The next day, Asakura carried his black backpack and strolled into the campus with loose steps, occasionally letting out a long, drawn-out yawn.
It wasn't that he went off to do anything weird, but rather that he spent the entire night researching new potions, occasionally even trying his hand at making a Golden Snitch—though the progress on both brewing potions and replicating the Golden Snitch was fairly concerning.
When he reached the bottom of the school building, he happened to meet Yui, who was waiting there, and received an unexpected piece of news from her.
"Miura Yumiko joined the tennis club?" He wiped away tears squeezed out from yawning at the corner of his eyes, asking with a hint of surprise as his lazily drooping eyelids instantly lifted. His tone was full of disbelief—he really had no way to connect that proud and stubborn girl with a tennis club full of lying-flat slacker salted fish.
"To be exact, it should be 'returned to the tennis club'," Yui rarely changed her hairstyle today, her pink long hair falling over her shoulders with a gentle smile in her eyes. "Yumiko was in the tennis club back in middle school, you know."
"May I ask what kind of mental journey she went through to choose to rejoin the tennis club?"
Actually, from the previous tennis match, Asakura could roughly tell that Miura had a foundation in tennis, and one could even say her skill level wasn't bad—the power in her wrist when swinging the racquet and her serve stance both bore marks of deliberate training, definitely not a level cobbled together on short notice.
Still, her sudden joining of the tennis club couldn't help but make him a bit curious.
It couldn't possibly be that after being beaten to a pulp and shut out by him in tennis, her inner masochist erupted and made her choose to join, right?
"She said watching Hikigaya and Saika struggle in a club where everyone else lies flat is very funny," Yui said.
"..."
Asakura's expression turned somewhat hard to describe, his lips twitching slightly. His originally inquisitive eyes were instantly replaced by helplessness, his lips pursed into a straight line, speechless for quite a long time.
"I know what you want to say, Takuma-tan, but is there a possibility that this is just Yumiko showing her tsundere side?" Yui tried hard to defend her friend, leaning her body slightly closer to Asakura, her eyes brimming with sincerity.
Asakura subconsciously felt she was merely looking for a chance to pull closer to him, and then found himself amused by his own overthinking.
"But from start to finish, I've never seen her show any dere [sweetness]. Rather than calling her a tsundere [harsh-sweet], wouldn't it be better to call her a tsun-tsun [purely harsh]?" Asakura jabbed in an exasperated tone; after all, she was merely a mortal living in the era of tsundere decline, "It's completely impossible to like her."
"That's good then." Yui let out a relieved sigh.
"Ah?" Asakura froze, his eyes widening slightly, his face full of confusion.
Where is that good?
"No, what I mean is..." Yui appeared somewhat flustered for some reason, a light blush instantly rising on her cheeks. Her eyes subtly dodged his gaze, not daring to look straight into Asakura's eyes, her hands hurriedly waving as her tone turned somewhat stammering, "Yumiko is just like that, you know. Wanting to feel her kindness and gentleness requires patience to peel off her camouflage layer by layer."
"That sounds like something that would make one's eyes sting."
Asakura's mouth twitched, a trace of disgust flashing through his eyes as he quietly complained in his mind:
Could Miura have been someone's onion in her past life?
"Still, with this, the tennis club's problem is solved, right?" Yui said, her tone carrying a bit of gratification, putting on a slightly smug look of 'Takuma-tan and I solved the incident together, we're too strong'.
"Oh, have you already taken action against the other members of the tennis club? Using Hitler?" Asakura, who was still yawning, instantly shut his mouth, a bizarre spark of excitement suddenly lighting up his eyes as he leaned closer to Yui, his tone turning eager, "Is it swallowed whole? Although restraint types are pretty interesting to watch, speaking of snakes, as expected, swallowing whole is the way to go!"
The more he spoke, the more excited he got, strange light flashing in his eyes as his hands subconsciously gestured, completely failing to notice Yui's face turning darker and darker, nor perceiving the strange looks cast by passing students around them.
"It's Napoleon! And nobody took action! Why does Takuma-tan get so excited when talking about this!" Yui knitted her brows, her tone full of helplessness as she puffed up her cheeks and looked at Asakura with dissatisfied eyes.
"...Do you want to know?" Asakura paused eerily for a moment before asking.
"Forget it."
Yui backed down.
It was likely the unique instinct of a dummy that allowed her to sense danger; the girl hurriedly waved her hands, face full of resistance as if dodging some flood or wild beast.
Because the girl's guarded look was far too serious, even Asakura couldn't help wanting to reflect on whether something had gone wrong with his usual reputation.
By the way, is that step you subconsciously took backward for real?
"Since you didn't resolve the (physical) problem, what did you mean by what you said earlier?" Asakura asked offhandedly, turning visibly unenthusiastic in an instant. His shoulders slumped slightly, his tone recovering its previous laziness, the eye not wearing an eyepatch turning somewhat hollow.
"It's about the Triwizard Tournament. For the tennis club, the matches consist of double team matches and single individual matches. With Yumiko joining, even if those third-years don't train properly, the number of participants is already enough."
Yui counted on her fingers, her slender fingertips moving as she nodded and counted, her eyes full of seriousness, terrified that Asakura wouldn't understand.
Although for unknown reasons, whether it was Hachiman or Saika as the president, their tennis skills could only be considered average—Hachiman as a novice always played with a bit of clumsiness, while Saika, though gentle and earnest, lacked explosive power. Yet when playing doubles, they complemented each other remarkably well, so synchronized that it was as if they could use combo skills like Kizuna Combination at any moment, one defending and one covering, cooperating seamlessly.
On the other hand, Miura's skill was quite excellent, her swings powerful, her serves precise. Although eight times out of ten she still couldn't win against the Japanese national youth team candidates over at Shuchiin—those people received professional training year-round, their reaction speed and technical level far exceeding ordinary people, with experience so rich they could probably shoot a sports anime—making it impossible for ordinary students from an ordinary school to collide with them, at least it wouldn't be too embarrassing.
At least they wouldn't get shut out completely.
As a side note, although the specific rules hadn't been fully finalized, there was no gender restriction for tournament participants. This was because the vast majority of clubs at Shuchiin had outstanding players of any gender—aside from attack helicopters—and the female players' strength was not inferior to the male players at all. Therefore, toward Sobu High's team, they cooperated with a posture of playing along to the very end—whatever kind of team Sobu High fielded, they would enter with a team of the same gender, showing no insincerity whatsoever, yet also carrying the arrogance of the strong looking down from above at the weak.
To use a somewhat punchable phrase from Shuchiin's side: "You guys are the challengers!"
It feels like one might even comprehend the Dimension Slash by fighting against them.
"That really is great." Asakura let out another yawn.
Having said that, if Miura were to immediately snatch a regular starting position right after joining the tennis club and represent Sobu High in the Triwizard Tournament, I have a feeling those third-years in the tennis club who normally slack off relying on their seniority wouldn't accept it peacefully.
Considering that whether Miura is an onion or not, she at least acts like a quite tough type on the surface, maybe... no, it should be said that a conflict will definitely occur.
It'll be best to wait until the evening club activity time to go to the tennis court and check out the situation.
☆
Service Club activity room.
Lunch break. The weather these past few days had been quite nice; sunlight poured through the glass windows of the activity room and spilled onto the desk draped with a light-colored tablecloth, illuminating the room with a cozy warmth.
The air inside the activity room was filled with the fragrance of the tea Asagumo had brewed in advance—actually, this was originally always Yukino's job, but after Asagumo's range of activity shifted from the club cabin to the activity room, this job was completely usurped by her.
The activity room was very quiet, with everyone having their own things to do. After all, besides Yanami, everyone else had come over after finishing their meals.
(Actually, Yukino also ate in the club activity room, but her appetite was very small, so she was able to finish before the others rushed over).
At this time, Asakura walked leisurely into the activity room, holding a small black USB flash drive in his hand—it wasn't anything rare, just the kind of mass-market good you could buy at a convenience store for a few hundred yen.
He walked straight up to the computer in the activity room that frequently crashed and skillfully inserted the USB flash drive into the computer's port.
As a side note, this computer's specs were actually quite good, but Asakura had previously used it to forcefully run the AI written by Ryunosuke. As a result, that thing obviously wasn't something a personal computer could handle, so it got wrecked, turning into its current broken-shoe state where it crashed frequently...
Soon, the contents of the USB flash drive were displayed. It was densely packed with video files. Anon leaned over, her eyes instantly lighting up as she looked at the various recordings completely stuffing the screen, unable to help but exclaim: "Wow... The preparation is truly thorough..."
The gazes of the other people in the activity room also followed over, clearly feeling somewhat curious about the thing Asakura had brought.
"What is it, what is it? What did you bring?" Yanami leaned straight over, only to be pushed away in disgust by Asakura: "Wipe your oily mouth clean from just finishing your meal before coming over!"
"Ugh, what do you mean oily? This is the effect of lip balm, and it's peach-scented too!" the girl said indignantly: "If you don't believe me, smell it..."
"Alright, Anna, don't disturb Takuma-kun."
Yanami, who still wanted to lean over, was pulled back by the smiling Asagumo before she had time to move forward, and was pressed right back into her chair.
"I just wanted to clear my false charges..." the girl mumbled aggrievedly.
"Although it's definitely not all of them, the match routes of the top-tier players in the various clubs at Shuchiin are basically all here."
Asakura ignored Yanami's protests, tossed a 'GJ' look at Asagumo, and then casually clicked open a few videos. While showing them to the others, he explained, "I estimate the opponents Sobu High's sports clubs will face during the Triwizard Tournament are all in here."
"Where did you get these?" Yukino put down the book in her hand, raised her head, and looked at him with suspicious eyes as she asked.
Actually, she had also tried to gather similar intelligence, but the clues were too messy to sort out properly. Coupled with the fact that there was a lot of fake intel and time was short, she hadn't achieved any results.
As a result, she didn't expect Asakura to silently bring out the fully organized content directly, which couldn't help but make the girl feel a bit discouraged.
"Downloaded from the internet," Asakura spread his hands, his tone relaxed with an indifferent expression on his face. "Many open tournaments have recordings; they were surprisingly easy to find."
Although this was indeed the truth, as many high school sports events actually had recorded broadcasts, it was just that normally no one watched them, and the view counts on YouTube were quite dismal.
But in reality, the difficulty in finding these recordings wasn't searching for the videos themselves, but knowing the corresponding players—Shuchiin had many clubs and no shortage of top-tier players. If one didn't know their specific names and match information, even searching online would make it very hard to find the corresponding content.
However, with that notebook delivered by Chika, everything became much simpler. The notebook meticulously recorded the names of the top-tier players in each of Shuchiin's clubs, their specialized events, the matches they had participated in, and even simple analyses of their technical characteristics. After that, all one had to do was follow the clues to find what they were looking for.
What saved even more worry was that Asakura didn't even lift a finger himself, but instead handed the entire job of finding and downloading the materials over to Momoka.
Watch closely, I'll only perform this once: this is how employees are meant to be used (scummy capitalist tone).
Although Momoka felt somewhat dissatisfied with working overtime, constantly complaining with weird phrases like "Overtime again," "This isn't what we agreed on," "What do you mean there's overtime pay?", "What do you mean overtime pay is three times the normal hourly wage?", "No problem, leave it all to me!", and "Loyalty!", she was nevertheless held hostage by Shiina and obediently completed Asakura's request.
However, this morning, when Momoka handed the USB flash drive containing the recordings to Asakura, the two large dark circles on her face couldn't be hidden no matter what. Her eyes were full of exhaustion, even her gaze had become dull and lifeless, and the corners of her mouth were drooping. That haggard appearance truly made listeners sad and onlookers weep.
On the contrary, Shiina, who actively worked overtime to help without any overtime pay, looked to be in quite good spirits.
Could it be that Momoka's life essence was absorbed by that child...?
Right at this moment, the door to the Service Club was pulled open from the outside, and then the familiar girl with long, straight black hair barged into the activity room.