My Classroom of the Elite: I Can Add Points Without Limit - Chapter 155

224. Hirata's junior high school record: His punching power dominated the entire grade.

Have you ever been too afraid to save a fellow traveler, and could only watch helplessly as they were persecuted?

Seeing that Yosuke Hirata was starting to show interest in talking, Aragaki Shun bought a canned drink from the vending machine, handed one to him, and then sat down on the bench next to him without wavering, answering:

"First, let's define what kind of person can be called a companion. Under that premise, I have never experienced the situation you described."

Helpless?

This idiom is a bit too far removed from the Aragaki Shun's second life.

Even tracing back to his not-so-powerful past life, he had never actually witnessed his companions being persecuted.

This doesn't mean he was particularly capable back then.

The key point is that, in his previous life, starting from elementary school, he was always full of homework every day, so he really didn't have much energy to socialize or play.

To put it more sadly, from elementary school through middle school to high school, over such a long period of time, Aragaki Shun never made a single friend who could be called a true companion in his previous life.

Because his grades were decent, he wasn't at the bottom of the class and could talk to most of the students, but the relationships weren't really deep. They were the kind of relationships that would be lost if the students were reassigned to different classes.

After finishing the college entrance examination and entering university, he didn't even recognize all his classmates except for a few roommates, let alone make friends with them.

After entering the workforce, it goes without saying that everyone is a money-driven worker. If they feel a company is not suitable, they will change jobs and leave. They never dwell on whether they are colleagues or not.

In short, in his previous life, he was far from being able to afford such things, but in this life, he can do anything and doesn't need to worry about these trivial matters.

"I think so too!" Yosuke Hirata's face was full of bitterness, and he made a self-deprecating remark. "With Aragaki's abilities, he naturally doesn't need to worry about this, but I'm different. Whether in the past or now, I've always been like a useless person, unable to do anything, and everything I do ends up making things worse."

"So what exactly did you do in the past that caused the school to put you in Class D?"

Aragaki Shun asked curiously, "I've always thought that Class D is a cesspool. Even the most good-tempered person would be driven crazy by those idiots if they stayed there every day. If there were students who were already at risk, they would explode sooner or later if they were influenced by the atmosphere around them."

Putting a group of flawed individuals with various defects and dark histories together makes one wonder if the school is playing a game of cat and mouse, ultimately raising an unprecedentedly powerful and corrupt individual.

To reiterate, if someone has a mental illness, they should see a psychologist or be placed in a peaceful and supportive environment to return to normalcy, rather than being thrown into a garbage dump and left to sink into despair.

"Aragaki- kun's evaluation is really excessive."

Hirata sighed, but couldn't find a rebuttal, so he changed the subject:

"If I had to say, I was a very inconspicuous student in my class until I entered the second year of junior high school."

Hmm, that's a bit hard to imagine.

As far as Aragaki Shun knew, Yosuke Hirata had only been in school for a short time, but he had easily become the center of attention in Class 1-D thanks to his kind, selfless, and helpful personality.

How could someone like him say he used to be insignificant?

Wait, the important milestone is the second year of junior high school?

Upon hearing this unusual age, Aragaki Shun began to have some guesses in his mind.

"Although I'm not particularly noticeable, I'm not entirely insignificant either. I have a few friends, I'm really just an ordinary person."

Neither revered at the top nor isolated at the bottom, they are just ordinary middle-class people, which sounds very ordinary and unremarkable.

So what exactly happened to make him look like this?

"I have a childhood friend who's been very close to me since I was little. He's a boy named Sugimura. We were in the same class for all six years of elementary school, and we lived very close to each other. I remember we would go to and from school together every day."

"We weren't in the same class after we entered the first year of junior high. Even so, we still went to and from school together at first."

"But since a certain day, the frequency has gradually decreased, and I've started only playing with the students in my new class. This in itself... well, it's probably a very ordinary thing."

Hirata seemed nostalgic, reminiscing about the past in a somewhat dreamlike way.

That was a fairly ordinary memory, because making new friends in a new environment is a natural thing, and not strange at all.

If it were Aragaki Shun himself, after entering junior high school and being reassigned to a new class, it wouldn't be long before he forgot the names of his elementary school classmates whom he rarely saw.

"But... while I was playing with my new friends, Sugimura- kun was being bullied behind my back." Yosuke Hirata gripped the jar tightly in his hand.

"Sugimura sent me countless distress signals, such as when he had a facial injury or bruises on his body, but I prioritized playing with my classmates and didn't take them seriously."

"Sugimura has always been very competitive and prone to fighting, so I didn't think too much about it... However, when I saw him again in my second year, Sugimura's heart had already broken down."

"His cheerful and lively image vanished completely, and he took the violence of punching and kicking for granted. His bullies wouldn't even let him go to the toilet, so he lost control of his bladder in class, and was then bullied again. This scene unfolded before my eyes..."

It's that same old story about school violence and group bullying again. Aragaki Shun frowned slightly.

That's just how things are around Sakurajima; similar incidents happen in most schools, whether they're elementary, junior high, or high school.

When he was in junior high school, he also encountered a group of clueless idiots who inexplicably disliked him and wanted to cause trouble. As a result, he taught them a lesson, and even the teacher who tried to smooth things over was fired by him through his own means.

"During this time, you just stood by and watched him get bullied without doing anything?"

Aragaki Shun couldn't understand. "Isn't he a comrade you acknowledge? With the momentum you just displayed when you defeated Miyabi Nagumo, would you really worry about a bunch of cowardly middle school students?"

"Yes. You can vaguely imagine, right? I didn't do anything, and I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of becoming a target, afraid that my current happy environment would be destroyed... I've been ignoring Sugimura, whom I used to be close to."

Hirata scratched his head in regret. "I was just deceiving myself, thinking that everyone would get tired of bullying and stop someday, that Sugimura would stop coming to school someday and the bullying would disappear, or that someone would help him. I was just thinking about these selfish things."

Unexpected, yet also quite reasonable.

This approach naturally results in a vastly different image from that of Yosuke Hirata during his Advanced Nurturing.

But considering that Hirata was only a second-year junior high school student at the time, just around 14 years old, it seems quite normal for him to make that choice.

After all, not everyone has the courage to stand up and confront mob violence.

Even many adults can't do this, so why be so demanding of a junior high school student?

"So, what happened to that guy named Sugimura in the end?"

"That day is still deeply etched in my mind. When I returned to the classroom after morning soccer practice at school, Sugimura was waiting for me with a swollen face. To be honest, I felt terrible standing there. He was my childhood friend, but he seemed like a completely different person to me."

"I even thought that if I got involved with him, I would be bullied like that. Sugimura must have seen my ugly thoughts. He didn't say anything, but it was as if he was confiding in me... That day, he jumped out of the classroom window."

"Jumped off a building?" Aragaki Shun's brow furrowed, unsure what to say. "Is there any hope for him?"

"The doctors seem to have diagnosed him as brain dead, and now his parents believe that Sugimura will recover and are waiting for him."

"But now I don't know if he's alive or dead. I always feel that what happened that day was unusual. I now think it might have been a dream, or an illusion, it just felt so unreal. It was only when Sugimura jumped that I realized something: that in order to avoid trouble and protect myself, I had driven an important friend to his death."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

It sounds rather tragic; it seems that this incident triggered the change in Yosuke Hirata.

But he has no other feelings right now, only one perplexing question that he really can't help but ask himself—

"That guy named Sugimura, so he has parents?"

Since his parents are still alive, and seem to be the type who love him dearly, continuing to spend a lot of money and patiently waiting for his recovery even after he was brain dead... how did he end up like this?

Aragaki Shun couldn't understand. Even if parents felt it was inappropriate to interfere with their children's social interactions at school, couldn't they at least help with transferring schools?

Or perhaps, because Sugimura was too proud, he returned home without saying a word and concealed his ordeal so well that his parents didn't discover what had happened?

Perhaps because he had no similar experience, he just couldn't understand it.

Yosuke Hirata was taken aback by the question. After a wry smile, he didn't know how to explain it, so he simply ignored the question and continued:

"Sugimura's suicide shocked me deeply. During that time, I didn't know what to do and was in a daze all day. But more importantly, I was affected by the aftermath."

"I think this commotion will subside after his suicide attempt. After such a heavy sacrifice, there will be no more bullying at the school."

"But I was too naive. After this incident, I witnessed the unfathomable darkness of human nature."

Hirata trembled, clenching his fists with gritted teeth, his eyes flashing with a murderous intent.

"The new target of bullying has become a classmate of mine."

He suppressed his emotions and began to mutter to himself as he exhaled.

"It's unbelievable! Such a terrible incident just happened, and now new bullying has emerged. People who were just bystanders are now being treated the same way, and some of the students who didn't participate in the bullying have even joined the bullies."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

The boy rubbed his temples, having lost count of how many times he had been speechless.

"No, they've driven someone to jump off a building, so why are the bullies completely unharmed and able to continue getting away with it?"

"I don't understand, Sugimura's parents saw their child brain dead and did nothing? And your lousy school, such a terrible incident happened, and the school administration had absolutely no intention of improving discipline? And what about the law enforcement officers? Didn't a single person call the police?"

Are they sure they live under the same blue sky?

Why was Hirata able to recount so many memories that shattered his logic?

"... You don't understand!"

Yosuke Hirata Aragaki Shun a deep look and said in a somber tone, "Aragaki has never encountered any setbacks in the past. Some inexplicable things are simply unimaginable until they actually happen."

"But that's the reality. After Sugimura jumped, the bullies paid no price. They treated him like a broken toy, quickly forgetting Sugimura sacrifice and looking for the next target to bully."

Aragaki Shun: "..."

I just hope I'll never understand this kind of thing in my entire life.

This school has just too many amazing people with all sorts of bizarre experiences!

"The scope of bullying expands without limit. If the lowest-ranked student in the class is no longer there, the student who was second to last will automatically become last. In a sense, this is a natural law."

"I can't let that happen again. I feel I absolutely have to stop it!"

Shaking his head, Aragaki Shun gave up on using normal logic to analyze Hirata's past experiences.

Once he shed his mind, he became a simple listener, occasionally asking a question when the other person needed it, allowing them to continue talking.

"And then you start taking action?"

Hirata nodded. He nodded more than once.

"To prevent this mistake from happening again, I took some measures."

Hirata slowly raised his head and looked directly at Aragaki Shun.

"To put it simply, that method is to control the class through terror."

"Terrorist tactics? Is it a matter of violence against violence?"

That seems to be the only way.

That's a bizarre school that wouldn't change even if they used bullying to drive someone to suicide.

In this situation, the only option is to use even stronger force to stop those who bully the weak and fear the strong.

"Hmm. I'm not as good at fighting as Sudo and Ryuen. But there aren't many people in the world who can seriously beat someone up. When I seriously raise my fist, no one will fight back."

"I became the only student in the class at the highest level, while all the other students were at the lowest. That's how I wanted to eliminate bullying from the class."

"Whenever a dispute arises, I intervene and inflict equal punishment and pain on both parties. My behavior is no different from bullying, but this method does bring a brief period of peace to the class."

Aragaki Shun: "?!!!"

What kind of bizarre method is this?!

To prevent school bullying, should both the bully and the victim be beaten up whenever a dispute occurs?

Damn it, this is just a case of teenage angst. He wants to defeat evil in the world all by himself, or even become the greatest evil himself!

And you call yourself "the only person of the highest rank"? Who taught you to use this method to stop school bullying?

Rubbing his temples, Aragaki Shun really had a headache.

"So, to prevent someone from being bullied, you're the one who gets to beat up the bullied person again? You're really something else."

To come up with such a solution, whether in terms of force or logic, Hirata is truly a genius.

"I don't understand... Never mind, you can continue. I don't want to ask questions right now, I'm afraid of being influenced by your logic."

Seeing Aragaki Shun's shocked expression, Yosuke Hirata couldn't help but feel a sense of self-mockery. In the entire Advanced Nurturing, there were probably very few people who could trouble him like this.

"In the end... I ruined the entire grade. They all lost their smiles and just spent each day like emotionless robots. It was quite a story in the area where I lived at the time... and it almost became a criminal case."

The Leader of Class A bluntly stated, "The strangest thing is that something like this hasn't been treated as a case yet!"

It is obvious that in Yosuke Hirata's hometown, not only are the junior high schools corrupt, but the law enforcement agencies are also corrupt, and everything is in a terrible state.

And you actually managed to suppress and ravage the entire grade with your personal strength?

I remember that Kushida Kikyo also managed to cause the collapse of a class simply by using a secret.

From this perspective, Hirata's destructive power far surpasses that of his opponent.

Putting aside other aspects, I acknowledge that punching power.

"How did the school ultimately handle it?"