Classroom of the Elite, but It's a Diary Style

"Consider this after-sales service for that voice recorder from before."

"Come on, look me in the eyes." Asakusa Toru cupped Horikita Suzune's cheeks in his hands, forcing her gaze to meet his: "Look in my eyes!"

"Tell me, tell me right now, what are you thinking, what have you done, how should you repent, and where should you be heading?"

"Answer me!"

"--" The loud command made Horikita Suzune snap the popsicle in her mouth with a sharp crack. She instinctively tried to shrink back, but Asakusa Toru's hands held her firmly in place. With no other choice, she pulled the popsicle out and said pitifully, "The, the popsicle..."

"Bite it off, then swallow it. It's only a couple of bites." His face was perfectly calm, his tone level and steady.

Horikita Suzune found it hard to imagine that he had just shouted so loudly.

Obediently, she crunched down and swallowed the popsicle, leaving her holding nothing but a wooden stick.

"I, I want to be a younger sister who won't disappoint her brother..."

She wanted to be someone worthy of the name Horikita Manabu's sister, someone who could make her brother hold his head high and introduce her to others by saying, "This is my sister."

"I, I have been studying so, so hard..."

She hadn't spent time on anything unnecessary, hadn't participated in any useless socializing, and had buried herself entirely in her books to study.

"I, I should have spotted the trap in Chabashira-sensei's words, I should have stopped Yamauchi from leading everyone into indulgence ahead of time, I should have..."

For some reason, as her cheeks were held by his large hands, the hazy fog in her mind began to dissipate.

But... there was still no path ahead.

Even with the fog cleared, she had no concept of which direction she was supposed to be heading in the first place.

And so, Horikita Suzune's words stalled there.

"--You should find a mirror, or a flat patch of ground, take a leak, and take a good look at yourself." Asakusa Toru sighed softly, sounding weary and resigned. "You need to recognize your own abilities, understand your own nature, know your own position, and then weigh and judge your own limits."

"Now, tell me your abilities, tell me your strengths, tell me what you think you're better at than others."

Show me your self-awareness.

"I... am very good at studying?" Horikita Suzune hesitated for a moment before offering the only answer she firmly believed in.

"..." Asakusa Toru shook his head and asked another question: "How long do you study every day? And what are your current grades like?"

"Ten, twelve, maybe thirteen hours... And as for my grades, I don't think I lose to anyone."

Even while stuck in the quagmire of Class D, whenever the topic of grades came up, Horikita Suzune would straighten her back just a little.

She was proud of her results.

"Compared to your classmates?" Asakusa Toru raised an eyebrow.

Horikita Suzune didn't understand why he asked, but she nodded anyway.

If you don't compare yourself to your classmates, who else would you compare yourself to?

"...That's quite humorous." Asakusa Toru sighed gloomily, then asserted without hesitation: "You don't know how to study at all."

"No, if we're talking about whether you can study, at least compared to Yamauchi Haruki and those guys, I'm sure you can."

"But that doesn't mean you are good at studying."

Someone truly good at studying wouldn't need to rely on long hours to desperately chase after the academic level of their peers; putting in that much effort just to compete with others your own age doesn't count as being good at studying.

"This just means you are good at squeezing yourself dry, good at putting shackles on yourself, and then locking yourself in a prison."

"In short, you have the innate constitution of an assembly-line worker." Seeing that Horikita Suzune no longer intended to look away, Asakusa Toru finally let go of her face and continued: "Studying ten-plus hours a day is your true strength."

"But at the same time, it could be called a weakness."

"You study too much and too rigidly, so your brain stops turning. When your brain stops turning, the knowledge you've learned has no practical use, and you end up looking like a complete idiot."

Asakusa Toru raised his hand, hooked his fingertip against Horikita Suzune's forehead, tensed it, and flicked.

"--" Horikita Suzune instinctively closed her eyes, but the force that landed on her forehead was very light.

He hadn't used any real strength.

"What you need to do now is download... ahem, open up your perspective." Asakusa Toru shrugged: "At the end of the day, is graduating from Class A really that important to you?"

"Did you come to this school for the graduation privileges of Class A, or just to follow in your brother's footsteps, acting like a super-obsessive tag-along, following him wherever he goes?"

As his voice trailed off, Asakusa Toru stood up slowly and stretched his body after sitting for so long.

"Your self-awareness is terrible. Since you can't see anything by looking in a mirror, go find other people. Find a few more, and get a profile of the 'Horikita Suzune' that others see."

"And then..." After a moment of thought, Asakusa Toru reached out and pulled out his personal terminal: "Let's add each other first; I suddenly have an idea."

Clutching the two wooden sticks, Horikita Suzune obediently took out her terminal and added Asakusa Toru to her contact list.

Although she didn't seem to fully understand yet, she inexplicably felt as if she had understood.

Self-awareness... was it?

"Oh, right, don't be stupid and just go around grabbing people to ask what they think of you. That's not called profiling; that's called fishing for compliments." Asakusa Toru tapped his own head and added.

Horikita Suzune: "..."

"No way, that look on your face—you aren't actually planning on doing that, are you?" Asakusa Toru was shocked.

"No, is it not allowed?" Horikita Suzune's expression was a bit unnatural. "And what even is 'begging for a seal'..."

"It is not allowed." Asakusa Toru felt he was starting to understand Horikita Suzune a little better. After an unhesitating denial, he raised an eyebrow. "Go find yourself some friends."

"Don't you dare give me that 'I don't need friends, friends are meaningless' speech."

"That kind of thinking is the most foolish of all."

Raising his hand to poke Horikita Suzune on the forehead again, Asakusa Toru said, "Where else can you find such useful tools who will do things for you for free just because you say 'we're friends,' other than actual friends?"

"At the end of the day, if you have to study over a dozen hours a day just to stay at the top of your peers academically, then this is probably as far as you'll ever get in life."

"Compared to burying your head in the sand and grinding for a dozen hours, wouldn't it be more cost-effective for you to set aside some time to satisfy the bare minimum of social interaction?"

Grinding for an extra hour or two wouldn't help Horikita Suzune step into the ranks of geniuses, and cutting back an hour or two wouldn't cause her academic performance to fall behind anyone else's.

There was really no need for her to pack her schedule so tightly.

Unless she was addicted to studying, or addicted to living in a prison of her own making.

Asakusa Toru couldn't see the former, so no matter how he looked at it, it had to be the latter.

He felt that this Horikita Suzune character had a bit of a masochistic streak.

"I've said too much." Shaking his head, Asakusa Toru cleared his thoughts, then said casually, "There's no need to force yourself to look for friends only among your classmates. Low-quality friends are worse than having none at all, but if you insist on finding friends in your class and can't think of a breakthrough point..."

"Start with me."

Gently pressing a hand to his chest, Asakusa Toru said softly:

"I, Asakusa Toru, offer short-term lending services. Funds are limited, first come, first served."

"Class D hasn't been able to get a single point lately, so you must be quite troubled, right?"

"Anyway, that's that. Think it over yourself, I'm heading out." Waving his hand nonchalantly, Asakusa Toru walked away slowly.

Horikita Suzune sat on the bench, her ears filled with the words Asakusa Toru had just spoken.

"...Friends."

Such a distant word for her.

In the past, she never would have entertained the thought of wasting even a second on socializing.

But... Asakusa Toru didn't seem to be wrong. She had her limits, and the current results proved it.

"..."

Lowering her head, Horikita Suzune looked at the two wooden sticks in her hand.

One was engraved with "Thanks for your patronage," and the other was engraved with "Try again."

After hesitating for a moment, she once again put the stick, which no longer had any ice cream on it, into her mouth.

"...It's still sweet," she said.

In the afternoon.

Palette.

"Ah, over here, over here—" Seeing Asakusa Toru's figure, the girl with golden-powder hair raised her hand high and waved at him.

Enthusiastic, lively, cheerful.

The very picture of a leader.

Ichinose Honami.

Sitting next to her was Shiranami Chihiro, and to her right was an empty chair specifically left for him, while further ahead sat Kanzaki Ryuji and Shibata Hayate.

In short, this was a small gathering of Class B.

"I told you, there was no need to wait for me specifically..." Asakusa Toru pulled out the chair and sat down.

"Ah, because you didn't say what you wanted, I ordered a Matcha Parfait for you, okay?"

Whipped cream, matcha, a giant glass.

"...Why a Matcha Parfait?"

Chapter 62: What a Coincidence

"Because Asakusa-kun mentioned it before, so I took the liberty of ordering it. Do you not like it?" Ichinose Honami asked softly.

Asakusa Toru reached out to touch the glass of the Matcha Parfait and shook his head:

"No, that's not it."

He generally wasn't picky.

It was just that it was a bit chilly; if he ate this in the afternoon, would he even be able to eat dinner tonight?

Thinking this, he looked up.

And then, Asakusa Toru saw Shiranami Chihiro eating a Strawberry Parfait with a look of pure bliss on her face.

Well, since they think it's fine, then it doesn't matter.

It's just that...

"Why are you two having parfaits too?" He looked toward Kanzaki Ryuji and Shibata Hayate.

Shibata shoveled a spoonful of parfait into his mouth and said with a grin, "It's not bad to have something sweet once in a while, right?"

"Besides, isn't it the first of the month today?"

Unlike Class D, which received a zero-point evaluation, they had received the points they were due.

"...It's just too sweet," Kanzaki Ryuji said softly.

Raising the spoon in her hand high, Shiranami Chihiro spoke up:

"It's only good because it's sweet!"

"Alright, let's put the sweets aside for now," Ichinose Honami pressed her hands together. "Let's get back to the main topic."

"What are we going to do about the midterm exams?"

Just like with Class D, Hoshinomiya Chie, as the homeroom teacher for Class B, had come to the classroom at the same time and announced the same results.

Class D had zero points, while Class B... no, they should be called Class A now; their class points stood at 890.

The original Class A had dropped to the rank of Class B, with 840 class points.

Class C maintained its rank, achieving a score of 750 points under the high-pressure rule of Ryuen.

To put it bluntly, the gaps between the three classes were not that large.

Logically speaking, even if they had known the information about the special exam in advance, it would have been very difficult for them to surpass the original Class A.

But unfortunately, the Little Princess Sakayanagi was a god of civil war, and Ryuen had already obtained the information from Asakusa Toru ahead of time.