"What's wrong?" Takeru asked, tilting his head in confusion as he noticed Suzuki's sudden, rigid expression.
"Nothing, it's fine. You can call me Suzuki, too, Takeru."
Suzuki decided to forcibly shove his worries to the back of his mind. Maybe the plot will change now that I'm his roommate, he reasoned, though he knew that was a dangerously optimistic thought.
"Okay! I'll call you Suzuki, then!" Takeru grinned brightly, genuinely thrilled that his new roommate seemed so approachable and kind. "By the way, where are you from?"
"Oh, I'm from..."
As they unpacked their bags and began tidying up the small dorm room, they easily fell into casual conversation about their hometowns and their expectations for the academy.
"This school is amazing, though!" Takeru laughed innocently, practically radiating naive excitement. "It's completely free, and the entrance exams were super easy! I heard the reputation is fantastic too. I'm honestly just so glad I got accepted despite my terrible grades. Hahaha..."
"..."
Suzuki was at a total loss for words. How was he supposed to explain that this school wasn't even remotely normal? In the end, he decided to just nod along and pretend he didn't know anything either. Takeru definitely wouldn't believe him anyway.
Maken-Ki.
The 6th Suzuki had never in his wildest dreams expected to be reincarnated into this specific world. Of all the multiverses out there, why did it have to be an ecchi battle-harem universe?
He wasn't entirely sure how the supernatural mechanics worked here, but he could definitely feel a strange, potent energy thrumming through his body.
What was it called again? Chakra? Ki? Inner power? Magic?
[It is called an Element.]
Oh, right!
Fortunately, he had the Manager skill now. Even when his memory failed him, his internal AI could instantly pull up the correct lore and optimize his actions.
While his innate Element—the supernatural energy native to this world—was only slightly above average in raw capacity, the Manager utilized it with terrifying efficiency. It allowed him to think faster, require less sleep, and push his physical limits further without tiring. Thanks to this optimized stamina, he had spent his pre-enrollment years doing high-end physical labor, quietly amassing a comfortable amount of savings. His life was significantly less miserable than the Naruto Suzuki's.
Like many of the students here, he was an orphan. In this world, children who awakened to the Element were often alienated by normal society, viewed as freaks or dangerous anomalies, eventually funneling them all into Tenbi Academy.
Did this tragic societal alienation make him want to rise up, become a hero, and change the world?
Not in the slightest. His life had just finally stabilized; why would he go looking for trouble? He was perfectly content leaving the world-saving nonsense to the clueless protagonist unpacking his bags three feet away.
Tenbi Academy was a private prep high school that had only recently transitioned from an elite all-girls combat school back to a co-ed institution. Takeru Ooyama was one of the first male students allowed in. Suzuki had managed to slip in alongside him.
Why had Suzuki willingly enrolled in a school full of violently overpowered, hormone-crazed teenagers?
Simple: tuition was 100% free.
Unlike the majority of the student body—who wasted all their time and energy training for flashy duels that had absolutely zero practical application in modern society—Suzuki didn't care about combat rankings. His goal was straightforward: graduate at the top of his academic class, get into a prestigious university, and secure a cushy, high-paying job as a government civil servant.
The government desperately needed intelligent, non-combative managers to oversee these super-powered teenagers. He wasn't interested in a rose-colored, chaotic high school life. He wanted a boring, stable, intensely lucrative life that guaranteed he wouldn't die before he hit thirty.
But what about his Manager ability? Wasn't it a waste not to train his Element to its maximum potential?
Not really. Power came in many forms. The meatheads at this academy thought power was just punching really hard or shooting lasers. Suzuki knew that true, unshakeable power came from money and political authority.
He had considered taking the entrepreneurial route, but when he synced with the memories of the Arifureta and Tensura Suzukis and saw how incredibly stressful it was to manage a multinational corporate empire, he changed his mind. Working a stable 9-to-5 government job with absolute job security and excellent benefits sounded like paradise.
His master plan was flawless: graduate, become a civil servant, use the Manager to casually play the stock market on the side, and eventually marry a quiet, slightly above-average woman who wouldn't drag him into life-threatening harem hijinks.
There were plenty of beautiful women at this academy. He just needed to carefully avoid the plot-relevant ones.
"I'm going to take a shower first," Suzuki announced, grabbing a towel. "I'm all sweaty from moving those boxes."
"Okay, I'll go after you!" Takeru replied cheerfully. "Don't take too long in there, and don't go wanking yourself!"
"...Do you honestly think I'm you?" Suzuki deadpanned, looking at the protagonist with utter exasperation. "Also, you might want to hide your porn stash. What if your childhood friend drops by unannounced and finds your 'treasures'?"
"Ah! Oh, right!" Takeru slapped his forehead, immediately scrambling to hide the precarious stack of adult magazines he had left on his bed. But as he shoved them under his mattress, he looked back at Suzuki with a bright, entirely inappropriate grin. "Hey, we can always watch my collection together later, Suzuki!"
"...Let's just focus on getting to the entrance ceremony on time, okay?"
Suzuki couldn't deny he was a healthy teenage boy, but the idea of a communal viewing session was just wrong on so many levels.
"Oh, right! I totally forgot school starts today!" Takeru panicked, scrambling to find his uniform.
"....." Suzuki.
"I'm going to shower," Suzuki sighed, shaking his head. At least Takeru's sheer idiocy meant the plot was still mostly intact. The guy was an idiot, but his future was guaranteed to be filled with aggressively affectionate women.
As for Suzuki?
Women were strictly a low priority right now. He had textbooks to study and a boring, stable future to secure. Unlike Takeru, he knew exactly what kind of violently ecchi school Tenbi Academy was, and he fully intended to keep his head down and avoid the crossfire.
He stepped into the attached bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and began washing away the sweat of moving day. The warm water felt great, and he was just finishing up, reaching for his towel to dry off his lower half, when—
Click.
The bathroom door suddenly swung wide open.
"Takeru, what are you doing?! You're going to be late if you don't hurry up! You need to finish your bath and—"
The loud, scolding female voice abruptly died in the woman's throat.
Suzuki froze, the towel still dangling uselessly in his hand. He stared blankly at the stunning, incredibly well-endowed young woman standing in the doorway.
The woman blinked her large, pretty eyes. Then, very slowly, her gaze drifted downward.
Her eyes locked dead onto the absolute monster hanging casually between his legs—a behemoth that definitively proved he was not a background character.
"...."
As the woman stood paralyzed in the doorway, staring at his shockingly massive equipment with a deeply flushed, slack-jawed expression, Suzuki simply took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
He thought about the original author of Maken-Ki and the aggressively degenerate plotlines this universe ran on.
Yeah, Suzuki thought tiredly. My peaceful life is officially over.