Chabashira Sae

"It's you, classmate. What did you want?"

Ye Yunchuan looked at her, confused.

Normally, when a stranger stared at a woman like that,

an ordinary woman would have hurried off in a panic as soon as she got off the train.

Unfortunately, Horikita Suzune was clearly no ordinary woman.

Ye Yunchuan's lecherous gaze made her very uncomfortable.

But his boldness and undisguised desire also left a deep impression on her.

She was very confident in her looks.

She had caught boys sneaking glances at her before.

But she had never met anyone as bold and unabashed as Ye Yunchuan.

"What's your name?"

Horikita Suzune found herself growing a little curious about him.

After all, she was always a forceful person.

And the fact that he could outmatch her in presence during a staring contest

made her instinctively feel that Ye Yunchuan was no ordinary guy.

"Ye Yunchuan! What about you, beautiful? What's your name?"

Ye Yunchuan gave Horikita a deliberately frivolous look.

"Horikita Suzune. I don't want anything to do with you. And don't you dare look at me like that again!"

Horikita frowned. Like Ye Yunchuan, she made little effort to hide her dislike of him.

"Can't do that. The way I look at people is my business. You can't force me to change it, legally or morally!"

Ye Yunchuan shrugged.

She was certainly forceful, but he had no intention of sucking up to her.

Though he'd been single his whole life in both incarnations,

his instincts told him that playing the devoted puppy wouldn't work on a woman like Horikita.

She was the sort who admired strength.

Rather than groveling, conquering her with his strength would be more straightforward.

"You!"

Seeing how Ye Yunchuan refused to give her any respect, Horikita was incensed.

Her impressive chest heaved up and down before finally settling a good while later.

"I'll remember you. You'd better watch yourself. If I ever catch you alone, I'll make you regret it!"

Horikita Suzune clenched her fists.

She shot Ye Yunchuan a furious glare, then strode off.

"I'm screwed. I've completely made an enemy of her. I almost forgot—this girl can fight, too!"

Ye Yunchuan frowned.

Horikita Suzune wasn't as skilled as her brother or Ayanokoji, but she was still a capable fighter by the standards of Classroom of the Elite.

Ye Yunchuan wasn't a weakling, but he'd never trained in martial arts or karate.

"Man, if I'd known I was going to this school, I would've joined the karate club and gotten some practice!"

Ye Yunchuan sighed.

That said, he still didn't take Horikita Suzune's threat to heart.

At worst, she'd beat him up. He wasn't about to be scared of her over that.

Still, her threat had made him realize how important strength was.

His top priority now

was to find a reliable girl and turn the system's power into something tangible as soon as possible.

As for who to choose?

Ye Yunchuan already had the perfect candidate in mind.

After sitting through an excruciatingly long and tedious opening ceremony speech,

Ye Yunchuan soon followed the crowd into Class D, just behind Horikita.

By a stroke of luck, he and Horikita Suzune were both in the back row.

The window seat was naturally out of Ye Yunchuan's reach.

As expected, it was occupied by the man named Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

Ye Yunchuan sat beside Horikita Suzune, leaving her between the two of them.

"Why are you here again!?"

Of course, Horikita Suzune and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka didn't know each other at all yet.

Compared with Ayanokoji, she was clearly more bothered by the guy she disliked, Ye Yunchuan.

"Well, what a coincidence. Looks like we have an unexpected connection. How about we become friends?"

Ye Yunchuan looked at Horikita in surprise.

He had to admit, the girl was truly beautiful. No matter how many times he stared at her, she still took his breath away.

And they were sitting so close together, too.

Just thinking about getting to stare at her every day from now on got Ye Yunchuan excited.

"Disgusting. How unlucky can I be, getting assigned to the same class as you?"

The thought of spending the next three years with Ye Yunchuan made Horikita's scalp tingle.

"Anyway, stop staring at me, or I'll make you regret it!"

Horikita Suzune glared at Ye Yunchuan.

She had made up her mind: if he didn't listen, she'd find a chance to teach him a lesson.

"Oh, now you've got me a little scared!"

Ye Yunchuan looked away.

Of course, it wasn't because he was afraid.

It was just that someone else in the class had caught his interest even more than Horikita Suzune.

"Hmph. Good. You'd better be scared!"

Horikita Suzune thought Ye Yunchuan had backed down. She folded her arms, looking rather pleased with herself.

Little did she know that Ye Yunchuan wasn't looking at her at all. He was carefully sizing up the girls in the class.

Class D might be the worst of the four classes, full of defective students.

But when it came to looks, it completely outclassed the other three classes.

Never mind the stunning Horikita Suzune, who was practically the school's most beautiful girl.

The real face of the hidden underground idol, Sakura Airi, wasn't much less beautiful than Horikita, either.

More than her looks, Ye Yunchuan liked Sakura Airi's personality.

She was timid and the sort of girl who'd be easy to handle.

Perhaps noticing Ye Yunchuan's gaze, the timid Sakura Airi immediately ducked her head.

"Adorable!"

Ye Yunchuan only glanced at her, then looked away.

Unlike Horikita, if he stared at her too long, he might scare her. And then it would be harder to get her to have his children someday.

Besides her, the girl sitting diagonally ahead of him, Hasebe Haruka, also caught Ye Yunchuan's eye.

If the girls in the class were divided into four tiers by looks,

Hasebe Haruka was undoubtedly a second-tier beauty, on a par with Sakura Airi.

The others were pretty, too, but none of them were as striking as those two.

Of course, they weren't his targets.

His target was the brown-haired gyaru with her jacket tied around her waist, chatting happily with a group of girls.

Karuizawa Kei!

She might not have been a first-tier beauty, but in terms of popularity, Karuizawa Kei was miles ahead of all the girls mentioned above.

There was only one reason for that.

Every man liked a doglike girl who was utterly loyal to him.

Even when Ryuen bullied her,

Karuizawa Kei refused to betray Ayanokoji, proving her loyalty to the extreme.

Ye Yunchuan was no exception.

After all, to him, loyalty meant she'd be easier to handle.

And besides, Karuizawa Kei had a weakness that even he couldn't resist taking advantage of.

"Why do I suddenly feel so cold?"

Karuizawa Kei, the one in Ye Yunchuan's sights, shivered.

"Whatever. It's probably my imagination."

She glanced around but noticed nothing unusual, then went back to chatting with her classmates.

She'd finally escaped her past and returned to a normal life. She didn't want to waste a single moment of it.

She clearly had no idea that hell was waiting just around the corner.

Chapter 3: Chabashira Sae

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon, Ye!"

As Ye Yunchuan was looking over the girls around him, a familiar figure approached.

Kushida Kikyo.

He'd figured this dark-haired little minx would come talk to him, but he hadn't expected her to show up so quickly.

She acted as if she couldn't wait.

"I see!"

Noticing that Kushida Kikyo kept glancing at Horikita Suzune,

Ye Yunchuan immediately understood what was going on.

Kushida Kikyo had a dark past at her old middle school.

Now that she'd come to a new school, she naturally wanted to keep that past buried forever.

Unfortunately for her, Horikita had been her classmate at her previous school.

That was why Kushida was so wary of her, to the point that later on she'd betray the class just to get Horikita Suzune expelled.

"Ah, nice to see you again, Kushida!"

Ye Yunchuan replied coolly.

Now that he'd settled on a new target, he wasn't particularly interested in Kushida Kikyo for the time being.

"You're as cold as ever, Ye!" (What a phony. You hypocrite. You were practically drooling while staring at me earlier!)