Don't Use It to Harass Other People's Ears. / Judgment Day

If it was going to be made public, he should write it in the diary himself. He couldn't expose it like this.

Even if he didn't make it public in the diary, taking the handwritten copy and threatening Kushida Kikyo with it in person was still a decent option.

You don't want your true nature exposed, do you?

With leverage in hand, he could do whatever he wanted!

But... why had Two-Faced Person suddenly exposed herself?

Wasn't she afraid he'd really publish the message?

Was it a test? That couldn't be right. He'd barely interacted with her, so how could he be testing her?

Had she snapped and started acting crazy? Didn't she usually have ways to relieve stress?

Could it have been... just a simple accident?

No, no, that couldn't be likely, could it?

He couldn't figure it out.

But it didn't matter.

After reading the message, Asakusa Toru had an idea of what to write in his next diary entry.

He'd open with this!

The next diary entry was a problem for another day. What mattered more today was collecting his reward.

He'd finally gotten an A rating. Not getting an S would make all the pent-up frustration he'd been bottling up for days a waste.

"You have a new message."

"...Which idiot left a message this time?"

[?]

This message was very short. It contained only a question mark.

Though it was just one question mark, Asakusa Toru felt like he could guess who had sent it.

Sakayanagi Arisu.

Right, a month had passed. He'd forgotten to tease the Little Princess for getting the wrong person.

Did she still think he was Wang Meiyu?

Chapter 52: Don't Use It to Harass Other People's Ears.

"Would you like to make this message public?"

The voice sounded again, but this time Asakusa Toru answered without hesitation:

"Yes!"

Of course he had to make this one public. If he didn't, would he even be human?

"Would you like to add an 'annotation' to this message?"

Once again, the confirmation sounded.

"Oh? I can add annotations too?" Asakusa Toru sat up straight. "Then of course I'm going to give the Little Princess a proper annotation."

But what exactly counted as an annotation? How much could he add?

Asakusa Toru soon found out.

"Just a question mark is too simple. It can't clearly show the Little Princess's identity. But merely adding her identity doesn't seem like enough either. I have to make more people appreciate the importance of her name."

"Her identity alone still isn't enough. A question mark is one thing, but the thoughts and emotions behind it are another. Those need to be explained clearly, too."

"Hey, she only left a question mark. Do you think I can... Ah, I can't do that?"

His pen swept across the page with bold strokes. Asakusa Toru waved his hand and added a great many annotations to the Little Princess's priceless question mark.

And so the "message" in the diary became this:

[Advanced Nurturing's number-one Love-struck Brain, super Nepo Baby, frail and delicate, feet never touching the ground, rich young Little Princess: "?" When I type this question mark, it's not because I have a problem. It's because I think you have a problem. Maybe you don't, but if you think about it carefully, you might still have a bit of a problem.]

Now that was what you called making someone distinctive!

Actually, Asakusa Toru had wanted to write a forbidden word there, but after thinking it over, he decided it was too much and settled for "feet never touching the ground."

Oh, sorry. It wasn't because it was too much. The diary had told him he couldn't write it.

But if he could "embellish" the Little Princess's message, what about Two-Faced Person's?

With that thought, Asakusa Toru flipped back through the diary to Two-Faced Person's "message," which had filled a whopping twenty-seven pages.

"Wow, that's a lot. I don't really feel like embellishing it... Huh? I can delete it? No, I mean, I can 'select' the parts I want?" As he listened to the rules, a strange smile appeared on Asakusa Toru's face.

What was this, "I'll delete messages I don't like"?

Heh heh heh, that made it way too easy to delete them!

Asakusa Toru quickly flipped through the diary, searching for a message that would work as a selection.

He couldn't use the parts insulting him.

It seemed like the diary wouldn't let him select the parts insulting the diary, either.

As for the rest... He'd pick this section.

Soon, Asakusa Toru found the passage he wanted.

"But if she only insults Class D, won't that be too specific? If she's going to insult people, why not insult everyone?" Rubbing his chin, Asakusa Toru fell into thought. "Since that kind of embellishment worked just now... Ah, I mean, annotation. If that kind of annotation worked, then if I annotate it like this..."

"Hey, I think that might work."

Seeing that his idea seemed to have been approved, Asakusa Toru's eyes lit up.

Then he couldn't be blamed. If anyone was to blame, it was the diary!

First, he'd select the passage! Then he'd embellish it!

And finally, insult everyone!

[Handprint Sister: Stupid Sakayanagi Narimori, stupid Sakagami Kazuma, stupid Chabashira Sae, stupid Hoshinomiya Chie, stupid Yamauchi Haruki, stupid Sakayanagi Arisu, stupid Hashimoto Masayoshi, stupid Horikita Suzune, stupid Kanji Ike, stupid Ryuen Kakeru, stupid Ishizaki Daichi, stupid Kanzaki Ryuji, stupid Asakusa Toru, stupid Ayanokoji Kiyotaka, stupid Koenji Rokusuke, stupid Kushida Kikyo, stupid Hasebe Haruka, stupid Miyabi Nagumo, stupid Horikita Manabu. You're all stupid, every last one of you, the stupidest people in the world. This whole school is a stupid, stupid school.]

Looking at the annotated handwriting, which the diary had twisted to resemble the original message while leaving the details mostly legible but difficult to connect to reality, Asakusa Toru smiled in satisfaction.

He couldn't use the parts insulting him, but he could use the parts insulting "Asakusa Toru."

As the old saying went, a person needed convictions and principles of their own.

Clearly, our Two-Faced Person, Handprint Sister, Miss Kushida Kikyo, didn't have enough conviction.

If she wanted to insult people, she should insult everyone—not just Class D, and not just the students. Advanced Nurturing had so many people, and the concentration of idiots among the students was already high. Why assume the teachers weren't idiots? Why assume the chairman wasn't an idiot? Why assume the other school staff weren't idiots?

That was right. This whole school was a stupid school.

She needed to have the attitude of insulting everyone!

And not just everyone else. If everyone was such an idiot, wasn't it possible that she herself was an idiot too?

So tell me, should idiots be insulted?

Yes! Absolutely!

Why not insult them? If they deserved it, then insult them with all your might!

The only pity was that this message couldn't be made completely public. It would probably only be visible to the handful of Diary Copy holders.

It wasn't that he couldn't make a copy and find a way to send it out, but for the time being, he didn't have a good way to do it anonymously.

So come on, give me a good reward!

[Today's entry is complete. Rating for this entry: "A." Drawing reward.]

[Reward drawn successfully. Congratulations, you have obtained the Skill "Voice Transmission."]

It was as if the diary had heard Asakusa Toru's thoughts.

The long-delayed reward had finally arrived.

As if by instinct, Asakusa Toru immediately understood how to use this "Skill."

[Name: Voice Transmission]

[Category: Skill]

[Effect: Gather your voice, choose a direction, and transmit it one way.]

[Note: "Don't use it to harass other people's ears."]

"...Whoa, even Voice Transmission showed up." Feeling the new ability, which he could wield almost as naturally as his own arm, Asakusa Toru's eyes flashed with surprise.

This was the first Skill he'd ever obtained.

But...

"If you could give out Skills directly, why the hell didn't you do it sooner?"

He'd thought the diary could only give him items.

If it could hand out Skills directly, why hadn't it just given him the White Room graduate physique instead of a Membership Card?

...Was it to make it easier for him to touch people's legs?

What kind of personal trainer behavior was that?

He could put the whole thing about legs aside for now. The moment he saw the Skill's effect, Asakusa Toru thought of a D-rated reward he'd gotten on the day of swimming class.

[Name: Bowtie Voice Changer]

[Category: Item]

[Effect: Input enough voice samples to generate a voice model, and you can freely choose which model to use.]

[Note: "Not Conan."]

If he used this together with Voice Transmission...

You told me not to harass people. Did you really think I wouldn't?

Chapter 53: Judgment Day

May 1.

Judgment Day.

Ever since she'd read the diary yesterday, Horikita Suzune hadn't slept well all night.

She'd suffered from insomnia again.

It had been a long time since she'd last been unable to sleep, but the familiar feeling of insomnia made her body feel strangely at ease.

Dark circles had quietly appeared beneath her eyes. Her head drooped, her vision blurred, and her mind felt hazy.

...She didn't even know how she'd made it to class.

But class still had to go on.

No matter what happened, classes still had to go on.

That was a student's duty.

"Hey, hey, Ken, did you get your money?"

"What's wrong with this school? Didn't they promise us a hundred thousand?"

"I was going to buy breakfast, but now I can't even pay for it."

"Don't worry about it. I've still got plenty of money!"

"Hey, Haruki, where'd you get all that money?"

"Heh heh, don't tell anyone. Ryuen from Class C gave it to me. He's a really good guy, too. I just did a few little things and got fifty thousand. He practically handed it to me!"

"Thanks to him, I can spend without worrying even at the end of the month. Heh heh, check out the game console I bought the other day!"

Even with her head down on her desk, the voices of those idiots by the door kept drilling into Horikita Suzune's ears.

"...Sigh." She sighed quietly and buried her head even deeper in her arms.