It had to be said that although Sogo Doma had just been arguing over Eriri's situation, saying, "So-called external influences are merely external factors. The only one who can decide what they want to do is themselves. If Eriri herself had no interest in doujinshi, then..."
In truth, though, external influences were far from as simple as he made them out to be. Otherwise, the story of Mencius's mother moving three times would never have been passed down through the ages.
Of course, Sogo Doma was an exception. Other people were influenced by external factors, while he was capable of influencing those factors himself. That was why he could speak so righteously—because from his perspective, external factors really were no big deal.
Take Rumi Tsurumi, for example. She had originally been ostracized too, but under Katsura Kotaro's guidance, she learned how to unite classmates who had likewise been excluded, then crush the bullies in one fell swoop—
Start by uniting a minority, then use that minority as a foundation to unite the majority. Katsura Kotaro might not have known what "politics" was... but he understood perfectly well how to make more friends and fewer enemies...
And he had always acted according to that principle.
With Katsura Kotaro's personal example and instruction, it was hardly strange that Rumi Tsurumi could stir things up at school.
Yukino Yukinoshita had never understood why Rumi Tsurumi, an elementary school student, could so easily accomplish what she herself could not. That was because, under Katsura Kotaro's guidance, Rumi Tsurumi had never set her sights on the popular kids, or rather, those people with their own little cliques. Her targets had always been the students no one paid attention to, the ones with few or no friends.
Because that was what Katsura Kotaro had done as