Ichinose, Have You Ever Considered What You'd Do If Someone Sponsored You? (Continued)

Ichinose has lost her fig leaf.

After being brought here by Hachiman, she discovered that what she was trying to hide had been seen through by him.

And right now, Hachiman is looking at her.

"..." Ichinose.

Meow.

She seemed to be under immense pressure.

As a student with a strong sense of affability and excellent social skills, she actually understood that although Kushida also had the appearance of an angel, she was quite different from her. After getting along well with people, Kushida seemed to like breaking down the barriers in other people's hearts and then obtaining their secrets.

To become close friends.

And now, it seems that her own secret has been seen through by Hachiman.

"Alright." Ichinose finally gave in to the other person's gaze.

"Actually," she said, "It happened last month, not long after the Forestry Exam ended."

"I met a second-year student who was going through a lot of painful things. She was feeling really bad and even wanted to drop out of school. She told me about it."

"Then," Ichinose seemed somewhat hurt as well, and said, "I told her about my past, hoping to encourage her that there is still hope in life."

"But..." she hesitated again. She became hesitant to speak.

In other words, she realized that she might have been betrayed by this senior student.

"..." Hachiman pondered.

The timing of Ichinose's acquaintance with this upperclassman was quite subtle.

The Forestry Exam ended, which was also the time when Nagumo withdrew from the election. At that time, Nagumo did not want to withdraw from the power struggle, so he could only use Kiriyama to command the entire school.

Therefore, he needs to remove obstacles so that Kiriyama can become the Student Council President.

Only 111 second-year students and 132 third-year students remained.

Among them, third-year student Sakayanagi has a fixed 100 votes.

Therefore, even if Nagumo manages to gather all 32 remaining votes from the third-year students, he still needs the support of the first-year students.

We have the support of at least two classes.

Otherwise, he still wouldn't be able to surpass Sakayanagi.

Because Sakayanagi is guaranteed to get 40 votes from her own class, and then 100 votes from the third grade, so the minimum is 140 votes.

Hachiman and Sakayanagi were close friends, so Nagumo probably thought that Hachiman's class votes were also for Sakayanagi.

Then Sakayanagi will have a minimum of 180 votes.

Nagumo's situation has become dangerous; he must take down at least one and a half first-year classes.

The Ryuen's class was desperately poor, so they could be bribed with money, while Ichinose's side...

Suddenly, I felt like everything connected.

If Nagumo wants to collect votes, then Ichinose must defeat Ichinose's class. Defeating Ichinose will secure the votes for her Class Ichinose.

The fact that the Ryuen's class would attack Ichinose... clearly shows that Nagumo has already paid a price, enough to entice the Ryuen's class. He might even be able to arrange for the Ryuen's class to do something.

It's not surprising that Nagumo would choose the Ryuen's class to carry out the operation.

Last semester, Nagumo had already shown interest in Ichinose several times, only to have it thwarted by Hachiman on several occasions.

So he knew his image was ruined.

Then we need to change our approach.

But this alternative approach is disgusting.

First, arrange for someone to approach Ichinose and gain Ichinose trust. Kind people like Ichinose are easy to lure.

Isn't this just a repeat of the Kushida incident? However, Nagumo's methods are far more extreme than Kushida's. Kushida knew someone's secret, but he wouldn't reveal it unless there was danger, or he would have thought of using the secret to attack the other party.

However, Nagumo deliberately set a trap for Ichinose.

The reason is not hard to guess; it's probably Ichinose could actually be in Class A, but she was assigned to Class B.

Therefore, there must be some kind of point deduction.

So he wanted to see if there was anything there.

Hachiman doesn't think there's anything scary about Ichinose's dark past.

Because, according to the words of the experienced person Kikyo Kushida, rumors must be a mixture of truth and falsehood, so some of the rumors that were released were true.

1. Ichinose is not suitable to be Class representative. Even if she is in Class A now, she will fall down quickly because of her.

2. Ichinose has already been designated as the secretary of the next Student Council President.

3. Ichiya Haho is of bad character and should not be keeping the class's points.

These are the three most prevalent rumors that have been summarized so far.

The first point can be disregarded. It's probably true. Being a lamb in this school will get you devoured.

Is that the only thing that's true?

Uncertain.

Because these three rumors were spread at the behest of Sakayanagi.

When Sakayanagi went to arrest Ryuen's class, he must have caught the rumors that Ryuen's class wanted to spread and then discovered the unbelievable parts of them.

Therefore, Hachiman felt that point 1 was not the key point.

Secondly, it's possible that Ichinose will join the Student Council, because Sakayanagi is probably very confident that he can become the next Student Council President, so he might invite Ichinose to join.

According to Hachiman's thinking, someone like Sakayanagi might fire all the upperclassmen Student Council members.

So.

It's quite possible that they might ask fellow students to expand the Student Council's membership.

So, since two are already true, does that mean the third one must be false?

The third point is also noteworthy.

That is it.

Honami Ichinose is of questionable character.

If the first two conditions are true, then logically the third condition must be false.

His character has always been recognized by everyone.

There are people who like her no matter what age.

If someone is of bad character, no one will want to be near them.

But.

However, this is problematic.

Because.

Ichinose is also a very intelligent person, at least Kushida.

She is kind, good at socializing, and has many ways of dealing with things.

But.

Why have you remained silent when you've been subjected to such rumors?

Therefore, the last rumor might actually be true. Honami Ichinose has a dark side that cannot be exposed.

Sakayanagi probably learned of this from Ryuen's class, which is why he couldn't believe it.

That's why they chose to have Hashimoto spread targeted rumors—it was a test for Ichinose.

Even after that, Ichinose's choice remained conservative.

Therefore, she has probably already obtained the answer she wanted.

Ichinose has a history of misconduct.

However, Hachiman did not believe that Ichinose who would do something so heinous.

Take the last time when she was confessed to by her classmate Chihiro, for example; she was thinking of not hurting him.

And.

Nagumo's decision to send the Ryuen squad to attack clearly shows his bias.

He either wanted to coerce Ichinose into dropping out of school, Class Ichinose was leaderless and he could resort to underhanded tactics, or he wanted to help Ichinose and gain her favor.

Similar to a hero rescuing a damsel in distress.

Hachiman, however, tends to favor the latter.

Thinking this, Hachiman gazed at Ichinose and began to listen to her recount how her kindness had been taken advantage of.

Ichinose clasped her right hand in her left and became lost in sadness.

Her thoughts drifted back to before she enrolled in school.

[Honami, do you know that there is such a special school where you can enroll for free, and after graduation you may even be recommended for a job or enter your desired university without taking an exam?]

Most importantly, it's a boarding school; there's no tuition, and even living expenses are free.

During those six months, her homeroom teacher once told her this through the door.

So she came here.

Yes.

She lost the trust of others in the past, and now that she wants to start over and regain their trust, she can only start by trusting others.

So, she closed her eyes, thought about the painful things of the past, and spoke about the things she still couldn't forgive herself for.

Honami Ichinose comes from a single-parent family. She has only one mother and one younger sister. Her father abandoned them and ran off with another woman when she was very young.

He completely failed in his responsibilities as a father.

My mother worked very hard and was very strong, working two jobs to support her two daughters.

Ichinose is also very sensible. She knew about scholarships when she was in junior high school, so she studied hard and finally got a scholarship to Kōshi High School. However, she didn't intend to go to high school. She planned to work after graduating from junior high school so as to ease her mother's burden.

However, the mother disagreed; no matter how tired she was, she wanted her child to have the right to a normal education. But she eventually fell ill due to overwork.

The younger sister is also very well-behaved. Knowing the family's difficult situation, she didn't say where she wanted to go after her mother fell ill, and she didn't go shopping with her friends during holidays.

But on her birthday, her younger sister told her that she really wanted to buy the trendy hair clip that last year's celebrities wore.

One costs 10,000 yen.

It was a huge sum of money for them, and it seems that the mother was exhausted because she was trying to give her younger sister this gift.

She comforted her sister and told her to give up the gift for now, promising to buy it for her when she reached working age.

But it seems that the repeated concessions and abandonments made the younger sister become paranoid, crying and blaming her powerless mother.

So, Ichinose made a decision.

On her sister's birthday, she went to the store and stole the hair clip.

See? There are plenty of bad people in the world, aren't there? She's only making a mistake for her sister's sake. And she hopes this is just a loan, and that she'll repay the shop owner when she has the means to do so in the future.

Because it was stolen, she didn't wrap the hair clip in any packaging, but her sister was still very happy.

Seeing my sister's smile, the guilt in my heart lessened considerably in an instant.

Ichinose made her promise not to take him out casually.

But the younger sister broke her promise. She went to see her mother with the hair clip and showed it off.

This was the first time Honami had seen her mother so angry. She beat her severely and then confiscated her sister's gifts.

Then, disregarding her hospitalization, her mother dragged her to the shop and knelt down to apologize.

In the moment of humbly kowtowing, Honami realized just how grave the sin he had committed was.