Classroom of the Elite: After Her Information Updates, They Always Want to Win Me Over! Chapter 21

A few well-placed compliments were enough to make Kushida Kikyou visibly let down her guard—she even slipped into a state of self-satisfaction without realizing it.

He had no idea what she'd originally intended to get from him, but clearly, he'd thrown her off her rhythm.

Complimenting people takes skill, too...

The key was figuring out what mattered most to the other person.

For someone like Kushida Kikyou, the word "hardworking" seemed to have a kind of magic to it.

Especially when Shimizu Akira had accurately pointed out that she'd secretly practiced over the weekend. The complicated thrill of being seen through and then acknowledged was far more satisfying than any flattery.

As for the claim that "you were the only person in the class who practiced swimming beforehand," it was a complete lie.

After all, he wasn't an expert on human skin tones, nor did he have any special powers. How could he tell at a glance whether his classmates' skin had changed color? The truth was simple—he'd already known that Kushida Kikyou had gone to the pool over the weekend. He'd gotten that information the previous Saturday.

Still, a little white lie like that did no harm.

It was like when a restaurant server casually called you "handsome." You knew it was just politeness, but it still put you in a good mood.

In the end, Horikita Suzune and Onodera tied for first with an excellent time of 26 seconds.

Kushida Kikyou came in third with a time of 31 seconds.

As swimming class drew to a close, Shimizu Akira noticed Kushida repeatedly casting meaningful glances at Horikita Suzune.

Her eyes, which were always curved into crescents, were now hard to read. Though her lips were turned up, there was something oddly off about her expression.

Does she care that much about her ranking?

Shimizu Akira wondered to himself.

Looks like that door's going to take another beating tonight.

Advanced Nurturing High School was much like the vast majority of ordinary high schools in Japan.

Its curriculum followed tradition, including basic subjects like Japanese, mathematics, English, social studies, and science. Each subject was graded on a 100-point scale.

After a week of settling in, Shimizu Akira had completely caught up with the class's progress in mathematics and English. He could even say he was breezing through them.

He could easily keep up with the lessons without having to pay close attention.

On the one hand, he had a solid foundation from his education in China in his previous life. On the other, Japanese high school curricula really were significantly behind China's.

To compare their progress, China's mathematics curriculum was like a speeding Shinkansen, while the pace at Japanese high schools was more like a leisurely sightseeing train. As far as entrance exam difficulty went, China's was higher.

After all, Japan's education system had spent many years under its "relaxed education" policy.

Shimizu Akira didn't know much about the current state of education in China. At least in the time he remembered, students led a life that could only be called a "devil's schedule": bleary-eyed, they rushed to morning study at six, then couldn't leave the evening study hall until nine at night, dragging their exhausted bodies home.

By comparison, the schedule at a Japanese high school was practically "paradise mode": classes began at a leisurely eight thirty in the morning, and students could leave school with their bags before four in the afternoon.

Shimizu Akira wasn't criticizing the difference. After all, in Japan, the real competition often began after school.

The cram schools with their lights blazing were packed with students working themselves to the bone to get into prestigious universities. This "easy on the surface, high-pressure underneath" education system might have been more suffocating than China's "open competition."

However, at a fully residential school like Advanced Nurturing High School, students didn't even have the opportunity to find a cram school. After all, this place was cut off from the outside world, and even the most basic avenues for extracurricular tutoring were closed to them.

But Shimizu Akira knew a truth that applied everywhere: whether in China or Japan, as long as you had a solid grasp of Japanese, mathematics, and English, you could maintain above-average grades in class.

These three subjects were like education's "golden triangle," testing a student's most basic and important abilities. Mathematics honed logical thinking, English tested memory and linguistic aptitude, and Japanese cultivated both emotional understanding and writing ability.

For Shimizu Akira, though, Japanese class alone had become a hurdle he couldn't seem to overcome.

Even after a week, obscure classical grammar terms like "perfective form" and "irrealis form" still tangled up his thoughts like a knot.

He had to admit that he was probably letting down all the transmigrators out there.

After all, in his previous life, he hadn't even touched Japanese grammar. Now, trying to cram all this knowledge was like asking a modern person to decipher oracle bone script. No matter how hard he tried, he was bound to be confused.

037 Dressed Like That! My Kid's Too Busy Staring at the Teacher to Pay Attention in Class!

Failing even one subject in the midterm or final exams meant expulsion.

That was one of the crucial hidden rules at Advanced Nurturing High School.

Before leaving, that upperclassman from Class D had specifically warned him:

"Even if you lose to the other classes, or get by on the free meal plan every month, just don't get expelled for having terrible grades. That'd be too embarrassing."

Shimizu Akira certainly didn't want to leave in such an embarrassing way.

But this school was clearly no ordinary place. What high school would expel students for failing even one subject?

The only good news was that the midterms were still more than a month away.

If he started cramming Japanese from scratch, he should still have time to scrape together a passing grade.

But three mountains stood in his way: modern Japanese, classical Japanese, and classical Chinese.

He could just about manage modern Japanese, but classical Japanese was like something out of a textbook written in the heavens. Even though the page was full of familiar Chinese characters, the combinations were obscure and difficult to understand.

It feels a lot like studying classical Chinese in my previous life... but since this is Japanese, it's several times harder!

What was worse, the same Chinese character could have more than a dozen readings in classical Japanese, and its meaning could change completely when attached to grammatical particles.

It was like facing an encrypted text, with the key buried deep in the past.

"My head's killing me..."

After Japanese class that afternoon, Shimizu Akira rubbed his temples as usual, pressing his fingertips against the nerves throbbing beneath his skin.

Japanese class wasn't like math or English. At least on the surface, it didn't seem so "unapproachable." Even an elementary school student could probably understand some of it. But once he tried to dig into the uses of each character and the sound-change rules in the classical language, his brain immediately felt as if it had been filled with lead, sinking heavily into a fog.

They're all Chinese characters... so why do they turn into a code when they're put together?

As he sat lost in thought, a faint voice suddenly drifted to his ear—

"Um... Shimizu, thank you for speaking up for me yesterday..."

He turned and saw his deskmate on his right, Sakura Airi, looking down as her fingers unconsciously twisted the hem of her skirt.

Her voice was as light as a feather. If his hearing hadn't been so sharp, he might have thought it was just the wind outside the window.

"It's nothing! I was just in a bad mood that day, and he's a pain who skips class all the time."

Shimizu Akira waved it off, his tone casual.

That wasn't entirely an excuse. He really had been in a bad mood that day, and he really did dislike Yamauchi Haruki.

After all, he's at least half responsible for Class D's "zero-score achievement." Kanji Ike and a few of the other boys picked up his bad habits, too...

"..."

Sakura Airi was silent for a long time.

Her gaze quietly skimmed over the Japanese textbook on Shimizu Akira's desk. It was practically brand-new: the spine was firm, the page edges were pristine, and there were hardly any creases. He clearly hadn't opened it much.

So he really is struggling with Japanese...

She parted her lips slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but in the end, she only bit her lower lip lightly and swallowed her words.

"Oh, right!" Shimizu Akira lowered his voice, looking serious. "Just to make absolutely sure— you really never confessed to Yamauchi Haruki, did you?"

"...I didn't!"

This time, Sakura Airi's voice rose sharply, making several students in the row ahead turn around curiously.

She hurriedly covered her mouth, the tips of her ears instantly turning red as if they might drip blood.

Sakura Airi's gaze lingered on Shimizu Akira's face for a brief moment, then she quickly lowered her head like a startled animal.

Shimizu Akira raised an eyebrow, his gaze resting for a moment on the tips of her reddening ears.

Looks like it really didn't happen...

Now that I think about it, she really is the type who has trouble talking to people.

After school, Shimizu Akira finished dinner and headed straight to find Horikita Suzune.

He'd thought she was still angry about him bringing up her older brother during gym class, and might refuse to go with him to the staff room to see Chabashira Sae.

To his surprise, though the girl kept her face stern and frosty, she silently followed in his footsteps.

When Shimizu Akira pushed open the staff room door, Chabashira Sae wasn't there, as he'd expected.

In her place was a young woman wearing a light pink silk blouse, casually leaning against a desk.

The hem of her blouse was loosely tucked into a pair of high-waisted shorts, outlining her slender waist.

Most striking of all were her long, shapely legs, which looked even more slender and straight beneath the shorts.

Her outfit was far too casual, nothing like people's usual image of a teacher. Yet there she was, sitting in a chair reserved for teachers.

Normally, a female teacher would wear a well-tailored skirt suit with elegant black stockings, just like Chabashira Sae, who was always so strict and proper.

But the woman in front of him...

She looked exactly like the sort of example that would appear in a parent's complaint letter: "How can you dress like that? My child spends the whole class staring at you instead of paying attention, and you're to blame for the drop in their grades!" She was the kind of "problem teacher" who would have students' mothers joining forces to protest against her.

However, at the fully residential Advanced Nurturing High School, it was almost impossible for parents to drop by and observe classes the way they could at an ordinary school. It was even unclear whether the school held regular parent-teacher meetings at all.

Just as Shimizu Akira was pondering this, the female teacher had already noticed the movement at the door.

She tilted her head slightly, a languid smile lifting her lips. "Oh my! Which teacher are you two lovely students looking for?"

"Chabashira-sensei," Horikita Suzune replied stiffly, naming her homeroom teacher. Her words carried a clear edge of displeasure.

"Hmm? Looking for little Sae, are you?" The female teacher tapped her chin with a fingertip. That overly familiar nickname made Shimizu Akira realize at once that the two were close. "She was just in the staff room a moment ago~"

When she moved to invite them inside to wait, Horikita Suzune immediately turned her down coldly. "No need."

To his surprise, the young teacher took the initiative to step into the hallway. She casually pointed her right index finger at her own face. "Allow me to introduce myself properly. I'm Hoshinomiya Chie, the homeroom teacher for Class B. Little Sae and I have been inseparable friends since high school! We still call each other 'little Sae' and 'little Chie,' too~"

Then the teacher named Hoshinomiya Chie leaned closer to Horikita Suzune as if she'd discovered a new continent. "You have such a similar air to little Sae. But why did she specifically ask you two to come here? That's suspicious."

She blinked curiously and touched a finger to her lips. "You didn't get into trouble, did you?"

When Horikita Suzune remained silent, she suddenly clapped her hands together and flashed a sly smile. "Wait, could it be... relationship advice?"

Horikita Suzune's brow twitched almost imperceptibly.

038 So He Really Had Understood "Physical Needs" Correctly

Hoshinomiya Chie.

On the surface, she was a lively, approachable young teacher who always liked to mingle with her students.

And yet, Shimizu Akira couldn't help recalling the perplexing piece of information he'd received on the first day of school:

[Information 3: If you need to take care of your physical needs, knock three times on Hoshinomiya Chie's door at exactly 2:00 a.m.]

Wait! The mysterious "open-minded" person in that rumor is this teacher?! She's a teacher, for crying out loud!

Could it be... I misunderstood? Maybe "physical needs" doesn't mean that kind of thing...

The concept of "physical needs" was much broader than people thought. Besides sex, it also included the basic requirements for staying alive, such as air, water, food, and sleep.

But Hoshinomiya Chie quickly realized that she wasn't getting anywhere with Horikita Suzune, so she naturally turned her gaze to Shimizu Akira, who had been silent all along.

"Oh my! Isn't this Shimizu?" she exclaimed, suddenly leaning closer. "You're even more handsome in person than in your photo!"

Shimizu Akira asked politely, "Hoshinomiya-sensei, you know who I am?"

"Of course~" She raised an index finger and wagged it playfully. "The girls have a secret 'first-year handsome guy ranking,' and Shimizu is at the very top!"

"Girls have rankings like that, too?" Shimizu Akira instinctively looked at Horikita Suzune beside him, but she immediately cut in coldly.

"Don't look at me. I didn't vote." Horikita's tone was still cool, but she showed no surprise. Clearly, she'd already known about the ranking.

"Shimizu~" Hoshinomiya Chie suddenly leaned in closer, her eyes sparkling with gossip. "A handsome guy like you must already have a girlfriend, right? I bet lots of girls have confessed to you!"

Shimizu Akira turned slightly, discreetly putting some distance between them. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"Really~?" Hoshinomiya drew out the word meaningfully, tapping her chin with a finger. "You only denied having a 'girlfriend'... So that means girls have confessed to you before, right?"

"...They have." Shimizu Akira paused, then added, "But I turned them down."

Karuizawa Kei's confession flashed through his mind. That should count as a confession, too.

"Oh my~" Hoshinomiya Chie drew out her words again, her mischievous gaze shifting between the two. "Shimizu wouldn't happen to be..."

"...We're not that kind of relationship." Horikita Suzune cut in instinctively, then realized she'd let her feelings show the moment the words left her mouth.

"—in love with my Ichinose?" Hoshinomiya finished the rest with a smile, though her eyes stayed fixed on Horikita's face. "I mean our class representative, Ichinose. After all, Shimizu spoke with her last week. Don't get so worked up."