Of course, by "going back the way they came," he meant obeying the arrangements. It couldn't be helped—one person alone couldn't possibly stand against the Shinomiya Family, one of the Four Great Conglomerates, unless that person was Sogo Doma!
Perhaps the Natsukawa Family would ease their restrictions on Masuzu Natsukawa because of her. At the very least, if Masuzu Natsukawa really got into the University of Tokyo, an arranged marriage probably wouldn't fall upon her. After all, the value a University of Tokyo student could bring might not be any less than that of a marriage alliance...
However, if the marriage partner was one of the Four Great Conglomerates, or a powerful family like the Doma Family that was hardly inferior to them, then even getting into the University of Tokyo wouldn't spare Masuzu Natsukawa from becoming the subject of an arranged marriage.
Thinking about it carefully, though, it wasn't strange at all. The value a University of Tokyo student could create for their family was unknown. In this country, where class divisions had long solidified beyond breaking, no matter how outstanding a University of Tokyo student from an ordinary background was, at most they could turn their own family into a distinguished one—still the most inconspicuous kind among distinguished families.
Some University of Tokyo graduates even went straight into becoming corporate drones. Of course, with the University of Tokyo threshold behind them, even as corporate drones, they started higher than others. They could be called middle-management corporate drones.
Only University of Tokyo students who already came from privileged backgrounds had truly immeasurable value. Take someone like Keiryu Doma, a powerhouse who had directly propelled his family into the stratosphere—he was the very pinnacle of what people dreamed of when they thought of "elite university graduates."
Unfortunately, in all these