Sparks

At lunchtime, a long line snaked through the cafeteria's free-meal section, like a silent scar.

Horikita Suzune carried a flimsy tray, the cheap feel of its shoddy plastic pressing against her fingertips.

The food on it was dull in color and bland in taste. Its only distinguishing feature was the label "free."

Her gaze swept over several tables crowded with D Class students. Hirata Yosuke frowned as he struggled to swallow nearly flavorless stew. Beside him, a few boys who were usually loud and boisterous mechanically shoveled rice into their mouths, their faces marked by a numbness that had sunk into their bones.

Being able to fill their stomachs seemed to have become their sole, carefully conditioned aspiration.

But it was never an empty stomach that truly dragged people into the abyss.

Horikita was just about to sit in an empty corner seat when a deliberately muffled snicker nearby stabbed at her like an icicle.

"Pfft... look at them, the very picture of a 'balanced diet.'" Two girls from B Class (Sakayanagi Class) strolled past the D Class section, their eyes sweeping over the meager trays, their mocking smiles unconcealed. "No wonder these 'geniuses' managed to squander all their points within a month of starting school. The whole school should come learn from their 'boldness.'"

A C Class boy passing by stopped, his sense of superiority practically spilling out of him. "You can say that again. They couldn't even protect their classmates in an ordinary exam. They 'helped' us skip the trouble of testing the rules ourselves. They've been so 'dedicated' to coming in last, you could almost call it a talent."

"Genius class," "bottom of the rankings," "couldn't protect their classmates," "trash"... Each word was a poison-tipped needle, piercing the crumbling self-respect of every D Class student with cruel precision. They also cut straight through Horikita Suzune's strained composure.

Her fingers tightened abruptly around the edge of her tray, her knuckles whitening with the force of her grip.

She looked up, only to be met with more classmates quickly lowering their eyes. There was no angry retort, only heads bowing even lower, as though they had accepted those vicious judgments as a brand upon them.

The contempt and insults from other classes were merely external causes. More deadly was the self-doubt that festered day and night within D Class. A class that had started off rotten to the core, breaking its own record for coming in last again and again— even they couldn't help wondering: were they really the irredeemable "0" judged by the S System? Moving up a class? What a pipe dream.

Despair was like thick tar, slowly hardening in the air and smothering the last spark of fighting spirit.

Horikita forced herself to sit and picked up her utensils, but the food tasted like cardboard.

Anxiety blazed through her like a wildfire, leaving her unable to sit still.

Problems towered before her, while her classmates' morale had already fallen through the floor.

She wanted to do something! Change everything! But every time the thought arose, cold shackles followed close behind: she wasn't capable enough.

That realization weighed heavily on her heart, almost leaving her unable to breathe.

She couldn't find the heart of the problem or see a way through. She was utterly lost, not even knowing where to begin.

Solve the problem? At that moment, it was no different from trying to scale a sheer cliff with her bare hands.

Was she anxious? Of course she was! How could she not be, watching helplessly as the class's sinking ship went down faster and faster? But aside from futilely burning with anxiety inside, she seemed truly... powerless.

And yet, in the depths of this nearly frozen despair, an unfamiliar sensation brushed quietly across Horikita's heart, like a faint current beneath the ice.

It wasn't hope. That was too much to ask.

It was something more primal, more piercing: resentment.

She saw Hirata Yosuke's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, a fleeting flash of humiliation in the motion.

She saw the boys mechanically shoveling rice into their mouths. Beneath their barely lifted eyelids, after the B Class girls had walked away, she could make out bloodshot eyes held in check.

She could even hear, as the C Class boy finished speaking, a faint, muffled sound in the deathly silence around them—the sound of teeth grinding together.

They weren't incapable of feeling.

It was just that their last scraps of self-respect and anger had been crushed beneath an even greater sense of despair and helplessness, scattered across the ground, leaving them without even the courage to pick them up.

Sakayanagi Arisu's B Class could look down on them with effortless grace, while Ryuen Kakeru's C Class could trample them with impunity, because they had fortresses built from "points" and the "high status" temporarily granted to them by the S System.

But what did D Class have? Nothing but that glaring "0," those free meals, "pig slop" handed out like charity, and the humiliation and doubt that had sunk into their bones... All they had left was a tiny, wretched yearning for a "normal" life that even they despised, and a resentment toward their tormentors, rooted so deeply that they didn't dare speak of it.

Horikita Suzune's gaze returned to the dull lump of food on her tray.

The flames of anxiety hadn't gone out. Under the pressure of those cold shackles, they had instead burned away to reveal a different, almost ruthless clarity.

She didn't have the power to turn the world upside down. What she did have was D Class itself, this swamp of despair.

Could she make use of that resentment...?

The thought was like a match struck in the darkness: faint, but enough to instantly illuminate a corner of her mind sealed away by despair.

Yes, they were scattered like sand, trash in everyone else's eyes.

But a fire capable of burning everything to ashes could still rise from a garbage heap.

All it needed was a spark, an opportunity to gather those broken scraps of resentment and turn them into fuel. Sakayanagi's elegance, Ryuen's arrogance, C Class's superiority... If guided well, the pressure they brought to bear might yet become the furnace that reforged D Class's dull blade.

Was she incapable? Perhaps.

But to sit idly by and watch everyone—including herself—rot away in this mire was something Horikita Suzune would never choose!

She abruptly shoved a mouthful of bland stew into her mouth. It tasted like cardboard, but she swallowed it with grim resolve.

The path to striking back was still unclear, but in the ashes of despair, the will to fight back had quietly clenched its fist.

Evening, school building bulletin board

On the bulletin board, the cold numbers stood like a final verdict:

Class Points:

Class A: 1040 points

Class B: 1033 points

Class C: 838 points

Class D: 0 points

B Class students passing by stopped, their gazes shifting between the glaring 1040 beside Class A and their own class's 1033. Frustration and confidence in victory mingled on their faces—the gap was narrowing, but they had yet to reclaim the throne.

D Class students, meanwhile, hurried past as if avoiding an epidemic.

Some caught sight of the bright red "0" and recoiled as though burned by a hot iron, turning their heads sharply and quickening their pace. Others stared fixedly at the ground, as if trying to wipe the number from their field of vision entirely. A few paused briefly, a spark of fire suppressed to the limit—the same kind Horikita had just felt—flickering through their eyes, only to be covered by even deeper numbness as they lowered their heads and hurried away.

Horikita Suzune watched it all from the shadows a short distance away.

The light from the bulletin board outlined her cool, tense profile.

The "0" remained as glaring as ever, and the backs hurrying away still stung.

But deep in her eyes, the cold flame kindled by resentment swayed silently, waiting for a wind to fan it into a wildfire.