Sen no Sen / It'll Come in Handy

The only thing she was certain she could do, the talent that meant she would never lose to anyone.

...That was Kushida Kikyo's true nature.

Everything else, from her outward friendliness to the malice underneath, was merely an expression of herself that stemmed from this.

She had been born for it.

"..."

But trust had its limits, and earning everyone's trust came at a price.

The crushing pressure piled onto her shoulders, leaving her unable to breathe. With no other way to cope, she used anonymous posts on an online forum to reveal her true self without restraint in a hidden corner of the internet.

And so, her true nature was exposed.

When everyone in her class turned on her, Kushida Kikyo chose to fight back.

When faced with other people's malice, there was no reason not to strike back, was there?

All she had to do was expose them. She could use the trust they placed in her to reveal their innermost selves, just as she had revealed her own.

Then they would attack one another of their own accord.

And then her middle school life would be over.

...That wasn't what she wanted.

"I'm going to start over..." The memory that had surfaced came to an abrupt end. Kushida Kikyo drew a deep breath, ignored the cold voice in her ear announcing that she had finished reading, and slammed the diary shut. "I have to start over."

High school was the perfect time to reshape her life, a turning point where she could erase everything in her past.

So even if the diary's Recorder had declared an intention to kidnap her, even if the Recorder had come close to naming her and pointing out her true nature,

she still had to start over.

And so, weighed down by her worries, Kushida Kikyo welcomed the day.

She put on the uniform that had arrived with her acceptance notice and boarded the bus along the route laid out in the school's introductory materials.

Apart from a handful of other passengers, nearly every seat was occupied by teenagers wearing the same uniform as her.

"'I was the one who chose vocational school'..." Almost as soon as she boarded, Kushida Kikyo found herself thinking of the words she had read in the diary the day before.

The diary's Recorder was a new student who would be entering Advanced Nurturing High School today, just like her.

In other words, the bus around her might contain someone who knew her true nature—someone capable of destroying the next three years of her high school life.

Who could it be?

The blond man who looked like trouble? The unremarkable girl sitting in the back? The expressionless brown-haired guy? Or—

Kushida Kikyo raised a hand to grasp a strap and struggled to keep her expression under control, suppressing her emotions as much as she could.

She had done this countless times. It was something she should have grown used to long ago.

Even so, she couldn't help letting out a deep sigh inside.

"Ah, this is just awful."

Beneath her mask, her expression twisted. Her already poor mood sank even lower.

The reason was simple.

She had seen someone she really didn't want to see.

A girl who had attended the same middle school as her.

Horikita Suzune.

Though they hadn't been in the same class, and Horikita might not know about her past or the incident she had caused in middle school,

Kushida wouldn't gamble on that possibility.

She and the diary's Recorder.

Those two were the greatest obstacles to her peaceful high school life.

Chapter 5: Sen no Sen

Asakusa Toru had gotten up unusually early that morning.

It wasn't because he was so excited about the new school year that he couldn't sleep. He had long since stopped expecting much from school.

He was certainly curious about which class he'd be assigned to, but that wasn't the main point.

The main point was the timing.

After receiving a reward like the Infinite Voice Recorder, a plan had formed in his mind.

A plan that only he, someone who could produce a recorder right at the start of the school year, could carry out.

"First-Year Class B. Should I call that unexpected, or only to be expected?" Asakusa Toru arrived at Advanced Nurturing early and raised an eyebrow when he saw which class his name was listed under.

In this life, he had awakened his past-life memories fairly early. He had shown exceptional ability from a young age, and in most people's eyes, he certainly deserved to be called a "genius."

After all, he had no parents and managed to support himself, kept up with his studies, and even earned a generous amount of money by copying light novels. No matter how you looked at it, other people would have counted him among the geniuses.

His only flaws were probably that he had no parents and few friends.

To turn his dwindling advantages into a solid foundation before they faded further with the changing times, he had almost no free time to waste on socializing.

This world was a mixed-up crossover universe. Although the development of most works followed similar trends, there was no guarantee that things would always line up.

If even one piece of information from his memories was inaccurate, he could be forced to fall behind instead of staying ahead.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have chosen to make money by copying light novels. He'd have been making waves in the financial markets long ago.

Well, though he said he copied light novels, he couldn't reproduce entire stories perfectly. He just took the memorable, interesting ideas he recalled, tried them out, and used them to write his own stories.

But that was exactly what had made him understand how far he was from the truly cheat-level geniuses in those stories.

Yes, he was talking about the guy who had written a work that sold over fourteen million copies by the age of fourteen.

Back to the point: at Advanced Nurturing High School, students were assigned in order to Classes A, B, C, and D.

On the surface, it seemed like an ordinary class assignment system. In reality, the school was judging students according to its own arbitrary standards.

Class A was probably the cream of the crop. Class B, the average. Class C, the troublemakers. Class D, the defective products.

The specifics might differ, but Asakusa Toru figured the essence was more or less the same.

Incidentally, the 100% college admission and employment rate mentioned earlier was a privilege enjoyed only by Class A.

So, apart from Class C, whichever class he'd landed in would have made sense to Asakusa Toru.

If you judged him only on academic ability and similar skills, setting aside his shortcomings in negotiation, there was no doubt he could have been placed in Class A.

Just as a certain nepo baby with a serious physical disability had been placed in Class A, he might have been assigned there too, to prove that Sakayanagi Arisu's placement hadn't been favoritism.

Of course, it was only a possibility.

And if they took his shortcomings in social interaction into account, there was another useful example: Horikita Suzune, who mistook loneliness for aloofness and rejected socializing.

In other words, there was a chance he might have been placed in Class D.

But in the end, he'd been assigned to Class B.

"So they don't think my flaws are severe enough to make me a 'defective product'?" Asakusa Toru had his answer.

After confirming the class assignments, Asakusa Toru didn't head straight to the Class B classroom, nor did he follow the signs to the entrance ceremony hall.

Instead, after picking up his Personal Terminal, he followed the directions and found his way to the First-Year Class C classroom.

The classroom was mostly empty, with only a few people inside. There weren't many students who'd arrived as soon as the school opened, let alone students from Class C.

More precisely, there were only two people in Class C at that moment.

One was a girl with short blue hair and a healthy, strong build, sitting at her desk with a deeply bored look.

The other was a gentle, quiet girl with long silver-gray hair, who seemed to be staring into space.

If he remembered correctly, the first was named Ibuki Mio, and the second was Shiina Hiyori.

Without announcing his presence, Asakusa Toru walked into the First-Year Class C classroom as casually as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

For first-year students, everyone's seat had been assigned in advance. There was no first-come, first-served system, and it was easy for each person to find their own seat.

By the same logic, it was just as easy for everyone to find someone else's seat.

Ryuen Kakeru's seat...

Ah, there it was, up front.

It didn't take long for Asakusa Toru to find his target.

Ryuen Kakeru's seat.

At this school, which claimed to value merit above all else, students competed against one another by class for the right to secure the school's promised guarantee of employment.

For that purpose, figures known as "leaders" naturally emerged.

They led the others, gave them directions, and then aimed for the throne of Class A.

Among them, the student who would later become Class C's leader was Ryuen Kakeru.

If Asakusa Toru had to label him, "ruthless" would come first. "Violent" and "dictatorial" came second.

Although his main reason for enrolling at Advanced Nurturing was to make it easier to write his diary every day, and he didn't care at all about the privileges of Class A, it would still be disgusting to get dragged into this guy's schemes during class battles.

So, to keep that from happening, he needed to get hold of something that could shut down Ryuen Kakeru's plans before he did.

The best, most suitable, easiest, and earliest opportunity to get that leverage was obvious.

It was today—the day Ryuen Kakeru would soon bring the entire Class C under his control.

A rule built on violence could prevent its victims from reporting him if they were bound to him by mutual interest. And with the careful use of blind spots in the security cameras, no evidence would be left behind.

But what if someone who seemed to know the future left behind a recorder that first-year students shouldn't have been able to get their hands on yet?

What then?

Chapter 6: It'll Come in Handy

Earlier, Asakusa Toru had tested the Infinite Voice Recorder's effects of endless recording and splitting.

But apart from those, the Infinite Voice Recorder had another feature.

The recorder itself.

The recorders he took out wouldn't disappear.

They lost their ability to record endlessly and became ordinary recorders, but the devices themselves didn't vanish when he produced another one.

In other words, even if he dropped out on the spot and opened a recorder company, he could take out endless new recorders using materials that cost him nothing and probably get rich.

That said, he wasn't planning to do something stupid like slip a recorder into Ryuen Kakeru's desk, wait until later, then retrieve it and use it as leverage.

He didn't think Ryuen Kakeru would check his desk on the first day, but retrieving the recorder would still be a hassle.

After all, the Infinite Voice Recorder's ability to record for twenty-four hours only applied to the most recent original recorder on his person. Any earlier ones became ordinary, independent recorders.

So he had never planned to retrieve it.

Nor had he planned to sneak the recorder into Ryuen Kakeru's desk without Ibuki Mio and Shiina Hiyori noticing.

"..." A cool breeze blew through the open window and stirred the girl's long, fine hair.

Shiina Hiyori seemed to come back to herself all at once. She turned instinctively and looked at Asakusa Toru as he entered the classroom.

"Ah." She made a sound, but didn't say anything more. Then she turned her gaze away again.

Her delicate face showed no clear emotion, making her seem more like a lifelike doll. There was something about her that gave people the faint urge to tease her.

Shiina Hiyori had no particular desire to socialize.

Even when the classroom had held only her and Ibuki Mio, the two of them hadn't exchanged a single word.

So, although another student had entered the otherwise empty room, she didn't react in the slightest.

Ibuki Mio, who had also been assigned to Class C because of her shortcomings in socializing, reacted the same way. She glanced over at Asakusa Toru when the sound caught her attention, watching him approach Ryuen Kakeru's seat, then looked away and gazed out the window at the growing number of new students outside.

"Hmm..." Seeing their reactions, Asakusa Toru raised an eyebrow, a little surprised.

He didn't hesitate. He reached out and slipped the recorder into Ryuen Kakeru's desk.