The Second Smiling Face

When Horikita saw those two words, her brow visibly twitched.

Transaction

She stared at them for two seconds, as if forcing something down.

Then she simply looked away from the paper, too lazy to say a word.

Gu Heng was not surprised in the slightest.

What Horikita could not stand most right now was not Gu Heng calculating people.

It was Gu Heng making the act of "calculating people" sound so clear-cut.

She was still at the stage of I don't like it, but I might have to accept it.

Gu Heng had passed that stage years ago.

He knew some things sounded unpleasant.

But unpleasant did not mean useless.

"Are you planning to look at people like that forever?"

Horikita finally spoke, her voice low.

"What else should I do?" Gu Heng asked. "Rely on hope?"

"At the very least, you shouldn't be like this, putting a price tag on everyone."

"I didn't put price tags on them," Gu Heng said. "I'm just figuring out who'll cost the class first."

Horikita looked at him coldly.

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes." Gu Heng folded the sheet of paper and tucked it back into the book. "One is selling people. The other is figuring out who'll drill a hole in the boat first."

Horikita said nothing.

Because she realized she could not immediately refute him.

Gu Heng's logic made her uncomfortable, yet what made it uncomfortable was not that it was wrong.

It was that it resembled reality far too closely.

The commotion around Sudo was getting louder and louder.

"Are you sick or something? So what if I put my legs here?"

"The teacher's gone already. What are you pretending for?"

The boy beside him laughed in agreement, while several others joined in the heckling.

They were sprawled all over their seats like monkeys who had just been let out of their cages.

Hirata Yosuke turned around from the front row and said something with a smile. His tone was not forceful, yet the noise over there naturally quieted a little.

Gu Heng's eyes finally shifted as he watched that scene.

That was what made Hirata valuable.

He could not suppress people who genuinely wanted to do evil, but he could make most people who wanted to join the chaos cool down first.

That ability was worth a great deal in Class D.

"What are you looking at him for?" Horikita asked.

"Seeing who's more suitable to use first."

Horikita's expression darkened.

"Can't you say that in a nicer way?"

"I can," Gu Heng said. "There's just no need to."

"You're really irritating."

"And yet you're still listening."

Horikita choked on that, but she could not exactly deny it.

She really was listening.

And the more she listened, the clearer things became.

That was the most irritating part.

"Hirata is suited to be a buffer," Gu Heng continued as if he had not seen her expression. "Sudo is suited to be among the first people we have to save. Kushida..."

He paused there.

Horikita immediately caught that momentary hesitation.

"What about her?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Obviously."

Gu Heng glanced at her.

He actually did not recommend laying everything out so clearly just yet.

Without evidence, warning someone about a danger that was not specific enough would only turn into emotion.

And in a place like Class D, emotions often only ruined the situation ahead of time.

"Tell you now, and all it'll do is make you more wary of her," Gu Heng said.

"So you want me to do nothing?"

"It's not about doing nothing. It's about not doing anything stupid."

Horikita's fingers tightened.

"Do you think that anything anyone does besides you is stupid?"

"No," Gu Heng said. "I think turning hostile before you have any leverage is the stupidest thing."

That finally silenced Horikita for half a second.

She did not like being suppressed.

But she understood reason well enough.

Especially because those words struck directly at the mistake she was most likely to make.

She was too used to confronting things head-on.

But at this school, winning a collision did not necessarily mean winning.

"So you're planning to leave her alone?"

"At least for now." Gu Heng looked in Kushida's direction. "And you'd better act like you haven't noticed anything either."

Horikita followed his gaze.

Kushida was smiling as she talked with two girls beside her, her tone so natural that she seemed born to stand at the center of a crowd.

There was nothing wrong with her at all.

And precisely because there was nothing wrong with her, something felt abnormal.

"Have you been used to suspecting people for a long time?"

Horikita suddenly asked.

Gu Heng paused slightly.

That question sounded more sincere than any of her previous ones.

It did not sound like probing.

Nor did it sound like an argument.

It sounded like she was genuinely wondering what sort of life a person had to live before thoughts like who can be brought in, who should be guarded against, who will explode first became permanently lodged in their mind.

"It's not suspicion," Gu Heng said blandly. "It saves trouble."

"Thinking the worst of others saves trouble?"

"If you account for the worst first, then when things really do go bad, you won't need to pretend to be surprised at the last minute."

Horikita looked at him, and for a moment, she felt that Gu Heng was unlike most people their age she had met.

It was not a matter of whether he was smart.

It was the way he habitually accounted for things spiraling out of control, as if he had long stopped believing in good outcomes.

"You live a tiring life."

"It's fine," Gu Heng said. "Easier than getting reset at the end of the month and regretting everything afterward."

Horikita did not continue that topic.

She knew too well that some people would not tell the truth just because you pressed them.

Gu Heng was that kind of person.

The more you tried to pry open his heart and look inside, the more he would show you only the layer that was most useful.

A bright female voice suddenly rang out from the front.

"Should we make a group chat first, everyone?"

It was Kushida.

She stood by the aisle with her phone raised, smiling as though she had just come up with an idea no one could possibly refuse.

"It'll be convenient for announcements and planning activities later."

"Sure, sure!"

"Kushida really thinks of everything."

"I'll scan it! I'll scan it!"

In an instant, the atmosphere that had been scattered moments ago gathered around her again.

Gu Heng watched her and lightly tapped the desk with his fingertip.

It had begun.

This was where the second smiling face became truly troublesome.

She did not overpower people by raising her voice, nor did she persuade them through reason.

She made everyone feel that refusing her would make them seem like they did not belong.

That was harder to deal with than brute force.

"She's good," Horikita said quietly.

"Yes," Gu Heng said. "Which is why we can't make a move too early."

"What about you?"

"I'm not competing with her for that position."

"Why?"

"Because right now, anyone who competes with her to be 'popular' will lose badly."

Gu Heng said it too calmly, as if the conclusion required no thought at all.

Horikita looked at him again.

"So you're going to hide?"

"It's not hiding," Gu Heng corrected. "It's letting her weave this web of relationships first."

"And after she's finished weaving it?"

"Then I'll decide whether to borrow it or cut it."

A chill ran faintly down Horikita's back.

For the first time, she clearly realized that Gu Heng was not someone who would be fooled by surface-level liveliness.

He was already thinking about how to take apart Kushida's network and use it in the future.

Just then, a heavy crash suddenly came from the back row.

Bang.

Everyone looked over.

Sudo had kicked his chair crooked and was glaring at a boy in front of him.

"What did you mean by what you just said?"

The other boy refused to back down.

"What did I mean? Was I wrong? People like you are obviously the ones most likely to cause trouble for the class."

The moment those words fell, the air immediately tightened.

Gu Heng narrowed his eyes.

That boy was not deliberately courting death.

He had merely said what many people were thinking.

And that was exactly what someone like Sudo could not stand.

"Say that again?"

Sudo took a step forward, his fists already clenched.

Hirata immediately stepped in.

"Calm down first."

"Stay out of it!"

Sudo shook off his hand, rage rushing onto his face.

Some people in the classroom started trying to mediate, some watched the show, and others instinctively shrank back.

Gu Heng did not move.

It was not that he did not want to.

The cost of moving now was wrong.

Sudo had not actually thrown a punch yet.

If he stepped in now, he would only seem like a busybody.

And he would not be able to stop it anyway.

"Didn't you say he'd be the first to explode?" Horikita asked quietly.

"Yes."

"You're not going to do anything?"

"Someone else is more suited to handle him right now."

Horikita followed his gaze.

Hirata stood between the two of them. His tone was no harsher than before, but the moment he stepped in, several of the people who had been egging them on quieted down.

Gu Heng watched for a moment, then suddenly stood up.

Horikita froze.

"Didn't you say you weren't going to interfere yet?"

"I'm not going to interfere with Sudo." Gu Heng pushed his chair back. "I'm going to watch Hirata."

"What do you mean?"

"It means Class D's first workable deal won't be with the loudest person."

He took two steps out, then stopped and glanced back at Horikita.

"It'll be with the person best at making everyone else shut up."

With that, Gu Heng walked toward Hirata.

Horikita remained where she was, realizing something for the first time.

What Gu Heng was about to do was no longer just a warning.

He was about to make his move.

On the other side of the classroom, Kushida still held up her phone, her smile as gentle as if nothing had happened.

Sunlight fell across the side of her face, bright and clean.

Gu Heng looked at that smiling face when the transparent view before his eyes suddenly flickered.

Above her head, several familiar values surfaced, then quickly sank.

Then, at the very top, a new line of text slowly lit up.

Eliminate Threats 89

Gu Heng's steps paused slightly.

The next second, that line flashed as though something had wiped it away, returning to the surface-level gentleness and friendliness.

But he had already seen it.

And he had seen it clearly.

Kushida's brightest trait had never been friendliness.

It was silencing witnesses.