From what he had just heard, Class Points were tied to the Personal Points distributed each month.
Then, on the very first day of school, she'd already noticed students in her class sleeping during lessons, and some even playing on their phones.
How many Class Points would they lose over the course of a month?
"Isn't this something even an elementary school student should know? And isn't it strange that none of the teachers in any subject ever stop them?" Aoyama gathered the long hair hanging beside him into his hand, using his domineering behavior to suppress Karuizawa's desire to resist.
"Don't tell anyone about this yet. Wait until I give you the signal, then use the credit for discovering it to become the center of the girls' group."
"As for how we act toward each other in public, we'll pretend we're childhood friends who haven't seen each other in years. If you need to, you can also use me as a tool to win over the other girls."
To help Karuizawa become the leader of the girls in Class D, he didn't mind showing a little skin and socializing with them.
After all, students who got into this school were mostly good-looking, especially the girls.
It was a win-win.
"It's only the first day of school. How do you know so much? And I don't think I've ever met you before."
"You don't need to know that. Also, it's time to settle the fee for my friendship."
Faced with Karuizawa's suspicious gaze, Aoyama smiled back.
Soon, a transfer notification for fifty thousand Personal Points appeared on his phone. After deducting what he'd spent at lunch, he now had over a hundred and forty thousand Personal Points.
And as the number on his Personal Terminal changed, another number, visible only to Aoyama, shot up from a pitiful three digits to five.
[Detective Conan World Villain System]
This was the cheat he'd received at birth. It had made him think he'd been born into the world of Detective Conan.
After growing up and searching for a long time, he'd found no information at all about a high school detective.
Eventually, he'd accepted that the system had been given to him by mistake—a bug.
And rather than a system, this cheat was more like a video game console. The only way to get anything was through draws.
The good news was that there was a guaranteed reward. The bad news was that only dirty money could be used for draws, and all the prizes were villain skills or items from the Detective Conan world.
One draw cost a hundred thousand Personal Points, and there was no discount for a ten-pull.
Before coming to Kouiku, his only source of dirty money had been the time he'd run an experiment and swindled pocket money from a neighbor's kid: one hundred yen in total.
Since he had no dirty money, he still had the newcomer's first ten-pull discount.
"Can I go now, Aoyama?" Watching the boy who'd drifted off, Karuizawa gradually calmed the turmoil in her heart. She hadn't learned the name of the boy beside her until the transfer went through.
"Just call me Aoyama. We're childhood friends who've reunited after all these years."
Pulling his attention back from the System Panel, Aoyama was in high spirits after confirming that Personal Points could be used for draws too. He chuckled as he corrected Karuizawa's mistake.
"If you run into trouble, text me and I'll help. For the sake of my fifty thousand Personal Points each month, I'll protect you."
"Anyone who bullies you is bullying me."
Since he didn't need Karuizawa's help for the time being, he made his promise and let her leave.
When he returned to the small supermarket, there were far fewer people inside. A tall figure stood in front of the drinks shelf, apparently struggling to choose from the many beverages.
"High school students aren't old enough to drink, Kamuro." Aoyama stopped beside the girl and pointed out that she was looking at the wrong shelf.
Kouiku was a school students couldn't leave for three years. Its grounds were astonishingly vast, and it even had a shopping mall, with more staff than students.
As a result, the stores also sold alcohol, which students weren't allowed to buy.
"You're awfully familiar. Just so you know, I hate alcohol."
Answering coldly, Kamuro Masumi turned toward the register, her long hair swaying. She showed no intention of continuing the conversation.
"If you don't like it, why were you staring at it for so long?"
He quickly picked out a few daily necessities and paid, then caught up with Kamuro in the dormitory lobby.
The first-year dormitory building housed both boys and girls. The girls lived on the upper floors, the boys on the lower ones, and there was an elevator in the lobby.
It was worth mentioning that a monitor in the lobby showed the inside of the elevator.
"This has nothing to do with you, does it?"
"When something piques my curiosity, I don't let it go."
Standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the elevator, Aoyama didn't back down despite the impatience on Kamuro's face.
Not long after the story began, Kamuro would steal beer for the thrill of it. A student would catch her in the act and use it as leverage, turning her into his lackey.
He wasn't about to hand over a tool he'd set his sights on.
The matter he'd assigned Yamamura needed time to develop, and so did his plan to make Karuizawa the girls' leader.
Over the next few days of free time, he'd put on a good show of sticking to her like glue.
Chapter 5: The Strange Underclassman
"I'm under no obligation to answer you."
"And I'm under no obligation to give up."
He followed Kamuro to her room. After she shut the door in his face, Aoyama kept smiling and strolled back to his own room.
The luggage he'd left there that morning was still piled quietly in the corner.
He opened the window, swept the floor, and wiped down the surfaces.
Only after half an hour of work did he start unpacking. He quickly hung his few clothes in the closet and moved his somewhat old books onto the desk.
Then he put his newly purchased daily necessities in the kitchen and bathroom. The dormitory room, which had seemed cold and long unoccupied, immediately felt more lived-in.
So this was the room I'd be living in for the next three years. It seemed pretty nice.
Looking around the clean, tidy room, Aoyama Shiki felt a flicker of anticipation for the school life ahead.
He took his uniform jacket from the wall and headed back to school.
On the vast sports field, students from several athletic clubs were already working up a sweat. When they saw him arrive, obviously a new student, many looked surprised.
They probably wondered why, after getting the huge sum of a hundred thousand Personal Points, he wasn't shopping up a storm at the school mall or having fun with friends.
Now wasn't the time for fun.
Finding an empty spot, Aoyama Shiki began his warm-up exercises. He didn't slack off at all.
Back in middle school, because he was an orphan and couldn't afford cram school, he'd spent most of his time studying. As for his physical fitness, he was only as fit as an average boy.
Ordinary high schools didn't demand much of their students physically, but Kouiku was different.
It demanded excellence in every area: physical fitness, intelligence, communication skills, judgment. It assessed every ability a leader needed.
"An underclassman who came to the field to exercise on the first day of school? You're the first."
As he rested after warming up and jogging, a senior girl approached him before he could go over to her.
With a sunflower hair clip and long orange hair, she gave off a cheerful, lively air. A smile lit up her fair face.
"Shouldn't you be making friends right now?" Asahina Nazuna continued before he could answer.
"I've already reserved the friends I want to make. There's no hurry."
Sitting beside her on a bench beneath a tree, Aoyama replied in a gentle tone.
Among the students in Class 1-A, he didn't want too many friends. Kamuro and Yamamura were enough; any more would get in the way of his selling out Class A to earn dirty money.
He felt a little guilty toward the students in Class A, but the system's prizes were just too tempting.
Unmatched fighting skills, the perfect drug APTX4869 that could make someone young again, perfect disguise skills—how could he not be tempted?
"What a strange thing to say." Asahina crossed her legs and stretched them out in front of her. "I'm Asahina Nazuna, a senior in Class 2-A. Will you tell me your name, strange underclassman?"
"I kind of like that nickname. You can keep calling me that, Asahina-senpai. By the way, my name's Aoyama Shiki."
"You're an interesting underclassman."
"I still prefer 'strange underclassman.'"
Aoyama Shiki smiled faintly and stretched, tilting his head back. The soft sunlight filtered through the leaves, but it wasn't dazzling at all.
"Could you tell me about the Student Council, senpai? I'm thinking of joining."
"The Student Council? I was hoping to recruit you for the Track and Field Club."
Asahina looked disappointed for a moment, then perked up again. She carefully introduced the current members of the Student Council, starting, naturally, with its president, Horikita Manabu.
He'd become Student Council President in his first year. Talented in both academics and athletics, he'd never made a mistake during his term. He was practically superhuman.
But when she reached the second member, Vice President Miyabi Nagumo, Asahina's tone was no longer admiring.
Her first words were a warning: the underclassman absolutely shouldn't follow his example.
"Thanks, senpai. Once I join the Student Council, I'll congratulate you—and treat you to a meal."
About ten minutes later, after hearing Asahina's introduction to the Student Council, Aoyama had a better understanding of its structure, especially its second-year members.
Most of the current Student Council was made up of second-year students. The third-years had almost all retired.
"Quite confident, aren't you, underclassman?"
Asahina smiled at his certainty that he'd get in. After saying she looked forward to it, she left in response to her friend's call.
Her energetic stride brimmed with vitality.
So this was youth, Asahina-senpai.
He turned his eyes away from her graceful back and returned to the track to exercise.
It was still early, well before six in the evening. He had plenty of time to work out—and to strike up conversations with the upperclassmen.
A trickle of small bits of information could add up and provide a reasonable explanation for his foresight.
As a special school, Kouiku was covered with countless cameras, laid out like a spiderweb to monitor nearly everything the students did.
And the embodiment of the school's power was the Student Council.
The second day of school.
Exhausted from the day before, Aoyama had gone to bed early, and he woke up early too.
After exercising for over half an hour, he put his breakfast in a pot to heat. He even took a shower while he waited. His routine was more like an athlete's than a student's.
The most important thing in life was knowing your own limits.
He'd realized when he was very young that he wasn't a genius. Neither his memory nor his physical abilities were exceptional. The only reason he'd gotten into a prestigious middle school without paying tuition was his self-discipline.
He had a cheat, sure, but only a fool would stake their entire life on it.
After rushing around, Aoyama arrived at the Class 1-A classroom with three minutes to spare before class.
Quite a few students were chatting in small groups. Their smiles seemed a little more natural than they had the day before.
The students gathered around Katsuragi Kōhei and Sakayanagi Arisu were the most numerous.
"Can you tell me why now, Kamuro?" He passed Kamuro's seat and spoke to her as she looked at him with obvious distaste.
"No."
"Then I'll ask again next time."
He smiled, walked around to greet Yamamura, who was sitting alone, and only then took his seat, after she gave him a somewhat flustered reply.
Soon, the bell rang for the first lesson, and the teacher arrived.
No one chatted on the sly or secretly played on their phones. The students of Class A showed the qualities that had earned them their placement.
Meanwhile, although a few students in Class B looked tempted, they didn't break any rules. Classes C and D were another matter.
After seeing students play on their phones during lessons the day before and the teachers do nothing even when they noticed, several students had grown bolder.
This was especially true in Class D. One red-haired boy with a buzz cut openly slept through class and even snored, while the teacher still pretended not to see.
Several students frowned, but several others put their phones on their desks.
They figured that if sleeping and snoring didn't get him in trouble, quietly playing on their phones couldn't be a problem either.
Every one of these rule-breaking actions was fully recorded by the camera in the corner of the classroom.
Chapter 6: I'll Be President, You Be Secretary
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