When it was just her and Tanaka Yukishin.
She could relax a little more.
Karuizawa Kei was Tanaka Yukishin's legitimate girlfriend, after all.
She really didn't know how to face her.
When she got no reply, Karuizawa Kei didn't keep teasing her.
She knew when to stop.
As a girl, accepting her darling's desire to build a harem already showed how much she loved him.
As for actively helping him build one, that was impossible.
Even if her body couldn't take it, she still wanted to keep him to herself a little longer.
The two of them headed toward the clubroom.
Meanwhile, Chabashira Sae returned to the classroom office.
She sat down and fell into deep thought.
Of the Big Three singled out at the start of the school year, two were doing nothing, and the other was slacking off.
Class Points had started plummeting over the past few days.
She had seen it all and kept it in mind.
Unfortunately, she couldn't say anything.
Since most of them hadn't realized how important it was, she would let the class rankings make them feel the pressure.
With the capable students refusing to get involved, that was probably the best choice.
What a headache.
Capable students had plenty of options.
Class A wasn't a necessity for them.
So how was she supposed to get these three SSRs moving?
Chapter 53: Wrapping Up the Clubs
Ever since the day he entered the school, going to clubs every day to grind through their challenges had become part of Tanaka Yukishin's routine.
But a school with over four hundred students had only so many clubs.
On April 28, he reached the final stop—the Kendo Club.
Koenji Rokusuke came along as his friend and watched the last bout.
"I'm so jealous. Points are flowing into your account like a river."
No matter how many times he saw it, he'd never imagined that points could be earned like this.
It wasn't a limitation of his perspective or way of thinking. It was simply that his own abilities had never led him to consider it.
"Koenji, if you want to give it a try, I can let you take on the Kendo Club."
Tanaka Yukishin tried to egg him on.
These people had been watching him for nearly a month.
Wouldn't it be fun to hear, "I could do that too"?
Koenji Rokusuke sensed the "malice" hidden beneath Tanaka Yukishin's encouragement and decisively refused.
"Forget it. I don't have your ridiculous stamina."
"What a shame. I wish I could watch this forever."
The speaker was Kiryuin Fuuka, a second-year student and a female version of Koenji.
She'd been thoroughly enjoying the spectacle these past few days.
Although most of the time, the matches had been one-sided beatdowns.
But a one-against-many showdown like this was a feast in its own right.
"If you're interested, Senpai, I can let you take on the Kendo Club too."
"No, no. I'm a girl."
"Men and women are equal. Believe in yourself. You can do it, Senpai."
"Even if you talked until the end of the world, I still wouldn't do it."
"Tch."
After failing to persuade her, Tanaka Yukishin turned to chat with Karuizawa Kei and Sakura Airi.
Laughing and chatting, the group arrived at the Kendo Club.
The Kendo Club's president, Miyajima Hayata, was waiting in front of the main entrance.
"Ah, the Kendo Club president isn't a beautiful girl, but a burly guy. What a disappointment."
Looking at the handsome young man in front of him, who was 180 centimeters tall, muscular, and well-proportioned, Tanaka Yukishin made a bold declaration.
Miyajima Hayata didn't get angry. He simply played along.
"I'm sorry I'm not a beautiful girl."
"Although I don't mean to discriminate against women, in activities involving physical contact, there are inevitably fewer female experts than male ones. That's determined by the differences in men's and women's physical structures."
As he spoke, Miyajima Hayata led the group through the activity room and into the inner room.
The Kendo Club's activity room at Advanced Nurturing High School was at the end of the north corridor on the third floor of the activity building. Pushing open the old oak door, which creaked softly, they were greeted by the lingering scent of pine resin left behind by the bamboo swords.
The 270-square-meter Japanese-style room had dark-brown wooden floors, their surfaces worn smooth and glossy by years of practicing swings.
The east wall was divided into six sections by tall windows. Sunlight filtered through beige curtains, casting dappled shadows over the silver-gilt kote displayed on the racks.
A vermilion shrine stood in the center of the north wall, with three unsharpened real swords fanned out before it. Nameplates honoring former team captains hung beneath the sword guards.
To its right, the honors wall displayed awards from the past decade, including a banner for reaching the quarterfinals of the national high school team tournament in Heisei 23 and a medal for winning the Kanto Region Rookie Tournament...
The most eye-catching item was the certificate for last year's Kanagawa Prefecture Tournament championship, its gold-leaf border gleaming under the fluorescent lights.
Above two rows of black folding chairs in the corner hung a half-sheet of Japanese paper, inked with the words "Zanshin." The ink had begun to bleed slightly.
More than twenty bamboo swords leaned against a paulownia rack on the west wall, their newly made pale-yellow blades intermingled with old swords darkened by years of use.
The protective chest armor was neatly arranged beneath the rack, each set labeled with a club member's surname.
At that moment, six second-years were engaged in ji-geiko. Their dark-blue hakama rippled as they slid across the floor, which thudded rhythmically beneath their footwork.
The supervising instructor tapped the timer, and his shouts mingled with the sharp cracks of clashing bamboo swords, startling the white pigeons by the window.
The flapping wings mixed with the distant clamor of the sports field, gradually fading into the April sunshine.
They reached the inner room.
Tanaka Yukishin took the bamboo sword someone handed him and casually swung it, stirring up a whoosh of air.
Miyajima Hayata stood opposite him.
He quietly waited for Tanaka Yukishin to get used to the bamboo sword.
A few minutes later, it felt much more comfortable in his hands.
Tanaka Yukishin stopped and spoke.
"How are we doing this? Lay out the procedure."
"Tanaka-kun can decide. I don't know how skilled you are, after all."
After thinking for a while, Tanaka Yukishin recalled that Japanese kendo basically had eight slashes and one thrust.
They were Tangzhu (↓), Kesa Slash (), Reverse Kesa Slash (↘)), Left Pheasant (→), Right Pheasant (), Left Upward Cut (↗), Right Upward Cut (), Reverse Wind (↑), and Thrust—for nine techniques in all.
He didn't know any fancy moves anyway.
So he might as well strike eight times using speed and strength.
"Listen, Senpai, you know I've never practiced kendo. So I'll just do two crosses. For the first, a regular cross, I'll wait until you're ready, then swing from where I'm standing. You can counterattack, block, or do whatever you like."
"After that, I'll do a diagonal cross, with movement. I'll wait until you're ready before attacking again. How does that sound?"
"Once you're ready, eight strikes... should be enough."
Miyajima Hayata gripped his bamboo sword and nodded.
As the last club's gatekeeper,
he'd already heard from the other clubs that he wasn't a match for Tanaka Yukishin.
But as a descendant of a samurai family, he couldn't back down without a fight.
The slanting sunlight passed through the beige curtains, dividing the floor between the two men into a line of light and shadow.
After the Dragon Bloodline was completed, Tanaka Yukishin had spent a month acclimating to it.
His physique had improved by thirty percent compared to before he entered the school.
He made a rough estimate, then decided to stick with his usual thirty percent strength.
The bamboo sword swept upward from below in a reverse crescent, its path tearing through the dust and creating a visible swirl of air.
This unorthodox Reverse Wind upswing, carrying the force of a blade cutting through the wind, aimed straight at Miyajima Hayata's crotch and chest.
Miyajima Hayata stamped down hard with his heel and brought his sword down in a Tangzhu strike like a guillotine.
The two bamboo swords collided with a muffled thunderclap, tiny splinters bursting from the point of impact.
Watching from the side, Koenji Rokusuke saw Miyajima Hayata's knuckles turn white beneath his kote. It was proof that he'd poured his entire body weight into his hands.
The wooden floor dented slightly from the force, and the hanging Zanshin scroll swayed faintly.
"Do you need a break?"
Tanaka Yukishin raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected Miyajima Hayata to use his body weight to match thirty percent of his strength.
But the next few strikes wouldn't be so easy to meet with body weight.
"No."
Miyajima Hayata rotated his wrists to loosen his muscles, then readied his sword.
The second strike came down vertically at once, leaving a curved afterimage of the bamboo sword. Miyajima Hayata shifted into a diagonal, 45-degree defensive stance.
As the two swords were about to collide, Karuizawa Kei instinctively clutched Sakura Airi's sleeve. The latter's hands trembled slightly as she held up her camera.
At some point, Koenji Rokusuke's hands-in-pockets stance had turned into a forward-leaning arms-crossed pose. Even his breathing had grown shallow and rapid.
The instant the bamboo swords met, a grating crunch rang out. Within 0.3 seconds, the defender's knees bent three times to absorb the impact.
In an instant, the scent of pine resin filled the air, a common result of high-intensity strikes.
Sakura Airi's camera captured a shocking sight: Miyajima Hayata's bamboo sword had bent into an exaggerated C shape, his left knee slammed against the floor, and sweat spattered across the boards.
The instructor had somehow come in, and Kiryuin Fuuka glimpsed the number on his timer. From his defensive stance collapsing to him dropping to one knee, the whole process had taken just 1.47 seconds.
Tanaka Yukishin looked at Miyajima Hayata's trembling hands, shook his head, and turned away.
After Miyajima Hayata had replaced his bamboo sword and rested, Tanaka Yukishin swung horizontally.
Facing the third strike, a Left Pheasant, Miyajima Hayata had recovered his stance and chose to counter with a crosswise strike.
When the two bamboo swords collided, Karuizawa Kei's skirt suddenly fluttered, stirred by the faint breeze created by the sword pressure.
As Miyajima Hayata's hands went numb and his strength gave out, his bamboo sword spun toward the shrine, scraped past the gold-lacquered sword rack, and embedded itself in the paulownia display rack.
Amid the flying splinters, one happened to lodge in the middle character of the "Heisei 23rd Year Banner."
The entire dojo fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the humming vibration of the bamboo sword in the rack.
Koenji Rokusuke suddenly burst out laughing. "That's way more thrilling than a home run flying out of the baseball field!"
His voice echoed through the vast room, rousing the onlookers.
From now on, I should be able to post two 4,000-character chapters a day.
Probably...
Before you continue