As the saying went, endure for a moment and you grew angrier the more you thought about it; take a step back and you felt more cheated the more you thought about it.
As Tomoya Aki walked away, the more he thought about it, the more stifled and enraged he felt. Why? All he wanted was to cut in line, wasn't it? He had already gotten down on his knees and bowed! Even if they refused to give up their spot, they didn't have to step on his head or grab his neck to threaten him!
Even his father, disappointed as he was in the persona Tomoya had put on, had never stepped on his head while he was bowing in apology, much less grabbed his neck and threatened to toss him back into the furnace for a reset!
Tomoya Aki refused to accept this. What storms had he not weathered? What tactics had he not used? People said otaku got isolated and bullied, yet hadn't he used his fabricated persona to make countless people accept him? Apart from that initial period when he had been ostracized, hadn't Tomoya Aki made himself into quite the influential figure?
Though ever since back then, the class's opinion of him had only been around forty-sixty. In other words, forty percent thought Tomoya Aki was decent, while sixty percent had neither a good nor bad impression of him.
That ratio might have seemed a little low, but Tomoya knew that those forty percent were the ones who admired him. The persona he performed was living the way those people never dared to live. If he wanted, they could become his followers at any time.
The proof was Iori Hashima, once Tomoya Aki's friend. With just a nod from him, that guy who looked like