Classroom of the Elite, I Have a Life Simulator

Arisu Sakayanagi looked straight into the pupils of Honami Ichinose, stating her perspective on him in one breath:

"If he takes any extreme actions tomorrow, do not stop him."

"Extreme actions?"

Honami Ichinose asked, feeling a bit strange.

"...Although I don't know if it's my fault, Kitagawa Ryo has not actually fully shaken off the influence the White Room had on him."

Arisu Sakayanagi suddenly smiled. Unlike her usual faint, ambiguous smile, this one carried a hint of bitterness:

"Two years ago, you found him at your doorstep, didn't you?"

"...Don't you already know that?"

"Yes, because I was the one who had him left there."

Arisu Sakayanagi said earnestly:

"Otherwise, how do you think someone who had lost almost all of his memories could have simply walked out of the White Room?"

She tilted her head to look at the ceiling, the play of light and shadow casting darkness across her face:

"I don't know what I was thinking, actually believing I would be trapped by such a clumsy dream for over two years."

"In truth, I never wanted to wake up from it, simply because in that dream where I won, Kitagawa Ryo didn't go to Tokyo to meet you until he was sixteen."

"So in that dream, when we first met, you had him enter your dream-within-a-dream directly?"

Honami Ichinose recalled the dream she had observed, the one where Kitagawa Ryo was imprisoned by a false version of herself.

["...Perhaps I am more jealous than I imagined myself to be."]

Arisu Sakayanagi muttered softly, a remark Honami Ichinose did not hear:

"What did you say?"

"I said it seems that no matter how I modified that dream, I could never stop him from meeting you in the end; it was merely a difference between fourteen and sixteen years old."

"It's almost as if you're the fated heroine."

For a moment, Honami Ichinose found herself unable to respond. Arisu Sakayanagi sat there with her legs curled up, burying her face in the shadows.

"So."

Arisu Sakayanagi continued, her voice remaining unchanged:

"If an accident occurs on the scene tomorrow, you only need to trust him."

"Of course I trust him."

"That is for the best."

"I'm heading back."

Honami Ichinose waited a while longer to be sure that Arisu Sakayanagi had no intention of speaking again, then stood up and walked out the door:

"You don't have to worry about having strange dreams tonight. Good night."

"Good night."

Arisu Sakayanagi remained seated, replying without even lifting her head.

Chapter 35: The Third Ending (Part 2)

"Nice to meet you, I am Ayanokoji Kiyotaka."

"Nice to meet you, I am Kitagawa Ryo."

Kitagawa Ryo's first impression of Ayanokoji Kiyotaka was not bad. Aside from appearing slightly lethargic and seemingly uninterested in anything, there was no significant difference between him and a normal fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy in terms of dress, movement, or tone.

The two were strangers to begin with, and there was no need for pleasantries. Furthermore, they had come here today to prove two opposing philosophies; in every sense, they were "enemies."

Immediately after, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka took the black and white pawns into his hands, shuffled them in a place where Kitagawa Ryo could not see, and then held out his hands again.

"I choose the left hand."

After Kitagawa Ryo spoke, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka opened his left hand, revealing the white pawn.

In other words, Kitagawa Ryo would play white and move first.

In the match that followed, both Kitagawa Ryo and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka remained silent, letting time slip away.

In this empty room, only the sound of black and white pieces being placed echoed repeatedly.

"I originally thought that there would never be anyone stronger than me there, because everyone said I was the only successful case, and my standards were the highest standards of the White Room."

As the chess match reached the middlegame, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka began to think frequently.

His tone remained devoid of inflection, giving the impression that while he was boasting, it was simply a statement of fact.

"Actually, I can't figure out why my chess level is this good either. Perhaps after playing with Sakayanagi so much, I learned it without a teacher?"

Kitagawa Ryo replied with his usual teasing tone.

From the middlegame onward, Kitagawa Ryo's advantage began to accumulate.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka managed to hold the crumbling situation together until the endgame.

However, he still could not stop the momentum across the entire board. Ayanokoji Kiyotaka stared at the board for a long time without finding a move to escape the checkmate, and he quietly set down the piece in his hand.

"I lost."

He did not seem to have any dissatisfaction; one could even say he admitted his defeat with complete composure.

"Do you not even feel a sense of frustration when you lose?"

"That kind of emotion is useless."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka shook his head slowly:

"Let's start the next game."

Kitagawa Ryo rubbed his wrists and knees with a theatrical air:

"How about we rest for a bit? I used to feel sore in my hands and legs every time I finished a game with that guy Matsuo, and that's even more true after playing a match against a player of your caliber today."

Upon hearing the familiar name, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's tone underwent an almost imperceptible change:

"Then let's rest for a while."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka recalled what the butler Matsuo, who had been intentionally assisting his escape from the White Room, had said to him yesterday:

"If the other party suggests taking a break, you may take a short rest accordingly."

"Is there any benefit to agreeing to this request?"

"That person escaped the White Room one step ahead of you."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka cast his golden eyes toward Kitagawa Ryo. He was somewhat curious about the other's experiences, but under the current circumstances of being monitored at all times, he found it difficult to ask directly.

About thirty minutes later, the two changed into lightweight, form-fitting combat suits and stood facing each other in the center of the arena.

"Please take care of me."

"Please take care of me."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka looked at Kitagawa Ryo with some surprise:

"Your fundamentals don't seem particularly good."

He was being very tactful in expressing his opinion. Unlike chess, where one could only judge the level of play after starting, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had already identified at least three weaknesses in Kitagawa Ryo just during the preparation phase of the combat: a weak stance, a lack of notable strength in the right forearm, and even incorrect force distribution and center of gravity throughout his entire body.

The moment the device above the arena emitted a sharp signal to begin, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka rushed in front of Kitagawa Ryo with explosive speed. Although he was unsure if Kitagawa Ryo had intentionally left him an opening, he would absolutely not miss such a perfect opportunity to attack.

The next second, his right hand transformed into a knife-hand strike, slamming heavily into the most vulnerable part of Kitagawa Ryo's neck.

"One move?"

"Again."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka blinked, refocusing his gaze on Kitagawa Ryo, who was standing there.

"Please take care of me."

"Please take care of me."

The instant the starting signal exploded in his ears, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka surged forward, whipping a leg fiercely toward Kitagawa Ryo's head.

Kitagawa Ryo instinctively used his arms to block the strike, but the force transmitted through his arms still forced him to retreat several steps.

Seizing the opportunity of the opponent's unstable stance, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka landed a series of straight punches aimed at Kitagawa Ryo's waist. Under the hurried defense, several heavy blows landed solidly on his body.

Pain quickly traveled along his nerves to his central nervous system. Kitagawa Ryo gritted his teeth, searching for a chance to counter, but was soon struck in the head by a powerful hook.

"Again."

Facing Kitagawa Ryo's preemptive strike, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka simply tilted his body slightly to dodge a whip kick. He took advantage of the momentum to turn, using his waist to power a right leg strike into Kitagawa Ryo's shoulder, knocking him back several steps until he stumbled.

Immediately after, he charged toward Kitagawa Ryo like a cannonball, aiming for the bridge of his nose.

As long as this area sustained even a little damage, it would trigger an unavoidable physiological reaction in the human body: "tearing up."

The effect was successful, and then, while the opponent's vision was blurred, he swung an uppercut toward the jaw.

Kitagawa Ryo's body collapsed to the ground for the third time.

"Hey, again."

To be honest, in the past, I had actually tested how many layers I could stack a dream into.

The final result was that when the dream reached four layers—that is, a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream—it became very difficult for me to find my consciousness from the deepest layer. Not only that, after that failed test, I lost a significant chunk of my memory, as if a large, visible blank space had been cut out from the middle of a cassette tape.

After contacting the butler Matsuo through Matsuo Eiichiro, I confirmed that I had one, and only one, opportunity tomorrow to weave a dream for myself and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

To ensure that I would definitely win, I set the number of dream layers to...

Ninety-nine layers.

Of course, weaving a dream of two people fighting is much easier than weaving an entire world, but ninety-nine layers was indeed beyond my capabilities.

However.

Actually, I had already noticed it back when I was trapped in the dream within a dream created by Sakayanagi Arisu: I had a total of three nightmares concerning Ichinose Honami.

First, I watched from the sidelines as Ichinose Honami committed theft, a crime that remained a shackle binding her throughout her entire high school career.

Second, Ichinose Honami accidentally stabbed me to death with a knife, ultimately not only facing legal judgment but also suffering a mental breakdown.

Third, the one I saw earliest, was the tragedy where the Ichinose Family was targeted by an unknown force, her mother lost her job, Honami was expelled from school after her theft was exposed, and finally, her mother, in despair, died by burning coal at home.

It was only after waking up that I realized these were the outcomes if I failed to resist the White Room.

Therefore, even if only to avoid this worst-case scenario, I must defeat my opponent here to secure a future for Ichinose Honami and her family.

Kitagawa Ryo could no longer remember how many times he had fallen, or rather, he had almost forgotten the reason he was standing here, fighting this... person whose name he couldn't recall. Ever since the fourteenth layer of the dream began, his memories had been slipping away bit by bit; those memories of the time spent with Ichinose Honami over the past few years were falling away like fine sand through his fingers, grain by grain.

"You seem to understand my fighting style quite well. Did you do some research beforehand?"

After grappling with Kitagawa Ryo for a few rounds, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka asked calmly.

"Perhaps it's just that I've been hit so many times that my body has already memorized your moves."

Kitagawa Ryo locked his eyes onto the other's trajectory while assuming a starting stance.

After falling twenty times, he had already become able to withstand Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's initial three strikes, and now, he could even find opportunities to launch an attack in the early stages.

[Unwavering Perseverance (Purple): Struggle, strive, and never give up. (This is the cornerstone of success.)]

"Haa."

Kitagawa Ryo licked his parched lips with his tongue:

"Again."

[Talent Combat Mastery (Green) proficiency maxed out, upgraded to Combat Expert (Blue)]