Yukinoshita's Correction Method

Yukino Yukinoshita quickly understood Shizuka Hiratsuka's frustration. "So that's why you wanted to keep him in the Service Club."

"Helping others is a good thing, but this is going too far." Shizuka Hiratsuka pointed her cigarette at Yukino Yukinoshita. "I happened to think of your Service Club, and you know everything that happened after that."

"Didn't you talk to him, Sensei?"

"'I like watching other people's terrible lives.' That was his answer." Shizuka Hiratsuka clicked her tongue. "I keep feeling like that wasn't the truth."

"It probably was the truth. He just didn't finish saying it." Yukino Yukinoshita sorted the medical records by date. "He was... confirming something."

Shizuka Hiratsuka didn't understand. "Hm?"

Yukino Yukinoshita handed over the medical records she had arranged. "Do you notice anything?"

"Leg fracture, arm fracture, right shoulder dislocation, thigh sprain, split at the corner of the eye..." Shizuka Hiratsuka flipped through them. "He got hurt in quite a comprehensive variety of ways."

Yukino Yukinoshita pointed out the key detail. "And no location was injured a second time."

"Huh?" Shizuka Hiratsuka checked again and again. "You're right. Coincidence?"

"If it wasn't a coincidence," Yukino Yukinoshita said, the image of Dong Yunshan hanging from the steel pipe appearing in her mind, "then he was confirming the strength of his own body. Or rather... confirming that he was still alive."

"You're making it sound like a mental patient self-harming..." Shizuka Hiratsuka's voice stopped abruptly. Only when the overly long ash fell on its own did she suddenly come back to herself. Like Dong Yunshan often did, she brought two fingers together and lightly tapped her temple. "There's... something wrong here? No, wait, these were all accidents!"

Yukino Yukinoshita reminded her, "You should have some understanding of his ability to control his body too, Sensei."

"This..." Shizuka Hiratsuka's brows drew tight. "If that's really the case, then he has to receive professional treatment."

"On what grounds?" Yukino Yukinoshita raised her eyes. "Because he sacrifices himself to help others and acts bravely for a righteous cause, so you feel he has mental problems?"

"...Aaaaah!!!" Shizuka Hiratsuka clawed her already messy hair into an even greater mess. "That damn brat. Even if I have to use force, I'm dragging him to the hospital!"

"With his physical abilities, I'm afraid it won't be that easy." Yukino Yukinoshita calmly stated the facts. "It may even have the opposite effect."

"Damn it..." Shizuka Hiratsuka bit her thumb in frustration. "Could this be his real goal? Using helping others as cover for self-harm..."

"There's no need to use his goal to deny the self-sacrificing quality of his actions. No matter what, the fact that he helped others doesn't change." Dong Yunshan's gloating smile appeared in Yukino Yukinoshita's mind. "If anything, having such a goal makes him more like the him I know."

Shizuka Hiratsuka lit another cigarette. "But I can't just do nothing..."

"In fact, Sensei, your slowness was just right."

Shizuka Hiratsuka: "Eh?"

Normally speaking, wasn't that supposed to be the teacher's line?

No, wait, a teacher couldn't say that either.

"If you'd discovered it too early, you would inevitably have interfered with his actions, and it's very possible that his condition would have worsened." Yukino Yukinoshita waved away the smoke drifting near her. "Your previous hands-off approach happened to let him transition smoothly into his current stable state."

"Stable state?"

"How long has it been since he last got hurt?"

Shizuka Hiratsuka thought back seriously. "About... two or three months."

The most recent medical record was from a long time ago too. After that, he had only suffered minor injuries that didn't require a hospital visit.

The injury Shizuka Hiratsuka remembered was the time two or three months ago when Dong Yunshan had helped someone hold the line.

With the help of Shizuka Hiratsuka's information, Yukino Yukinoshita successfully confirmed her own conjecture. "He has already successfully completed his confirmation of his physical state, which is why he was willing to stay in the Service Club."

"And here I thought my method had worked." Shizuka Hiratsuka muttered, "Then is he fine now?"

"Now he's begun a new confirmation, or rather, continued the previous confirmation—confirmation in the mental aspect." Yukino Yukinoshita finally grasped the crux of the problem. "But unlike the body, it isn't that easy to repeatedly wound the mind in a short period of time, so he needs to rely on other people to complete this. In this process, he can better perceive his own existence. The final result that appears is what he told you..."

Shizuka Hiratsuka forcefully stubbed out her cigarette. "'I like watching other people's terrible lives.'"

"His habitual formalism stems from the emptiness inside him. He can't even confirm his own existence, so he can only package himself through superficial imitation." Yukino Yukinoshita finally understood the internal logic behind Dong Yunshan's series of behaviors. "His reflexive escapism comes from his self-isolation. He's like an egg, using a hard shell to protect himself, only able to absorb heat from the outside, waiting until the chaos inside truly takes shape before he dares to touch the shell that confines him..."

Yukino Yukinoshita's voice gradually weakened, and her cold eyes slowly lost focus.

Shizuka Hiratsuka noticed something wrong with her. "Yukinoshita?"

"...I need to make some adjustments to the follow-up correction plan." Yukino Yukinoshita came back to herself. "Thank you for the information, Sensei."

Shizuka Hiratsuka put away the medical records and leave slips. "Then I'll leave it to you."

"About Yukinoshita?" Shizuka Hiratsuka flicked a cigarette out of the pack and put it in her mouth. "What made you suddenly ask about that?"

"That girl is a little stubborn." Dong Yunshan recalled the way Yukino Yukinoshita had looked when she left earlier. "I originally thought winning once would make her realize her own shortcomings, but it seems... it instead stirred up her rebellious streak."

"So you want to understand her a little better and treat the problem at the source." Shizuka Hiratsuka fiddled with the cigarette pack. "I thought that after you beat her before, you bullied her too badly, and to avoid her taking revenge too harshly, you wanted to prepare in advance."

"Win or lose, it's all for the sake of completing her correction." Dong Yunshan picked up the lighter nearby. "The original correction method had limited effects, so of course I need to adjust it."

"Now that you mention it... she has indeed taken concrete action." Shizuka Hiratsuka gave him an approving look. "The correction is beginning to show results."

"But it's only just begun." Dong Yunshan lit Shizuka Hiratsuka's cigarette for her, then flicked his finger, and the lighter spun at his fingertips. "I need more information."

"You should have heard a little about Yukinoshita's family situation too." Shizuka Hiratsuka exhaled a mouthful of smoke. "Her father is the president of a construction company and also serves as a prefectural assemblyman. Her family is quite wealthy."

"Hm?" Dong Yunshan noticed the issue. "If I remember correctly, assembly members of local public entities shouldn't be able to concurrently serve as representatives of companies that have close dealings with local public entities."

"You actually know about all that... Well, I suppose you would, spending every day out in society." Shizuka Hiratsuka shook her head. "Yukinoshita's father married into the family."

Dong Yunshan understood. "The family business shifted from commerce to politics, and her mother serves as president, but to outsiders it all looks the same."

"That's basically it." Shizuka Hiratsuka paused. "And she also has an older sister."

Dong Yunshan vaguely sensed something. "Very capable?"

Shizuka Hiratsuka nodded hard. "Capable in every way."

"The family heir?"

"The one and only designated family heir. She handles almost all of their public-facing activities."

"No wonder..." Dong Yunshan tried putting himself in her shoes.

If I were the second son of a prestigious family—

He couldn't get into the role at all.

Still, Dong Yunshan did understand Yukino Yukinoshita's problem now.

Ever since she was little, whether it was the people around Yukino Yukinoshita or Yukino herself, they had all been comparing her to her older sister.

And judging by what Shizuka Hiratsuka had said...

She had lost pretty badly.

"She isn't just talking theory. She's failed too many times, so she wants to prepare as thoroughly as possible, until nothing can go wrong." Dong Yunshan finally figured out the internal logic behind Yukino Yukinoshita's whole series of behaviors. "It's not that she won't act. It's that she doesn't want to act when she isn't certain."

The lighter spun rapidly between his fingertips, and Dong Yunshan's thoughts grew clearer and clearer. "She's like an egg. Everything in her past binds her inside like a hard shell. After failing over and over again, all she can do is calm down and gather strength, waiting until the moment she truly takes shape before she dares to touch the shell imprisoning her..."

Dong Yunshan's voice gradually faded, and the lighter spinning between his fingers slowly lost speed.

Shizuka Hiratsuka noticed something was off about him. "Dong Yun?"

"I think I know what I should do." Dong Yunshan came back to himself. "Thank you for telling me all this, Sensei."

Shizuka Hiratsuka put out her cigarette and smiled faintly. "Then I'll leave it to you."

P.S. Thanks to [The God on the Left] for the tip!

The more I write, the more I want to write.

The more I want to write, the messier my thoughts get.

The messier my thoughts get, the less I write.

So, the more I write, the less I write.

≡ω≡

Service Club, in the clubroom.

Yukino Yukinoshita sat in the chair by the window. The muscle soreness from before had already disappeared, but she had not moved the desk away.

After all, with the desk there to support her, reading was more comfortable.

The hand turning the page rose again, and Yukino Yukinoshita tucked the fallen strands of hair behind her ear, revealing an earlobe like warm jade.

She tilted her head slightly and looked toward Dong Yunshan. "Why do you keep staring at me?"

Dong Yunshan steadied his breathing and applied force while gripping the dumbbell. "Have you heard of mind-muscle connection?"

"It refers to consciously aligning intention and movement during fitness equipment training, establishing a connection between the working muscles and the nerves in the brain." Yukino Yukinoshita recited it as if she knew it by heart. "It's used for training isolated muscle groups."

"When your attention is focused on one part of your own body, your thoughts empty out along with it, and your gaze unconsciously fixes in one direction." Dong Yunshan blinked. "In other words, what people call spacing out."

"You weren't looking at me on purpose. You were spacing out, right?" Yukino Yukinoshita withdrew her gaze. "And here I thought you could no longer suppress your feelings for me."

"Before you decide I like you," Dong Yunshan switched the dumbbell to his other hand, "first, let's define what liking someone means."

Yukino Yukinoshita's voice was cold. "All right, I understand now. No one has ever liked you."

"No, wait. If you weren't looking at me, how did you know I was looking at you?" Dong Yunshan realized where the problem was. "Could it be that you can no longer suppress your feelings for me?"

"Because in class, people look at me from time to time, so I can easily judge whether someone is staring at me." Yukino Yukinoshita turned a page. "Didn't you say it before? When someone is suddenly being watched by many people, they always look first at the person they like—there's another similar situation too."

"Oh?"

"When people laugh, they habitually look toward the person they like most." Yukino Yukinoshita's voice barely rose or fell. "When someone in class makes a fool of themselves, most of the girls look toward the boy they have a crush on, while most of the boys look at me."

Dong Yunshan couldn't help sighing. "The classmate who made a fool of themselves is way too pitiful."

Being laughed at was bad enough, but no one even looked at them.

"When those boys discover that I'm not looking at them, they'll go look at the joke instead." Yukino Yukinoshita gave a cold laugh. "The girls are a little slower. First, they follow the boys' gazes and glare at me, then they go look at the joke."

Dong Yunshan thought of a plan. "Normally speaking, there shouldn't be just one girl being envied, right?"

Yukino Yukinoshita lowered her eyes slightly. "When I came back from overseas in middle school, there were two relatively cute girls in the class. They had a certain amount of support among the boys, and the girls in class wished they could get rid of them."

Dong Yunshan put down the dumbbell and wiped his sweat. "Then that's perfect. Win over one group and suppress another, and you'll soon be able to form a small circle that suits you."

"But after I entered school, every girl in the whole school wanted to get rid of me." Yukino Yukinoshita brushed back her long hair. "In terms of appearance, I was far above everyone else. The only ones who could be mentioned in the same breath as me were Yamashita and Shimamura, but that was limited to appearance. Grades, athletics, the arts, even etiquette and the spiritual level—they were ultimately far inferior to me. In front of me, they were as ordinary as any ordinary girl. All they could do was unite with the other girls and think of every possible way to drag me down—there wasn't a single person in that entire school who worked hard to improve themselves in order to surpass me. That pack of imbeciles..."

Perhaps because she was worked up, Yukino Yukinoshita's face flushed faintly.

Only after Dong Yunshan returned to his seat to rest did he notice that Yukino Yukinoshita's breathing had grown a little quicker.

It turned out she had simply said too much at once and was a bit out of breath.

"If it were you," Yukino Yukinoshita said, turning her head, "what would you do?"

Dong Yunshan answered honestly, "I don't know."

"Hmm?"

"I wasn't there at the time, and the general idea I just came up with got rejected by you." Dong Yunshan spread his hands. "I don't even know the specifics, so how could I possibly know what should be done?"

"I heard you've helped a lot of people," Yukino Yukinoshita pressed. "Has there never been anything similar?"

"There actually has." Dong Yunshan thought back for a moment. "When I'd just started my second year of middle school in Nagoya, a boy with a really bad personality transferred into our class."

"And then?"

"I hung out with him for a few days." Dong Yunshan recalled back then. "We played games together, played soccer, grabbed food, and he got familiar with the classmates pretty quickly."

"Are you still in contact now?"

"...Huh?" Dong Yunshan thought about it. "Now that you mention it, we don't seem to have talked much lately."

Yukino Yukinoshita shook her head. "That's why I won't waste time on things like that."

"Not being in contact doesn't mean we aren't friends," Dong Yunshan said with a smile. "Honestly, if he did contact me, I'd be worried instead, like, did something happen..."

Knock, knock, knock—the sound of knocking rang out.

Yukino Yukinoshita tucked her bookmark into her book, and she and Dong Yunshan answered in unison, "Come in."

Yui Yuigahama slid the door open and greeted them in a bright voice, "Yahallo~"

"Hallo there~" Dong Yunshan waved back in kind.

Yukino Yukinoshita let out a long sigh. "...Do you need something?"

Yui Yuigahama, who had been so cheerful just now, instantly grew nervous. "Huh? Why... does it feel like I'm not welcome? Don't tell me you hate me, Yukinoshita?"