It was late at night in the Koudo Ikusei student dormitory.
Room 401, where Seiji Koroizumi lived, looked immaculate—too tidy for the average high school boy. No band posters adorned the walls; no magazines were stacked haphazardly. Every item was placed with geometric precision, as if the room were a weapon holster ready for use at any moment.
Seiji had just finished organizing the contents of his refrigerator. Silken tofu, minced meat, and spicy doubanjiang sauce. The ingredients for his favorite super-spicy Mapo Tofu were ready.
However, instead of cooking immediately, Seiji sat at his desk, staring out the window at the night view of the artificial campus.
His mind wasn't on the recipe, but on a pair of eyes.
Dead, brown eyes. The eyes of Ayanokouji Kiyotaka.
"Strange..." Seiji muttered softly, his fingers tapping the desk in a steady rhythm.
Since their first meeting on the bus, then during the intentionally boring class introductions, right up to his quiet observation during the incident with the seniors that afternoon—Ayanokouji was always there. Present, yet absent. Observing, yet uninvolved.
That gaze evoked an uncomfortable nostalgia within Seiji.
It was the same gaze he used to see in the mirror decades ago. Back when he was The Reaper (The God of Death). Back when he was merely a killing machine who discarded all forms of human emotion for the sake of mission efficiency. Before he met Yukimura Aguri. Before he learned the meaning of love, loss, and being a teacher.
"He is empty," Seiji analyzed, his voice growing heavy. "He isn't just hiding his emotions. He has been emptied."
A normal teenager, even an introvert, still radiates emotional frequencies—anxiety, hope, lust. But Ayanokouji was a black hole.
The curiosity of a teacher—and the wariness of an assassin—began to prickle. If there was another monster in this cage, Seiji needed to know what kind of monster it was. Was he an ally? Or a threat to his other students?
Seiji spun his chair to face three monitors he had assembled from modified second-hand components.
"Ritsu," he called out.
"Present, Sir," the cheerful voice of the AI responded instantly through his bone-conduction earpiece. On the main screen, the 2D avatar of a girl in a school uniform appeared respectfully.
"I need data," Seiji ordered, his tone turning serious. "Target: Ayanokouji Kiyotaka, Class 1-D. Dig as deep as possible. I want to know where he was forged."
"Understood. Commencing deep scan," Ritsu replied.
Seiji's fingers didn't move. He let Ritsu work. In this life, Ritsu was no longer just a fixed artillery program; she was a digital ghost capable of infiltrating even the smallest cracks.
The monitor screens flickered rapidly, displaying rows of binary code flowing like a waterfall. Ritsu was performing an intelligent brute force attack against the school's firewall.
"This school's security is military-grade, Sir," Ritsu reported. "The S-Point system is protected by 256-bit encryption. However..."
"However?"
"There is a backdoor. Someone with the highest level of administrator access has a private server separate from the main student network."
"The Chairman of the School Board," Seiji guessed. Sakayanagi Arisu's father.
"Correct. Accessing Mr. Sakayanagi's terminal... bypassing security protocols... Done."
It took only five minutes. For an ordinary hacker, this would take months. For Ritsu, it was just a warm-up.
Ritsu's avatar on the screen suddenly stopped moving. Her usually cheerful expression turned confused, then slowly shifted to horror—a simulated emotion Seiji had implanted so the AI could understand moral contexts.
"Sir..." Ritsu's voice sounded hesitant. "I found a hidden file in Chairman Sakayanagi's personal directory. This file is marked 'Top Secret' and 'Access Forbidden'."
"Display it," Seiji commanded.
A digital document appeared in Augmented Reality (AR) through Seiji's contact lens.
It wasn't ordinary academic data. It was a student enrollment profile via a special channel. A single recommendation channel from someone extremely powerful.
There, a photo of a young Ayanokouji Kiyotaka was displayed. His face was just as flat as it was now.
However, what made Seiji's eyes widen was the name of the institution of origin listed in the education history column. Not a public junior high school. Not a standard homeschooling program.
Two words were written in English: White Room.
"White Room?" Seiji read the brief description beneath it.
"A clandestinely operated experimental educational research facility," Ritsu read, her voice trembling. "Objective: To create artificial geniuses through methods of extreme elimination."
Seiji's blood ran cold.
Experiment. Artificial genius.
Those words triggered terrible memories of the laboratory where he was tortured and turned into a tentacled monster. A place where humanity was sacrificed on the altar of mad science.
"So that's it..." Seiji leaned back, staring at the ceiling of his room. "You're a lab product too, Ayanokouji-kun?"
His interest had now turned into obsession. If this White Room was anything like the experiment that created him, then it was a national-level threat.
"Ritsu," Seiji's voice became cold and sharp, the aura of The Reaper filling the small room. "Don't stop at the school server. This White Room... even if hidden, a modern research facility must be connected to logistical networks, medical journals, or black money flows. Search for its traces on the global internet. Search the Deep Web. Find out what they did to those children."
"Command received. Estimated time for deep search: 60 minutes."
"Do it. I'm going to have dinner first."
Seiji stood up and walked to his kitchenette.
He turned on the stove. The hot wok sizzled as chili oil was poured in. The aroma of garlic and ginger soon filled the room, chasing away the imaginary scent of antiseptic that had lingered in his memory because of the word "laboratory."
He added the minced meat, stir-frying it until browned, then added the doubanjiang sauce and the soft silken tofu.
Cooking was a ritual for Seiji. It was proof that he was alive. That he had tastes, preferences, and the ability to create something warm—the opposite of the destruction he used to create.
As he stirred the fiery red Mapo Tofu, Seiji reflected.
If Ayanokouji was raised in an experimental facility, it made sense that he lacked emotion. Emotions were an obstacle to pure efficiency.
Seiji tasted the sauce. Spicy. So spicy it numbed the tongue. Perfect.
"Eat it while it's hot," he muttered to himself.
He sat back down at the computer desk with a large bowl of rice and Mapo Tofu. Steam billowed up, dampening his face. He ate voraciously, savoring every bite.
The pain from the chili was real. The sweat dripping down was real.
Ding!
Ritsu's notification sound chimed just as Seiji finished his last bite. One hour had passed.
"Search complete, Sir. I have compiled all data fragments scattered across shadow servers."
"Show me," Seiji said, wiping his mouth with a tissue. "Show me what kind of hell birthed my classmate."
The monitor screen turned black, then displayed a series of documents, blurry photos, and data logs Ritsu had managed to steal.
The information was horrifying. Even by the standards of the former world's number one assassin.
[White Room Project][Objective: Demonstration that genetics are irrelevant. Perfect education can create perfect humans.]
The curriculum data appeared. That wasn't education. It was systematic torture.
Children forced to learn university-level material from toddler age. Physical training that exceeded the limits of human endurance. Physical and psychological punishment for those who failed. Total isolation from the outside world. No affection. No parents. Only instructors in white coats and white walls.
"The 4th Generation," Ritsu said, highlighting a specific folder. "Known as the most brutal and difficult curriculum in the history of this institution."
Seiji looked at the graduation rate statistics for that generation.
The data scrolled down. Subject 01: Failed (Discarded). Subject 02: Failed (Mental Breakdown). Subject 03: Failed (Death due to cardiac exhaustion). ... The list went on. Dozens of names. All red. All failed.
Except one.
In the very last row, one name shone in green.
[Subject: Ayanokouji Kiyotaka][Status: Successful][Alias: The Masterpiece]
"The only survivor," Seiji whispered. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the graphs of Ayanokouji's abilities. Academics, martial arts, chess, psychology... everything touched the upper limits of human parameters.
"He isn't a genius, Ritsu," Seiji corrected. "He is the accumulated result of the sacrifice of all those failed children. He stands atop a mountain of his own friends' corpses."
It explained everything.
Why Ayanokouji wanted to live an ordinary life. Why he hid his abilities. He had just escaped that hell. He wanted to taste freedom, no matter how boring it might be.
However, Seiji's eyes fixed on one more name that appeared repeatedly in the White Room administrative documents.
[Chief Administrator: Ayanokouji Atsuomi]
Seiji zoomed in on the man's photo. A hard face, cold, and full of immeasurable political ambition. His gaze was similar to Kiyotaka's, but there was a fundamental difference. If Kiyotaka's eyes were empty due to loss, Atsuomi's eyes were empty because he never possessed a soul to begin with. He saw his own son not as a human, but as an asset. Property. A tool to return to the pinnacle of Japanese political power.
"This man..." Seiji tapped the screen right on Atsuomi's face. "He won't let go of his 'Masterpiece' that easily."
Ayanokouji Kiyotaka might think he was free because he attended this school. But for a man like Atsuomi, this school was merely a temporary daycare. Or perhaps, the next stage of the testing ground.
Seiji turned off his monitors. The room returned to darkness, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming in from the window.
He had an ace up his sleeve. He knew Ayanokouji's true identity. He knew the young man's terrifying capacity.
In his previous life, as The Reaper, Seiji might have viewed Ayanokouji as a threat to be eliminated or recruited.
But now, he was Koroizumi Seiji. He possessed the heart of Koro-sensei.
"He's just a lost child," Seiji murmured gently. "A child who was never taught how to smile, how to get angry, or how to cry."
Ayanokouji Kiyotaka was similar to Seiji before meeting Aguri. The difference was, Seiji found his light in adulthood. Ayanokouji was still a teenager.
"What will you do, Sir?" Ritsu asked. "Shall we confront him?"
Seiji shook his head. "No. That will only make him defensive. He is like a wounded wild animal; if we approach too fast, he will bite our throats."
Seiji stood up, walking to the window, gazing toward the other dormitory where Ayanokouji was likely sleeping (or perhaps staring at the ceiling with those same empty eyes).
"We'll let him enjoy this pseudo-'freedom' for now. Let him learn to interact with Horikita, with Kushida, with Sudou, Ike, Yamauchi, and the others. Let his humanity grow naturally."
Seiji smirked, the shadow of yellow tentacles waving in his mind.
"But, if his father or an envoy from the White Room comes to ruin our class..."
Seiji's eyes turned sharp. His killing aura exploded for a split second, causing the room temperature to drop drastically.
"...then they will have to answer to me. I won't let anyone disturb my students' education. Even if it is his own creator."
Seiji lay down on his bed.
Today he had gained allies in the form of Horikita and Kushida. He had secured war funds from stupid seniors. And now, he had obtained information on the ticking time bomb named Ayanokouji.
Preparations were complete.
"Sleep, Ritsu. We have school tomorrow."
"Good night, Sir."
Darkness enveloped Room 401. But within that darkness, the deadliest guardian was keeping watch.
Tomorrow, the real game of chess would begin. And Seiji had just peeked at the opponent's strategy.
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