"Consider it after-sales service for that Voice Recorder from before."
"Come on, look me in the eye." Asakusa Toru cupped Horikita Suzune's cheeks with both hands and turned her face toward him. "Look in my eyes!"
"Tell me. Tell me what you're thinking right now, what you've done, how you should repent, and where you should go from here."
"Answer me!"
"—" His raised voice made Horikita Suzune snap the ice pop in her mouth in two. She reflexively tried to duck away, but Asakusa Toru held her firmly in place, leaving her no choice but to pull the ice pop from her mouth and say pitifully, "I-Ice pop..."
"Bite it up and swallow. It'll only take a couple of bites." His tone was utterly calm, his expression just as placid.
Horikita Suzune could hardly believe he'd just been shouting so loudly.
She obediently crunched down the ice pop and swallowed it. Another wooden stick was now in her hand.
"I-I want to be a little sister who won't disappoint my brother..."
She wanted to live up to the title of Horikita Manabu's little sister, to be someone her brother could proudly introduce to others, head held high: "This is my sister."
"I-I've been studying really, really hard..."
She hadn't wasted time on anything unnecessary or taken part in any pointless socializing. She'd thrown herself into her books and studied as hard as she could.
"I should have noticed the trap in what Chabashira-sensei said. I should have stopped Yamauchi from leading everyone into indulging themselves. I should have..."
For some reason, with someone's large hands cupping her cheeks, the fog clouding her mind gradually began to clear.
But... there was still no path ahead.
Even after the fog cleared, she had no idea which direction she was supposed to go.
So Horikita Suzune's words caught in her throat.
"—You should find a mirror, or a patch of flat ground, take a piss, and then look at yourself." Asakusa Toru sighed, weary and helpless, then spoke softly. "You should recognize your abilities. You should understand your nature. You should know where you stand, then assess and determine your own limits."
"Now tell me what you're capable of. Tell me your strengths. Tell me what you think you're better at than other people."
Let me see your self-awareness.
"I... am good at studying?" Horikita Suzune hesitated, then gave the one answer she believed in.
"..." Asakusa Toru shook his head and asked another question. "How long do you study each day? And how are your grades now?"
"Ten... twelve or thirteen hours, I guess... As for my grades, I don't think I'd lose to anyone."
Even though she was stuck in a quagmire like Class D, whenever grades came up, Horikita Suzune would straighten her back a little.
She was proud of what she'd achieved.
"Compared to your classmates?" Asakusa Toru raised an eyebrow.
Horikita Suzune didn't understand what he meant, but nodded anyway.
Who else would she compare herself to if not her classmates?
"...That's pretty funny." Asakusa Toru sighed, then declared without hesitation, "You don't know how to study at all."
"No, if we're talking about whether you know how to study, then at least compared to Yamauchi Haruki and those guys, I'm sure you do."
"But that doesn't mean you're good at studying."
People who were truly good at studying didn't need to put in endless hours just to catch up with their peers' Academic Ability. If you worked just as hard and were still struggling to keep up with your peers, you couldn't call yourself good at studying.
"It means you're good at grinding yourself down, good at putting yourself in chains and locking yourself in a cell."
"To sum it up, you were born to be a cog in an assembly line." Seeing that Horikita Suzune didn't seem inclined to look away, Asakusa Toru finally let go of her and continued, "Your real strength is being able to study for more than ten hours a day."
"But you could also call it a weakness."
"If you study too much, too rigidly, your mind stops working. And when your mind stops working, the knowledge you've learned is completely useless. You just end up looking like an idiot."
Asakusa Toru raised his hand, curled his fingers slightly in front of Horikita Suzune's forehead, then flicked her.
"—" Horikita Suzune reflexively closed her eyes, but the flick that landed on her forehead was very gentle.
He hadn't put any force into it.
"What you need to do now is download... Ahem, broaden your horizons." Asakusa Toru shrugged. "When you think about it, does graduating from Class A really matter that much to you?"
"Did you come to this school for the privileges that came with graduating from Class A, or were you just trying to follow in your brother's footsteps, being an absurdly devoted shadow who follows him wherever he goes?"
After he spoke, Asakusa Toru slowly stood and stretched after sitting for so long.
"Your self-awareness is terrible. If you can't figure anything out by looking in the mirror, go ask other people. Ask a few of them and build a profile of 'Horikita Suzune' as they see her."
"Then..." He thought for a moment and pulled out his Personal Terminal. "Let's exchange contact info first. I just had an idea."
With the two wooden sticks clutched in her hand, Horikita Suzune obediently took out her terminal and added Asakusa Toru to her friends list.
She didn't quite understand what he was saying yet, but somehow felt as if she did.
Self-awareness...?
"Oh, right. Don't stupidly grab people one by one and ask them what kind of person they think you are. That's not profiling; that's asking to be sealed." Asakusa Toru tapped his head and added, "Just thought I'd mention it."
Horikita Suzune: "..."
"Wait, don't tell me that look means you were really going to do that?" Asakusa Toru was astonished.
"I-Is that not allowed?" Horikita Suzune looked a little uneasy. "And what does 'asking to be sealed' mean...?"
"It's not allowed." Asakusa Toru felt he was starting to understand Horikita Suzune a little. After rejecting the idea without hesitation, he raised an eyebrow. "Go make some friends."
"Don't tell me you don't need friends or that friends are meaningless."
"That's actually the stupidest thing of all."
He poked Horikita Suzune in the forehead again. "You can get someone to do things for you for free just because you say, 'We're friends, right?' Where else are you going to find such useful tools besides among your friends?"
"After all, if you have to study more than ten hours a day just to rank near the top of your age group in Academic Ability, then this is probably as far as you'll ever get."
"Instead of hunching over and grinding away by yourself for more than ten hours, wouldn't it be a better use of your time to set aside some of it for the bare minimum of socializing?"
Studying for another hour or two wouldn't be enough to make Horikita Suzune a genius, and studying an hour or two less wouldn't make her fall behind everyone else.
So she really didn't need to pack her schedule so tightly.
Unless she was addicted to studying or to being in prison.
Asakusa Toru couldn't see the former being true, so the only possibility he could think of was the latter.
He figured Horikita Suzune was a bit of a masochist.
"I've said too much." Asakusa Toru shook his head and sorted through the ideas that had just occurred to him, then casually said, "You don't have to limit yourself to looking for friends among your classmates. If they're low-quality friends, you're better off without them. But if you insist on finding friends in your class and can't think of a way to approach them..."
"Then start with me."
He placed a hand lightly against his chest and spoke softly:
"I, Asakusa Toru, offer short-term loans. Limited funds, first come, first served."
"Class D hasn't earned a single point lately, so you must be having a hard time, right?"
"Anyway, that's it. Think it over yourself. I'm heading out." Asakusa Toru waved casually and ambled away.
Horikita Suzune sat on the bench, the things Asakusa Toru had said still echoing in her ears.
"...Friends."
The word felt so distant to her.
Before, she would never have given even the slightest thought to spending time socializing.
But... Asakusa Toru did seem to have a point. She had her limits, and the result in front of her proved it.
"..."
She lowered her head and looked at the two wooden sticks in her hand.
One was marked "Sorry, try again." The other was marked "You won another one."
After hesitating for a moment, she put the stick, with all the ice already gone, back in her mouth.
"...It's still sweet," she said.
Afternoon.
The Palette.
"Ah, over here—" When she spotted Asakusa Toru, the blonde girl raised her hand high and called out to him.
Warm, lively, cheerful.
A true lady.
Ichinose Honami.
Shiranami Chihiro was sitting beside her. The seat on her right had been left open on purpose, while farther ahead sat Kanzaki Ryuji and Shibata Hayate.
In short, it was a small gathering of Class B students.
"So I told you, there was no need to wait for me..." Asakusa Toru pulled out a chair and sat down.
"Ah, since you didn't tell me what you wanted, I ordered you a matcha parfait, okay?"
Whipped cream, matcha, a huge glass.
"...Why a matcha parfait?"
"Because you mentioned it before, so I ordered one without asking. Don't you like it?" Ichinose Honami asked softly.
Asakusa Toru put his hand on the glass of matcha parfait and shook his head.
"No, I don't mind."
He usually wasn't picky about food.
It was just that this was a little cold. Would he even be able to eat dinner after having this in the afternoon?
As he wondered about that, he looked up.
Then Asakusa Toru saw Shiranami Chihiro eating a strawberry parfait with a blissful expression.
...Well, if they thought it was good, then it was fine.
Still...
"Why did you two get parfaits too?" He looked at Kanzaki Ryuji and Shibata Hayate.
Shibata spooned some parfait into his mouth and grinned. "It's nice to have something sweet once in a while, right?"
"Besides, isn't it the first of the month today?"
Unlike Class D, which had received a score of zero, they'd earned the points they were due.
"...It's just too sweet," Kanzaki Ryuji said softly.
Shiranami Chihiro raised her spoon high and chimed in:
"That's what makes it taste good!"
"All right, let's put the sweets aside for now." Ichinose Honami brought her hands together. "Let's get back to the main topic."
"What are we going to do about the midterms?"
Just like Class D, their homeroom teacher, Hoshinomiya Chie, had come to class at the same time and announced the same results.
Class D had zero points, while Class A—formerly Class B—now had 890 Class Points.
The former Class A had dropped to second place and become Class B, with 840 Class Points.
Class C had held its position and scored 750 points under Ryuen's iron-fisted rule.
To put it plainly, the gap between the three classes wasn't very large.
In theory, even if they'd known about the Special Exam in advance, it would still have been difficult for them to overtake the former Class A.
But Sakayanagi, the Little Princess, was a Civil War Phantom God, and Ryuen had gotten the information from Asakusa Toru ahead of time.
Before you continue