In the end, the one who wrote this diary wasn't her brother.
No matter how much information the other person had pointed out, no matter how much they knew, they still weren't her brother.
Horikita Suzune closed the diary and let out a heavy sigh.
It didn't matter where she left the diary, but she still carefully put it away in a drawer.
Then she lay down on her bed.
Usually, she fell asleep quickly, but tonight, for once, she couldn't.
As soon as she closed her eyes, her mind started wandering uncontrollably, and all sorts of random thoughts kept surfacing.
The words in the diary appeared in her mind more than anything else.
"Trial" and "Pseudo-human."
Come to think of it... what was a "Pseudo-human"?
The question surfaced, and Horikita Suzune suddenly realized she was starting to lose sleep over it.
The more she told herself not to think too hard about it, the clearer the question became in her mind.
At last, she couldn't take it anymore. She climbed out of bed, turned on the light, and grabbed her terminal.
"What is a Pseudo-human?"
Horikita Suzune decided to look it up with a search engine.
And then, she got her answer.
"A mysterious creature that imitates humans...?"
Were there people like that in Class 1-D?
15. White Room Membership Card
[Today's entry is complete. This entry received an "S" rating. Drawing reward...]
[Draw successful. Congratulations, you received the item "White Room Membership Card (1:365)."]
"Yes!" The cold voice echoed in his ears, and Asakusa Toru clenched his fist excitedly.
An S rating!
His over-the-top act of calling out "Little Sister-chan, Little Sister-chan" hadn't been for nothing. Apart from not calling her by name, he'd practically stripped Horikita Suzune down to her underwear.
Sure, the Plot Index had probably boosted his rating, but most of it was thanks to his own efforts!
But... a "White Room Membership Card"? Are you kidding me?
Tell me, was this reward really chosen at random?
Whether it was truly random or not didn't matter. As far as Asakusa Toru was concerned, getting a useful reward was what counted.
Judging from the name alone, he knew it would probably come in handy.
Speaking of the White Room, he couldn't help bringing up the facility known as the White Room.
It was a room constructed entirely in white, as the name suggested, and was said to be capable of cultivating "perfect geniuses."
The way it created "artificial geniuses" was actually rather questionable.
They gathered newborn babies from all sorts of places, then "improved" their learning efficiency from the very beginning by suppressing their emotions.
After that came the "elimination rounds," where knowledge was taught to them step by step, level by level, with no limit to how far they could go.
Only those who survived the ever-increasing standards and constant elimination of students during their "training" could become the "geniuses" the White Room produced.
As for those who fell behind, stagnated, or couldn't keep up with the other students' pace of learning...
They were failures.
Asakusa Toru wasn't about to comment on whether suppressing emotions really improved children's learning efficiency. That was how it worked in the setting, so he'd just accept it.
But the White Room's results were only so-so.
Aside from mass-producing people skilled in combat, he couldn't see what qualified that dump to create artificial geniuses.
It felt... inferior to Kamukura Izuru.
Still, there was one thing about the White Room that was worth mentioning.
Its combat prowess.
Everyone who came out of the White Room, male or female, was far stronger than ordinary people. That was why the White Room had earned the nickname "White Room."
Back to the reward for this diary entry.
As always, what appeared in his hand was an ordinary-looking "membership card."
But once he focused his thoughts on it, he could clearly see its effects.
[Name: White Room Membership Card (1:365)]
[Type: Limited-Time Item]
[Effect: Enjoy one full year of customized White Room training courses in a total of one day. You may freely schedule your lessons. When the course ends, you may choose to convert this membership card into a White Room graduation certificate.]
[Note: "Do you even understand what a classroom built on the principle of might makes right is?"]
As he focused his consciousness on the card, a prompt asking whether he wanted to begin the course quietly appeared.
"Yes," Asakusa Toru said softly.
He had been in his dorm at Advanced Nurturing High School just a moment ago, but the instant he spoke, everything around him quietly transformed into a pure-white room.
The bright white room stretched endlessly outward, vast and empty. An unimaginable sense of unreality engulfed Asakusa Toru in an instant.
But before he could even take it in, a figure abruptly appeared in front of him.
A twin-tailed girl with purplish-red hair appeared before him. Her golden eyes, devoid of emotion, slowly opened, and her blank face seemed to pay tribute to her emotionless, poker-faced predecessor.
Before Asakusa Toru could react, the moment the girl landed and steadied herself, she whipped up a long leg clad in black thigh-high socks and spun around, sweeping him off his feet.
"Guh—" Her leg looked delicate and soft, but when it hit Asakusa Toru, it was unexpectedly powerful.
The pain of being attacked, and even the feeling of being pinned to the ground beneath her long, shoeless leg in black stockings, were far too vivid to be an illusion.
Under the girl's cold, condescending gaze, Asakusa Toru's mind, frozen by the sudden attack, finally began to clear.
But before he could make sense of the situation, his vision blurred for an instant. He was back on his feet, and the twin-tailed girl in black thigh-high socks had appeared before him once again.
Without changing her expression, she raised her long leg again.
"Hey, once was bad enough, but you're doing it again?!" Asakusa Toru leaned sharply backward and dodged the same attack, then started scrambling away in a panic. "What happened to the customized training course? Where's my trainer?"
He'd come to the White Room to work out, not to get beaten up!
No matter how great a beautiful girl's black stockings looked, it still hurt when she kicked him!
The girl in front of him clearly had no intention of responding. She just kept launching attack after attack.
"Wait, slow down, don't, stop, help—" Even his frantic dodging had its limits. Before long, Asakusa Toru was pinned to the ground again.
Then, just as he expected, everything before his eyes reset once more.
"..." He sighed. He let the girl knock him down, and when everything reset again, he dodged instinctively in the direction he remembered her attacking from. At the same time, he began to organize his thoughts.
He knew the twin-tailed girl in front of him.
"Amasawa Ichika."
One of the White Room's creations. Though she wasn't from the same generation as the Pseudo-human who had been hailed as its greatest masterpiece, the gap between them wasn't all that big.
Under normal circumstances, she would enroll the following year as a first-year student.
But now, he'd seen her here ahead of time.
"Whoosh—" Another fierce attack came at him. In the quiet room, with no unnecessary sounds, the only noise was the girl's relentless advance and assault.
So it wasn't really her...?
Those emotionless eyes and that impassive face. She hadn't hesitated at all when he called out to her, and every time the scene reset, she raised her leg in exactly the same way.
I see. So real combat was the best training course...?
A glimmer of understanding flashed in his eyes, and once again, the girl pinned him beneath her soft foot.
"—Ugh."
He couldn't land a single hit.
16. Multiply by 365
Once he realized he had no chance of beating Amasawa Ichika anytime soon, Asakusa Toru gave up on wasting more time in the White Room.
As long as he chose to pause the current course in his mind, he could interrupt the fight and leave the White Room, returning to his real dorm room.
The membership card was still in his hand. He had spent quite a while getting beaten up by Amasawa Ichika in the White Room, but it seemed like hardly any time had passed in reality.
He casually pulled out his Personal Terminal, started a stopwatch, and entered the White Room once again.
Six minutes later, when he returned to reality, only one second had passed on his terminal.
Just as the name of the membership card indicated, time in the White Room passed at a ratio of 1:365.
"...That's kind of interesting." Asakusa Toru raised an eyebrow. "But is it just combat training?"
Whenever he entered the White Room, Amasawa Ichika—or rather, a Simulation Android with her appearance and strength—would immediately attack him. When she knocked him down, everything reset.
From the perspective of gaining combat experience, it would probably be very effective.
But whether it could actually help him "work out," and whether training in an unreal environment could affect his real body, wasn't clearly stated in the membership card's effects.
Still, considering that this was a "gym," not something like a "combat training room," Asakusa Toru figured he could assume that his training results in the gym would carry over to reality.
The only problem was that it was an annual membership.
"Complete a year of training in a total of one day. When the course ends, you may choose to convert the membership card into a graduation certificate"—that was how the card's effects were described.
So here was the question.
If he was really so hopeless that he couldn't beat Amasawa Ichika even after using up all his time, would he still get a graduation certificate?
The moment the thought occurred to him, text appeared before his eyes again.
[If you fail to complete all courses, you may choose to convert the membership card into a certificate of completion.]
Everything else remained unchanged. This short note was the only addition to the detailed description of the effect.
"Oh, so it comes with a supplementary note." The black-and-white text gradually faded, and Asakusa Toru couldn't help grinning. "That's wild."
"But no matter how you look at it, a graduation certificate is better than a certificate of completion, right?"
Asakusa Toru knew he wasn't a genius, but he didn't think he was an idiot, either.
A time ratio of 365 to one was certainly useful, and a combat training space that reset endlessly was powerful, too.
But he thought an S-rank reward should be more than that.
He'd have to explore it further.
Though he had been mercilessly battered by a beautiful girl in the gym, his real body hadn't shown any obvious signs of fatigue. For now, he couldn't tell whether that was because so little time had passed, or if that was simply how the membership card worked.
In any case, he decided to spend three minutes in the gym before bed.
Oh, no. It would be more accurate to say he'd spend one thousand and ninety-five minutes in the gym.
Multiply by 365.
The next day.
First-Year Class B.
After replenishing the energy he hadn't managed to replenish the night before in the cafeteria, and wolfing down his food, Asakusa Toru finally made it to his classroom.
Last night, he'd spent three minutes having a long, in-depth conversation with "Amasawa Ichika." He'd successfully confirmed that the White Room wasn't just a combat training space, but a gym where the results of his training would be reflected in his body in reality.
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