Classroom of the Elite, but It's a Diary-Type Story
Author: Moonlit Magician
As soon as Asakusa Toru received his acceptance letter from Advanced Nurturing High School, he got a "diary that gave you rewards just for writing whatever you wanted."
But having read plenty of diary-type web novels, he saw through the diary's true nature at a glance.
Who in their right mind kept a diary? Wasn't the whole point of writing one to let other people read it?
According to the diary, the rewards drawn after completing an entry depended on how entertaining it was, whether the spoilers were appropriately paced, and how much the readers' emotions fluctuated.
So he picked up his pen and wrote today's entry.
[Your past, present, and future are all in my hands. You'd better come to terms with that.]
If you don't read my diary, I'll die for you to see.
Social death.
Volume One
Chapter 1: I Chose Vocational School
"I've been wondering for a long time: did I choose vocational school, or did vocational school choose me? After thinking about it for a long time, I came to a conclusion."
"I chose vocational school."
"Sure, a good university isn't necessarily worse than a junior college, and a good high school isn't necessarily worse than a vocational high school. But in the end, vocational school is the best."
"That's what I firmly believe."
Sakayanagi Arisu read the words on the diary in front of her in a gentle voice, her face full of puzzlement.
"What on earth is this guy writing?"
She couldn't make sense of it.
Terms like "vocational school," "junior college," and "vocational high school" were hard to understand at first, but after thinking it over, she could more or less work out that they might refer to technical colleges and vocational schools. If she remembered correctly, those were terms used in the country across the sea.
So was this a diary from that country?
"..." Sakayanagi Arisu fell silent.
The diary in her hands had appeared out of nowhere that evening.
It had materialized in midair and drifted slowly down. And only she could see it.
It was a fascinating phenomenon.
At least, given the theories she knew, she couldn't imagine how such an elaborate magic trick could be accomplished.
A prank? Magic? An illusion?
No matter how she looked at it, the circumstances made it impossible.
Even more astonishing was the fact that her father, who had been there with her, hadn't noticed the diary at all.
He seemed unable to see it. As far as her father was concerned, she hadn't even asked any questions about the diary.
How interesting.
Something beyond her understanding had happened on the day before she was about to start high school.
She had every reason to be interested, and every reason to open the diary.
But when she did, she found these utterly baffling words.
Whatever the diary's origins, its contents seemed to say that vocational schools were better than regular universities...
As Sakayanagi Arisu pondered this, more words suddenly appeared on the diary, as if it had refreshed in the blink of an eye.
[Anyway, what I mean is, from here on out, it's vocational school time.
Unless something goes wrong, you're all about to start at vocational school—what they call Advanced Nurturing High School.
Don't wonder how I know who you are. I'll generously explain what's going on.
First of all, I imagine you're most curious about this diary, right?
I'm sure some of you have already tried. That's right, this diary is special. You can't reveal anything about it to anyone unrelated, by any means whatsoever. That includes showing or using it in front of other people. You also can't destroy it or throw it away, no matter what you try. It'll always come back to you.
Of course, this isn't a curse. It's just my cheat. As a transmigrator, I got a cheat that gives me rewards every day as long as I write a little in my diary.
You don't have to understand. Just know that my job is to write the diary, and yours is to read it.
As for why you have to read it...
The reason is simple. Your past, present, and future are all in my hands. You'd better come to terms with that.
I know your past, understand your present, and know your future.
You don't want someone to learn the secrets you least want known while you're completely in the dark, do you?
You don't want someone to peer into your innermost thoughts while you're blissfully unaware, do you?
You don't want someone to see in advance the decisions you might make in the future while you're lost and uncertain, do you?
I won't claim to know everything about you, but I doubt you can afford to bet that I'm lying.
So, I'll say it again.
Your past, present, and future are all in my hands. You'd better come to terms with that.
That's enough of the kidnapping declaration. Let's talk about something fun. After all, it's hard to believe someone just because they say so.
So, let's expose someone.
"There's more than one Two-Faced Person at this school."
That's today's spoiler.
Feel free to wonder whether it might be you.
Of course, everyone probably has a side that differs from the face they show the world. It's hard to express yourself without any pretense at all, when what you show others and what you truly feel behind their backs are different things.
So the Two-Faced Person I'm talking about is a "defective product" who caused a huge incident in middle school.
Crushed by a deep inferiority complex, desperate for supreme superiority, and keeping malicious thoughts buried deep inside. A defective product, suffering, tormented, and struggling.
Even after reading this diary, you could probably pretend nothing was wrong.
But that doesn't matter. I'm not especially interested in your exact identity anyway.
I only need to protect myself.
I can't pin down your exact identity, and you can't confirm who I really am. So even if I write about you, all you can do is chalk it up to bad luck.
But if you want to stop that from happening, you can try to find me and play a "Hide and Seek Game" between the Recorder and the Peeper.]
The text stopped there.
As if announcing the end of the entry, a cold voice echoed in Sakayanagi Arisu's ears.
"Today's reading complete. Reading Points +1."
The voice was unimportant. There was a chance it was an auditory hallucination, but at this point, Sakayanagi Arisu no longer believed the diary in front of her was one.
She didn't think a hallucination could be so logical, or that its words could have such a distinct style.
"'Hide and Seek Game,' huh?" She gently closed the diary, a faint smile at the corners of her mouth. "Interesting."
"Very well. I accept your challenge."
She was a little disappointed that the first Two-Faced Person whose past he'd exposed wasn't her. She didn't think she had any weaknesses, and she would have been all the more interested if he'd managed to write something about her.
Still, this was enough.
If it was a diary, then there would surely be plenty more "spoilers" in the days to come.
"Let's treat it as a bit of entertainment before I bury the fake genius." Sakayanagi Arisu smiled.
Chapter 2: The Legitimate, Official, Fully Accredited Ace Diary!
Asakusa Toru was a sixteen-year-old boy and a transmigrator.
Perhaps it was because he'd read so many books in his previous life that he'd been reincarnated into this hodgepodge of an anime crossover world.
Unfortunately, even in a new world, he was still an orphan.
Fortunately, not having parents wasn't a bad thing.
As long as he had no parents, he could be invincible on the internet, impervious to anyone trying to use his parents against him.
With his head held high and no shame at all, he could simply nod and say, "My mom's dead," when someone said, "Your mom's dead." It would make them look back on it later and wish they could slap themselves dozens of times, cursing themselves for being such a terrible person.
That was his invincible shield.
Still, even as a transmigrator, life without parents was tough. If he hadn't been sent to an orphanage when his past-life memories awakened, Asakusa Toru suspected he might have died on some street before remembering his previous life, if he'd had bad luck.
But that was all in the past.
After struggling and working hard with the help of his past-life memories, he'd assumed he'd spend his whole life with nothing but the advantage of knowing what was coming. Then, sixteen years late, his cheat finally arrived.
A diary.
Its full name was "The Diary That Gives You Rewards Just for Writing Whatever You Want."
A very straightforward name.
But clearly, well-read Asakusa Toru wasn't going to be fooled so easily.
The moment he got the diary, he remembered all sorts of diary-type novels from his previous life.
Either the protagonist wrote a diary while the whole world hounded him, and only after he died was it exposed to the world, clearing his name and leaving everyone full of regret; or the diary was revealed to everyone in real time, and the protagonist used the unhinged ramblings in it to win over all kinds of heroines, like a protagonist whose inner thoughts were laid bare.
Even now, he couldn't help wondering why the protagonists in those diary-type stories actually believed the bullshit that no one would ever read what they wrote.
Seriously, who in their right mind kept a diary?
Fortunately, the diary he'd received wasn't some scammer's toy designed to mess with its owner.
It was a legitimate, official, fully accredited ace diary!
A clear scoring system for diary entries.
A vast pool of rewards to draw from.
A defined range of readers.
The day he got the diary, Asakusa Toru abandoned his original plan to make a fortune by copying light novels and devoted himself to developing his cheat.
After a little research, he picked up his pen and wrote the entry Sakayanagi Arisu had read.
He stirred things up, gave away a spoiler, and declared war.
Each of the three corresponded to a different evaluation mechanism in the diary.
How entertaining the content was, whether the spoilers were appropriately paced, and how much the readers' emotions fluctuated.
The diary's system would evaluate what he wrote, calculate a score, and then draw a reward.
It shouldn't be complicated. At least Asakusa Toru understood what he needed to do.
He'd leave the score and reward aside for now. Although he'd finished today's entry, the diary still needed a little time to calculate the result.
So he turned his attention to the range of designated readers.
He knew the readers were students at Advanced Nurturing High School not only because he'd recently received an acceptance letter from the school, but also because the diary had already told him.
[Current Plot: Welcome to the Classroom of the Elite]
[Today's Plot Index: B]
The first line marked the range of the Diary Copies issued by the diary. Only characters in the corresponding story had a chance of receiving one.
The second was a special bonus index. Whenever he was at a key point in the plot, the index would multiply the original score.
In other words, the more important the content, the more important the timing when he wrote it.
Before you continue