COTE: Koenji What if

Analysis of Volume 1 so far

Ayanokouji is also a character who is perfectly logical, and right now he is coming up with justifications as to why he must be investigating Hirata and Ichinose, seeing them as potential threats to his existence at this school, just like what he did stating that Ryuuen, Sakayanagi and even Sakayanagi's father were threats to his existence at the school in Volume 7 and Volume 7.5 despite them clearly not being threats at the moment.
(See the analysis videos by Saadisfy for Volumes 7 and 7.5. Pretty much Sakayanagi wasn't a threat as she was clearly going after Ichinose (Ayanokouji even set up the whole thing). Ryuuen is not a threat as Ayanokouji can simply get Ishizaki and Albert to drop out, and Ryuuen clearly didn't want that as he would have dropped out if he didn't care about them (see the end of volume 7), and Sakayanagi's father straight up protected Ayanokouji when Ayanokouji's father met with Ayanokouji in volume 7. And yet for some reason Ayanokouji saw him as a threat, just to use that as an excuse to use Karuizawa in the future. This is because he couldn't accept the fact that Karuizawa loved him and that he could even love Karuizawa, so he found logical justifications just for the two of them to work together. Ayanokouji copes hard.).

In reality he is coping hard, and is obsessed with the idea of being defeated, which is why he hopes that Hirata is a genuinely good person at the same time. Ayanokouji has a major bully victim mindset, where he sees his dad as the bully. But he doesn't really know about the fact that he has this obsession, (he just knows he wants to be defeated by Koenji at this point in the story) so he came up with logical justifications for his actions. The main justification is regarding how Kushida was a fake and even attempted to expel Ayanokouji, despite seemingly being just like Hirata on the surface. Kushida's act did have Ayanokouji fooled right at the start, but he did have some clues about Kushida due to her going after Horikita, so Ayanokouji purposefully tested Kushida during the café trip where he intentionally left holes for Horikita to find out that it was a set up in this fanfiction in chapter 3.2, and then continued to test Kushida by investigating her using Manabu after deducing that she was possibly from the same school as Horikita, so Ayanokouji met up with Manabu in secret to confirm if she recognized Kushida, leading to their two deals as well as stalking Kushida to see if she would trip up her possible facade. So Ayanokouji is projecting his experience of Kushida not actually being a genuinely good person onto Hirata.

And now Ayanokouji has another justification about Hirata being a potential threat due to him being in class D and not revealing his full backstory, leaving holes in his story. Ayanokouji didn't trust Hirata in the original series as well due to this same reason when he told Karuizawa in the end of volume 4.5 that there were holes in Hirata's story. And Ayanokouji now even sees Ichinose as a potential threat to his existence, projecting his experience with Kushida onto Ichinose now. Ayanokouji sees Ichinose and Hirata as potential Kushidas, but that is because he is trying to find logical justifications to justify why he is so invested in going after Hirata and Ichinose (which in reality is because he is obsessed with wanting to be defeated by them. He wants to see them as enemies and threats as their ideologies are in direct conflict.). Furthermore, the idea of a good person alludes Ayanokouji due to the white room and how he saw the worst of the worst. And of course, Kushida hasn't helped with that. This is why when Horikita asked if Ayanokouji believes there is a truly good person in this world at the end of chapter 10.1, Ayanokouji says he doesn't think so, despite hoping that Hirata is a genuinely good person just before in his monologue.

There is a contradiction between Ayanokouji thinking that Hirata isn't a good person due to his past experiences with Kushida and the trauma from the white room and so Ayanokouji won't allow himself to get expelled even if it is a 1% chance that Hirata is a fake. Ayanokouji's protection, not wanting to go back to the white room is his number 1 priority. This is compared to him wanting Hirata to be a genuinely good person so that Hirata can be someone who could defeat Ayanokouji, become his enemy, clash with polar opposite ideologies.