COTE: Villain's Gambit

01 - The Assignment

Japan.

Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School.

The April breeze sent pale-pink cherry blossoms drifting across the front gate, scattering them like rain over the pavement. A sleek black luxury car rolled to a stop at the curb.

The rear door opened.

A maid in uniform stepped out first, carrying a schoolbag in both hands. She moved to the side of the car and waited there with practiced respect.

Then a boy with tousled black hair stepped out after her.

His features were sharp, almost too handsome for his age, and his uniform fit perfectly, without a single wrinkle. He wore a bright smile as he looked up at the school before him.

'So this is where I begin.'

Yukiya Amami's smile deepened.

He was sixteen, and he had not originally belonged to this world. He had been reborn into it.

The Amami name was anything but ordinary.

The Amami Zaibatsu stood among Japan's six great conglomerates. Behind the scenes, it controlled nearly thirty percent of the country's economy and held considerable influence overseas as well. Its roots ran deep enough that most people could only guess at its true scale.

Yukiya had shown extraordinary talent almost from birth. His memory was razor-sharp, he grasped new concepts at an almost abnormal speed, and once he saw something, he rarely forgot it. Because of that, the Amami family had given him the best education available and raised him as one of its successor candidates for the next generation.

Succession, however, was never that straightforward.

Japan's great families were nowhere near as polished as they looked from the outside. Put bluntly, the men at the top of society had never been shy about producing heirs beyond the main family line. Count the branch families and collateral lines, and the number of potential heirs easily topped a hundred.

The Amami family had more than one way to choose its successor.

Enrollment at Advanced Nurturing High School was one of them.

This government-backed school was one of the few relatively fair arenas where the major zaibatsu could test their heirs. Inside its walls, apart from the law itself, school rules outranked everything else.

Even if a family had enough influence to replace the chairman, that chairman would still be forced to operate within the school's rules. No one was exempt. From the chairman down to the students, every role was bound by regulations detailed enough to leave very little room for brute force.

Advanced Nurturing was unlike any other school.

It operated on one absolute principle: merit. Each year, it admitted only one hundred and sixty students through its own selection process, then divided them into four classes: A, B, C, and D, with forty students per class.

Only students who graduated from Class A would receive the school's promised reward: the freedom to choose any future they wanted.

An aspiring professional athlete could be placed directly on a national team. A student who wanted higher education could enter Japan's top university without taking an entrance exam. Someone aiming for politics could choose a government office and begin from an entry-level post.

For three years, the four classes would compete with one another for the chance to graduate from Class A and claim the futures they desired.

It was fierce.

For the zaibatsu, it was also one of the best possible proving grounds for a successor.

Of course, the Amami family's standard was never going to be limited to graduating from Class A. Every year, dozens of students did that. For a family entrusted with immense wealth, using that alone as a test would be laughably childish.

Graduating from Class A was only the baseline.

In three years, the family would measure something far more important.

How many Class A graduates would willingly abandon their own dreams and follow Yukiya Amami instead?

That was the real trial.

Not personal strength. Not grades. Not athletic ability.

The ability to read people, win their loyalty, and bring talented individuals under his command.

That was what the head of a great family needed.

"I should be going now, Master Yukiya."

The maid handed him his schoolbag and gave a small bow. With Yukiya's permission, she returned to the car.

Only then did he take a proper look at the school in front of him.

He had arrived early, so there were only a few boys and girls in red uniforms near the gate. The departing luxury car drew their attention. Several of them turned to watch it pull away.

At the same time, a girl standing on the steps caught Yukiya's eye.

She had an open, graceful presence and was looking in his direction.

Her pink hair fell to her waist. Her blue eyes were sapphire-clear, and with delicate features framed by her bangs, her smile was almost impossible to resist. The burgundy school uniform suited her strikingly well, drawing attention to the curve of her chest, her narrow waist, and her long, straight legs.

Honami Ichinose.

Yukiya recognized her instantly from the novels.

The future leader of Class B.

She could hold her own physically and, academically, ranked first in her year. She was the kind of person who met almost everyone with kindness and patience, someone with a powerful sense of justice and a capacity for acceptance so overwhelming that it could almost drown out the individuality of those around her.

In an instant, everything he knew about her surfaced in his mind.

All of it came from the novels.

His greatest advantage was not his identity, his talent, or his physical ability.

It was his knowledge of canon.

With that thought, Yukiya offered Honami an easy smile.

She answered with one of her own and a small nod.

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