[Eighth Day of School] Shiina Hiyori's Confession

The final bell of the school day finally rang.

The lingering echoes of the broadcast slowly settled within the Class C classroom.

At the podium, the teacher tossed a short, used-up piece of chalk into the tray with a soft clatter, then briskly announced the end of class.

As the adult's figure vanished at the end of the hallway, the frozen air in the classroom seemed to melt in an instant.

The students let out a collective sigh, shedding the rigid, formulaic posture they had maintained throughout the entire day.

The sounds of shifting desks and chairs, the clicking of opening and closing bags, and fragmented chatter quickly intertwined as the people around them gathered into small groups with an unspoken rhythm, flowing out toward the classroom door one after another.

"Whew..."

Not wanting to squeeze into the crowd, Kujo simply sat in his seat, silently watching everyone leave.

Once the classroom was mostly empty, he slowly stood up and walked toward the other side of the room.

Like the other students, Kujo was also looking for his own small circle.

Looking out the window, he realized that his usual lunch companion was already nowhere to be seen.

Without needing to think, the other party had surely gone off on a date with the beauty sitting next to him.

Kujo had long since grown accustomed to being alone.

Having lived two lives, he was already used to the monotonous routine of a three-point line between home, school, and the cafeteria.

Even after transmuting into a familiar novel world, Kujo found that for the next three years, he would still have to struggle to keep up with academic advancement and exams.

This had long since drained away any sense of novelty he felt when he first arrived in this world.

What should have been a blood-pumping script of a class underdog story had been lived out by Kujo as a mundane daily grind of checking in at the dorms, the school building, and the cafeteria.

Most importantly, the private points in his account were already running low; even with strict frugality, it would be hard to make it to the end of the month. He could only comfort himself every day that everything would get better.

Unfortunately, this was Advanced Nurturing High School, the school that operated on the principle of meritocracy.

Whenever he thought of this, Kujo couldn't help but feel a hint of confusion about his future student life.

Only those who graduated from Class A were guaranteed the treatment of directed advancement or employment, and Kujo was currently in Class C, only one rank higher than the bottom-tier Class D.

But compared to the lower-ranked Class D, it was no exaggeration to say that this was the class with the lowest potential in the original work, a class completely unrelated to rising to Class A.

As of now, Kujo didn't even have the confidence to avoid being expelled by the school, let alone rising in class or advancing in his studies.

The classroom grew increasingly empty, and the last few sounds of laughter vanished outside the door.

Kujo withdrew his gaze from the window, only to realize that he wasn't the only one left in the classroom; sitting not far away in the back diagonal row was someone else.

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She was a budding beauty with a promising future.

Her cherry-pink lips were always pursed in a shy arc, the stray hairs behind her ears trembled slightly as she turned the pages, and her fingertips danced lightly on the corner of the book.

Kujo noticed that every time the girl turned a page, she pressed the corner down neatly, clearly showing she was a girl who cherished her books.

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Perhaps she had finished a chapter, or perhaps she was moved by the excessive silence of the classroom, but she suddenly looked up, and without any warning, their eyes met.

The classroom fell into a subtle stillness, where even the sound of the air moving seemed audible.

For Kujo, it was more accurate to call it awkward; almost instinctively, he was the first to look away.

But even so, Kujo could still feel that the girl's gaze had not left; it remained quietly fixed in his direction.

I should probably leave now...

Taking advantage of the fact that the inexplicable atmosphere hadn't yet fermented, and before he could do anything more discourteous, getting up and walking out of the classroom as if nothing had happened was the wise choice. But before Kujo could put this into practice, the girl called out his name first.

"Kujo-kun."

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The girl's voice was very soft; Kujo didn't even react to whether she was calling him.

He turned his face hesitantly and pointed at himself silently with his finger.

"Kujo-kun is staying quite late today, too?"

Kujo was slightly taken aback.

He had no prior interaction with this girl; it was no exaggeration to say he wasn't even sure if she knew his name correctly.

This aimless small talk left Kujo somewhat confused, and he had no choice but to remain silent.

In reality, Kujo was not entirely ignorant of the girl; he knew the entire story of this girl from the original work, and even knew that in the latest plot, she was jokingly referred to by everyone as the "final winner."

Because he was a transmigrator.

A transmigrator who had arrived in the world of Classroom of the Elite, chose to enter Advanced Nurturing High School for special reasons, and later happened to be assigned to Class C as an ordinary student.

Now, facing this very important Class C character from the original work, Kujo never expected that someone like him would one day have his life intersect with hers.

"My name is Shiina Hiyori." She had already packed her bag, but showed no intention of leaving immediately; instead, she sat up straight and introduced herself to him clearly.

Kujo politely exchanged names with her, but the girl seemed to have no intention of letting him off the hook just like that:

"Kujo-kun, do you like books?"

The question itself was ordinary enough; if asked by anyone else, it would likely be dismissed as a perfectly standard social inquiry. Yet, here and now, coming from her, it carried an indescribable, subtle weight.

Kujo's heart gave a slight skip, though he reminded himself for the umpteenth time not to get ahead of himself.

That is absolutely not what she meant.

Just because he was a transmigrator, he shouldn't arrogantly assume he was the protagonist, a person naturally destined to attract the affection of random girls.

That was completely impossible.

He decisively avoided all potential danger flags.

He thoroughly extinguished the last remnants of delusion in his heart.

He would stay far away from any mundane high school romance story.

Over the next three years, he would either prepare twenty million points to transfer to Class A and enjoy the power that came with graduation, or he would build good relationships with the prominent characters from the original story and try to scrape by.

That was the only way.

Only by doing this could he survive in that cruel Japanese society after graduating from this school, living the life of an ordinary person and never repeating the failed existence of his past life.

Reinforcing these thoughts, Kujo met her gaze, keeping his tone calm and distant:

"Shiina-san, I don't really read much. Rather than reading other people's stories, I prefer to work hard for my life after graduation."

This was, without a doubt, a rejection.

Three years would pass in the blink of an eye; the brief time spent at this school would fade once they entered society, and no one would live in the past forever.

Kujo was self-aware; he was an intensely unromantic realist, and his life had no intersection with the girl before him.

But to his surprise, after hearing his words, the girl didn't show any embarrassment or disappointment at being rejected; she simply sighed with admiration:

"Kujo-kun is so mature."

Hearing this, a hint of self-mockery welled up inside Kujo.

He had simply been stripped of his unnecessary edges and fantasies by life.

To put it bluntly, he was just a weary adult in a teenager's skin, one who had been repeatedly hammered by reality.

Yet, Shiina seemed very firm in her perspective, her voice shifting from its initial softness to something more animated:

"Does that mean... if I could make you like reading, Kujo-kun? Would that change the way you think?"

She unconsciously clasped her hands together, fingertips touching, as if trying hard to maintain a calm expression.

She... seemed to be making the suggestion quite seriously, perhaps even... with anticipation.

Kujo was completely stunned.

It wasn't his first day in this world; he had already been at Advanced Nurturing High School for several months. He never expected that the tiny "butterfly effect" would first ripple through and cause such a massive deviation in this girl who lived among books.

Before he could digest this information, Shiina spoke again.

This time, her voice was softer, yet every word was clear.

"I actually like you, Kujo-kun."

Listening to the girl, Kujo felt his thoughts freeze entirely; he couldn't utter a single word.

"I like books, but I don't like lying. So, I was just pretending to read earlier, because~ I was waiting for Kujo-kun to notice me."

!!

"Someone like me will probably cause all sorts of trouble for you in the future, won't I?"

?!!

"If you don't hate me, Kujo-kun, you can just call me by my name from now on. But I'll only call you Kujo-kun, because I really like calling you that."

Whenever the future Kujo looked back on this moment, he felt he truly wasn't a good person.

He was like a fool who, seeing an entire forest of cherry blossoms unfolding before him, failed to appreciate it, only to stop and lose his way because of a single leaf with a unique pattern that happened to fall into his palm.