POV Kushida Kikyo

I wanted to be number one.

It didn’t matter if it was academics or sports. I just wanted something special that only I had.

Because gaining attention from that was the greatest joy for me.

Amazing, cute, beautiful, kind. It didn’t matter what it was. The moment people looked at me with admiration was when I felt most alive.

Second or third place wasn’t enough.

It only had meaning because it was first.

But as I got older, there were things I came to understand.

No matter how hard I tried, with my abilities I couldn’t become number one in studies or sports. I had confidence in my looks, but since people’s tastes vary widely, I could never clearly become number one there either.

That’s why I decided to act as the kindest person.

By being kinder and more considerate than anyone else, I became the most popular person at school.

Liked by boys and girls, relied upon, trusted. It was a pleasure I couldn’t obtain from anything else.

But because of that, I suffered just as much pain.

Every day I built up enough stress to make my hair fall out, got sick again and again, and still endured and endured and endured.

But my heart eventually reached its limit.

I poured all the stress hidden inside me into a blog.

Anonymously, I wrote the truth exactly as it was and vented all my daily stress.

Thanks to that, I felt immediate relief. Words of encouragement from strangers who didn’t know me saved me.

But making it a blog visible to an unspecified number of people was a mistake.

Even though I hid the names of the people involved, the content was true, so people realized.

Everyone who had been helped by me until then became my enemy.

I protected myself by using ‘truth’ as a weapon.

I exposed everyone’s secrets and redirected the hostility away from myself.

But as a result, the class collapsed.

I would never fail again.

With that resolve, I enrolled in Advanced Nurturing High School where no one would know me.

I planned to start over here.

But that woman was here.

Horikita Suzune.

Someone who knew my past.

She might not show interest in others, but the fact she knew about me made that irrelevant.

She needed to be dealt with.

I spoke to Horikita many times.

She rejected me every time, but classmates looked at her with discomfort for rejecting someone who was kindly approaching her.

That’s how I pushed her into isolation.

But there were two uncertain factors.

Ayanokōji Kiyotaka and Tsubaki Yuki.

Only those two continued interacting with Horikita.

If Horikita opened her heart and revealed the secret to them, it would be over.

So I decided to approach them.

I had to separate them from Horikita somehow.

I couldn’t match the timing with Ayanokōji-kun, but I believe I successfully guided Tsubaki-san away.

Satisfied that Tsubaki-san was talking to Horikita less, May arrived and the school’s secret was revealed.

If you got a failing grade in the upcoming midterm exam, you would be expelled.

The entire class became busy.

Amid that, the class idiots planned to hold a study session with Horikita.

I cooperated and bowed my head to gather them.

But despite that effort, Horikita ruined it.

It was fine that it failed.

Still, it angered me that my effort was wasted.

That’s why I decided to relieve my stress.

The blog had failed.

So I screamed instead.

Raising my voice felt refreshing.

By venting my dissatisfaction toward Horikita on the rooftop, I was able to maintain myself.

But Ayanokōji-kun saw me.

On top of that, he recorded video and audio.

I had no choice but to submit to his blackmail.

I thought my school life was over.

So I prepared myself and let Ayanokōji-kun hold me.

At first I stubbornly endured.

But that composure quickly disappeared.

Before I knew it, as Ayanokōji-kun skillfully touched my body, I found myself saying things like a slave.

It was frustrating.

But to escape that hell of pleasure, submitting to this man was the only option.

I didn’t want to lose my virginity.

Still, the sensation was something I had never experienced before.

The only way was to satisfy him and end it.

So I accepted Ayanokōji-kun.

But it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Rather… isn’t Ayanokōji-kun actually good at this?

Looking closely, he’s kind of handsome too.

Even though he forced himself on me like this, I didn’t feel that bad.

At first he was mean.

But once he realized I had submitted, he suddenly became gentle.

Like something lovers would do, he showed me sensations I had never known.

Before I realized it, I was the one kissing Ayanokōji-kun.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

But even that regret disappeared before overwhelming pleasure.

Before I realized it, I was telling Ayanokōji-kun about my past.

The dark history where my mistake destroyed the class.

Normally it wasn’t something I would tell anyone.

But somehow I wanted him to hear it.

Ayanokōji-kun listened.

After hearing my story, he pointed out several unnatural aspects of my past.

At first I almost dismissed it as nonsense.

But his words had no contradictions.

In fact, they were convincing enough that thinking that way seemed natural.

Yes… when you think about it, it is strange.

Of course I know I was at fault.

But even so, it’s clearly strange that no one supported me after everything I had done for them.

Back then, the trust I had built wasn’t comparable to now.

Yes, I wrote insults and exposed secrets.

But not believing me without even hearing my explanation really does seem like someone intentionally spread bad rumors, just like Ayanokōji-kun said.

But Ayanokōji-kun sympathized with me.

He comforted me, saying I was a victim who had been treated horribly.

For the first time, I felt the reassurance of entrusting myself completely to someone else.

When morning came, the discomfort of having my true nature exposed had disappeared.

Rather, I even felt glad it was him who discovered it.

I trusted him that much.

At Ayanokōji-kun’s command, I became the leader of the class.

Surprisingly, that didn’t feel bad either.

Until now, anyone who knew my secret had to be eliminated.

But Ayanokōji-kun didn’t make me feel uncomfortable at all.

I quickly understood why.

He doesn’t deny me.

Even knowing my true nature, he accepts both my public face and my hidden face.

If anything, he acknowledges my actions and even does things that benefit me.

The stress I used to vent on the rooftop will now be heard by him.

He’ll praise me.

At first I hated being threatened.

But those feelings quickly disappeared.

Now I don’t mind acting for his sake.

Because he is the first person who accepted the real me.

* * *

POV Horikita Suzune

I have a brother two years older than me.

In order to catch up to him, I entered Advanced Nurturing High School.

But what awaited me at this school was a series of hardships.

Not only was I assigned to the lowest class, but even though my personal ability was high, I somehow didn’t receive proper evaluation.

Even so, I decided not to give up and aim for Class A.

I couldn’t afford to stop here if I wanted to catch up to my brother.

But that very brother looked at me with disappointment.

Apparently my current situation and lack of ability had disappointed him.

That’s why the only thing I could do was show him my growth.

Still, even I understand that aiming for Class A alone isn’t realistic.

I absolutely needed allies.

Allies with enough ability to aim for Class A.

Fortunately, there were candidates.

My classmates Ayanokōji-kun and Tsubaki-san.

They possessed abilities surpassing mine and clearly didn’t belong in Class D.

If I gained their cooperation, aiming for Class A wouldn’t be impossible.

But for some reason Ayanokōji-kun hesitated to cooperate and instead proposed a condition.

If I won a bet against him, he would cooperate.

The bet was to teach three classmates with particularly poor academic ability.

He said teaching those three would be extremely difficult.

But once someone understood the basics, studying wasn’t that hard.

Teaching itself didn’t worry me.

The problem was gathering them.

Honestly, I’m not someone who interacts much with others.

Naturally I have no friends in the class and I don’t believe I need them.

But that attitude became troublesome in the current situation.

Obviously those three wouldn’t obediently study just because I called them.

I had to create a situation where they would participate.

If I couldn’t do it alone, I had to rely on someone else.

But I couldn’t use Ayanokōji-kun or Tsubaki-san in this bet.

Which meant there was only one person I could rely on.

Kushida Kikyo.

I had forgotten at first, but she was a girl from the same middle school as me.

There were rumors she caused some major incident.

But right now that didn’t matter.

I had to ask her to gather the three.

Honestly, asking her for help after rejecting her so many times felt unpleasant.

But I had no choice.

With Kushida-san’s help, I somehow managed to create the study session.

However, I quickly understood what Ayanokōji-kun meant.

They were first-year high school students who didn’t even know simultaneous equations.

On top of that, they tried to leave after studying for barely five minutes.

Teaching people like that was pointless.

Because of the bet with Ayanokōji-kun, I tried to teach as kindly as possible.

But they still accused me of looking down on them.

If they felt looked down on by something so trivial, it only meant they themselves believed they were inferior.

In the end, they abandoned studying.

I didn’t even feel like chasing them.

That meant I lost the bet with Ayanokōji-kun.

But even if it were Ayanokōji-kun, there was no way he could guide them.

Even if teaching them succeeded this time, the same situation would happen again.

It would repeat endlessly.

Rather than such futile effort, it would be better to cut them off now even at the cost of negative points.

That was my judgment.

Surely Ayanokōji-kun would understand how hopeless they were.

I thought that naïvely.

But Ayanokōji-kun didn’t abandon them.

I don’t know what method he used.

But they started studying seriously during breaks and lunch.

At first I couldn’t believe it.

I even suspected they were pretending to study just to surprise me.

But as time passed, the reality became undeniable.

Why?

They couldn’t last five minutes in my study session.

Our teaching methods shouldn’t have been that different.

I didn’t want to admit it.

If I admitted it, it would mean Ayanokōji-kun was right and I was incompetent.

Someone like that could never catch up to my brother.

But no matter how much I tried to avoid it, reality didn’t change.

Two weeks before the exam, the exam range suddenly changed.

Even then Ayanokōji-kun showed no panic.

Even though I needed to study for myself, he continued teaching the failing group as if it were nothing.

In fact, he even had enough leeway to help other isolated students in the class.

This couldn’t continue.

At this rate I would become a useless person who could only talk.

But anything I did wouldn’t help the class.

If I interfered, it might only make things worse.

At one point I almost asked Ayanokōji-kun if there was something I could do.

But no.

If I relied on him here, I wouldn’t grow.

If I wanted to become like my brother, I had to think and act for myself.

However, no matter how much I thought, I couldn’t find anything I could do.

A sense of helplessness overwhelmed me.

The image of my brother seemed to mock me.

You can’t even do something like this?

I must aim for Class A.

Because I want to become someone like my brother.

But what about me now?

Can someone like this become like him?

Right now the class functions perfectly fine without my help.

Is it really okay to just rely on others like that?

No matter how much I questioned myself, no answer came.

Sleepless nights continued.

I had never felt this anxiety before.

Just seeing my classmates working hard made my chest tighten.

The only way to escape this anxiety was studying.

While studying, I could ignore it.

As if running away, I continued studying.

But it wasn’t a fundamental solution.

I feel like I must do something.

But I don’t know what that something is.

Without knowing, with vague anxiety still inside me, time mercilessly moved toward the exam.