The Much-Anticipated Swimming Class

[暴力支配一切:@我真的没有匿名6457, I remember you. I'll dig you out and make you wish you were dead.]

[我真的没有匿名6457:@堀北学, he's threatening to kill me! I'm so scared...]

The lovely Saturday morning at Kouiku was shattered by a post uploaded to the forum in the middle of the night.

The video was so earth-shattering that even the students who were used to browsing the internet were left speechless.

As they enjoyed the spectacle, they exclaimed over Kouiku having produced such a prodigy. His achievement would surely go down in the school's history.

The heated discussion on the forum continued until the afternoon.

The school, which had remained silent the entire time, suddenly posted a new notice on the forum.

[Effective immediately, Kouiku is adding two new school rules:

First, students are forbidden from using excrement to attack other students in any form. (Yourself included.)

Second, students are forbidden from fooling around in the toilets or attacking anyone while they are using the toilet.]

[Additionally, regarding the fight in the toilets between Ryuen Kakeru and Yamada Albert of Class 1-C, Ryuen Kakeru, who instigated the incident, has been suspended for one week. Meanwhile, since Yamada Albert only defended himself and, to some extent, reminded the school to address the shortcomings in its rules, he will receive a verbal warning.]

In less than a week after enrolling, Ryuen Kakeru had accomplished what countless A-class graduates had failed to do—he had forced the school to add new rules, and not just one, but two!

Even decades from now, people would still remember the Toilet War God and King of Red History, who had once stood atop Kouiku...

"Hahaha..."

At the café, Mikage Touji read the school's announcement, slapped the table with both hands, and laughed until tears streamed down his face.

"You're having an awful lot of fun..."

Morishita Ran puffed out her cheeks and eyed Mikage Touji's phone suspiciously. Unable to resist her curiosity, she pulled out her own phone and opened the video.

"Ha... hahaha..."

Mikage Touji was laughing so hard he nearly fell over. He hurriedly reached out and covered Morishita Ran's big eyes with his palm.

"Kids... hahaha... shouldn't watch this kind of thing, haha... It'll dirty your eyes."

He turned to see Yamamura Miki opening the forum too and added, "Same goes for girls."

"..."

"Mikage Touji, do you like me?" Morishita Ran asked in a calm voice.

"Haha—gah!" Mikage Touji's laughter stopped dead. He immediately replied, "That's less likely than Shinjō and Daigo never crashing again."

"Then you're a super pervert, covering Morishita-sama's eyes and refusing to let go." Morishita Ran's voice turned sharp, and a chilly breeze, like a tiny blade, seemed to scrape against his face.

"Ahem." Mikage Touji came to his senses and quickly let go of Morishita Ran, whose anger was steadily rising. He put on a serious face. "Anyway, this isn't something girls should watch. Trust me."

"Mm." Yamamura Miki nodded like a little chick pecking at grain.

"You weren't even the one who did it. Why are you laughing so hard..." Morishita Ran slipped her phone back into her pocket and muttered under her breath.

The smile on Mikage Touji's face froze for a tenth of a second. He gazed at Morishita Ran as she poked at her parfait with a spoon.

It had all started with someone's can of coffee...

Chapter 19: The Much-Anticipated Swimming Class

In early April, Tokyo's average temperature was somewhere in the teens. The air felt slightly chilly, yet Advanced Nurturing had already begun its swimming lessons.

Mikage Touji sat by the pool, leaning back with both hands on the ground. His eyes darted around, following the girls in his class. Their youthful figures swam through the pool like fish, and their occasional laughter, clear as silver bells, drew a blissful sigh from him.

"What happened to Ryuen—that was your doing, wasn't it, Mikage?"

While Mikage Touji was making the most of his youth, Katsuragi Kōhei had already come up beside him without a sound. With his arms folded, he stared ahead and interrupted Mikage's blissful moment.

"You figured it out..."

Mikage Touji replied to Katsuragi while keeping his eyes fixed on the group of girls splashing each other playfully in the pool.

"It wasn't hard to guess. The time and place you let slip when you called me lined up almost perfectly with the video, and our Class A benefited the most from Class C's failed consolidation." Katsuragi Kōhei paused, his voice growing low. "If you'd told me about it then, I would've gone over there."

"What do you think?" Mikage Touji gave Katsuragi Kōhei a thumbs-up and proudly showed off his pearly white teeth. "My masterpiece..."

"It's a little... well... but I have to admit, it was very effective." Even Katsuragi Kōhei, usually so composed, was having trouble keeping a straight face.

"Then that's all that matters. Speaking of which..."

Mikage Touji smoothly moved on from the toilet incident. He pinched his chin and carefully looked Katsuragi Kōhei up and down. Katsuragi was wearing nothing but swimming trunks.

"I thought you just liked shaving your head. I didn't realize you were actually completely hairless."

Katsuragi Kōhei looked down at his own body. He wasn't self-conscious about it, and answered frankly, "You mean that? I have atrichosis. My body can't grow hair."

"I see..." Mikage Touji fell into thought.

The students from Class A finished changing and gradually got into the water. The pool water sloshed over the edge in waves, lapping against Mikage Touji's feet.

"Katsuragi, I've got a question."

"Mm... go ahead."

"Do you usually shower really quickly?"

"..."

"I-I guess you could say I do..." Katsuragi Kōhei was struggling to follow Mikage Touji's train of thought.

"You're bald. Do you still wash your head?"

"Of course."

Katsuragi Kōhei nodded solemnly and explained that not only did bald heads need to be washed, they needed to be cared for with face wash and body wash. He also had to protect his scalp from the sun in his day-to-day life.

Mikage Touji listened, nodding repeatedly to show that he'd learned something.

After he'd finished speaking, a classmate called to him from afar. Katsuragi Kōhei said goodbye to Mikage Touji and headed over.

"Next time, remember to call me in for something like this. I'll help out," Katsuragi emphasized once more.

"Got it."

After Katsuragi walked away, Mikage Touji silently poked his head over the edge of the pool and slapped the water.

"I win, Morishita! Remember to treat me later!"

A figure suddenly shot out of the still water, splashing Mikage Touji right in the face.

"Huff... huff... huff..."

Morishita Ran panted heavily, her little face flushed red.

"How long?"

"Two minutes and twenty-three seconds."

"Morishita Ran has set a new record!" Morishita Ran raised her hand and cheered loudly.

"Remember to treat me," Mikage Touji emphasized again.

Five minutes earlier, Morishita Ran and Mikage Touji had argued over whether Katsuragi washed his head regularly.

Morishita Ran thought Katsuragi's bald head looked so smooth and didn't get dirty easily, so he only needed to wash it now and then.

Mikage Touji, on the other hand, thought the shorter the hair, the more often you needed to wash your head. And since Katsuragi was bald, he was sure Katsuragi washed his head every day.

The outcome was obvious...

"Morishita Ran is a good sport!"

After completing the challenge, she swam off toward the other side of the pool on her own.

Was getting excited as soon as they came into contact with water an inherent trait of children? Mikage Touji watched Morishita Ran swim away and sighed.

He sat by the pool for a while longer, until a long whistle sounded. Mikage Touji looked up.

The gym teacher called from afar, "Everyone, come over and line up."

A second teacher had appeared who shattered Mikage Touji's preconceptions, following Mashima Tomoya!

As he stood in the lineup, Mikage Touji looked at the teacher's bulging arm muscles and thought, with a twinge of pain, of his former-life gym teacher, who was always getting sick, and his math teacher, who never got sick no matter the weather and often sent the gym teacher to the hospital with a forced elbow strike.

"Three students from the practicum group, huh..." The gym teacher sounded rather pleased.

"Then I'll get straight to the point. In a moment, I'll give you a preliminary test. The fastest student will receive a reward of five thousand points, and the slowest will stay behind for extra lessons..."

The gym teacher launched into his routine lecture. In short, it amounted to this—

I will put you through rigorous training to make sure you can learn to swim. In return, you'd better be prepared to face certain death.

Mikage Touji was sweating cold. He could swim...

Just a little...

So as soon as he got into the water, Mikage Touji, who was in the first group, promptly asked the person in the lane beside him for help.

"Kito, do you know any Quick Success Technique that can boost my speed by thirty percent in under a minute?"

Kito Hayato in the second lane seemed stumped by Mikage Touji's question. It took him a long moment to say, "No."

"That's a tough one."

Mikage Touji's face was half-submerged. He stared at the glittering water, which looked like fish scales, as bubbles rose before his eyes.

Was he going to end up in extra lessons on his very first try?

"Mikage, it's not like I'll come last," a gentle male voice said from the lane on the other side.

The speaker was a rather thin boy named Sanada Kosei. He was unfailingly polite and one of the top students in class.

"Sanada, can you swim?" Mikage Touji's eyes lit up.

Sanada Kosei: "..."

Your silence speaks volumes!

The outcome was just as expected: Mikage Touji took last place in the boys' group with an impressive time of forty-eight seconds.

By contrast, Kito Hayato showed no mercy. As soon as the whistle blew, he surged far ahead of Mikage Touji and took first place among the boys.

Incidentally, first place among the girls went to a purple-haired girl. Her long, nimble legs rhythmically slapped the water, while the soles of her feet, pink and white, bobbed up and down with the splashing waves. Watching her left Mikage Touji feeling thoroughly refreshed.

After the class was dismissed, Mikage Touji swam glumly toward the gym teacher's end of the pool.

On the way, Morishita Ran glided past him on his right, first doing freestyle, then breaststroke, then backstroke.

Mikage Touji felt as if she'd silently mocked him. He decided that from now on, he'd train hard before gym class and make sure he could finally crush the arrogant Morishita Ran!

When he reached the edge of the pool, Mikage Touji realized that the girl from the other group who'd stayed behind for extra lessons was his deskmate.

"Shiraishi, are you not very good at swimming either?" Mikage Touji felt a little more at ease. They were comrades in the same trench.

"I haven't swum in a long time, so it felt a little strange to suddenly get in the water. But..." Shiraishi Asuka suddenly exerted herself and drifted over to Mikage Touji with the waves. "I didn't expect to be with you, Mikage. Hehe... I don't mind this at all."

Her pale golden hair brushed Mikage Touji's nose. A faint fragrance from her hair mingled with the distinctive damp smell of the pool, filling his lungs.

"Your physical abilities aren't great, but they're definitely not bad either. How did you end up in last place...?"

As Shiraishi Asuka spoke, she reached out a slender finger and curiously poked the muscles on his body, a strange gleam in her eyes.

"Ahem." Mikage Touji felt a little embarrassed and leaned back. "It's a technical issue. Can't be helped."

"It's okay. I'll keep you company," Shiraishi Asuka reassured him softly.

"Shiraishi..."

"But forty-eight seconds is still pretty slow. You'll have to work hard," Shiraishi Asuka said with a smile, delivering a devastating blow.

Mikage Touji, who had just started to feel touched, was instantly doused in icy water.

"Are you the two?" The burly gorilla of a gym teacher came up behind them and checked the clipboard. "Mikage Touji and Shiraishi Asuka, forty-eight seconds and fifty-eight seconds. You're a bit slow, but that's within the normal range. With a little effort, you'll catch up soon."

After that, the gym teacher had them swim another lap, pointed out the mistakes in their movements, and explained a few swimming tips to each of them.

The gorilla teacher was surprisingly good at teaching. Combined with the impressive senses his psychic abilities gave him, Mikage Touji was swimming properly in no time. He could even take a moment to chat with Shiraishi Asuka in the lane beside him as they swam.

"Shiraishi's at fifty-eight seconds, and she still made fun of me for getting forty-eight."

"Is that so?" Shiraishi Asuka said. "Boys and girls are different. Girls can be delicate, but if boys are too delicate, people will laugh at them."

"Now that you mention it—"

Mikage Touji suddenly stopped and looked Shiraishi Asuka over again. She was swimming alongside him and chatting at the same time.