Back in his dorm room, Chris couldn't be bothered to change clothes. He simply had GANTZ beam them away with surgical precision — one step, done.
Then he pulled up the live surveillance feed.
As the architect of all of this, the curtain call was the one part of the show he simply couldn't miss.
"Let's see... how's our resilient little Ichinose doing right now?"
He tapped his fingertip lightly and expanded the feed on Ichinose Honami.
On screen.
The pink-haired girl pushed open her door, her movements dull and absent, as though her mind had checked out somewhere along the way.
She didn't turn on the lights.
By the pale wash of moonlight seeping through the window, she drifted to her desk and poured herself a glass of water.
She lifted it. Brought it to her lips.
And stopped.
A long moment passed. She didn't drink.
Finally, as though every last thread of strength had quietly unraveled, she set the glass back down on the desk — and slowly opened her right hand, spreading her palm face-up.
In the dark, she stared at it. At the hollow of her empty hand.
Like she was remembering something. Or trying to hold onto something that was already gone.
It was the warmth of the last tear Shiranami Chihiro had shed before she vanished.
As he watched, the girl's shoulders began to tremble — faintly, then less faintly.
One by one, crystalline drops spilled silently down her cheeks and fell into her palm.
"I'm sorry..."
In the empty room, a sound rose — a stifled, suffocated murmur, pressed down until it was barely more than a whimper.
"Chihiro... I'm so sorry..."
Watching Ichinose fall apart on screen — that quiet, glittering unraveling — Chris rubbed his chin. He suspected his expression right now was wearing something that looked distinctly, unambiguously pleased.
"It can't be helped," he told himself softly, in the manner of a man offering himself a very reasonable defense.
"You can't see a rainbow without a little rain, right?"
"Ichinose. That kindness of yours is too cheap. It only becomes something real after it's been hammered through the thorns — after it's burned all the way down and risen from the ash. That's the only way you'll become the kind of leader that actually matters."
All of this was necessary sacrifice. It was his painstaking, deeply considered kindness!
Sufficiently moved by his own noble intentions, Chris gave a small nod of satisfaction — and switched the feed to a coordinate already far outside the school grounds.
Someone's home. Shiranami Chihiro's real home.
On the bed, the girl who should by all rights have been dead jolted awake — drenched in cold sweat, gasping.
Ten full minutes of sobbing, hyperventilating collapse followed. Then, once she'd confirmed she was alive and in one piece — she grabbed her phone in something approaching frenzy and dialed the number she could have recited in her sleep.
"...The number you have dialed is not in service."
Once. Twice. Countless times over.
No matter what she tried, the answer was always the same flat, merciless tone.
Chris watched her stunned, uncomprehending expression, and the smile on his face deepened.
Of course the call wouldn't go through. That part he'd arranged specifically for her.
Under normal procedure, she would have had her memories of the Advanced Nurturing High School and the Black Sphere sealed away — returned to an ordinary girl's life at a regular high school, none the wiser.
But Chris had decided that same recycled amnesia, every single time, was simply boring.
She'd stepped offstage temporarily. The least she could do was contribute a little something while she waited in the wings.
So instead of erasing Shiranami Chihiro's memories, he'd made a small, targeted adjustment to the memories of everyone around her.
In the minds of her parents and friends, Shiranami Chihiro now existed in the state of someone who "passed away in a car accident shortly after graduating middle school, due to health complications." They didn't know the Advanced Nurturing High School existed. They couldn't perceive her at all.
"I wonder," Chris mused with quiet anticipation, "how Shiranami-san — who still has all her memories — is going to react when she realizes that everyone around her can no longer see her..."
No deeper reason. He was simply curious what would happen.
And once enough students had been expelled, he could always hold a revival match — tell them that whether they chose to keep living or sit and wait for death was entirely their own decision. Just imagining the desperate scramble that might produce was enough to make him feel genuinely animated.
For Ichinose's development, this was only the first step.
He swiped his finger. The feed changed again.
This time, the location wasn't the school. It was a dim, grimy alleyway somewhere in Tokyo.
On screen: a man with wild, frantic eyes — the irises a raw, blazing red from extreme starvation — clawing at his own hair in visible agony.
A Ghoul.
More specifically — a Ghoul teetering on the edge of a full frenzy, his Rc cells critically depleted.
At this moment, the creature was following some deep, instinctive pull — driving itself toward the island that was the Advanced Nurturing High School. According to information he'd wrung from someone with connections, that school was the only place in this world where "extraordinary power" existed. The only place that might solve his hunger.
"Hoh. And he's a named one, too."
Chris raised an eyebrow, recognizing the face — a notorious, unhinged killer from Tokyo Ghoul.
"Saeki Sorao, hm..."
"Well. Since you've made the trip — do me a small favor before you starve to death."
——
The next day.
Perhaps because last night's "preliminary test" hadn't touched the majority of students. Or perhaps because Class D had its own unique brand of cheerful nihilism — when things got bad enough, they simply stopped caring.
The classroom was nowhere near as gloomy as one might have expected. If anything, it was as noisy as ever.
"You know, the more I think about it, the Black Sphere exams might not be entirely a bad thing?"
Shinohara Kouzuki was perched on top of her desk, scrolling through the six-thousand-point windfall on her phone, in a genuinely decent mood.
"I mean, every time we clear one, we walk away with a nice pile of private points, right? As long as we don't get picked, we come out ahead."
"Not to mention — isn't our class ranking almost catching up to Class C now?"
"Right, right!" Satou Maya chimed in, blowing on freshly painted nails. "Horikita-san and Sudou-san worked so hard — honestly, we owe it all to them!"
At that, Sudou Ken's head came up automatically. His eyes found Horikita Suzune.
Horikita Suzune sat with her back straight as ever, as though the noise around her had nothing to do with her. She neither refuted the misunderstanding nor accepted the praise — just turned a page, cold and unhurried, as if she'd never registered the conversation at all, and had never once noticed his existence.
Sudou Ken opened his mouth. His fist clenched, then unclenched.
Thinking back on yesterday's exam, he didn't have the nerve to walk over and ask her directly about the details of the exams she'd done with Chris. But he also couldn't stand being sealed outside the truth like this.
So he turned and made his way to Ayanokoji's desk instead.
"Hey. Ayanokoji."
He dropped his voice, his tone coming out slightly awkward:
"From what Hirata said, you've been in more than one Black Sphere exam, right? Besides last time?"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka lifted his eyes, giving a single mild nod. "Yeah, that's right."
Seeing him confirm it, Sudou's expression lit up slightly. He pushed forward:
"So... do you know the details of the one Horikita and Chris were in? I mean — the first exam?"
"I've noticed they seem... kind of in sync. Like they have a whole thing going on."
What a magnificently sour question.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's gaze drifted sideways. His dead-fish eyes slid, against their will, to Horikita Suzune sitting diagonally ahead — then back to the painfully conflicted expression on Sudou's face.
So this is what teenage jealousy looks like...
Just as Ayanokoji was quietly working out the least effort way to deflect — the classroom door swung open.
Chris walked in, yawning, right as the bell rang.
Nearly the same instant his foot crossed the threshold.
Snap.
Horikita Suzune — who had been sitting quietly with her book — closed it without warning and stood up from her seat.
Under the startled stares of the entire class, she walked in a straight line to the door, directly up to Chris, who had barely made it inside — and without a word, grabbed him by the wrist.
"Come with me."
"Huh?"
Chris blinked, still processing — and found himself physically hauled to the front of the classroom before he'd had time to form a proper response.
"Horikita? What are you—"
Sudou Ken's eyes looked like they were about to fall out of his head.
Horikita Suzune paid the surrounding stares no attention whatsoever.
She turned to face the class — hand still locked around Chris's wrist — and raised his arm high into the air. Like a boxing referee announcing the winner of a match.
"One minute of your time. I have something to declare."
Her clear, composed voice carried through the classroom without a hint of hesitation.
"Everyone has been under the impression that the class points are something I earned."
"That is incorrect."
"Chris and Kushida Kikyo were the first in this class to participate in a Black Sphere exam."
"And he — as a fixed participant — has accumulated a total of eleven points across the two exams I've been part of. Whereas I... have managed a cumulative total of four points, giving everything I had."
"In command, in combat ability, and in reading the flow of a situation — I am nowhere near his level."
"He is the one who has contributed the most to Class D. He is the one who carried me — the actual powerhouse. The real thing."
She let her gaze sweep the room, eyes sharp:
"I don't want to hear anyone credit me for his work again. That's an insult to me, and an injustice to him."
"I'm done."
Complete silence fell over the classroom.
Every mouth was hanging open. Every pair of eyes locked onto the two figures standing at the front of the room.
Even Kushida Kikyo was stunned into stillness — clearly not having expected Horikita to walk out and do something like this, unprompted and unapologetic.
Under the blaze of so many shocked and searching gazes —
Chris moved to reclaim his hand. He found that this woman had a surprisingly firm grip.
"Horikita. Was all that really necessary?"
He kept his voice low.
Horikita Suzune finally let go.
She turned, tilted her head up, and looked Chris directly in the eye.
Those eyes — which usually carried an ever-present edge — were, in this moment, entirely open.
"I believe it was."
"I have no interest in maintaining a reputation built on lies. Losing in skill is losing in skill. That's just where things stand — but I intend to close the gap."
She paused, as though something had occurred to her. The faintest ghost of something crossed the corner of her mouth — barely there, immediately gone, leaving behind the usual cool indifference.
"Of course — that's a separate matter entirely."
"If you still want me to tutor you in your academic subjects — what I said before still stands."
With that, Horikita Suzune turned and walked back to her seat. No lingering. No looking back. Her dark hair swept a smooth arc through the air behind her.
She opened her book.
She was done with the conversation.
All that remained was Chris, still standing at the front of the room, left alone in the wind — the involuntary center of attention for the entire class.
——End of Chapter——
Note ① — Saeki Sorao: An extreme picky eater with a preference for human torsos. Relatively weak in terms of raw power, but responsible for large-scale predatory activity of a particularly vicious nature and with direct ties to the Bronze Tree organization — which earned him a classification of Rank A. The reason he hasn't been collected by the Black Sphere yet: he'd barely arrived when he killed several corrupt officials who had no protection, and upon learning of the Advanced Nurturing High School's existence, Chris decided there was still use to be wrung out of him.
Note ② — Ghouls: Sustaining a Ghoul's enhanced physical capabilities, regeneration, and the deployment of their Kagune all require a constant, heavy consumption of Rc cells. Ghouls cannot synthesize sufficient Rc cells on their own — they must replenish them by consuming the flesh and blood of humans or other Ghouls. The problem: humans in the world of Classroom of the Elite do not possess Rc cells. Which means a Ghoul transported here faces a simple, brutal equation: starve to death, or turn on their own kind.
____
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