[The Third Day of School: My First Encounter with Ayanokoji Kiyotaka (Thanks to Kurikara Tenzho)]

After leaving the school rules to Ryuen, Kujo adapted to his new student life and explored the school out of boredom.

During the hours when he had no classes, he could only move around Advanced Nurturing High School on the condition that he didn't disturb the other students' studies.

So Kujo's top priority was to figure out how many cameras were installed around the school and where they were located. That would further reduce the chances of getting caught if he broke the rules.

After that, he planned to look for places on campus where he could exercise.

Although Kujo had made a deal with Sakagami, he was completely free to skip classes.

Still, he occasionally sat in on interesting lessons to make himself more familiar to his classmates.

Kujo especially liked attending the last class of the day, since it gave him a chance to see his classmates nodding off.

He thought that was what ordinary students' school lives were supposed to be like.

Student cafeteria.

Kujo had realized that he'd been spending far too many of his personal points lately. He now had fewer than ten thousand points available in his account.

To make ends meet, he had no choice but to eat the free meal provided by the student cafeteria: the mountain vegetable set.

The school had a comprehensive support system for students with no personal points, ensuring that even those with zero points could get the basic nutrition they needed to maintain their lives on campus for three years.

Since he wasn't very familiar with the process, the upperclassman who had been waiting behind Kujo kept urging him to hurry as he got his ticket.

Kujo turned around.

And saw someone unexpected beside the ticket machine.

It was the protagonist of the original story, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka.

After picking up his meal, Kujo waited for him.

Ayanokoji seemed surprised that an unfamiliar student was waiting for him. Then he introduced himself:

"My name is Ayanokoji Kiyotaka. I'm in Class D."

Ayanokoji had learned the basics of how students greeted one another.

He was eager to make friends with boys in his year.

The person in front of him also looked like a first-year. His uniform was new, though he didn't seem like a talkative type.

"I'm a first-year too. I'm in Class C. My name's Kujo Makoto. You can call me Kujo."

Then Kujo and Ayanokoji chose an empty table and sat across from each other.

They chatted as they ate.

"What do you think of the food, Kujo?"

Ayanokoji wanted to know what an ordinary student would think of the same food in front of them.

"It's edible."

Ayanokoji found himself agreeing with Kujo's answer.

Then,

Kujo propped his head on one hand and asked with interest:

"Are you in any clubs? I think you'd be suited to the piano club or the calligraphy club."

Ayanokoji didn't know how to respond for a moment.

He tried to recall anything he knew about the subject, and finally remembered that the school did, in fact, have clubs.

Clubs were extracurricular organizations whose staff and funding were managed by the school and Student Council. Students could join them to meet more people and enrich their school lives.

So this was what ordinary students cared about?

Was this something people brought up in casual conversation?

Ayanokoji had learned another trick. He could use it to start conversations with others later.

Ayanokoji said he hadn't joined any clubs.

Then he asked Kujo the question he was most curious about:

"What do you think of the rumors going around the school lately?"

"Like what?"

"That you can buy anything you want at this school with personal points."

"That's definitely false."

Ayanokoji pressed him for an explanation:

"Why do you think that?"

Kujo pointed his chopsticks at the upperclassmen around them and made something up:

"Look around. The upperclassmen are eating vegetables just like us. If points were really that important, why wouldn't the older students trade some points from the younger ones? The first-years don't know anything, and the third-years are graduating in a year. You can't take anything from this school with you anyway. Even if they didn't steal anything, they could just trade some random stuff for points with the first-years."

Ayanokoji found this to be a fresh perspective.

But couldn't it just be that they liked eating vegetables?

He wanted to keep asking Kujo questions. He was curious about what Kujo would say:

"Then what do you think about the school giving students so many points every month? Come to think of it, I never really thought about how I'd spend a hundred thousand points. I'm eating vegetables now because I want to save money."

Ayanokoji's words didn't convince Kujo in the slightest.

Kujo knew Ayanokoji's character well, and he also knew that at this point, Ayanokoji was trying hard to pretend to be an ordinary student.

So Kujo kept making things up:

"Points are just points, not money. The school can only buy a limited amount of supplies from outside, so no matter how many points they give us, they can only circulate within the limits the school can support. Even if you had an unlimited balance, the most you could buy would still be the supplies available at the school."

In other words, if the school adjusted its prices, a hundred thousand points could be worth ten thousand—or even a thousand.

Ayanokoji took that lesson to heart.

So this was how an ordinary student thought?

Ayanokoji felt that he could learn a lot of new things from Kujo.

"I understand. You've cleared up a lot of my questions, Kujo. I have just one last one. If you wanted to move up to Class A, would you save up twenty million points and transfer individually, or try to raise your class points above the current Class A?"

Ayanokoji wanted to hear what this student named Kujo Makoto thought.

The earlier questions hadn't really been what he wanted to ask.

They were just common topics on the school's social platforms, which Ayanokoji had brought up to make conversation.

This was what he was truly curious about.

How would an ordinary student view the issue of graduating from Class A?

"Does graduating from Class A really mean everything? If you're strong yourself, it doesn't matter what class you graduate from. But since you said it was hypothetical, if I had to choose..."

As he spoke, Kujo shared the move Ayanokoji had made in the original story:

"If that day really came, I'd lead my class to Class A, then jump over to Class D and fight them."

After saying that, Kujo explained that he'd only been joking. There was no way something like that could actually happen.

But the idea he'd just suggested

left Ayanokoji deeply shocked.

After that, Kujo and Ayanokoji exchanged contact information.

Ayanokoji had made his first friend at the school.