Knock. Knock.
Slender knuckles rapped lightly against the door.
Only after hearing a quiet "come in" did Amase Kazuna push open the half-latched door and step into the office.
She let her gaze skim past the ornate, slightly oppressive décor lining the walls, and settled it on the figure seated behind the desk.
"Director Tsukishiro — the enrollment formalities have all been taken care of."
Amase Kazuna clasped her hands behind her back, leaned forward just slightly, and spoke with a light smile: "So then... am I supposed to just go ahead and get myself into that so-called 'Black Sphere exam' next?"
At the sound of her voice, Tsukishiro lifted his gaze from the screen.
He laced his fingers together, resting the backs of his hands lightly beneath his nose. His deep-set, hook-like eyes turned toward Amase Kazuna.
"Quibbling over phrasing is pointless — but I'll correct you on one thing anyway."
His tone was measured. Businesslike.
"It's not 'get yourself into it.' It's that you need to work to be chosen by it. Based on the intelligence we currently have, the selection is not under the school's control."
Amase Kazuna blinked — then reined in the light, breezy expression on her face, adopting a dutiful, obedient look as she murmured an apology.
"Sorry, sorry. As my graduation thesis, that was a pretty careless thing to say."
"But please don't worry. Now that I'm here, I'll complete the mission perfectly."
She straightened up, gave a wave, and turned to take her leave. "Then I'll be heading out, Director. Before the mission begins... I'd like to go see the legendary upperclassman I've heard so much about."
As she turned to go, Tsukishiro seemed to remember something. He called out to stop her.
"Wait a moment."
He paused. His eyes grew quiet and deep.
"Ayanokoji's Class D... contains a particular individual. A special one."
"If you have the bandwidth — try to get a feel for them. It would be ideal if you could uncover what they're truly capable of."
"Consider it... an extra-credit challenge."
"Oh?"
Amase Kazuna's eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head slightly.
Someone Tsukishiro is personally flagging for attention... just how special are they?
But she didn't press for the specifics.
As the first student from the White Room's Fifth Generation to be selected — and to successfully make it into this Advanced Nurturing High School — she didn't consider herself inferior to any of the school's so-called defective products.
In her own mind, she had long since placed herself as a challenger who stood equal to — and was about to surpass — the so-called "Greatest Masterpiece."
If she already had the confidence to pull even Ayanokoji Kiyotaka down from his pedestal, then naturally she was confident that no matter what variable she encountered, she could crush it with her own ability.
"Since you put it that way, I'll keep an eye out."
Amase Kazuna left Tsukishiro with a confident side profile as she moved toward the door. "Well then — I'm off to check in with my class representative~"
She walked out of the office.
As the heavy wooden door swung shut behind her, the curve at the corner of Amase Kazuna's mouth stopped hiding. It curled slowly, freely upward.
——
Meanwhile, on Ichinose's end.
A friend request popped up on her phone screen without warning — and Ichinose Honami visibly paused for a moment.
But almost immediately, she realized: this was almost certainly the transfer student that Hoshimiya-sensei had emailed her about earlier, asking her to go receive.
She set her half-finished latte back on its coaster, rose from her seat, and turned to the group with an apologetic expression.
"Sorry, everyone. Something just came up — I need to step out for a bit."
Amikura Mako, seated beside her, stood as well without missing a beat.
"Is this about the transfer student? I'll come along, Ichinose."
"If there's anything you need help with, just message me on Line anytime~"
Kushida Kikyo gave a cheerful wave, ever the picture of warm consideration.
"Thank you, both of you. We'll head out first then."
Ichinose paused briefly — then she and Amikura Mako made their hurried exit.
Watching the two of them leave, Sakayanagi Arisu rested one cheek on her hand, while the other idly stirred her red tea with a silver spoon.
"Transferring in at such a sensitive time... into Ichinose's class of all places, the one that's already suffered casualties..."
Sakayanagi half-lidded her eyes, as if letting slip a piece of the picture by pure accident.
"Should we call it a convenient coincidence that fills an empty seat... or a deliberate arrangement?"
Chris couldn't help glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
As a genuine insider — and one of the students currently closest to the truth of the school's upper echelons — did this scheming little mastermind really not know why Amase Kazuna had come here?
Playing riddler. Pretending not to know what she knows perfectly well.
Tactical players really do have a certain kind of delightfully dirty mind.
That said, of everyone seated at the table, all of them — with the possible exception of Kamuro Masumi, who might lag slightly behind the others in pure strategic thinking — had minds sharp enough to keep up.
Even Kamuro, with her Judgment stat sitting at B-minus, had her baseline instincts fully online. She wasn't about to go full Arnold mode — context window of ten tokens, no sense of what came before.
So naturally, nobody jumped to any conclusions in response to Sakayanagi's seemingly offhand remark.
It was actually Kamuro Masumi who, following the thread of Sakayanagi's question, raised the voice of the average person:
"Whether it's intentional or not — after someone's already been killed, having a new person come to fill the gap... isn't that a good thing for us? Because the way the Black Sphere exams work, with numbers only going down and never up, there's literally no scenario where everyone makes it out alive in the end."
Sakayanagi Arisu listened, smiled faintly, and gave no answer.
After surviving several rounds of the Black Sphere exams back-to-back, Kamuro Masumi seemed to have shed a fair amount of the awe she used to hold for Sakayanagi.
Not that Sakayanagi was counting on being able to use those old leverage points to order Kamuro around anymore. But given that Kamuro appeared, for whatever reason, to have become something of a favorite of the Black Sphere — a lucky charm, almost — it was still worth the effort to keep her close and keep watching.
Just as Sakayanagi was about to ride the natural flow of the conversation and say something —
Kushida Kikyo, who couldn't stand a lull, got there first.
"Kamuro-san makes a fair point."
Kushida smiled. "Though I think what Sakayanagi-san was getting at is probably something like this — if this transfer student came here with some kind of special objective, we might be able to turn that to our advantage somehow; but if she's just a completely ordinary student who has no idea what's going on... then transferring in at a time like this is just pure, rotten bad luck for her, isn't it?"
"Heh."
Listening to Kushida's perfectly airtight little speech, Sakayanagi Arisu shook her head with a quiet smile and didn't bother poking holes in the girl's subtle maneuvering.
"More or less."
With that, she reached for the cane leaning against the table's edge, rose gracefully to her feet, and turned her gaze to Chris.
"I'm going to go take a look at this mysterious transfer student."
"What do you say, Chris-kun — care to come along and stir up some trouble?"
"Pass."
Chris held up his phone and shook his head.
"I'm going to go check on Ayanokoji. He seemed a little rattled by what happened in the exam earlier — as a classmate, the least I can do is show some concern."
Being turned down to her face again, Sakayanagi Arisu looked mildly displeased.
But she pressed her pale cherry-blossom lips together and didn't make a fuss about it.
"What a shame~"
"I'm not going to scold you for it. But I am your patron, aren't I? Do try, next time, not to so casually disappoint a young lady's expectations."
"Next time for sure. Genuine emergency this time," Chris said flatly.
Watching the two of them leave one after another, Kushida Kikyo propped her chin in one hand and turned with a helpless look to the only two left at the table — Shiina Hiyori and Kamuro Masumi.
"Well, the main goal of this little get-together was more or less achieved, but I didn't expect everyone to scatter so quickly..."
"I was hoping to use the weekend to bond a little more. After everything we've been through, we really are a community of fate at this point, aren't we?"
Kamuro Masumi sat exactly where she was, her expression growing stranger by the second.
She'd already been quietly surprised when Sakayanagi left without reflexively ordering her to follow along — that was already unusual enough.
Now, listening to Kushida's words, her internal radar was going off like a car alarm.
Is Sakayanagi Arisu actually... turning over a new leaf?
No. Absolutely not. That scheming little menace is definitely cooking something up.
Don't jump to conclusions. Watch. Keep watching.
While Kamuro was half-distracted, running through potential countermeasures in her head —
Shiina Hiyori, who had been sitting perfectly quietly across from her the whole time, suddenly lifted the copy of The Magic Cube Building in her hands, half-covering the lower part of her face with it, and asked in a soft, careful little voice:
"Um... Kushida-san."
"Since nobody has anything urgent right now... would it be alright if I read for a little while?"
Kushida Kikyo blinked — then immediately broke into a warm smile.
"Of course, Hiyori-chan."
"Though..." Kushida's tone shifted smoothly. "Once you're done reading — could you maybe tell me a few details from the exam you all went through earlier? Ichinose-san did post the basic information in the group chat... but honestly, I'm much more curious about what Chris-kun was like from your point of view~"
Shiina Hiyori held the corner of her book lightly against her lower lip, looking at Kushida Kikyo's intensely curious eyes.
After a brief moment, the girl gave a small, quiet nod.
"Sure."
——
At the same time.
On the tree-lined path leading toward the student council building.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had just received a text from Chris — brief, checking in on him — and was pausing mid-step, about to continue on toward Horikita Manabu's office.
He stood there, staring at the screen, turning over what Chris's gesture might actually mean.
And that was when Amase Kazuna — heading downstairs to find Ichinose — spotted him directly.
"Senpai~ Excuse me!"
"Do you happen to know where I can find Ichinose Honami-san, the Class B representative for first year?"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka pocketed his phone and turned around slowly.
The moment he got a clear look at the stranger — a girl with bright red hair in twin tails, wearing a playful, breezy smile — his brow furrowed, just slightly.
Because in Ayanokoji's mental catalogue of every first-year student at the Advanced Nurturing High School, this face did not exist.
A quiet alarm went up internally. On the surface, however, he kept the flat, unhurried expression of an unremarkable passerby.
"Ichinose-san is well known among the first years, yes."
"But I'd imagine her whereabouts aren't quite the kind of thing you can find out just by grabbing a random student off the path, are they?"
Amase Kazuna looked at him as if she hadn't quite caught the subtext.
Her face crinkled into an expression of mild, slightly put-upon innocence.
"Is that so?"
"But I really am just new here and trying to ask for directions! You're so cold, senpai~"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka regarded her without comment.
Just as he had once been able to spot — with zero concrete evidence — the faint, unmistakable wrongness clinging to both Horikita Suzune and Chris in the aftermath of a Black Sphere exam, he could see it now too.
This girl was working hard to hide something beneath that sweet, guileless surface. And it wasn't working on him.
Not to mention the simple fact of it: the campus was enormous, and this was a weekend. In a space this wide and this empty — she had, without any apparent reason, singled out him. The invisible, no-presence loner from Class D.
That, in itself, was the biggest red flag of all.
Following orders from someone? Or sent from... that place?
Ayanokoji made his assessment quietly.
He was just about to open his mouth — to play along with her framing long enough to probe a little deeper, extract something useful —
When, at the edge of his vision, he caught it: Ichinose Honami, moving at a brisk pace alongside Amikura Mako, coming into view.
The person in question had arrived. There was no point in stirring things up further.
So.
Ayanokoji swallowed the probe he'd been about to run. He tilted his chin slightly upward, his tone smoothing back to neutral.
"Ichinose?"
"She's right behind you."
____
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