair-removal cream to Horikita, a girl, was one such occasion.
"It's time to farm popularity points."
Kouya wandered around the convenience store and soon spotted the black-haired girl and brown-haired boy.
Once he was ready, Kouya slowly walked over to Horikita and said, "You've been deliberately picking out the cheaper products this whole time."
"Can I ask why?"
Horikita paused in the middle of choosing a product, then frowned at the neat-looking boy beside her. "If you're trying to hit on me, that's incredibly stupid. I'm under no obligation to answer you."
"Money Brother's here?"
"My stand-in finally makes his debut!"
Looking at the white comments streaming past, Kouya knew he'd entered the audience's field of view.
Now he just had to show what he could do.
"I was just curious whether you'd discovered the school's hidden rules, so I came over to ask."
Kouya smiled. "But judging by what you've been doing, you just seem to be frugal."
Hidden rules?
Horikita's hand paused. Then she furrowed her delicate brows. "It's hard to believe you could decide I hadn't discovered the school's hidden rules based on just one sentence."
"Maybe I'm deliberately choosing cheaper products because I've already figured them out."
She was fishing for information.
When she received the 100,000 points, she'd sensed that something was off.
But that was as far as she'd gotten.
She hadn't been able to dig any further into the school's secrets.
Now that Kouya might know about these so-called hidden rules, she had to find a way to pry the information out of him.
"Not quite." Kouya raised a finger and wagged it, smiling mysteriously. "From our earlier interaction, I've gotten a general sense of your personality. You're rather aloof and don't like talking to other people."
"Given your personality, if you really knew the school's secret, you'd keep quiet and stop answering my questions."
"But you're speaking to me vaguely. That means you've realized hidden rules exist, but don't know the details. So you're pretending to be open to conversation in order to get more information."
After hearing him out, Horikita knitted her brows, her pretty face darkening.
"Looks like I hit the mark." Kouya smiled, satisfied.
"By your logic, you might not know the rules at all and could just be trying to get information out of me," Horikita retorted coldly. Her argument sounded reasonable, but she seemed more like she was just being stubborn.
"Do you want me to prove it?"
"Exactly. If you can't produce evidence, then you're just a fraud pretending to know the hidden rules—nothing more than an empty show of confidence." Horikita fixed him with a sharp gaze, her expression serious.
Kouya paused. "If I told you the hidden rules I've figured out so far, that would certainly count as evidence."
"But then you'd get the information you wanted without giving anything in return, and I'd be the one getting the short end of the stick."
"So you can't prove it, then?" Horikita said. "Looks like you're just a bluffer. At most, you're a little perceptive."
"Of course I can prove it. I just don't need to reveal the hidden rules to do so." Kouya took out his Student Terminal and opened his personal information.
Dokuho Kouya.
Class 1-B.
Points: 1600000.
If he were an ordinary transmigrator, he'd definitely keep his points a closely guarded secret.
But he was bound to the Popularity Character System.
It was well worth showing off in front of the audience.
"How much?"
"1.6 million points?!"
"Classes only started recently, right? Money Brother already has that many points!"
"Money Brother's awesome! He makes things we can't do look easy!"
"Money Brother's not just good at spending money—he's great at making it, too."
"Money Brother, send me 500,000, and I'll do anything!"
As soon as Kouya revealed his points, the comments surged before his eyes like a tide, instantly crowding together until they were a blur.
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