??? POV

On a crescent-moon night, I was messing with my phone like usual when I noticed a message from an email address I didn’t recognize.

At first I thought it was suspicious, but the wording bothered me, so I decided to go to the place written in the email.

The place was the back mountain behind the school.

After waiting a while, that man casually showed up in his usual getup.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting, it seems I made you wait, to be honest, I’ve had my eye on you ever since the first time I saw you.”

“That doesn’t matter, what do you want?”

“You’re cold, you know, aren’t I your only family now?”

“I’ve never thought of you like that, don’t ever say it like that again!”

“How lonely, now then, shall we get to the main point… you’ve noticed too, haven’t you, that monster is more than you can handle alone, so why don’t we work together, you and I, we both have a grudge against him, our goal should be the same.”

“…Fine, but we’ll handle the plan, you just shut up and move when we tell you to.”

“I don’t mind, as long as we can kill him… then contact me once the plan is set.”

After saying that, the man gave me his phone number and left.

* * *

Ayanokōji POV

A few weeks passed after the school festival ended safely and one day I headed to school like usual.

I opened the classroom door and just as I was about to sit down like always, I noticed the class atmosphere was slightly different from usual.

“Morning, Isogai, did something happen?”

“Oh, Ayanokōji, yeah, a bit, some weird rumors have been spreading and Nakamura and Terasaka and the others are kind of on edge.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“Honestly, they’re stupid rumors, the kind nobody would even care about, but for the people involved, whether it’s true or not, they seem to hate drawing attention.”

“…If the rumor isn’t true, it’s probably best not to react and just ignore it, people say rumors last seventy-five days and then fade.”

“Yeah…”

Leaving behind Isogai, who looked uneasy, I headed to my seat.

For a guy like Isogai who prioritizes class harmony, he probably doesn’t want even small conflicts brought in.

Still, after that, nothing special happened and the day ended.

* * *

The next day, I went to school like usual and opened the classroom door and I immediately noticed the atmosphere was worse than yesterday.

“…Morning.”

“Yo, Ayanokōji, you know how rumors about Nakamura and them went around yesterday, I thought that’d be it, but today a new batch spread too, so everyone’s tense and it’s a pain, stuff like Nakamura’s doing prostitution, or Okano’s a violent gorilla who throws hands right away, well, the Okano one isn’t a rumor, that’s just facts, lol.”

“H-hey, Maehara!”

Even though nobody asked, Maehara started rambling about the rumors.

He was probably trying to lighten the heavy mood by acting upbeat on purpose, but in this situation it was the opposite effect.

Even with Isogai trying to stop him, Maehara kept talking and cold stares flew his way.

“Seriously, don’t you get that makes it worse, you’re really an idiot.”

“Huh, I’m just trying to encourage you guys not to care about dumb rumors like this…”

“That’s exactly why it’s annoying!! You’ve got it easy because you’re not the one getting baseless rumors spread about you, so you can stay relaxed.”

“...Well, I’m squeaky clean, so.”

“Hah? So you’re saying we’re dirty then and you actually believe those rumors?”

“Not really, I mean, they say there’s no smoke without fire.”

“...I can’t believe you, that’s the lowest.”

“What’d you say!?”

“That’s enough!”

Right as Nakamura and Maehara were about to explode, Korosensei stepped between them in the nick of time.

“We need to head to the main school building soon, or you’ll be late to the whole-school assembly and Maehara-kun, next time, think about how the other person feels before you speak…”

“Yes… sorry, Nakamura, my bad, I got carried away.”

“No… I got too worked up too and it’s not Maehara’s fault, the one spreading the rumors is the problem.”

“Alright, since you’ve made up, let’s head to the main school building for real!”

We came down the mountain and arrived at the main school building, but I felt something off about the countless eyes on us.

Lately we’d beaten Class A in competitions and gotten results at the school festival, so the looks that used to mock Class E had decreased, but what was aimed at us now was unmistakably those old mocking looks.

It wasn’t just looks either, they were whispering loud enough for us to hear.

“Hey, did you hear about Nakamura, apparently she sold her body during exams and bribed the proctors, lol.”

“Apparently Terasaka actually threatened Class A students with violence so they’d let him win the sports festival, lol.”

“No way, seriously, that’s match-fixing, lol, well, there’s no way Class E could beat Class A fairly, lol.”

“Then the school festival is looking suspicious too, lol, they probably used dirty tricks again, lol.”

“I’d started to respect them a little, but what a letdown.”

It wasn’t just Nakamura and Terasaka, bad rumors about other classmates were spreading too.

Even hearing it secondhand, it was pretty disgusting, for the people involved it must’ve felt like their guts were boiling.

At this point, the rumors were malicious enough that the school should be stepping in, but with Class E at the center, we couldn’t expect help from the chairman.

It also bothered me that only rumors about Class E were spreading.

A coincidence, or targeted… it was obviously the latter.

* * *

“Seriously, I’m pissed, who the hell started those rumors?!”

“I’m not letting this go, I’ll find them and make them regret it!!”

Nakamura and Terasaka and the others, who’d been targeted from the start, were clearly at their limit.

“Please calm down, if you rush, you’re playing right into their hands, as long as we don’t know their aim, we have to endure for now. And if it’s a lie, then don’t flinch, hold your head high!”

Terasaka and the others grudgingly accepted it and reined in their anger.

But this was only the beginning.

The next day and the next, as time passed, the number of rumors increased and the content got more extreme.

At first everyone endured and ignored them like Korosensei said, but gradually rumors started circulating that included pieces of truth.

They were all the kind of rumors you couldn’t spread unless you knew us well.

‘Shiota Nagisa’s mother is a toxic parent and she abuses her child.’

‘Kanzaki Yukiko used to party around a lot and got involved with lots of guys.’

‘Isogai Yūma was so poor he shoplifted and got dropped into Class E.’

‘Akabane Karma beat someone too badly in a fight and has been in a juvenile detention facility.’

‘Maehara Hiroto slept around so much that he got a female student pregnant and made her get an abortion.’

At that point, even the classmates who’d decided to ignore it finally couldn’t take it anymore and we concluded we had to find the culprit.

“Even if we say that, how are we supposed to find them?”

“That’s the problem, even if we try to trace the source, some people heard it from message board posts, others heard it from someone else, it spreads differently depending on the person and it’s worrying that the rumors aren’t completely off and include things only the person involved should know.”

“So the culprit is someone close to us?”

“The culprit is someone close to us, loves gossip and can gather information without anyone noticing…”

As far as I knew, only one person fit.

Maybe everyone else thought the same, because all eyes turned to Korosensei.

“Nyuya!? M-me? Wait, everyone, there’s no way I’d do something like that!!”

“I want to believe Korosensei wouldn’t, but… honestly, it’s hard to imagine anyone else could do this…”

“Yeah, Kayano’s got a point, if it’s Korosensei, he could collect our secrets without anyone noticing.”

“…”

“Stop it, everyone! There’s no way Korosensei would do that and besides, there’s no benefit to him spreading rumors about us!”

“He probably started it as a prank but it escalated, that octopus loves rumors.”

From there, Isogai and Kataoka denied the possibility it was Korosensei and the discussion ended with ‘insufficient evidence.’

But the seed of suspicion had already been planted.

Once someone’s suspected, it moves fast and with no proof of innocence either, by the end of the day the class was almost completely soaked in suspicion toward Korosensei.

* * *

The next day, when I went to the classroom, the additional rumors about classmates stopped and rumors about Korosensei started instead.

‘A yellow man’s nurufufufu laughter echoes in Kunugigaoka late at night, terror!? A huge underwear thief!’ and it had already become a weekly magazine article.

The timing was way too perfect for an article like that to appear this quickly after yesterday.

“See, rumors about sensei came out properly too!”

“Why are you happy rumors came out…”

“Getting called out yesterday and then a rumor drops today is way too obvious, it screams ‘we put it out because you pointed it out.’”

“And honestly, this is totally Korosensei, isn’t it?”

“Finding out he was doing this behind our backs since yesterday… I’m honestly disappointed…”

“W-wait! Sensei has absolutely no idea what you’re talking about!!”

“Then what’s your alibi?”

“Alibi?”

“That night, late at night when this happened, where were you and what were you doing?”

“What was I doing… I was going up and down between 10,000 and 30,000 meters while shaking Shaka Shaka Potato, that Japanese McDonald’s fries seasoning you shake in a bag.”

“Who the hell can prove that?!”

“Everyone, enough already, since yesterday, sure, Korosensei is full of little worldly desires, but the worst he’s done is skim a porno mag… or stare at gravure magazines, Japanese swimsuit-pinup magazines, during break time like he’s possessed… Sensei… please turn yourself in.”

“Even you, Isogai-kun!? How rude, sensei is innocent, then come to the staff room, to prove sensei’s strength of will, I’ll dispose of every single one of my gravure collection from my desk, not one left!”

That wouldn’t prove he didn’t do it, but since he was fired up, we had no choice but to follow him to the staff room.

Korosensei started tossing out gravure magazines one after another with terrifying speed, but suddenly he stopped.

He cautiously pulled something from the back and in his hand was a single piece of underwear.

“No way…”

“Everyone look! The class attendance book, next to the girls’ names he wrote letters of the alphabet, he’s checked everyone’s cup size!”

“T-that can’t be… ah, right! I prepared for us to have a BBQ after school, look at these skewers, don’t they look super delic—!”

Unable to endure everyone’s icy stares, Korosensei tried a last-ditch save, but it just poured oil on the fire.

The scene was so miserable that many students looked away, unable to speak.

It felt like you could hear the trust we’d built cracking.