Mio Ibuki Is Perplexed

Then he brazenly sat on Ryuen's desk and lightly tapped the chair in front of it, where Shiina Hiyori was sitting.

"Morning." Asakusa Toru raised a hand.

It was early, the sun was shining, and greeting someone at that moment was perfectly reasonable.

...Not.

Shiina Hiyori turned around in confusion, trying to recall the name of the classmate who should have been sitting there.

"...Ryuen-kun?"

"Nope, Shiina Hiyori." Asakusa Toru smiled. "I'm not Ryuen."

"Let me properly introduce myself. First-Year Class B, Asakusa Toru."

He held out a hand to Hiyori.

"..." Shiina Hiyori regarded Asakusa Toru's smiling face calmly. After hesitating for a moment, she still chose to take his hand. "First-Year Class C, Shiina Hiyori."

"Um, Asakusa-kun, this is Class C."

She wasn't particularly surprised that he knew her name. Anyone could read it off the nameplate on her desk, just as she had initially mistaken him for Ryuen Kakeru. He had merely glanced at the name on the desk, too.

But First-Year Class B?

"Ah, I know," Asakusa Toru said. "That's why I came."

Their hands quickly parted, and quite naturally, the instant he finished speaking, Asakusa Toru pulled a voice recorder from his sleeve.

As though it were the most natural thing in the world, he slipped the recorder into Shiina Hiyori's palm.

"Shiina, mind if I ask you a quick question? What do you think of this school?" The screen on the recorder lit up, clearly showing that it was recording. It seemed to be capturing their words without a hitch.

...An interview?

Shiina Hiyori looked down at the voice recorder in her hand, then looked back up at Asakusa Toru.

"...A hundred percent employment rate?" She tilted her head and offered the answer that probably anyone would have given.

"Is that all?"

"Free tuition?" Shiina Hiyori blinked at Asakusa Toru's follow-up question.

"...I see." He nodded and hopped down from Ryuen Kakeru's desk. "Thanks for answering. Keep the voice recorder as a gift. It'll come in handy."

The interview had been nothing more than a spur-of-the-moment test. If Shiina Hiyori was the diary's reader, perhaps she would have become suspicious of the school's seemingly wonderful claims after seeing him refer to it as a vocational school in the diary.

But as soon as Asakusa Toru heard Hiyori's answer, he realized he'd been overthinking it.

That wasn't to say he'd ruled out the possibility that Hiyori was the reader.

It was just that, if asking her that right after school started got him anything useful, then pigs could fly!

Well, interviewing her and finding the reader hadn't really been his objective anyway.

Shiina Hiyori hesitated, but still thanked him.

"...Thank you?"

What a strange person.

But it would come in handy...?

After gazing at the voice recorder in her hand for a moment, Shiina Hiyori gently pressed the stop button and casually put it away.

Then she opened the diary in her hands again, back at her seat.

Vocational school, cheat, kidnapping, spoilers, Hide and Seek Game.

The words, written in casual notes, unfolded across the diary's pages. As she slowly flipped through them, she eventually reached a blank page.

That was right: Shiina Hiyori was the holder of a Diary Copy.

What others thought was daydreaming was actually just her flipping through the pages of the diary.

Any action that might make others think she was looking at a diary quietly turned into something else in their eyes.

That included Asakusa Toru, who hadn't yet won the Hide and Seek Game and confirmed the identity of the copy's holder.

"...It hasn't updated yet." Looking at the blank page, Shiina Hiyori sighed softly to herself.

Novels were interesting. Mystery novels were very interesting.

But even more interesting than those was the "story" written by someone who claimed to know their past, present, and future...

Ibuki Mio Finds It Bizarre

Asakusa Toru knew nothing about Hiyori's reaction. After climbing down from Ryuen Kakeru's desk, he turned and walked over to Ibuki Mio, who had actually been sneaking glances at him from behind.

"...What do you want?" Biting her lip, Ibuki Mio raised her head, wearing a rather unpleasant expression.

To Asakusa Toru, Ibuki Mio looked just like a small animal deliberately trying to show that she wasn't someone to be messed with, puffing herself up and baring her claws.

Well, "small animal" might not be quite accurate. Ibuki Mio probably had some fighting skills, after all, so calling her a small animal seemed a little excessive.

But the general idea was close enough.

In Asakusa Toru's eyes, Ibuki's current behavior was a lot like that of a stray cat who longed for a new life in high school but didn't dare take the first step into someone else's social circle, only to regret ending up alone—yet when someone finally reached out to her, she glared them away and repeated the same behavior.

So, when dealing with Ibuki Mio, he couldn't be as easygoing as he had been with Shiina Hiyori.

Instead—

"Here, hush money." He simply grabbed Ibuki's hand and shoved another voice recorder—where he'd pulled it from, who knew—into her palm.

Feeling the cold metal in her hand, Ibuki Mio raised an eyebrow and looked utterly bewildered.

"Huh?"

Hush money? Whose mouth was he paying to keep shut? Mine?

Why would he want to keep my mouth shut?

And what had this guy just shoved into my hand?

Ibuki Mio lowered her head and saw the object he'd forced into her hand.

...A voice recorder???

...Why was he giving me this?

What a weirdo.

She raised her head again and looked at the mild smile on the not-unhandsome face in front of her. She immediately made up her mind.

And probably a weirdo with something wrong in his head.

"Though I doubt you'll say anything anyway, there's no harm in keeping it." Asakusa Toru smiled and casually patted Ibuki on the shoulder. "It's free. No reason to turn down a gift, right?"

After saying that, he didn't bother to see how Ibuki reacted. He walked straight out of the Class C classroom.

Asakusa Toru might have left, but Ibuki Mio had nowhere to go.

After all, this was her classroom, and she had no reason to go anywhere.

Holding the voice recorder that had been forced into her hand, Ibuki Mio's mind was a mess.

On the first day of school, someone from another class had suddenly shown up, shoved a voice recorder into her hand, and called it hush money.

She didn't even know what he wanted her to keep quiet about. Ah, if that was the case, did it still count as hush money? She really didn't know anything.

...What kind of nonsense am I thinking?

No, first I need to sort this out from beginning to end.

I, Ibuki Mio, am a First-Year Class C student. I came to school, found my seat, and waited for everyone to arrive so we could have homeroom, followed by the Entrance Ceremony.

Before that, a woman called Shiina Hiyori had arrived in the classroom before me, and she had no intention of talking to me.

...If she didn't want to talk, she didn't want to talk. Ibuki wasn't planning to chase after people and try to become their friend, either.

Then, after that, the bizarre man showed up.

First, he sat on the desk of that Ryuen-whatever guy, then struck up a conversation with Shiina as if they were old friends, and introduced himself.

Honestly, up until then, Ibuki had thought he'd come over to greet her because he knew Shiina.

She hadn't expected that he didn't know Shiina and wasn't even a Class C student.

So what had he come here for?

And besides, if they were all first-year students, shouldn't everyone have already gone through security?

Other than the terminals they'd received and the uniforms handed out in advance, weren't they not allowed to bring anything in?

So where the hell had this voice recorder come from?

Ibuki Mio couldn't make heads or tails of it.

But Asakusa Toru had been right about one thing.

It was free. No reason to turn it down.

Who cared where it came from? He'd given it to her, so she'd keep it.

At Advanced Nurturing, voice recorders were a very special item.

If you used one to capture someone's important words, you could use the recording to threaten them.

Whether it was someone revealing their plans or showing their true colors, a tiny voice recorder could turn most problems into non-problems.

So Asakusa Toru had a dream.

He wanted everyone at Advanced Nurturing to have a voice recorder of their own!

Just kidding.

What he was handing out were Voice Recorder Copies, after all.

As mentioned earlier, when he took out a second voice recorder, the first one turned into an "ordinary-looking" voice recorder.

But something that merely looked ordinary wasn't ordinary at all.

Once they were close enough, he could choose to access all the recordings stored in the Voice Recorder Copies around him.

Handing out voice recorders so casually wouldn't necessarily let him copy the recordings he wanted.

But what if it did?

Of course, he hadn't been handing the copies out at random, without any thought about who would get them.

He'd chosen people with names and identities who might be holders of Diary Copies.

Ibuki Mio and Shiina Hiyori.

Compared to random passersby, they were much more likely to have a Diary Copy.

His handing out voice recorders might expose him just a little, but as long as he didn't mention it in the diary...who would suspect?

"There are surprisingly a lot of weirdos at this school."

One more weirdo handing out voice recorders wouldn't make much difference either way.

"Right?"

There was still some time before school officially started. Considering that Ryuen Kakeru had a serious habit of being late, he had plenty of time.

He could wander around the upper-year classrooms and pretend to ask about things he already knew, covering up how he'd gotten the information in advance.

Even if he used the information directly, there probably wouldn't be a problem. After all, this was a school, and he was in an incredibly peaceful modern society.

But if he could avoid leaving himself open to suspicion, he was better off doing so.

"Heh heh heh heh~"

Time ticked by. After casually wandering around the other year groups, chatting aimlessly with a few upperclassmen, and pretending to gather information under the cameras, Asakusa Toru soon returned to the area near the First-Year Class C classroom.