Shallow and Superficial Horikita Suzune? Expressionless and Silent Kiyotaka Ayanokoji? A Firm Conclusion!

Akiyama Shin withdrew his gaze. In his mind, the confrontation between Kushida Kikyo and Koenji Rokusuke had already become old news.

To him,

it had been nothing more than an insignificant little episode.

Koenji Rokusuke was a maverick, utterly self-centered. His actions served his own preferences alone, and he paid no heed to others' opinions or conventional moral constraints. As long as his behavior didn't actively infringe on anyone else's interests, then no matter how antisocial he seemed, Akiyama Shin considered it simply a lifestyle he had chosen. There was no right or wrong about it.

As for Kushida Kikyo, whether her underlying motives were to satisfy her desire for attention, build up social capital, or stem from genuine goodwill, as long as the decision she ultimately made was to help someone, Akiyama Shin felt he had no grounds to criticize her.

He rather admired an old Chinese saying: "A gentleman judges by deeds, not intentions; judge by intentions, and no one in the world is without fault."

The objective consequences of someone's actions often mattered more than their motives, which were difficult to fathom.

The commotion on the bus eventually came to an end.

A woman in a business suit who looked like a school employee couldn't bear to watch any longer. She stood up and offered her seat to the elderly woman with difficulty walking. Koenji Rokusuke didn't react at all and continued to toy with his mirror.

Kushida Kikyo softly thanked the woman. Though she still seemed a little aggrieved, she soon began quietly chatting with the other new students who tried to comfort her, her warm, approachable smile back on her face.

The bus traveled smoothly across the long Cross-Sea Bridge.

At last, it stopped in front of the grand main gate of Tokyo's Advanced Nurturing High School.

Akiyama Shin stepped off the bus with the crowd, and a bustling mass of new students came into view.

Most of them had gathered in front of the large electronic bulletin board near the school gate,

looking up as they searched for their names and class assignments.

The air was filled with the faint fragrance of cherry blossoms, mingled with the new students' anticipation, unease, and excitement about their new surroundings.

Akiyama Shin also intended to check his class assignment. He had just started toward the crowd

when,

a clear click of the tongue, filled with obvious disdain, came from behind him and to one side.

The sound was faint and nearly lost in the surrounding hubbub, but it still reached his ears with unusual clarity.

Akiyama Shin stopped, then calmly turned around. Standing behind him was a girl with strikingly beautiful features.

She had smooth, cascading black hair that fell to her waist. A lock of hair at the front on her left had been neatly braided and decorated with a pure-white ribbon, adding a subtle touch of elegance to her cool demeanor.

Her figure was well-proportioned, and her legs were long.

The same tailored school uniform seemed to give her an icy air that warned others to keep their distance.

Her features were as delicate as a doll's, but there was no warmth in her clear eyes.

Only a cold aloofness that kept others at arm's length, and a hint of undisguised contempt.

Akiyama Shin quickly searched his memory and was certain he had never seen her before.

This was their first meeting.

He didn't know her, and he had no idea what had prompted this sudden hostility.

Akiyama Shin wasn't someone who cared about what others thought of him, but this unwarranted and clearly personal hostility still made him decide to ask what was going on.

He was used to keeping himself informed. Any hostility he couldn't account for could become a potential problem later.

Even if the problem might be insignificant, it was better to understand it in advance than to remain in the dark.

He turned to the black-haired girl, his voice calm and even.

There was no hint of anger at the perceived insult; he sounded more as if he were stating an objective fact.

"May I ask if there's something you want?"

"If I heard correctly, that click of your tongue just now was directed at me?"

At his words, Horikita Suzune met Akiyama Shin's reddish eyes, partly hidden by his black hair, without the slightest hesitation.

She didn't seem to have expected him to ask so directly, but her expression didn't change. She simply spoke in a cool voice, as devoid of warmth as her gaze.

"I just have an instinctive aversion to men who lose their heads over appearances."

"On the bus, you stared at that girl who struck up a conversation for quite a while, didn't you?"

"Someone with such an obvious people-pleasing personality actually managed to hold your attention?"

Her tone carried a condescending note, as if she had already seen through Akiyama Shin's superficiality.

Just then,

a somewhat flat male voice, almost devoid of inflection, cut in, seemingly trying to ease the sudden tension.

"Um... I'm Kiyotaka Ayanokoji."

The boy standing slightly behind Horikita Suzune suddenly introduced himself. He had an ordinary center-parted, light-brown hairstyle and a handsome face, but his expression was blank and his eyes showed no emotion, making it difficult to guess what he was thinking.

"This is Horikita Suzune. We... sort of met on the bus just now."

Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, a boy born in the White Room and raised to become its greatest masterpiece.

But at that moment, he was following instructions to experience an ordinary high school life, and trying to imitate the behavior of an ordinary high school student.

However, he fundamentally lacked a deep understanding of emotions, social etiquette, and human nature.

Most of the time, his emotions remained in an almost perfectly tranquil state.

Yet now, faced with the sudden confrontation between Horikita Suzune and Akiyama Shin, he felt a little... at a loss.

Based on what little he had learned, this sort of situation was usually awkward. He chose to intervene partly because Horikita Suzune's behavior seemed too blunt and rude, which didn't conform to his understanding of ordinary social norms, and partly because he was currently trying to become friends with Horikita Suzune.

Even though she had no interest in that at all.

On the bus, he had already experienced Horikita Suzune's tendency to follow her own subjective impulses, say whatever came to mind without considering others' feelings, and communicate extremely poorly.

The only reason she had clicked her tongue at Akiyama Shin was that she had glimpsed him looking in Kushida Kikyo's direction on the bus. She had rashly categorized him as an ordinary boy who was dazzled by a pretty face, childish, and inexperienced with girls, and looked down on him accordingly. Ayanokoji could only shake his head at her confidence in jumping to conclusions based on such a one-sided observation.

Horikita Suzune merely furrowed her brow slightly at Kiyotaka Ayanokoji's unsolicited introduction and glanced at him coolly, but she didn't contradict him.

As she saw it, Kiyotaka Ayanokoji was a strange hermit with mediocre abilities who, for some reason, insisted on following her around and talking about wanting to be friends.

After listening to Ayanokoji's introduction, Akiyama Shin looked at Horikita Suzune, whose expression said that she was simply stating the facts, and understood.

He gave a slight nod, his tone still calm.

"Akiyama Shin, Class 1-D."

He gave the class information he had just glimpsed on the nearby bulletin board, acknowledging Ayanokoji's introduction and stating who he was.

Then he looked back at Horikita Suzune. He neither got angry at her accusation nor hurried to defend himself. He simply replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I see."

"Just because you saw me looking in a certain direction, you decided I was staring at a girl and concluded that I'm childish and superficial. Is that right, Horikita?"

He paused briefly.

His dark-red eyes, visible through his hair, calmly met Horikita Suzune's stubborn gaze.

"I don't care. I'm not so desperate for female attention that I'd lose myself staring at a stranger on a bus. As for what I was looking at or thinking about, I don't see any need to explain it to you. If you're used to judging people based on one-sided observations and believing your conclusions without question..."

Akiyama Shin's voice remained even, but his words carried a sharp edge.

"Then that only shows that your understanding may be no deeper than the level of the very people you look down on. A superficial person sees superficiality in everything."

Horikita Suzune's delicate brows drew together noticeably. Akiyama Shin's response was completely unexpected. He hadn't stammered out a flustered defense or grown angry at being seen through. Instead, he had met her with an almost cold calm and an unvarnished retort.

She had always been confident in her own judgment, but Akiyama Shin's eerily calm red eyes and unshaken composure made her doubt her snap judgment, if only by the tiniest amount.

His refusal to be affected by her looks or her presence, and even his accusation that she was superficial, didn't seem like an attempt to play hard to get. Though she wasn't good at socializing, she wasn't stupid. She could still tell the difference.

Her pride wouldn't let her back down right away, but the facts didn't seem to match what she had assumed.

She pressed her lips together, her face as cold as if covered in frost, but ultimately said nothing more.

She merely gave a cold snort and turned her head away, no longer looking at Akiyama Shin.

In a sense, she had temporarily withdrawn her judgment that Akiyama Shin was a shallow nerd and upgraded him to someone who might not be so simple. That didn't mean she approved of him; she had simply decided he was worth observing further.

Seeing this, Akiyama Shin couldn't be bothered to say anything more.

He had little interest in probing people like Horikita Suzune: overconfident, poor at communication, and possessed of a narrow, stubborn way of thinking.

In his view, people like her rarely changed their ingrained behavior unless they suffered some major setback. Analyzing her would be a waste of time.

He gave Kiyotaka Ayanokoji a slight nod, then ignored the two of them and headed straight for the crowded bulletin board.

Watching Akiyama Shin walk away, Kiyotaka Ayanokoji turned to Horikita Suzune, who still wore a cold expression, and tried to talk to her in his flat voice.

"Looks like not everyone is the way you first judged them, doesn't it, Horikita?"

Horikita Suzune didn't turn her head. Her voice was cool.

"He may not be as superficial as I first thought. At the very least, he showed a composure most people don't have when challenged."

She paused.

But her tone still held her usual subjective bias.

"However, he still didn't explain what he was looking at, did he? And he really was looking at that girl the whole time. Maybe he wasn't staring at her absentmindedly, but his attention was focused there. He's probably just a little better at hiding it than some ordinary boys."

She stubbornly clung to her initial judgment, refusing to admit she was wrong outright.

As she saw it, Akiyama Shin's refusal to explain was as good as an admission. She would never consider that he simply felt there was no need to explain himself to her.

Kiyotaka Ayanokoji fell silent for a moment.

He could tell that Horikita Suzune was grasping at straws, but based on what he had learned about social conventions, continuing to argue didn't seem wise.

He chose to keep quiet.

He simply memorized Akiyama Shin's name and face: someone with keen powers of observation, a calm mind, and an apparent immunity to beautiful girls.

Akiyama Shin didn't take Horikita Suzune to heart; he couldn't even be bothered to spend the effort analyzing her.

His attention, instead, lingered for a moment on Kiyotaka Ayanokoji. The boy looked unremarkable on the surface, his emotions seemed unusually steady, and the way he spoke had an air of ordinariness that seemed deliberately imitated. But Akiyama Shin didn't think he was simply born expressionless. It seemed more like the result of being shaped by a particular environment over a long period. He was consciously learning how to interact and react like an ordinary high school student.

"Kiyotaka Ayanokoji, huh..."

A faint trace of interest crossed Akiyama Shin's mind, but there was something more important he needed to confirm.

He squeezed into the crowd and looked up at the huge electronic bulletin board, searching for his name.

His gaze swept quickly over the lists for Classes A, B, and C, and finally found the name Akiyama Shin in the Class D section.

"Class D, huh..."

He repeated the words to himself, showing no surprise. His eyes moved over the information at the top of the board: four first-year classes, with forty students in each.

Forty students per class, for a total of 160 across all four classes.

This number strengthened Akiyama Shin's suspicion that the classes competed against one another.

Such enormous expenses could hardly be supported by government funding alone. The school must have had its own internal system for generating revenue or selecting students, and the division into Classes A, B, C, and D clearly suggested a hierarchy.

Under the banner of Meritocracy, this kind of hierarchy was almost certain to be tied to resource allocation and the evaluation system.

He understood where his weaknesses lay.

He wasn't an all-around genius, but an undeniable specialist.

In the sciences and physical education, he was confident he could reach the limits for someone his age. He was quick-thinking and physically fit.

However, in humanities subjects such as Japanese and social studies, his grades hovered around the average, and sometimes even fell slightly below it.

More importantly, he wasn't good at proactively working with a team. He could manage a conversation, but socializing was by no means his strong suit.

He could talk to people normally, but forming close connections and maintaining a broad social network were neither things he wanted to do nor things he was good at.

"The role of Class D..."

"If things work as they usually do, with Class A at the top and Class D at the bottom, does being assigned to Class D mean that the school assessed everyone's overall abilities or weaknesses through some unknown method as soon as we enrolled?"

Akiyama Shin analyzed the situation calmly.

"Was it the entrance exam?"

"That would certainly count as one way to assess us. Since humanities are my weak point and I'm not good at cooperating, was I deemed lacking in ability and assigned to the lowest class, Class D?"

It was a reasonable deduction.

If that was true, then the school's definition of ability was probably far more complicated and demanding than its public image suggested.

It didn't just value academics; it also cared about overall ability, including social skills and teamwork.

He stood in front of the bulletin board as cherry blossoms continued to fall and sunlight gilded the grand school buildings.

"Looks like life from now on won't be peaceful..."