Japan, Mount Fuji
The winter dusk took away the last of the warmth.
The desolate, chilly wind stirred faintly among the mountains.
In a stretch of extremely secluded wasteland, a badly injured boy slowly climbed out from a pile of bones.
Gazing at the lifeless scene around him, the boy showed not the slightest fear. Instead, his eyes brimmed with excitement.
"I actually came back to life..."
The boy's lips parted slightly as he murmured to himself, still seeming unable to believe he had survived.
"Whoosh~"
A gentle breeze stirred. The next moment, a freshness unlike anything he had ever felt welled up inside him.
The feeling of nature filled the boy with delight, shaking him to his core.
"I'm... really alive again~"
The boy's hands trembled as silent tears streamed from his eyes.
Thinking of the unfathomable cruelty and darkness of the world he had once lived in, he realized that here, he had the freedom everyone dreamed of.
Only now did he finally understand why so many astonishingly gifted predecessors would rather die than escape that white prison. "So that's why."
"But~ am I really lucky...?"
Images from his memories gradually returned to his infancy.
Swaddled by his parents, the newborn baby hadn't cried at all. Instead, he'd worn a smile.
"I really did cross over into another world!"
"And it's the world of Classroom of the Elite. This is great, just great!"
But, to his despair, this life hadn't lasted long. Just as he'd thought his future was about to brighten, something happened.
A strange car accident took his parents' lives. Then a mysterious person carried him, still swaddled, to a facility for cultivating geniuses called the White Room.
From then on, it was less like I was living in the world and more like I was living in hell.
I endured endless, insane training in academics, physical conditioning, competition, schemes, killing, human nature, and countless other things.
I'd thought there was no way I could last even a day. But the White Room truly showed me that it understood me better than I understood myself...
In the end, I became a machine that did nothing but follow orders~
Until that day...
A boy named Ayanokoji Kiyotaka appeared~
At last, I—the machine guarding the gate—was defeated...
I'd thought my life had reached its end.
Yet beneath the scans of the many instruments overhead, a life that shouldn't have survived miraculously rose from a small mound of corpses.
"Tha..."
The boy murmured softly, his complicated gaze resting on the earth that had buried him. He didn't know why he had come back to life, but he could feel one thing for certain: he had grown stronger—stronger than anyone...
The March sunlight always seemed especially cold.
On a bustling street, a shabbily dressed boy watched an advertisement playing on a digital wall, his expression blank as passersby looked at him strangely.
"Advanced Nurturing High School: the highest standard of education in the country, the highest standard of safety in the country, the best treatment in the country..."
"The school receives extensive government funding and occupies a fully enclosed island campus. As long as you're capable enough, this is where you can truly put your abilities on display."
Any job or resource an ordinary person could dream of would be yours to choose if you graduated from this school as a member of Class A.
The passionate narration and the school's magnificent scenery made the boy's eyes light up.
What's more, to protect its students and manage the school, it had adopted a fully enclosed education system. Until they dropped out or graduated, no one could force their way in, and the students couldn't enter society either.
To the boy, though, the school that seemed like a cage made his pupils tremble.
"Could this be fate~?"
"Heh..."
As he looked back on the past, scene after scene, moment after moment, tears streamed down the boy's face.
For the first time, his trembling, icy voice poured out with something like emotion.
"This time... my life belongs only to me~"