After sensei left the entire class burst into glorious, pathetic, self-pitying chaos.
"If we don't get any more points, what I am gonna do? These aren't enough!!"
"I used up all of my points yesterday..."
"Forget about the points. What the hell about this class? Why was I put into Class D?!" Yukimura cried resentfully. A thin layer of sweat covered his forehead.
"Wait, does this mean that we can't get into college now? Why did we even go to this school? Does Sae-chan-sensei hate us or something?"
Everyone was panicking, yelling screaming, shaking their friends, doing everything but using their brains. Despite the looming threat of the midterms approaching, and with 7 people in severe danger, 12 people who passed within 10 marks, a range far too close for comfort, most students ignored that fact and focused solely on their worries about graduation. If any of these students did make it to graduation, they probably wouldn't deserve to be there.
This would have continued till the end of class if Hirata hadn't decided to intervene. Damn you Hirata, I was enjoying this.
"I understand that you're all confused right now, but everyone needs to calm down." Hirata, sensing the classroom tipping toward crisis, stood, and attempted to rein everyone in. "The midterms are coming up, and they need to be our priority. If we work together as a class, I'm sure that everyone can pass."
"Look how badly some people did. I don't want to waste my time helping people that will probably still fail! It's sad, but there's no point helping a lost cause." Yukimura was really stuck up with his self-worth. I admit he was quite intelligent for his age, however he possessed some of the worst physical skills in the class. To have that kind of ego was impressive, and eventually it would come back to haunt him.
"Calm down, you two, okay? I'm sure that the teacher talked to us harshly, so we'd be inspired to do better, right?" That was Kushida. She slipped between the two and separated them, gently taking Yukimura's balled fist. Just as anyone would expect, Yukimura didn't try to hurt her and reflexively took half a step back. As expected of the class angel, she resolved the dispute immediately.
"Besides, it's only been one month since we started here, right? Like Hirata-kun said, it's better if we all do our best together. Do you think that I'm wrong about that?"
"N-no, it's... Well, I certainly wouldn't say you're wrong, but..."
Yukimura's anger had almost completely vanished. Kushida looked at everyone in class, and it was almost as if her eyes reflected a sincere wish for us to work together. Her control over them was unrivalled. If she asked them to virtually anything, most of the class would follow her without question. In a divided classroom, she would be the key to success.
"Yeah, it's better for us to band together. Right? There's no need for you to fight, Yukimura. Hirata."
"I think we should start by forming study groups." Everyone went silent as Horikita spoke up. For someone who disregarded even the concept of friends to be injecting herself into conversation here was very surprising, and at this moment the floor was hers. "It's the simplest method of helping those with lower grades. Those who got top marks can take groups of 4 or 5 and teach them themselves."
"That's a great suggestion Horikita. If you don't mind leading one of them yourself, then I think we're on a good track. I, Kushida and Yukimura?" he hesitated before receiving a nod and continued, "will also lead a group each for the lowest students. Those who scored above 50, you can form your own if you wish and study together, but for now we will be prioritising those most at risk of failing." Hirata effortlessly transitioned Horikita's idea into a solid plan. He wasn't the class leader for no reason. But I could already predict where this conversation was going, and there was no way I would let it reach the destination Hirata intended.
"Ayanokouji, Kouenji, would you be willing to take a group each as well? You clearly are the smartest in the class, so if you could help that would be a huge benefit." Oh, poor Hirata, you have disturbed a sleeping bear.
"And why should we do such a thing, Hirata-boy? It is true that our academic prowess is unrivalled in our year, but I see no reason for the two of us to lead a study group."
"Unfortunately, I must agree with Kouenji here. There is no benefit that we receive for giving up our personal time to help those failing. Whether they fail or not, I have no interest in helping."
"Ayanokouji, Kouenji, please, if you could help out it would be amazing. I don't wish to see any of my friends leave, and don't you want to help the class? Surely you care about us a little!" Ah, Kushida was dangerous. Asking for our help whilst indirectly making us enemies to the class if we refused. But that would only work on people who cared for social standing, like her. Those who base their lives and beliefs around one objective cannot ever truly understand people who don't.
"It seems the devil is still pretending to be an angel, despite falling further than any other."
"Wouldn't that make her your master, demon-boy? The two-faced bitch is darker than you can ever be hahaha."
At our claims her face broke into shock horror. As quickly as that happened, she recomposed herself and pouted with a sad face, a couple of tears forming in her eyes.
"Oi, don't call Kushida-chan a devil!" "Don't be mean to Kushida-chan!" "If anyone is a bitch it's you two for not helping!" And the clowns arrive to defend their angel.
"As we have made clear, there is no social obligation for us to help, and you have nothing we want. Your negotiating position is worthless, Hirata. Consider your options before advancing next time." And with that, Kouenji and I withdrew from the conversation for the moment. Although, I wasn't done yet. I had foreseen the outcome of this discussion based on the attitudes of three boys. And it would be much more fun to keep listening.
"I suppose that's your choice then. Well, I guess we should start forming groups then."
"Why do we have to listen to you! I don't need to do anything you say. Maybe I won't study at all, and just cram the night before. It's worked for me so far."
"Yeah, shut up Hirata! We can study on our own."
"We don't need your help!"
Sudou, Ike and Yamauchi all speaking out. While Sudou had stayed away from them to an extent, it seemed it was an inevitability for him to be drawn into their orbit and dragged down.
"Don't bother studying alone. I will personally tutor the three of you." The ice queen Horikita had spoken. Her voice was at a new level of cold, and her gaze was boring into the three of them.
"Oh, now this is fun. Hirata, you wanted my cooperation? I will help Horikita tutor them." I put myself back in the conversation.
"Wait, hold on we never agreed in the first place."
"Yeah, why would we be tutored by you two, you're both horrible."
"I don't think you particularly have a choice. Ike, Yamauchi, Sudou I expect to see you three at the library this afternoon. I will personally drag you to passing if it kills me." She shot me a glare, as if saying, 'why are you involved we will discuss this later'. I suppose that's fair enough. I had interrupted and inserted myself into her tutoring group, so I may as well make myself useful.
But there was only one outcome for this group of students.
It was inevitable to fall apart.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It was only the first day or Horikita's terrible tutoring, only the first 20 minutes when everything fell apart. If I have to be honest, I'm impressed that it lasted this long in the first place. Considering Horikita's unyielding attitude, along with her distain for people who are lesser than her, Sudou's bullish nature, his dislike for study, Ike and Yamauchi being generally dislikeable, well. The list could go on, but it's a recipe for disaster. Putting these four together was like oil and water. There was no world in which they could, with their current mindset, function as a group in any productive shape or form.
"Honestly, first- and second-year junior high school students could easily solve this problem. If you stumble here, it'll be impossible for you to continue," Horikita said.
"So, what, we're like elementary school kids?" Sudou growled.
"Listen up. This can be easily solved using a system of simultaneous equations." Without hesitation, Horikita picked up her pen and got to work. Unfortunately, none of the idiots understood what she had done.
"What even are simultaneous equations?" asked Ike.
"Are you seriously asking me that?" said Horikita.
Wow, these guys had really never studied at all, it seemed. Sudou threw his mechanical pencil onto the desk.
"Stop. I'm done. This isn't going to work."
Sudou had quit before we could even begin. Horikita quietly seethed at this pitiful display.
"Fine, this is how you solve the problem. Follow along as I do it. You have to use simultaneous equations to solve it, like so." And the three boys sat and looked at her paper without comprehension as Horikita effortlessly solved the problem. Of course, it's not complex, but to keep neat setting out with simultaneous equations is not a simple task.
"Um, so you used this to get the answer? How?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, you're far too ignorant and incompetent," said Horikita. "If you can't solve this problem, I seriously shiver at the thought of what the future will bring."
"Shut up. Just because you're good at maths doesn't mean you can look down on me." Sudou slammed the desk, understandably irritated by Horikita.
"You're right. This has nothing to do with me. Your suffering won't influence me at all. I just pity you. You must have spent your whole life running from anything that presented a challenge," she said.
"Say whatever you want. Academics will be useless in the future, anyway."
"Academics will be useless in the future? That's an interesting argument. How do you justify that?"
"I don't care if I can't solve this problem. Studying's useless. Aiming to become a pro basketball player will help me a lot more."
"Incorrect. Once you learn to solve these kinds of problems, your entire life will change. In other words, studying increases the possibility that you'll solve the problems you face. It's the same principle as basketball. I wonder if, so far, you've been playing basketball by your own set of rules. When you struggle in basketball, do you run away from it like you do from studying? I doubt you take basketball practice seriously. You're a natural troublemaker, someone who always causes a disruption. If I were your adviser, I wouldn't let you on the team." If I had to pick a side, I would agree with Horikita. Even with incredible natural talent, if the person in question had no ability to learn or improve, they would eventually fail. And ignoring or failing to learn basic maths would only be a detriment to their lives in the future.
"Tch!" Sudou got in close to Horikita and grabbed her by the collar.
"Hey, Sudou. I didn't realise defective also meant moron, but it seems you like to prove me wrong today." It wouldn't do for him to injure Horikita, as I still needed her to tutor him. I would rather no one failed just yet, since we still didn't know how the school would respond, and losing class points in such a simple manner was not interesting at all.
"What did you say!" His attention shifted instantly onto me, releasing Horikita's collar and moving towards me instead.
"Are you dumb or deaf, because I thought I made what I said fairly clear."
"You watch yourself Ayanokouji. Yeah, you might have helped me a couple of times, but don't think I'm gonna ignore your attitude here!"
"You want to play professional basketball? Do you honestly believe you can make such a childish dream come true in this world? A simpleton like you who gives up right away could never hope to go pro. Furthermore, even if you managed to become a professional player, I doubt you'd earn an annual income sufficient to live on. You're a fool to have such unreasonable aspirations."
I'm sure Horikita was thinking exactly the same thing. The words she had been abusing Sudou with were leading to the same logical conclusion, however I couldn't allow her to be the ones to say them. It was much more fun to have an angry dog attack me, than to go after the person I was trying to push him together with.
"You!" It was clear that Sudou was on the brink of losing control. If he raised his fist, I'd have to wrestle him down.
"So, you're just going to immediately give up on studying or on school in general? Then discard your dreams of playing basketball and spend your days toiling away at a pitiful part-time job."
"Hmph. That's just fine. I'll quit, but it's not because it's difficult. I took a day off from my club activities for this, and it ended up being a complete waste of time. Later!" Sudou said.
"I'm quitting, too. Partly because I can't deal with studying, but mostly because I'm annoyed. You two might be smart, but that doesn't mean you can act like you're better than us." Ike, clearly fed up, threw in the towel as well."
"I'm not sticking around either. You two can go die, for all I care. I don't need your help." Yamauchi, as eloquent as always gave his two cents, and left the library following behind Ike and Yamauchi.
"I seems I was mistaken. Even if I'd helped them avoid failure this time, we would've faced a similar dilemma soon after. We'd have to go through this irritation all over again. Eventually, they'll fail. I finally understand how unproductive this was. I don't have the time for it."
"So that's how you think, then." That was Horikita's ultimate conclusion. If the failing students were expelled, then the class's average test scores would go up, and we wouldn't have to expend any extra effort. It wasn't wrong, on a one dimensional level, but when considering how complex and cruel the school was, for someone as smart as Horikita to think this way was truly disappointing.
"Do you think differently then, Ayanokouji? Please, share your wisdom, I would be willing to accept your input for the moment." Snippy. Calm down Horikita, no need to get so aggressive.
"You really can't see the bigger picture, can you? I thought better of you Horikita, but time and again you prove yourself defective."
"And what are you then? You, and Kouenji for that matter, both got placed in Class D as well. Do you claim to not be defective?"
"An excellent question, but now is not the time. The pressing issue is Sudou, and since you royally messed up, it falls to me to fix your mistakes." While it would be fun to antagonise a person with such convoluted thoughts, I didn't have time for that. Standing up, I moved to leave the library as well, but was blocked by Horikita.
"Where do you think you're going. We haven't finished our conversation yet."
"Move Horikita. Someone needs to save Sudou, and since you abandoned the task, you asked for, I have to clean up your mess." I brushed past her, and when she tried to grab my wrist, I pulled away. Stop giving me opportunities Horikita, eventually my self-control will crack. But for now, I can't deal with her. Sudou is on a timer, and I need to find him as quick as possible before someone else does and undoes all the work I had put into breaking him.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
After about 15 minutes of searching, I finally found Sudou. He was sitting on the grass near one of the gymnasiums where he practiced basketball. Most likely he was regretting his decision to skip and come to the tutorial today, seeing how poorly it went. Although, Horikita hadn't given him much of a choice. When she wanted to, she could be a fairly terrifying individual.
"Sudou."
That got his attention. He turned to see who had spoken, and his gaze soured upon seeing it was me.
"What now? Come to mock me some more? Tell me my dreams are crap? Fuck off, Ayanokouji, I don't want anything to do with you." Harsh words, but it seemed that study session had really got to him, more than I expected. Deep down, it seemed he recognised his flaws, and did want to improve, but Horikita wasn't the person able to provide a good environment for that. At least, not yet.
"I want you to come back tomorrow. The midterms are two weeks away, so there's still time to turn things around."
"Didn't you hear me; I'm not coming back. I'm not going to just sit there and be insulted as I don't learn for two weeks before failing." He had a fair point. That would be a terrible experience for his last two weeks here, but unfortunately, I had no intention of letting him leave.
"Then prove it. Fight me, right here and now. You claim basketball can carry you through life? You think your physical skills are good enough to give you a pass on everything else? Prove it. You want to stand by your words, then make me believe you. Because right now all I see is a sad little boy still living in a dream." That enraged him. Finally. Sudou was commonly accepted to be one of the strongest in the grade, behind perhaps only Albert from Class C, and I'd been looking forward to duking it out with him properly for the past month.
"FINE! You wanna go so badly, lets fight! But don't go whining when I beat the shit out of you!" He jumped up from the ground and assumed a stance. Not bad. He didn't seem to have any professional training, but from the way he held himself it appeared he had quite a bit of experience.
Stepping forward he threw a punch at me, much stronger and faster than the one on the first day of school. Probably a combination of his basketball training improving his body even further, and the extra power that comes from blind rage and adrenalin. I let it hit me, twisting my body slightly so that it hit the side of my chest instead of the center. Upon seeing me barely react to it, I saw his face change slightly in shock.
"Huuh?" That was possibly one of the strongest and fastest punches he'd ever thrown. It had hurt as well, but none of that showed on my face or body. Reactions to pain had been trained out of me years ago. To stand there and take a hit from him without seeming to feel anything should terrify even an observer.
After giving him his one hit, I dashed forward, faster than he could recognise, and grabbed his throat with my hand. I held him up for a second, ignoring his flailing arms, before slamming him down onto the ground. I didn't put too much force into it, not wanting to damage him, but enough that he would feel some shock and pain, enough to force him out of a fight he knew he couldn't win.
"What. Are you..." Coughing and wheezing, he tried to get back up. There was no sense of fight left in him, but his willpower continued to impress me. I'd seen trained soldiers lay broken on the ground, fear immobilising them after having such a maneuverer performed on them.
"You need to learn this at some point, better now than never. There will always be someone better than you at something. Be it academics, which is most people, or basketball. There's always a bigger fish Sudou. Which means that if you ever come up against that fish, you have no value. Branch out. Become someone useful. Because how you are currently, you just hurt the class. You're worthless, defective." He grumbled again at that same word, but I continued. "Become someone who's not. Improve your academics, make some friends. So, when that bigger fish comes for them, you can help them out."
I reached out a hand and helped him stand up. If everything went to plan, this would be the last time I had to deal with Sudou myself. And for that to happen I had to weave a small lie.
"I don't want to be here anymore than you want me here. But Horikita asked me to come. For some reason she hasn't given up on you yet. So go ahead, Sudou. Prove her wrong."
"Why would she want me back. She made pretty damn clear that I wasn't worth teaching."
"I have no idea. But whatever you decide will prove one of us right. Me or Horikita. Are you worthless or do you have some potential?" With that open question I left him to think. Walking back towards the dorms, there were many variables to consider. In the event that he did go back to studying with Horikita, somehow, I would have to convince her to do the same. Because the fact was, she agreed with what I had told him. In truth, the situation was reversed. Horikita had no intention to continue tutoring him.
I had one day to get her to agree. Not only that, but I would need the help of someone to execute the second part of my plan. In particular, someone popular who could help me make contact with other students in my grade. While I could contact most people in my class, those in other classes were out of my reach, especially the leaders, whom I was the most eager to speak with.
Sudou, however, was mostly dealt with. This situation would drive him to Horikita and give him someone who he thought believed in him. Belief was a strong motivator, and once they got through this exam, he would have absolute faith in her. Then, her nature would naturally hold him back from causing a ruckus, preventing his disruptions that would inevitably happen and impact my plans. It would be interesting, but a loose cannon like Sudou couldn't be left untethered.
It would also be incredibly funny to constantly see the two most opposing people together. A pair that could never function well, but I would force to be around each other. Well worth the effort so far.
Yes, everything was progressing rather nicely.
Authors Notes
This was another interesting one. Mostly meh feelings for it but i wrote it so enjoy.
Sorry for the delayed update i fell asleep at uni and completely missed my normal time for uploading. Maybe living off monster alone is not healthy or smth.