What Spell Did You Cast on Big Sister? / My Brilliant Intellect Has Claimed the High Ground Again

The main problem is that after these two newcomers joined, one was practically an automatic afternoon tea-killing machine, and the other spent two out of three hours in the club listening to Kitagawa Ryo recount his past stories. They really didn't put much effort into the drama.

Then there's the performance aspect.

The main problem here is that Nanase Tsubasa is full of artistic and performing talent, has not memorized any of the lyrics yet, while Tsubaki Sakurako has basically read through Shakespeare's dozen or so plays and remembers the lyrics almost perfectly, doesn't seem to be very good at reciting them.

In a sense, these two can be considered a bit clueless and grumpy.

Although the one who's clueless isn't really clueless, the one who's unhappy certainly looks genuinely unhappy.

Faced with this situation, Karuizawa Kei analyzed the specific problem in a specific way. First, Nanase Tsubasa Tsubaki Sakurako, trying to teach her specific acting techniques, or rather, the techniques of reciting lines aloud.

Unlike Sakura Airi's innocent and timid personality, Tsubaki Sakurako gives the impression of being emotionally detached, or rather, completely unable to get into character. This makes her lines seem like they are simply recited, which caused Karuizawa Kei a lot of headaches.

"Come on, look at me, pay attention to my tone and expression, or just record it on your phone."

After fussing around for a while, Karuizawa Kei decided to take matters into her own hands.

It must be said that the veteran Thespian in their roles was incredibly smooth. Just as Tsubaki Sakurako raised her phone to start recording, Karuizawa Kei had already reached out to Kitagawa Ryo, who was watching nearby, and immediately launched into a classic line from Romeo and Juliet:

"Romeo, why must you be Romeo? Deny your father, abandon your name—perhaps you will not do so, but if you will swear to be my lover, I will no longer wish to be called Capulet."

"Only your name is my enemy. Even if you didn't have this surname or this name, you would still be the same person. A name is neither a hand nor a foot, neither an arm nor a face, nor any other part of the body."

"Names are meaningless. The flower we call a rose, if it had another name, its fragrance would still be the same. Romeo, if you had another name, your loveliness and your perfection would not change in the slightest. Romeo, abandon your name, I am willing to give my whole heart to compensate you for this empty name."

"See, that's it."

Watching Karuizawa Kei's near-perfect live performance, Tsubaki Sakurako nodded thoughtfully.

"So, will you be letting me and Nanase act in Romeo and Juliet together?"

"It's just a random selection. You two will have to discuss and decide what exactly you'll be performing that day. I'm talking about the lines, vocalizations, and expressions/movements. I'm not asking for anything else, but at least get your emotions flowing. Imagine you're Juliet, facing your lover Romeo..."

I've never been in a relationship.

Tsubaki Sakurako shook her head honestly.

"It doesn't matter. It's not like only Actor who have experienced a love as Unforgettable as those in dramas can act well. Human emotions are always interconnected. You must have felt joy and sorrow in your past life. They are not all caused by love and Fate. As long as you make good use of them at the right time, you can put on a decent performance. It's like watching pigs run even if you haven't eaten pork."

After Karuizawa Kei patiently explained it once, she unconsciously added her own personal interpretation:

"Of course, if you can experience it in real life outside of the play, it will definitely help your performance, just like Liang and I. But that involves deeper aspects like the expressive and method acting styles. You two should focus on mastering the basics first, at least to the point where you can perform a complete play on stage."

"Knew!"

"Good."

While Karuizawa Kei was handling the Drama Club's affairs in an orderly manner, Kitagawa Ryo, the official club president, was able to steal a moment to chat with Sakura Airi, who was also just watching the commotion from the sidelines.

It's unclear whether there was some die-hard fan among the school staff, but a video of her performance at the Graduation Ceremony for the previous year's third-year students, which took place over a month ago, was quickly posted online. This was a real boost to her loyal fans, and many even thought it was one of the signs that Sakura Airi intended to make a comeback, and started digging up tags like "a promise to graduate two years later" for her.

"As for being an idol, I definitely won't do it again. There are too many messy things involved, and I'll be over 10 by the time I graduate. In an industry where people can debut as idols at 12 or 13 and are at their peak at 14 or 15, I'm considered old. I feel there's no need to get involved in this mess again."

"However, I might try related careers again, such as singer or Actor? There are quite a few examples of idols turning into singers or Actor."

"I thought Airi wouldn't go back to the entertainment industry."

"It definitely wouldn't have happened before, but now—with someone like Ryo, who has such a powerful background, supporting me, I feel like there will be far fewer troubles. That's what Hui told me. After all, Ryo can't just abandon us old friends after becoming a chaebol's son, can he?"

Looking at the girl who was playfully winking and joking at him, Kitagawa Ryo smiled and shook his head.

"That's definitely not the case."

Not far away, Nanase Tsubasa and Tsubaki Sakurako were still diligently practicing their theatrical performance under Karuizawa Kei's guidance, prompting Kitagawa Ryo to involuntarily recite a line from Shakespeare:

"Love everyone."

"Trust the minority."

"I will not let anyone down."

From the novel "As You Like It" (also known as "A Perfect Match").

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Chapter 41: What kind of bewitching potion did you give my sister?

Since the rules for the Special Exam for First Year were announced, the various clubs in ANHS have become much more lively. After all, this Special Exam is more like a competition between schools than between classes. Sakayanagi Narimori cleverly placed the competitors outside the school. In addition, the students from each First Year were mixed up and participated as clubs, so the tension between them was actually quite low, and the atmosphere seemed quite peaceful.

However, for some older students, this Special Exam was not so wonderful. Coincidentally, the second and third-year students were not scheduled for Special Exam this month, so their attention was naturally drawn to the First Year. The long-dormant school forum finally said goodbye to its daily routine of posting about Kitagawa Ryo's love life and started to see a large amount of content related to this Special Exam.

As the saying goes, above me everyone is equal, below me there is a clear class distinction. If you let second or third graders encounter this kind of Special Exam when they first entered school, they would naturally welcome and support it with both hands and feet. But now that they have finally become mothers-in-law and are about to enjoy the treatment of seniors, this is the thing.

Tokyo Advanced Nurturing High School has always been generous in its investment in club development. Whether it's sports clubs or other types of clubs, the equipment and facilities are top-notch. Kitagawa Ryo himself had heard Ken Sudō mention this. The Basketball Club's training facilities and methods are always among the most up-to-date and professional, and the teaching staff is also quite strong.

However, this does not mean that each club can adapt to and seamlessly transition to the training mode of two clubs running in parallel. After all, before the clubs were separated, everyone had already argued countless times with the Student Council about club funding and benefits. This time, suddenly asking the First Year members to fully cooperate with the freshmen who have just joined the clubs in training in accordance with the regulations will naturally lead to a lot of discussion and even complaints.

Kitagawa Ryo's Drama Club is considered to be doing well. Firstly, there are few people, and secondly, everyone gets along well and the members have good personalities, so naturally, no disputes will break out. But other clubs are obviously not so smooth sailing.

"Hey, did you guys hear? The Basketball Club had a fight during their club activity yesterday, they almost came to blows."

That morning, as Kitagawa Ryo walked into Class 1-A, he heard some students discussing this topic.

"Huh? What's wrong?"

"It seems that the Basketball Club coach arranged for some second and third-year students to practice with the First Year. Somehow, the two sides got into a fight, and after the second and third-year team won, they directly mocked the first-year students, saying things like, 'With skills like that, you still have the nerve to occupy the training ground every day and waste our training time playing house with you. You'll be useless even if you practice for a hundred years.' That's how they started arguing, and they almost came to blows."

"I don't think it's necessary to say things like that. After all, the First Year students have only been in school for less than two months. They can't possibly compare to the senior members who have been in the club for a year or two. I don't understand."

"Maybe it's because they have a grudge about this Special Exam for the First Year. And don't forget, when we partnered with the First Year for the exam last month, many people were given the cold shoulder and ended up having to spend Private Points to find a partner. Is this a way of getting revenge?"

"Hey! Shibata, what's going on with your Soccer Club?"

Shibata Sō, who was being called on and was eating his breakfast bread, turned around from his seat upon hearing the question. After quickly swallowing the bread in his mouth, he waved his hand helplessly.

"It's pretty much the same. As for the second-year students, neither Hirata I are interested in this, so we can keep it under control. But it seems like the third-year students have a lot of objections. After all, it's their final year, and many seniors feel that it's a waste for the First Year to have this opportunity to exchange with other schools. They really want to make an appearance."

"Isn't there that Aid Card?"

"Even if they consistently get top three spots, they'll only get three in the end. A soccer team has so many players, and they're only thinking about playing with their own grade, maybe with us second-year students at most. If you really put them on the field with First Year, they'll probably start blaming others before they even get on the pitch. And if they lose, forget about it. Those freshmen will probably never have a moment's peace."

It can only be said that every family has its own troubles. After listening to the students in the class chat about other clubs for a while, Kitagawa Ryo returned to his seat and saw the text message that Shiina Hiyori had just sent him.

As expected, they're here to complain about this Special Exam First Year exam.

If the previous pairing exam for first and second graders only affected two grades, this Special Exam for First Year truly impacted students in all three grades, unless you weren't in any clubs.

"I'm about to lose my mind from all those idiots who just joined the department."

Following behind was an adorable emoji.

Before Kitagawa Ryo could reply, Shiina Hiyori had already noticed that the message had been marked as read, so she quickly sent him a barrage of messages:

"I'm almost losing confidence from all this teaching. The school's design for this Special Exam is just too outrageous. Tea Ceremony and basketball are not even in the same league. I can already picture the disaster our club will face on exam day three weeks from now."

Kitagawa Ryo could only send a helpless emoji, since he genuinely didn't know anything about Tea Ceremony, only how to trick people into learning it. Horikita Suzune was one of those people he tricked into, but in the end, he was the one who enjoyed it. Hmm, perfect logic.

"So why is it you Hiyori, who's going to teach? What about the other senior members of the club?"

In fact, Shiina Hiyori's Tea Ceremony skills are not particularly high. Not to mention that he is not as good as Suzune, who was fooled by him for several years in the simulation, even within the Tea Ceremony Club of Tokyo Advanced Nurturing High School, he is not among the most skilled.

The other person's popularity in the Tea Ceremony Club was mainly due to Shiina Hiyori's good personality, plus her boyfriend would often bring handmade tea snacks to visit. Anyway, the Tea Ceremony Club is not like a sports club, which is all about fighting and competing everywhere. It's fine for everyone to have fun behind closed doors. But who would have thought that they would run into this Special Exam with such bizarre rules.

"Because I noticed that the seniors didn't seem very enthusiastic about this, I volunteered. Actually, I can understand, since there's no reward for helping out in the club this time."

The point that Shiina Hiyori and third-year students for the past two days. After all, the rules only say that all clubs should cooperate fully, but even for seniors who officially appear as external aids through the Aid Card, or seniors who help in daily training, the rules do not clearly state what Private Points they should be given as a reward.

Many second and third-grade students were quite united in their opinion: if you won't give it to us, we'll just take it ourselves. Anyway, the First Year took a lot of benefits from us second-grade students last month, so let's just give it all back now. The conflict in the Basketball Club yesterday was probably related to this.

Why did Hiyori still choose to help?

"Even though it's Special Exam, these First Year students will still represent our club on the day of the exam. If we can defeat them, wouldn't that be an honor for our club too? Our Tea Ceremony Club isn't like Ryo's Drama Club, which can compete in competitions and win awards all the time. Even winning a friendly match with another school like this is pretty good."

"Yes, Hiyori is right. You can actually use this approach to tell the other senior members of the club as well."

Upon seeing Shiina Hiyori's message sent without hesitation, Kitagawa Ryo replied affirmatively, because this might be one of the reasons why Sakayanagi Narimori arranged it this way. If even this point is not realized, then the so-called sense of collective honor and cohesion of the club is a joke. And if this point is realized, even if good results are not achieved in the end, the school should still give praise and compensation in other ways afterward.

As Shiina Hiyori was chatting with Kitagawa Ryo, a new text message suddenly appeared on the top notification bar of his phone. It was a message from Yuki.

For Time Management Master like Kitagawa Ryo, chatting with two people at the same time is no problem at all, so he immediately pulled down the message bar and began to seamlessly reply to two messages simultaneously.

"Takahashi from Class B just contacted me, saying that he wants our Student Council's four First Year students to go and pressure us today."

"A coup?"

"Yes, because he felt it was a great opportunity for us freshmen to quickly gain access to the core power and confidential information of the Student Council, so that the four of us could work together and take advantage of this Special Exam to directly participate in the official work of the Student Council."

Similar to other clubs, although the Student Council recruited four new members this year, they are mostly doing odd jobs, such as running errands, delivering documents, serving tea and water, and receiving guests. After all, not everyone is like Horikita Suzune last year, who was the only First Year in the Student Council at the time (Sakayanagi Arisu absent), and also had a Student Council brother. That's why she participated in several core Student Council meetings as secretary and meeting recorder, and read through a lot of school affairs that only the Student Council knew.

What does Xue herself think?

"I think we can go along with it. After all, the three of them have definitely already discussed it with each other. Even if I disagree, they will still do it if they cooperate with Ayanokoji. So it's better to let me take this opportunity to participate as well. After all, this Special Exam is indeed a legitimate opportunity."

"Hmm, I feel it's fine too. After all, Chairman Sakayanagi specifically mentioned your Student Council, which means that the Student Council's questions in this Special Exam are the most unique. If I'm not mistaken, it's very likely that you will be directly involved in setting some of the Special Exam topics."

"Special Exam?"

"Yes, but it's not certain yet. You can go to the Student Council today and see for yourselves; then you'll understand what I mean."

Although he said that, the truth is quite simple: Kitagawa Ryo seriously suspects that Sakayanagi Narimori is trying to trick the First Year students into doing free work for the school again, just like the cooking project that Horikita Suzune participated in during the Uninhabited Island Special Exam last year. In the end, everything she made became the school staff's lunch and dinner, which is really a case of making full use of resources.

It's already May, and considering that the large-scale Special Exam for summer vacation will be held in July, and these large-scale Special Exam often contain a series of smaller questions, Kitagawa Ryo has every reason to believe that this Special Exam by the Student Council is a harbinger of the next Summer Vacation Special Exam.

Maintaining the dual-thread mode, Kitagawa Ryo chatted with Shiina Hiyori and Yuki until the class bell rang. Kitagawa Ryo finally put away his phone and began to listen attentively to today's lesson.

After the morning classes ended, it was lunch break time. Shiina Hiyori, who had just chatted with him in the morning, seamlessly took over under the pretext of getting a free meal. Counting the time, the time he had spent getting a free meal at his place was almost longer than the time he spent exercising with Arisu. This also marked that nearly half a year had passed since he promised to transfer Hiyori Hiyori's class.

After leading his class to an outstanding performance in the End-of-Year Special Exam at the end of March, Ryuen Kakeru seems to have completely forgotten about it. Even Shiina Hiyori comes over for meals every day, doesn't seem to want to mention it again. It seems he hasn't accumulated enough Private Points yet.

Indeed, since it became impossible to obtain a large number of Private Points through guessing games, 20 million was not an easy amount to accumulate. In addition, Ryuen Class performed poorly in the first and second grade partner exam last month, and the class fell back to Class D. It has been a bit quiet lately.

However, in front of Ichinose Honami and Karuizawa Kei, Kitagawa Ryo wouldn't directly ask Shiina Hiyori about this. After all, it was inconvenient for him to personally comment on the matter of transferring classes. Therefore, whether it was transferring to Karuizawa's class before or Ryuen's class later, it had to be the result of other people's planning. At most, he would just say, "You guys really ruined my life," and then accept the result.

Meanwhile, Kitagawa Ryo had just finished lunch when his phone chimed again. This time it was a text message from Tsubaki Sakurako, containing only two short questions.

"What happened between you and your sister these past two days? Did you use some kind of spell on her?"

Kitagawa Ryo simply pondered this.

Could that stuff be considered a love potion?

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Chapter 42: Intelligence Takes Center Stage Again

Just like the second-year students who would gather together for lunch during their lunch break, the First Year students have also started to get to know each other better over the past month. Various small social circles have begun to form. Especially recently, with the Club Special Exam that require close cooperation, the place is bustling with activity at this time. You can often see students from other classes running to the door of another classroom to call their friends and walk together. The atmosphere is quite lively.

Even without this Special Exam that broke the ice between the students from different First Year classes, Tsubaki Sakurako would still go to Class 1-D to have lunch with Yuki every day without fail. After all, the two share the same surname and look quite similar, so most of the First Year know that they are sisters, and some even speculate that they might be twins.

Aside from a moment of surprise upon seeing them, wondering how siblings could have such different personalities—one unremarkable in Class B and the other flamboyant in Class D —no one really says much.

Of course, it's mainly because there's no need to stir up trouble right now. If you were in the Katsuragi class, which was on edge and suspicious after last year's Summer Special Exam, they would already be using this opportunity to suspect you of being the mole in the class.

Because the last class of Class 1-D in the morning was physical education, when Tsubaki Sakurako arrived, Yuki hadn't returned from the Gymnasium yet. So she simply placed her lunchbox next to the Class D door, took out her phone from her pocket, and started studying the performance video of Karuizawa Kei from a couple of days ago.

Tsubaki Sakurako doesn't consider herself to be a very competitive person, but perhaps because she dragged Kitagawa Ryo down in the last First- and Second-Year Partner Special Exam, preventing him from getting first place, she always felt that she needed to prove herself in this Special Exam.

After all, at Tokyo Advanced Nurturing High School, the name Kitagawa Ryo was associated with the Drama Club for a long time, and the Drama Club always had the aura of being the strongest and undefeated.

That's why, the thought of her representing the Drama Club in the Special Exam again made Tsubaki Sakurako feel particularly complicated.

It's impossible for her to easily break both of Kitagawa Ryo's undefeated records in less than two months since she enrolled. If that happened, even if Kitagawa Ryo herself didn't say anything, she probably wouldn't be able to live with herself.

Although it wasn't very obvious on the surface, Tsubaki Sakurako was undoubtedly a very proud girl. Not everyone can spontaneously develop a clear feeling of wanting to Salvation someone in their mind when they are a child and then put it into practice in the days that follow. Whether it's studying, sports, or other aspects, she is confident that she can do well.

After giving herself another boost of confidence, Tsubaki Sakurako focused intently on reviewing the various details of Karuizawa Kei's performance.

It's true that she started watching plays almost a year ago, but because of the snow, she unconsciously focused all her attention on Kitagawa Ryo most of the time. However, Kitagawa Ryo's acting style and approach, which were purely a gift from God, were obviously not something that Tsubaki Sakurako could quickly learn and imitate.

From this perspective, Karuizawa Kei's teaching style is indeed more suitable for her and Nanase Tsubasa, both beginners, but...

As the progress bar reached its end, seeing the other person making a superb performance gesture towards someone off-camera again, Tsubaki Sakurako quickly reached out and manually dragged the progress bar back to the beginning.

No matter what, Kitagawa Ryo is still her... older sister's lover. As her sister's younger sister, seeing this scene still makes her feel a little uncomfortable. She should have stopped her sister from joining the Student Council in the first place.

But then again, if they had joined the Drama Club together, it seems she wouldn't have been able to learn the truth about her sister that she had been desperately seeking from Kitagawa Ryo.

... Well, it's probably better for my sister to stay in the Student Council.

Just as Tsubaki Sakurako was standing at the entrance of Class D, watching a video and lost in thought, Yuki, who had just finished her morning PE class from the Gymnasium, walked over and, with interest, went behind her younger sister. She casually took the earphone that Tsubaki Sakurako was wearing in her right ear and put it in her own left ear.

"What are you looking at so intently?"

The scene in the video featured Karuizawa Kei performing a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Upon realizing this, Tsubaki Sakurako was quite startled, as Karuizawa Kei's performance was brimming with hostility towards her older sister. Putting aside the fact that she was giving a deeply affectionate and immersive performance, the way she addressed names in the dialogue was definitely a minefield for her sister.