When they arrived at the Student Council Room, Kiryuin Fuka showed the Student Council no respect at all. She sat down, crossed her legs, and acted like she was the one in charge.
Tachibana Akane poured her a cup of tea.
After taking a sip, she said, "You didn't call me here just to have tea, did you?"
Horikita Manabu tapped the laptop on the table twice, then turned it toward her and showed her a video. It was unmistakably footage of someone smacking her butt the day before.
Kiryuin shot Horikita Manabu a glare. If he weren't the Student Council President, she would've snatched the laptop and smashed it.
"Yesterday, you competed against a first-year student from Class A and lost, right? Afterward, you gave him a notebook."
"That's what this is about?" Kiryuin tilted her head. "I did give him a notebook, but there was nothing written in it."
"Then how do you explain this?" Horikita Manabu opened another video. It showed Yagami Shizuka explaining the S System to Class A.
"Huh?" Kiryuin looked just as curious. She'd been wondering why Yagami Shizuka had asked her for nothing but a notebook.
Now she saw Sakayanagi Arisu flipping through the blank notebook while someone else lectured at length.
How could anyone connect the two?
"Wait. Don't you have eyes? That's the notebook I gave him. There's nothing written in it. And is this Uninhabited Island survival thing real? I have no idea."
Horikita Manabu furrowed his brow and thought it over. "Is it possible you passed him the information some other way?"
"Do you have proof? Does being Student Council President mean you can accuse people without evidence? You can check my messages and call records. You can check the places I went yesterday, too. Without proof, I can sue you for slander."
Kiryuin Fuka wasn't afraid of the Student Council.
She hadn't done it, but even if she had, no one could convict her without evidence—not even the chairman of this school, let alone a Student Council President.
"President, I think we should be discussing how Yagami Shizuka came by the information," Tachibana Akane interjected.
"Whatever the reason, getting the information was his own ability, wasn't it?" Now that they'd stopped discussing whether she'd provided the information, Kiryuin grew bolder.
"Isn't that what you wanted? Are you going to ask him to explain himself? What would be the point of this exam then? Anyway, if he found out the information through his own ability, he didn't break any rules. That's his own talent."
Kiryuin had made a good point, and they couldn't disagree.
That was how this first-year exam worked. As long as he didn't break any specific rules—or they couldn't catch him breaking them—the information he'd obtained was valid.
"What I don't understand is why he asked you for a notebook. He couldn't have learned all the rules in such a short time. If he'd already figured them out, why come to you...?" Horikita Manabu offered his own theory.
"Could it be that he was just trying to hide his tracks? Maybe he'd learned about the school before enrolling.
"Besides, there's no way Sakayanagi Arisu knows nothing. Didn't he say Sakayanagi told him?" Kiryuin seemed to enjoy discussing the matter. She couldn't hide her excitement.
"Hold on." Horikita Manabu raised a hand to stop her.
Horikita Manabu found the reasoning confusing and wanted to sort through the information first. "Didn't you see how bewildered Sakayanagi Arisu looked, too?
"By the same logic, if Sakayanagi Arisu already knew the information, there'd be no need for all this trouble. There's only one possibility: the information had nothing to do with Sakayanagi Arisu or you. He found it out himself."
"So you're saying he knew all the information before enrolling, then targeted me after he got here and made me take the blame, while making Sakayanagi Arisu take the blame in his class?
"He made two people take the blame, clearing his name completely." Kiryuin found the possibility somewhat convincing.
With two people to take the blame, he could say it was the other person's fault wherever he went, creating a perfect loop without a single flaw.
But Tachibana Akane said, "Some of the information couldn't possibly have been available before enrollment, and there's no way Sakayanagi could've known it. Even the Student Council only just learned about it. So the theory that he got the information before enrolling doesn't hold up."
Hearing that, Kiryuin thought of another possibility. "Then the Student Council leaked the information, and you're blaming me?"
Horikita Manabu glanced at Tachibana Akane, then at the other Student Council members. After a moment's thought, a glint flashed in his eyes.
"I'm sorry for troubling you. This really has nothing to do with you. You can leave." Horikita Manabu pointed coldly toward the door.
"Wait. I think I could still help you discuss that student. Can you give me some information about him? I'm Detective Conan's top disciple, after all. I think I could be useful... Hey, hey..."
Under Horikita Manabu's icy gaze, Tachibana Akane dragged Kiryuin out of the Student Council Room.
"Has someone worth betting on finally appeared?"
Horikita Manabu pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His mind was exceptionally clear now.
He didn't believe anyone on the Student Council had leaked the information. According to Tachibana Akane, only she and Horikita Manabu knew it so far, and Yagami Shizuka had only interacted with a handful of people.
So how had Yagami Shizuka learned the information?
Through a teacher? Or the principal?
He couldn't figure it out. The less he understood, the more unfathomable Yagami Shizuka's talent seemed.
And a person like that was exactly the kind he wanted to find.
When Tachibana Akane returned, Horikita Manabu asked, "How athletic is Kiryuin Fuka?"
"Her overall physical education grade is A+. She's known as an athletic prodigy among the second-years, and she's even stronger than you, President."
"Cough... Cough!" Horikita Manabu choked on his tea.
The main thing was, he hadn't even known someone like her existed.
And if a girl who excelled at every sport could lose to that first-year student, didn't that make it even clearer how extraordinary he was?
"President, her academic performance is A+ as well. She scores over 95 in every subject, and most of her grades are perfect." Tachibana Akane added another reminder.
Horikita Manabu was even more surprised. He was certain there wasn't another student like Kiryuin in the whole school. There were none in the third year, and none among his former upperclassmen either.
So Yagami Shizuka had anticipated that she'd be his target. Even the timing and location of his helping her pay had been planned in advance.
"Had he also calculated that Kiryuin would run out of points?" Horikita Manabu murmured. Thinking through the whole sequence of events was frightening.
"She ran out of points right after the school year began. How did that happen?"
Tachibana Akane looked over some transaction records and the information they'd obtained. "She already had quite a bit of debt from last semester. Then her class points suddenly dropped, and after paying off her debts, she had almost nothing left."
Horikita Manabu propped his chin on his hand and thought it over. He felt it wouldn't be hard to find out she'd run out of points. What was strange was that no one had noticed the process of investigating Kiryuin.
Meanwhile, in the Class A classroom, the teacher who'd come to give a lesson was bewildered.
They'd never seen students so eager and attentive on the very first day of class.
After glancing at Sakayanagi Arisu, the teacher was filled with pride at having her as a student.
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