Campus Fishing Tips.

[Love is a terminal illness unique to humans.]

[If a human loses love, can they still be called human?]

[Some people are searching for 'love,' but I, who have severed my neural pathways, can no longer be called 'human' anymore.]

[Perhaps to me, 'love' is merely a product of civilization—love is composed of both the physiological arousal of our emotions and cognitive interpretation.]

"I'll make sure they take good care of you. Have you heard of a very special interrogation method? 'Hair Silk Milk Tea.'"

"It's when you grind up hair and mix it into coffee or milk tea. Hair is hard to digest and very sharp—it'll pierce the stomach and intestinal lining, causing abdominal pain like death."

Just hearing the description makes you start trembling, huh? What a fragile mind... Seishiki Otonashi mused.

Then he crouched down with a sinister grin, facing that fool's stupid expression—sweating from fear, throat dry, unable to speak. When it came to crushing a person's mental and psychological defenses, Otonashi still had plenty of tricks.

A twisted aura, bizarre, malevolent—this was the true form beneath the Color from Outer Space. Beautiful, pretty things that bring death, a monster that madly devours color and life.

Directly across from the school's main gate was the Police Station. The school's phones had an emergency call function. After all, they worried about students having accidents—that was understandable. Of course, the purpose was to protect the wealthy young masters and ladies; if something happened, the school couldn't escape responsibility. Commoner students? An afterthought. But you had to admit the design was somewhat humane.

"Unless this school deploys that waste Ghost Island, they have no right to interfere with the police. And you'll be expelled from here, burdened with a massive compensation debt. If you can afford to pay it off, fine. If not..."

Otonashi looked at him meaningfully.

"Then you'd better take on that loan, work your whole life to realize your value, and then go die."

Otonashi had no good impression of Ghost Island. Unable to control the current generation of working adults, he started controlling education, brainwashing the 'new generation of children' into tools for his 'political arena.' Since Ghost Island took power, this trend had become extremely obvious. That's why Otonashi didn't hesitate to call him a waste right on his turf.

With that matter perfectly resolved, Otonashi took off his wig.

"Phew~."

Otonashi now had two black briefcases in hand, containing what Zhou Changqing had gone out to the Headquarters to retrieve for him.

Copper coins engraved with various shapes, based on the 78 tarot cards, and a silver deck of playing cards.

The rest was left to the shop owner to handle. After all, his days as a Gambling Officer were in the past—he had no right to interfere. The remaining money was entrusted to the shop owner to convert from Neon Yuan into Points and deposit into the pawnshop, letting them work to recycle these Copper Coins. Whatever was left over served as commission and Zhou Changqing's reward...

If it were his past self, that Cheater's mind would probably have already collapsed. Otonashi was quite confident in that aspect.

After all, Otonashi used to be called Human Scum.

Now he was a student—he couldn't just reveal his true nature casually. Otonashi sighed, then put on what he thought was a perfect smile.

He'd have to keep an eye on that guy Kiyotaka Ayanokouji too. As for Arisu Sakayanagi, she was his trump card against Shigemori Sakayanagi. He hadn't drawn a good hand yet—only by firmly holding good cards would Otonashi appear before his opponent.

"Still need to work hard."

Leaving behind a meaningless phrase to motivate his numb, hollow mental world and appease the higher-dimensional existence within his brain, he left Keyaki Shopping Center.

(Afternoon)

"You sure have a lot of free time."

Otonashi was lying on the grass. Stuck into the fertile lawn was a wooden stick with its outline whittled down; Otonashi held another stick in his other hand, rubbing and rolling it.

The bag beside him contained earthworms he'd caught with his bare hands. They writhed like living soba noodles, twisting their mud-scented, freely stretching and contracting invertebrate bodies.

Kohei Katsuragi frowned at the bag of earthworms.

"Otonashi, if you want to catch beetles, I'll go with you. But catching these... that's a bit weird."

Kohei Katsuragi covered his face. Both Seishiki Otonashi and Morishita Ai were the type of free-spirited people he had no idea how to handle.

Kohei Katsuragi had come running over after Otonashi said he'd 'found a way to exploit the school's bug.'

"Would Little Fist Stone like fishing?"

"Don't call me Little Fist Stone. Fishing? Never tried it."

Kohei Katsuragi relaxed his brow a little at the word 'fishing.'

"Using earthworms catches fish faster, you know. Thanks to the school spending so much on maintaining the greenery, there are plenty of earthworms gathered here."

"You're not thinking of fishing here, are you?!"

"As expected of my Pokémon, Little Fist Stone! You get me so well."

Otonashi snapped his fingers, that mischievous smile like a playful little girl in her youthful years.

"Never mind when I became your Pokémon... You can't seriously be thinking of fishing at school."

Kohei Katsuragi had no idea where Otonashi came up with these crazy ideas. Fishing at school? Was that something a normal person could think of?

[Paying respects to the legendary author who got chased by security for fishing at the school lake.]

"The school's artificial lake and waterways do have fish, you know. Look, if we catch fish, we basically achieve free fish supply!"

"The problem is we don't have fishing rods. Even if we did, it'd be too conspicuous. Getting caught by campus patrol security and causing trouble or a bad impression wouldn't be good."

Kohei Katsuragi planned to nip Otonashi's 'ridiculous brainwave' in the bud.

"I already considered that, so I made a Spinning Bottle!"

Star Color pulled out the [Simple Poor Man's Fishing Rod: Spinning Bottle] from the four-dimensional pocket on his back.

Synthesis steps: [Homemade Fishhook + Foam Board + PE Line + Drink Bottle].

This was a skill Star Color had learned while wandering in the past, still fresh in his memory, and it counted as one of life's great pleasures.

(For the specific finished product, please see the author's note in this chapter.)

Kohei Katsuragi's face was full of question marks, then he conceded defeat. He could only let out a helpless sigh like an old father.

"You really came prepared."

"Come on, try fishing. This is a dead angle between two alternating surveillance cameras. No one usually comes by here. I spent a lot of effort finding this perfect fishing spot."

"You, you're never this serious in class. You waste your energy on things like this—I don't even know what to say to you."

"Being a good kid all the time, what's wrong with trying to be a bad kid once in a while?"

Star Color playfully stuck out his tongue.

"Let me teach you how to fish."

Star Color guided Little Fist Stone step by step from the very beginning, teaching him how to use the [Spinning Bottle] to fish.