The evening breeze in the small park carried the first chill of twilight. Horikita Suzune and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka sat in silence on a bench, a temporary truce in the quiet before the promised "celebration."
"The class points have updated," Ayanokoji stated, his voice as flat as the screen he read from. "Class A: 1082. Class B: 956. Class C: 902. Class D: 87." He paused, letting the canyon-like gap settle. "Realistically, aiming for Class A is a delusion. Currently, aiming for any class above us borders on fantasy."
Horikita's gaze remained fixed on the bleeding edge of the sunset, her profile sharp against the dimming light. "I will not give up," she said, the words clean and absolute. "The goal is Class A. That has not changed."
"Is that so?" Ayanokoji murmured, not looking at her.
"What?"
"Nothing." He closed his phone. "I was just thinking… it's good you're here."
A beat of silence. Horikita turned her head a fraction.
"Thank you," he continued, the words deliberate, "for helping those three."
"I acted for the benefit of the class," she replied automatically, but the defensiveness was gone.
"You adapted. The change is… significant." He noted the concessions she'd made—the patience forged, the coldness tempered—all to drag three unwilling students across the finish line. The girl who would have once walked alone was now, reluctantly, learning to pull others along.
"Change…" Horikita echoed, a rare note of self-awareness in her voice. "Is it really that noticeable?"
"Very," Ayanokoji confirmed. "It's an improvement. If this were the start of the term, you'd probably be stabbing me with a compass right now."
Her face darkened instantly. In one fluid, terrifyingly practiced motion, she produced a gleaming metal compass from her pocket and drove its point into his arm.
…It hurt.
And why did she actually have one? He stared impassively at the small, precise red dot on his skin, then at her icy "Test me again" expression. He chose a tactical silence.
The "celebration" in Ayanokoji's spartan dorm room was a study in contrasts. A picnic mat became an island of colorful snacks and canned drinks amidst the beige neutrality. The trio lounged noisily on the floor; Ayanokoji held the room's only chair like a disinterested monarch; Horikita and Kushida sat side-by-side on the edge of the bed, an invisible, charged line drawn between them.
"Cheer up, Ayanokoji! This is a party!" Ike yelled through a mouthful of chips.
"Why is it in my room?" Ayanokoji asked, his deadpan query lost in the noise.
The conversation inevitably turned to the exam. Ike nudged Yamauchi. "Hey, you actually did okay! Trying to impress someone? I heard she aced everything again."
Yamauchi sputtered, his face flushing, his denials transparent.
Then came Sudo's legendary 41 points. "One point less, man! You were on the edge!" Ike laughed, clapping him on the back.
Sudo grunted, the ghost of panic in his eyes. "Yeah, almost… Honestly, those 'past papers' Kushida gave us were useless. The questions were all different. Thank god Horikita actually made us learn some—"
He stopped. The words hung in the air, a grenade with the pin pulled.
The room froze.
Ayanokoji and Horikita's eyes met in a flash of shared, stunned comprehension.
Kushida Kikyo's smile—that perfect, sunny mask—slipped. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was long enough. The warmth vanished, replaced by a chilling blankness before the smile snapped back into place, brighter than ever.
"Ah! No! I mean—thanks to Horikita's study sessions! Seriously, thank you!" Sudo blurted, his voice too loud, scrambling to bury his mistake.
Yamauchi and Ike piled on with frantic, overlapping gratitude, a wall of noise to smother the slip.
Kushida's luminous smile never wavered, but a shadow now lived in its depths, a cold, calculating glint in her eyes that hadn't been there before.
Ayanokoji and Horikita exchanged another glance—a silent agreement to table the revelation. The party limped on, the joy now forced, and ended soon after with a collective, unspoken relief.
As the others filed out, only Kushida remained. She moved with cheerful efficiency, gathering empty cans and scrubbing at a stain on the mat, her back to the room. The cleanup was meticulous, a performance of helpfulness that now felt like a carefully staged play, its script suddenly called into question.
As she gathered the last of the cans, Kushida's voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur meant only for Ayanokoji. "You and Horikita-san seem quite close now. Do you… like her?"
Ayanokoji's expression didn't flicker. "No."
Kushida blinked, her smile unwavering. "I see." With a final, polite goodbye, she left, the door clicking shut softly behind her.
The moment she was gone, Ayanokoji's mask of indifference slipped. He pulled out his phone, his fingers already moving to message Horikita. The discovery of Kushida's involvement with the exam papers demanded immediate, private discussion.
But Kushida Kikyo did not return to her dorm.
She walked alone to the very edge of the dormitory complex, where a railing separated manicured order from the wild, dark expanse of the sea. The night wind here was a gale, tearing at her clothes and ruthlessly stripping away the flawless, sweet mask she wore like a second skin.
Her chest heaved with ragged breaths she could no longer control. Finally, her hands—usually so gentle—clenched the cold metal railing until her knuckles turned white. She stared into the churning black water and let the poison spill out in a low, venomous hiss that the wind tried to steal.
"Horikita Suzune… that damned Horikita Suzune!"
"Who does she think she is? That aloof, lonely act… that pretense of superiority! It should be me! I'm the one holding this class together! I'm the one everyone loves! Their gratitude belongs to me!"
"And that Sakamoto… what worthless fakes did he hand out? Completely useless! Is this some kind of joke to him?!"
"All of them… every single one is in my way! They're ruining everything!"
"Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!"
She kicked the railing, a sharp, futile sound swallowed by the roar of the waves. The face contorted in the moonlight was a grotesque parody of her usual radiance, twisted by jealousy and a hatred so profound it seemed to warp the very air around her. This was the true Kushida Kikyo, raw and ugly, exposed to an uncaring sea.
Just as the last choked curse left her lips, something on the water caught her eye.
A disturbance. A shape, moving against the waves at an impossible speed, cutting a silent, straight line directly toward her.
Her rage died mid-syllable, frozen in her throat. She squinted, uncertainty cutting through the fury.
What was that?
In the weak glow of distant streetlights and the faint sheen of starlight on the water, a figure resolved. A person, standing upright on the surface of the sea. Not on a board. Not on skis. On two impossibly slender, wing-like blades attached to his feet.
He was hydroplaning. No—it was something more precise, more absurd. His body was a study in controlled minimalism, leaning forward into the wind. His legs vibrated at a frequency too rapid to see, each microscopic tremor translating through the specialized blades into a explosive, high-frequency pulse against the water's surface. The pulses created instantaneous pockets of air and tremendous surface tension, repelling the water with enough force to propel him forward while simultaneously keeping him perfectly, impossibly dry. It was like watching someone ski on a mountain of vibrating glass.
He carved two pristine, phosphorescent wakes across the black water, a vision of serene, physics-defying power gliding straight out of the abyss.
Kushida stood paralyzed, her mind utterly rejecting the evidence of her eyes. The furious, spiteful girl was gone, replaced by a stunned statue.
As he neared the shore, the details solidified. The tall, upright posture. The familiar sweep of black hair. The glint of light on a pair of black-framed glasses.
Sakamoto.
He was returning from what appeared to be a routine, nocturnal training session—a secret technique practiced on the open ocean—and his path had brought him to this exact, lonely stretch of shore.
His gaze swept across the coastline, calm and all-encompassing, and landed on Kushida Kikyo. She was still gripping the railing, her face frozen in a rictus of shock, her mask utterly shattered, her most venomous self laid bare before the one person she least wanted to witness it.
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