As Horikita Suzune thought this, she said coolly, "I refuse."
I see.
So Horikita was noble and principled, and wouldn't bend for a few points.
"Fine, then. No points for you," Nakano Yuu said. Then he snapped off two photos in quick succession.
"..." Horikita.
"You're always angry, so I can never get a picture of you looking any other way," Nakano Yuu said.
"Because I don't like smiling in the first place," Horikita said stiffly.
"Kushida!"
But Nakano Yuu suddenly raised his camera toward Kushida, who was talking to Karuizawa in the seat behind her.
"Could I take a picture of you?" he asked.
"S-sure," Kushida Kikyou replied instinctively, then flashed a cute smile.
Click.
Nakano Yuu got the shot.
Only then did Kushida realize who had taken her picture.
Maybe it was just his imagination.
Damn it.
Nakano Yuu noticed that Kushida's cute expression seemed to change, and her eyes appeared to say something like this.
"..."
He felt like he'd somehow offended Kushida, but he had no idea how. It wasn't as if he'd gone out of his way to bother her lately.
"You weren't taking a picture of Kushida?" Horikita asked as she came over after he finished.
After all, he'd just taken at least five or six pictures of her, and she wasn't happy about being photographed.
When she got closer, she noticed that Nakano Yuu had said he was taking a picture of Kushida, but had used the background blur setting.
Background blur was meant to make the person or object being photographed clearer. But in the photo on Nakano Yuu's camera, Kushida was the one blurred.
Kushida's figure was out of focus, while the other student talking to her was crystal clear.
She had beautiful golden hair tied in a ponytail, pretty, delicate features, and dimples when she smiled.
Her hands were slender, her legs lovely, and she wore short white socks. Her uniform, however, was different from everyone else's.
She wore a blue shirt and had tied her red uniform jacket around her waist.
She was the very picture of a gyaru.
She was Karuizawa Kei, a girl from Class 1-D.
She was in the study group Horikita Suzune was responsible for, and her grades were poor.
Horikita also knew that several students she often hung out with were doing poorly in class, too: Shinohara Satsuki, Sato Maya, and Hasebe Haruka.
Those girls made up a little gyaru group. They liked wearing uniforms that stood out from everyone else's, with orange or blue shirts.
Horikita knew all that.
But...
"..." Horikita.
Horikita's gaze turned sharp.
"What are you trying to do?" she asked.
That was right.
As the leader of the study group, she had to ask why someone was secretly photographing one of her group members.
"What's her performance like in your group?" Nakano Yuu asked.
"Her grades have improved only a little, but she does seem to be studying hard," Horikita said. Then, as if adding an afterthought, she said, "It seems she barely studied any of the material in middle school."
In other words, she was a poor student. Horikita had concluded that her bad grades were due to gaps in her middle-school education. If she caught up on that material, she might be able to improve her academic ability.
Horikita Suzune, you're seriously impressive. Your instincts are always spot-on.
Because Karuizawa Kei really had missed out on middle-school classes.
P.S. Today's update is here, brothers! Time to pay your dues!
Chapter 42: Miyabi Nagumo: How dare some mere underclassman declare war on the second-years!
This year's freshmen were very different. More precisely, Nakano Yuu's year was nothing like the classes that had come before.
After all, they were the year and class of the original protagonist. And as the protagonist's class, they naturally had a few obvious goofballs like Yamauchi, Sudo, and Kanji Ike.
Then there was a versatile freak like Koenji, who pursued freedom.
There were also Hirata and Kushida, students with certain flaws but stats that could rival those of Class A and Class B students.
Matsushita Chiaki, who hid her abilities and believed she could go toe-to-toe with the male lead.
And the top students: Horikita Suzune, Yukimura Teruhiko, and Nakano Yuu.
They were all important assets in the competition between classes.
But the class also had plenty of problem students.
For example, Sakura Airi. She seemed to have no presence, but she was a gravure idol.
And Karuizawa Kei.
She acted like a brash gyaru, but she was actually timid. The gyaru type was the kind of person she hated most, because she'd been bullied throughout middle school by girls like that.
In other words...
She'd been bullied. She hadn't even been able to attend classes properly.
That was the main reason she'd missed so much of the middle-school curriculum.
So why did she now present herself as a gyaru? It was simple: the bullied had become the bully.
After being frightened by her tormentors, she'd chosen to wear their image like a disguise.
So she entered this new school looking like the kind of person she hated most, hoping she wouldn't be bullied again.
But...
The ideal was beautiful, but reality was cruel.
Once she'd taken on that persona, it was hard to drop it. She had to keep it up until she became someone she herself hated.
In the original story, she went to Hirata, one of the most popular students in the class, and confessed her past to him. Then she asked him for help, and they pretended to be dating.
Hirata's popularity helped secure her position, and she even became the leader of the gyaru group.
But it wasn't much use.
Because Hirata wanted to help everyone, she was only his girlfriend in name. When trouble came, Hirata wouldn't take her side.
And in the end, they broke up.
Of course.
To Nakano Yuu, all of that was part of the original story, and he could use some of those plot points to his own advantage.
His top priority was to gather twenty million points.
He'd thought of taking Karuizawa's picture while trying to photograph Kushida.
He'd suddenly remembered that one of the first-years' Special Exams in the original story was the Island Exam, along with the VIP Exam.
The Island Exam could earn him a tidy sum.
And if everyone chose Result 1 in the VIP Exam, he could make a fortune.
But...
One key part of the VIP Exam was figuring out the identities of all the VIPs in each class. The VIPs were assigned according to a pattern, so if he got his own class's VIP list and one or two names from other classes, he could work out the pattern.
Karuizawa was one of Class D's VIPs, and Kushida was another. As for the third, he had no idea. Who paid attention to the boys' names when watching the anime?
One rule of the VIP Exam was that no one could threaten or force another student to hand over their phone. They had to agree voluntarily.
And if he approached Karuizawa at the time, she might not show him the VIP information. So maybe he could lay some groundwork now.
So...
"Has she started dating Hirata yet?" Nakano Yuu asked.
"Dating? What are you talking about?" Horikita asked, looking puzzled.
Hmm.
If Karuizawa really had started a fake relationship with Hirata, it would have been announced to the class. Since it hadn't been, she hadn't done it yet.
"Then pass a message to her for me," Nakano Yuu said.
"What do you want to tell her?" Horikita asked, eyeing him warily.
Hey, hey, what were you thinking? Did you think he was some kind of bad guy who would target one of your group members?
But it also showed that Horikita was surprisingly reliable.
If you became someone important to her, she'd protect you.
Of course, Nakano was a man, and he had no interest in living off someone else.
Especially since... his family wouldn't allow it, either. His father wanted him to become the wallet for his five foolish stepsisters, not a useless man kept by someone else.
At this school, aside from Classmate Sakayanagi, only Kiryuin, a second-year senior, would fit the bill.
"I just want to give her a suggestion," Nakano Yuu said. "You know we have to rely on the school's Special Exams to make money, and for some exams, the two of us aren't enough. We'll need a few more people to help."
Oh.
Horikita's prickly demeanor immediately softened.
Horikita Suzune knew that Nakano Yuu had told her this before, and he'd already gained something from the current exam.
For example, he'd sold the old test papers he'd bought for tens of thousands of points to Ryuen Kakeru for 800,000 points. He'd even given her the points she'd spent on the papers.
But he'd still earned enough to cover his living expenses.
The thing was, he got to enjoy the money, while she still had only a little over 500,000 points in assets. Of that, 500,000 had come from her older brother.
So Horikita's little sister was still poor.
"Got it. I'll pass it on," she said.
See?
She'd been against it just a moment ago, but now she was willing to do the work.
Horikita was easy to handle. Just find something she was interested in, and you could get her working in no time.
She was very easy to manipulate.
So why couldn't someone so easy to handle come from a more powerful family? Why couldn't she be a little more capable, capable enough to support six people on her own?
"..."
No.
Maybe it was because he'd suddenly started thinking about something strange, but Nakano Yuu was feeling a little scattered today.
Anyway...
"There are eight days left until the midterms," Horikita said during lunch.
Before you continue