Well then.
Kushida Kikyou had taken the initiative to greet him. She'd even noticed him looking at her and introduced herself...
Nakano Yuu suddenly realized that she might have taken him for someone she could use to get what she wanted. The original male lead hadn't made it into the school, but... had he been playing the original male lead's part in Kushida's eyes all along?
And if he took the other guy's role, wouldn't he have to drag Class D along with him...
No, no, no.
There was no saving Class D. It was impossible.
Like he'd just had a nightmare, fear showed in Nakano-kun's eyes.
His expression was completely genuine, without a hint of acting. It said, Don't come any closer!
But...
Meow, meow, meow???
For some reason, Kushida Kikyou thought there was something wrong with this student.
She'd given him her sweet introduction, and her popularity and looks should have made boys like her. So why on earth was Nakano Yuu afraid of her?
Could it be... that Horikita Suzune had already told him about her dark past?
Was that why he was scared of her?
Damn it!
Kushida nearly let her expression slip, but she managed to maintain her sweet smile.
"Well, I'll leave you two to your... date."
As she said this, she raised a hand and waved lightly at Nakano Yuu and Horikita Suzune, her voice turning playful.
But...
To her dismay, neither Horikita Suzune nor Nakano Yuu denied it.
Did that mean they were admitting to being in a relationship?
If they were, then Horikita Suzune could indeed have told Nakano Yuu about her dark past.
Damn, damn, damn!
At this rate, would she have to silence not only Horikita Suzune but Nakano Yuu too if she wanted to start over at this school?
Perhaps she'd thought of something upsetting, because Kushida left in a bad mood.
"..." Horikita Suzune.
Once Kushida was out of sight, Horikita Suzune suddenly spoke.
"I don't really like Kushida," she said. "There's something about her that doesn't feel genuine."
Really?
That was an impressive instinct.
It was common knowledge among the readers that Kushida had a double personality and was a hypocritical goody-goody. Her dark past from middle school was that she acted kindly toward everyone, but complained about those same students on her blog.
In other words, she was nice to their faces and said the opposite behind their backs.
That had eventually come to light, causing the students who trusted her to fall apart and the class to collapse.
After all...
Who could imagine that a trusted friend was badmouthing them in her heart? Who could imagine that the angel who smiled at you, even though you were an ugly goblin, was thinking, You're nothing but a goblin?
So Horikita was right not to like Kushida.
Horikita might have been lacking in all sorts of emotions, but her sixth sense was remarkably sharp.
But, Horikita, it wasn't good to judge people based only on whether you liked them.
Just look at him. Anyone who could help him gather 20 million points and escape the nightmarish Class D was a good classmate in his book.
Still, thanks to Kushida's interruption, Nakano Yuu had found something to talk about with Horikita.
By around 8:40, even the students in the shopping district had begun to thin out, and Nakano Yuu finally got ready to head back with Horikita.
But...
"Do you really have to check your phone so many times?" Horikita Suzune asked.
The hands of Horikita, who claimed to have great stamina and athletic ability, were both full of shopping bags.
One was hers, and the other belonged to Nakano-kun.
Since he'd hired her to work, it was only natural for her to carry the bags.
On the way back, though, Horikita Suzune found Nakano Yuu's behavior strange. He was walking slowly, checking his phone again and again, and then he took her away from the main road and down a quiet side street.
In the end, he even sat down beside a vending machine with no cameras.
She was the one who'd been carrying the bags the whole way, yet somehow he was the one who looked tired and in need of a break!
"I'm checking the other person's location, and I think they're doing the same," Nakano Yuu said.
Horikita Suzune couldn't understand what he meant at all.
Still, she could see that Nakano Yuu was looking at the GPS, at the location of the person he'd saved in his contacts as his older brother.
"I called my brother over," Nakano Yuu said. "He should be nearby by now."
?
"Your brother?" Horikita asked, a little curious about what kind of older brother would have given Nakano Yuu information in advance.
Just then...
"I don't remember having a younger brother," a clear, stern male voice called out.
At the sound of it, Horikita Suzune's back straightened.
She looked like a cat that had just spotted a tiger. The bag in her hand slipped, beginning to fall.
"Hey, my mug!"
The bag held his personal belongings, including a fragile item: a mug with a puppy on it. He liked it quite a bit, and it was the last one of its kind. If it broke here, he wouldn't be able to find a replacement.
In an instant, Nakano Yuu steadied her. His left hand caught Horikita Suzune's right wrist, while his right hand grabbed the shopping bag.
The bag didn't hit the ground, and his mug was saved.
"..." Horikita Manabu.
Horikita Manabu silently watched their hands clasped together.
Thump. Nakano Yuu set the shopping bag down beside him.
"Well, you are Horikita's brother, aren't you?" Nakano Yuu said. "So I don't think it's a problem to save you as 'Brother' in my contacts."
"After all, I'm guessing Horikita only has one number in her contacts: her homeroom teacher's. And she only saved that number herself on the first day of school."
Nakano Yuu said this.
His words might have been a little harsh, but Horikita Suzune didn't contradict him at all.
If Horikita usually looked like a hedgehog with its spines up, now she seemed subdued.
What had subdued her? Was it the pressure of family ties?
In the original story, this younger sister admired her excellent older brother and wanted to become just as capable as he was.
She'd even come to this school because her brother had enrolled here.
She wanted to earn his recognition.
But...
The outdated information she'd received a few days ago, along with the news everyone had learned today, showed that her brother was still an excellent student and the Student Council President, while she'd been placed in Class D and given a garbage evaluation—an utterly useless little sister.
Perhaps Horikita Suzune hadn't even decided how or when she would meet her brother.
But...
Now she'd been caught by him so suddenly, without warning.
"Suzune?" Horikita Manabu said, pushing up his glasses with a stern expression. "You really did come along."
"Brother—" Horikita's younger sister really was acting like a little sister now.
"Your younger sister is now a first-year student in Class D, a class evaluated as garbage. And as the Student Council President, you probably know that Class D's evaluation score is zero. How many points did we lose in our very first month? We're the most outrageous Class D in history," Nakano Yuu said.
"That may be true, but you're a Class D student too, aren't you?" Horikita Manabu's voice was cold.
"I'm different," Nakano Yuu replied. "I was assigned to Class D because I didn't take the written test or the interview. I ended up here because I was missing those."
"You didn't... take the interview or even the written test?" Horikita Suzune asked in surprise.
"Heh." Horikita Manabu didn't pursue that topic. As Student Council President and a third-year senior, he knew plenty of the school's inside information.
Every year, one or two thousand students applied to this school, but only 160 were ultimately admitted. Why was that?
If the school were selecting talent through open competition, students as bad as those in Classes C and D wouldn't have been admitted. The student body had clearly been decided in advance.
Nakano Yuu's behavior showed without a doubt that he knew this.
A few days ago, Nakano Yuu had sent him a message containing a transfer receipt. Although some details had been obscured, he'd only covered the characters in Horikita Suzune's name. Horikita Manabu had still recognized his own younger sister.
As Student Council President, he'd recorded the names of all the new students when they enrolled.
Naturally, he'd noticed his sister's name among them.
But nothing much had happened during the nearly month since then. Then, out of the blue, he'd received notice that his sister had transferred points to someone else—and a full 80,000 points in one go.
It wasn't hard to guess, given that she still had 80,000 points near the end of the month, that she'd been saving them carefully. In the end, all those saved points had been taken from her.
He'd actually arrived a few minutes ago and heard the conversation between his sister and Nakano-kun.
Nakano Yuu had his number saved as "Brother," while his sister didn't recognize him.
That meant his sister hadn't revealed the fact that they were siblings.
So Nakano Yuu had found it out somewhere else.
"It seems the incident where a first-year in Class A was beaten up a couple of days ago was your doing," Horikita Manabu said. "You made Class A lose a great many points."
"That's a real injustice. I wasn't the one who made Class C harass Class A," Nakano Yuu replied. "But Ryuen from Class C did buy information from me."
"I've just been keeping an eye on the strange things happening at school and coming up with a few ideas," Nakano Yuu answered honestly.
Horikita Manabu understood.
Nakano Yuu had probably learned the truth about the school in advance, though Horikita Manabu didn't know where he'd gotten his information. But if he knew these things in advance, why hadn't he used them to benefit his own class? If he'd taken advantage of the opportunity, perhaps Class D could have turned things around in its first month.
Then today's news had made everything clear.
The first evaluation scores for the new students had been announced: first-year Class D had zero points.
They'd gone straight down to zero in one month.
As Student Council President, he'd learned something even more important from the Chairman: Class D hadn't actually lost points from 1,000 all the way down to zero. Its score had simply had a lower limit of zero.
He remembered the Chairman's expression at the time.
"This year's first-year Class D has certainly exceeded expectations."
It really was beyond expectations.
Even if one student was strong, there was no way to succeed while dragging along so many classmates who were completely hopeless.
Clearly, Nakano-kun had already understood that.
"Since I'm already here, tell me what you want. I don't have much time," Horikita Manabu said coldly.
Nakano Yuu had sent him three pictures in all.
The first was a screenshot showing his sister's transfer of 82,400 points to him.
The second was a screenshot of the 2,400 points he'd transferred back to her.
The third was a screenshot of his Student ID Card, showing an account with 380,000 Private Points.
Before you continue