The night in the middle of the ocean possessed a different quality of silence.
Far from the light pollution of the city, the sky above the cruise ship Speranza stretched out like a tapestry of black velvet dusted with diamonds. The sea breeze blew constantly, carrying the scent of salt that cleansed the lungs of the stifling air left over from the discussion rooms.
On the uppermost observation deck—a place rarely visited by students due to the strong winds—Seiji Koroizumi stood leaning against the guardrail. In his hand was a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
He wasn't contemplating complex strategies. He wasn't thinking about Ryuen or Sakayanagi. He was simply enjoying the moment.
"Aren't you cold?"
The flat voice emerged from the direction of the stairs.
Seiji didn't turn his head. He already knew who his guest was. The rhythm of footsteps that were nearly soundless, the breathing pattern as steady as a metronome... there was only one person on this ship capable of approaching him without triggering the alarm of The Reaper's instincts.
"This hot chocolate helps quite a bit," Seiji answered, lifting his cup slightly. "Want some? There's still more in the thermos."
Ayanokouji Kiyotaka walked closer, stopping beside Seiji. He was wearing a gray hoodie over his uniform.
"No need. I just had dinner."
Ayanokouji stared at the dark ocean below them. The whitecaps crashed against the ship's hull, creating a foam that glowed faintly due to the bioluminescence of plankton.
"It's strange," Ayanokouji said abruptly.
"What is?"
"This exam," Ayanokouji turned to look at Seiji. "Almost 36 hours have passed. Four discussion sessions have concluded. And guess how many groups have submitted an answer?"
Seiji took a sip of his chocolate. "Zero?"
"Zero," Ayanokouji confirmed. "Not a single betrayal. Not a single guess submitted to the school's server. I checked Mashima-sensei and Chabashira-sensei's expressions during dinner earlier. They looked... confused."
Normally, in an exam like this, there would be at least one or two fools tempted by the money, or one aggressive class attempting a preemptive strike. But this time, silence blanketed all twelve groups.
The Aries Group was peaceful due to Yukimura's fake rage. The Taurus Group was peaceful due to Hirata's smile. The Gemini Group was peaceful due to literary debates. The Virgo Group was peaceful due to Kei's gossip. Even the Cancer Group, which housed both Ryuen and Horikita... a ceasefire.
"You aren't just controlling Class B, Koroizumi," Ayanokouji analyzed, his eyes staring sharply at Seiji's side profile. "You are controlling the meta-game of the entire ship. You've created an atmosphere where 'doing something' is perceived as far more dangerous than 'doing nothing'. You have frozen the game."
Seiji smiled faintly. He set his cup down on the guardrail (carefully, so it wouldn't fall).
"You know, Ayanokouji-kun. In martial arts, there is a concept known as Wu Wei."
"Action through inaction?"
"Correct. Flowing with the water. Do not fight the current; become the water itself," Seiji spread his arms, feeling the night wind. "The school designed this exam under the assumption that humans are greedy creatures who will prey upon each other given the opportunity (The Prisoner's Dilemma). They expected blood. They expected conflict."
Seiji looked at Ayanokouji.
"But what happens when you eliminate that hunger? What happens when you feed everyone with the easy promise of '500,000 points'?"
"They become lazy," Ayanokouji answered.
"Exactly. Laziness is humanity's greatest strength," Seiji chuckled. "Betraying your group members is exhausting. You have to lie, formulate a strategy, bear the risk of being hated, and bear the risk of guessing wrong. Meanwhile, sitting quietly and playing cards for three days promises the exact same massive reward with zero risk."
"So you utilized humanity's natural laziness to counter the school's malicious design," Ayanokouji concluded.
"I simply offered the most efficient path. And humans... fundamentally love efficiency."
Ayanokouji fell silent for a moment, digesting that philosophy. In the White Room, efficiency meant maximum results through maximum effort. Here, Seiji was teaching that efficiency could mean maximum results through zero effort.
"It is a flawless psychological manipulation," Ayanokouji said, breaking the silence. "But we both know the school isn't just testing mental endurance. Mashima-sensei explicitly called this the 'Zodiac Exam'. There has to be a mechanical pattern behind the VIP designation. Something absolute and logical."
Seiji smiled, and this time, the smile was sharper.
"Have you already started looking for it?"
"The list of names in the email sent by the school," Ayanokouji replied flatly. "That was the first thing I checked. I tried looking for an alphabetical pattern or the gojuon order of the names in our group. But the pattern is a mess. Yukimura is fifth in the Aries group, Hirata is first in Taurus, and you are first in Gemini. There is no mathematical consistency to the placement of the names."
"And your conclusion?"
"The list of names in the email is a Red Herring. A distraction trap," Ayanokouji stated. "The school intentionally scrambled the order of the names so that any student trying to find a pattern from that list would waste hours of their time and eventually give up, assuming the selection is purely random."
Seiji reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper, and handed it to Ayanokouji.
"You truly are a sharp student, Kiyotaka-kun. Read that."
Ayanokouji unfolded the paper. Under the light of the deck lamps, he saw lines of Seiji's incredibly neat handwriting. It was a list of five names whose VIP status they already knew, accompanied by long strings of alphanumeric characters beside them.
Aries: Yukimura Teruhiko – S01T004601
Taurus: Hirata Yosuke – S01T008802
Gemini: Koroizumi Seiji – S01T009903
Cancer: Manabe Shiho – S01T015204
Leo: Kushida Kikyo – S01T007705
Ayanokouji's eyes swept over the data. His computer-like brain processed the information in a matter of seconds. His focus immediately locked onto the final two digits of each alphanumeric string.
"Student ID Numbers," Ayanokouji murmured.
"The number 01 for Aries. 02 for Taurus. 03 for Gemini... The VIP pattern is determined by the last two digits of the Student ID Number."
"Correct," Seiji nodded. "The school hid the key in something entirely administrative that we often ignore. At Advanced Nurturing High School, we are called by our names; we interact using our names. The ID number is just a string of digits printed in small text on our student cards. No normal student cares about or memorizes their friends' IDs, much less the IDs of students from other classes."
Ayanokouji looked at the paper again. "How did you manage to get their ID numbers? Manabe Shiho is in Class D. Kushida and Yukimura might have been easy since they're classmates, but Manabe?"
"Casual observation in the cafeteria," Seiji answered breezily. "When paying with private points, students have to scan their student cards at the cashier terminal. I simply had to stand in the right line, watch the terminal screen when Manabe paid for her lunch, and my eyes memorized the string of numbers. Remembering small details is an old habit of mine."
Ayanokouji understood. Seiji's processing speed and visual memory were far beyond that of a normal human.
"This pattern is incredibly dangerous," Ayanokouji said, folding the paper. "If even one person realizes this last-two-digits pattern, this exam transforms from a game of mutual suspicion into an open data hunt. They wouldn't even need to discuss anything in the rooms. They would just need to walk around the ship, find an excuse to look at the ID cards of enemy group members, and match the last two digits with the group's Zodiac order."
"Someone who knows this pattern could bag the identities of all 12 VIPs before the third day ends," Seiji added. "Imagine if Class A or Class C submitted correct guesses simultaneously for all the groups. They would receive an injection of hundreds of Class Points in an instant."
"Then why haven't you submitted the answers?" Ayanokouji asked. "You already hold the pattern. You could figure out the VIPs of the remaining 7 groups and carry Class B to the top of the rankings today."
"Because that violates my initial strategy," Seiji took the paper back from Ayanokouji's hand. "If I monopolize the correct guesses, the other classes will be hit with massive penalties. The point gap would certainly widen, but it would trigger a brutal war. Ryuen would go on a rampage, Sakayanagi would attack openly, and Class B would become the target of a joint destruction operation by an alliance of the other classes in the next exam. Winning by too large a margin is sometimes just as dangerous as losing."
Seiji looked out at the dark ocean. "I am keeping this pattern as a deterrent. If, on the final day, any class attempts to play dirty and breaks the 'Scenario 1' agreement, I will use this pattern to shoot down their VIP before they even have the chance to guess ours."
"But there is a risk," Ayanokouji said, steering the topic back to external threats. "This strategy of peace and the secret of this ID pattern rely on the assumption that there isn't some madman who just wants to watch the world burn. Ryuen, for instance. Or Sakayanagi."
"Ryuen is traumatized," Seiji answered casually. "He's still licking the wounds on his ego from the north beach. Furthermore, Manabe is the VIP in his group. If Ryuen is smart, he definitely already suspects Manabe, given how she's constantly trembling. But he hasn't guessed her because he knows it would harm Class D. He won't make a move unless he's certain he can defeat me."
"And Sakayanagi..." Seiji recalled the chess game in the library.
"...she is currently enjoying the show. Sakayanagi is in the Libra Group. The 7th order. If the last two digits of her ID are 07, then she is the VIP of her own group. And if she realized that, she undoubtedly cracked this pattern just as I did."
Ayanokouji nodded in agreement. "That genius girl probably already knows everything. She can easily access the ID data of the Class C students. The question is, why is she remaining silent as well?"
"To her, destroying this peace right now is too easy and too boring," Seiji stated. "She wants to see if I can maintain this utopian peace until the very end. She is waiting for the final day. She wants to see if I will slip up at the last second."
"You really are playing with fire with those monsters," Ayanokouji commented.
"A teacher must be prepared to step into the lion's den to teach, mustn't he?" Seiji turned around, leaning his back against the railing, looking straight at Ayanokouji. "So, what about you, Ayanokouji? What have you learned from this exam so far?"
Ayanokouji stared at his own palm.
"I learned that... being a background character actually requires far more effort than being the main protagonist."
Seiji let out a crisp laugh. "Ah, you're starting to feel it. Maintaining the facade of an ordinary student is difficult, isn't it?"
"Very. Especially with Karuizawa constantly ordering me to fetch her water and listen to her gossip."
"That is character building, Ayanokouji-kun. An exercise in patience."
"I think I prefer the physical training in the White Room," Ayanokouji complained, though there was a rare lightness to his tone.
The atmosphere grew silent for a moment. Only the sound of the wind and the roar of the waves remained. Two monsters standing side-by-side. One, a former assassin who became a true teacher; the other, the product of a perfect human experiment who merely wished to be ordinary.
Both were anomalies. Both were lonely in their own respective ways.
"Tomorrow is the final day," Seiji said, breaking the silence. "The pressure will peak. The school will not be pleased to see their exam fail to incite conflict. They will not let us sleep peacefully."
"Intervention?"
"Perhaps. Provocative emails. Secret offers. Or a sudden rule change." Seiji straightened his posture, picking his cooling cup of hot chocolate back up. "Be prepared, Ayanokouji. Tomorrow, we cannot solely rely on the laziness of others. Tomorrow, we might have to be a little... active."
"I will remain in the shadows," Ayanokouji stated.
"Of course. But even shadows can wield a knife if necessary, right?"
Seiji winked, then walked toward the entrance door of the deck.
"Get some sleep. Don't forget to use facial moisturizer. Karuizawa said your skin is dry from the ship's AC."
"She did not say that."
"She will say it tomorrow."
Seiji disappeared behind the door, leaving Ayanokouji alone under the moonlight.
Ayanokouji touched his own cheek.
"Dry skin..." he murmured.
He looked up at the night sky. Seiji's strategy was the Antithesis of this school's system. The school desired competition and elimination. Seiji desired coexistence and mutual elevation, even if he had to hold back from using that lethal ID pattern.
Who would win? The ideology of the White Room (which the school system also represented) or the ideology of Koro-sensei (which Seiji represented)?
Ayanokouji felt that, for the very first time, he genuinely wanted to see the end of this story. Not as an analyst, but as a curious reader.
He turned and walked back to his room.
Tomorrow, the final storm would arrive. And Ayanokouji would ensure he had the best seat in the house to watch it unfold.
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