Chapter 31

"Strength is what makes you feel fulfilled, isn't it?" Kushida Kikyo looked a little helpless. She hadn't expected Yuan Yuyuan to see right through her. "Honestly, could you let me finish? But you're right. So I started making changes, setting aside some of my study and exercise time specifically to get along with others."

"I don't know whether it was the result of my efforts or because people naturally found it easy to trust me, but everyone was willing to talk to me and share their troubles. Some even cursed out friends they seemed to get along with perfectly well in front of me. You can't imagine how happy that made me. I didn't care how I did it. As long as there was something I could be the best at, as long as people would say, 'Kushida is the most popular student in our school,' whenever they mentioned me, I was happy."

"Maybe it wasn't the best path, but it was the one I could go the farthest on. I started spending a lot of time managing my relationships with people, but those people..." Kushida Kikyo's face twisted into a grimace. But after so long living a lie, she'd mastered the art of controlling her expressions, and soon she calmed down again and continued her story. "They treated me like an emotionless wishing well, dumping every unhappy thought they had on me. The worst part was when a girl would come to me just to complain that the person she liked had looked her way without smiling. The negativity kept piling up until I could barely breathe. I couldn't take it anymore! They could come to me to vent, but not one of them was willing to accept that their wishing well had feelings of her own!"

"But then I found a great outlet, and that was..."

"The internet?"

"Are you even human?! How did you know that, too?"

Kushida Kikyo had meant to leave him hanging halfway through the story and make the creep who'd been spying on her squirm a little. But it turned out she was the one who looked like a fool, so she continued honestly. "It was a blog. I thought that if I posted anonymously, it would be fine. There are so many people in the world. How would they know that others hadn't gone through the same thing?"

"So I started spreading their secrets all over the internet. The most common ones were girls being jealous of someone's looks, or boys looking down on others for this or that. Maybe there wasn't much like that online, or maybe I just had enough dirt to spill. My posts spread from one person to ten, then from ten to a hundred, until they became more popular than I could control. But I still didn't delete them. It was as if, if I deleted those posts, all the negative feelings in them would come back to me and crush me all over again."

"Unfortunately, Lady Luck has never been on my side. My posts were inevitably discovered. She said she'd only told me about it. Tch, everyone says that. How was I supposed to know if it was true? She told the others, and just as you'd expect, I was ostracized. Yuan, take a guess: how did I get out of that situation?"

"When you're up against everyone, there are usually only three ways out. You could beat them with your own strength, but that isn't realistic for you. You could set one group against another, but once they explained why they were against you, I doubt anyone would help you. Even if you went to an adult or the school, all you'd get would be a half-hearted warning. That leaves making them turn on each other. You must have been holding something back—something that would make everyone believe you were two-faced."

Kushida lightly applauded Yuan Yuyuan. Unlike usual, the girl who was always so full of energy wore a smile that was faint, yet more genuine than any he'd seen on her before.

"Bingo! Since it was so easy for classmates to compare notes, I posted about grudges between students from different classes, sometimes even different grades. And even though they'd ostracized me, they hadn't kicked me out of the class chat. So while everyone was asleep, I brought out my weapon called 'the truth.' Basically, I exposed every little thing they'd done to each other."

"The next day, everyone showed their ugly side, but they were too busy to care about me. More than the person who'd leaked their secrets, they hated the people who'd talked about them behind their backs. Thanks to my posts, everyone found their enemies, and in the end, they all started fighting. I was the only one who got away unscathed. In the end, no one was punished, including me, the one who'd started it all. But the school board ordered our class to be disbanded."

Yuan Yuyuan listened to the whole story. Kushida's intelligence had exceeded his expectations, but her methods were more or less what he'd guessed.

"I'm impressed. Whether it was keeping a shred of reason even as the negativity crushed you, or making them turn on each other after your secret was exposed, both decisions were excellent. But you've been talking about what Suzune did at this school, and you haven't shown any desire to have her expelled. That means you weren't classmates, right?"

"That's right. But ever since I made the whole thing blow up, everyone at our school has known about it. There's no way Horikita doesn't know."

"But hasn't she still asked you to do things for her? You're too close to it to see clearly. Think about it: if she really knew, would she still be asking you to help her?"

Kushida thought it over. He was right! With the way Horikita looked down on everyone, she wouldn't have had any qualms about using the incident to threaten her.

"So she really doesn't know? But where are you going to transfer her? Class C?"

"Given her personality, she'd probably be happy to go to Class A. As it happens, someone in Class A has gotten on my bad side lately. I bet you'd love to see her fall from grace as soon as she gets there. I'll get her into Class A, and you'll help me take control of Class D. Deal?"

Kushida had thought Yuan Yuyuan was going to do Horikita a favor. She hadn't expected him to be even more underhanded than she was. He kept calling her Suzune, but now he was using her as a bargaining chip in a deal with Kushida.

"Deal. But why are you negotiating with me? Normally, you'd be the one threatening me."

Yuan Yuyuan considered it and decided that telling Kushida would do no harm. It might even earn her trust.

"A relationship like that is too fragile. Unless you're a masochist, you'll do everything you can to escape my control. I've always believed that mutual interests make the most reliable bonds between people. Threats should only be a last resort."

"And you've seen that I'm sincere. You can get rid of Suzune, and I can use Class D as my base. You need me to eliminate your rivals, and I need your ability to get along with anyone. We can both get twice as much done with half the effort. Why not?"

"How boring. I thought you'd be the kind of guy who knows how to treat a girl right, but all you think about is this sort of thing. Still, I'm really grateful to you." A hint of sadness crept into Kushida's expression, but she smiled as she embraced Yuan Yuyuan. "Yuan, you know, I've wondered so many times what my life would be like if someone found out what I'm really like now, or if someone at this school learned about my past. I couldn't even imagine it. But I never expected you not to care at all. Does that mean you actually like me better this way?"

"Whether you're like that or not makes no difference to me. If anything, this is how you should be. If you were really the way you act, you wouldn't have been assigned to Class D."

"That's so mean. I thought we were in love with each other." Kushida didn't pursue the subject. Instead, she looked at Yuan Yuyuan, who still seemed to have seen through everything, and asked, "What about Honami-chan? Honami isn't any worse than Katsuragi from Class A, so why was she assigned to Class B? And another thing—Yuan, you not being in Class A is the strangest thing of all!"