The School Full of Elite Students Volume 1: Classroom of the Elite x Male OC

Chapter 7.1

"ARE you two free for lunch? Do you want to eat together?"

During our break, Horikita came up and invited us out. 

"It's unusual to get an invitation from you. I feel nervous." Ayanokouji stated.

"There's no reason to be. I can treat you to the vegetable meal set, if that's okay with you."

Ayanokouji blinks 3 times in a row to make sure he heard that right.

"I'm joking. Seriously, whatever you want to eat is on me."

"Now I'm definitely scared. Is there some kind of catch?" Ayanokouji questioned

An invitation from Horikita was suspicious enough, so I can see why Ayanokouji was hesitant.

"If people can't honestly accept kindness, then mankind will meet its end, won't it?" she asked.

"But if mankind accepts too much kindness, then won't mankind get too spoiled?" I asked

"I suppose that's true." She answered.

With no other plans, we decided to follow Horikita to the cafeteria, where Ayanokouji chose one of the most expensive special meal sets and I chose one of the more medium-priced ones. Together, we three sat down.

"Well then, shall we eat?" she asked. 

"..."

"What's the matter, Ayanokouji-kun and Shinjiro-kun? Aren't you going to eat?" 

"Oh."

"Right."

I already knew I fell into her trap the second I agreed to go to the cafeteria with her along with Ayanokouji. Well, there's no turning back, I guess. Ayanokouji hesitantly bit into his croquette and after a few seconds of Horikita staring at me, I, too, reluctantly bit into my dried squid.

"I know this is rather sudden, but I want to talk to you two about something."

"I have a bad feeling about this..." Ayanokouji states.

"I felt this 'bad feeling' the moment she asked us to go to the cafeteria." I said.

Just as Ayanokouji was preparing to flee, she grabbed his hand. 

"Ayanokouji-kun, I'll ask once again. Will you listen to me? Your other friend is waiting to delightfully listen to me, shouldn't you do the same?"

'I'm not waiting to "delightfully" listen to you, there's no point, I've lost!'

"Ugh..."

Ayanokouji sits back down and faces to Horikita; I also did the same, but I looked to the left to face Horikita. Horikita then starts speaking.

"Ever since Chabashira-sensei's warning, fewer people have arrived late or talked in class. When I say we eliminated more than half of the reasons our class got into trouble, I'm not exaggerating."

"Yeah, that's true. It wasn't really a difficult issue to begin with, though." Ayanokouji said.

"Agreed. While it's not perfect, it's tremendously a better result than beforehand." I added on.

"The next step is to improve our chances of scoring well on the midterm. Hirata-kun started taking action toward that end earlier." Horikita added.

"The study groups, huh? Well, I suppose that a study group certainly could help. Only..."

Ayanokouji was about to say something but stops.

"Only what? It sounds like you're implying something. What's the problem?" Horikita asked.