Chapter 3.
I didn't end up going to the student club fair. Unless they had a food tasting club, an anime/manga club or a napping club I wasn't interested in any of it. Besides, anything was better than hearing Eiichiro's constant crusading. He's my best friend and I wasn't thinking of cutting ties with him or anything like that. At the moment he was emotional, scared and desperate.
He wasn't going to get out of his funk without processing it himself. I couldn't convince him and he couldn't convince me, so it would seem that we are at an impasse.
I turned my attention to the current issue at hand. Just because I was brushing aside Eiichiros concerns, that didn't mean that I didn't acknowledge that there was a problem. The truth of the matter is that he was right to be panicking. I was actually mildly impressed when he connected the dots with the ranking system as I had dubbed it and the promise of a guaranteed job of your choosing.
It was for this reason that I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling while contemplating how to rectify the problem. Class A,D, future prospects. None of that mattered to me at all. I didn't even need to go to college, I already learned everything that I needed to know, there was no other knowledge that I needed to seek. After I was done with school, I'd have government official job offers thrown at me from every direction.
The next three years were supposed to be my only chance at living a normal teenage life. From what I understood, we were supposed to be carefree, not concerning ourselves with these issues. It made me wonder why my father even put me in this school.
Was it to watch out for Arisu? Unlikely. If that were the case he would have put me in Class A with her. He very purposely put me in Class D. Did he put me here because he sensed my exasperation with the homeschooling curriculum I had? It was possible, most likely the most probable reason. I can't deny that my father dotes on Arisu and I. There's very little that he would deny us if we asked for it earnestly.
If that was the case, why this school? He could have sent me to any normal school in the country and that would have been just as easy if not better. No other school from my understanding had a curriculum like this, it was a classroom for the elite. Responsible for shaping the most brilliant minds the country had to offer into the future leaders of Japan.
If he did this for the protection of my teenage years, there was every possibility that the Japanese Government was pressuring him to have a more direct influence in my life. In here, with no contact to the outside world and free from external pressure, I was free to do whatever I wanted.
There was another slightly more devious scenario. Perhaps he thought that by forging bonds with the other students at the school they would motivate me to do something. That they would be able to make an impact on my laissez-faire attitude.
I scoffed at the notion physically as the thought crossed my mind. Everything I experienced at school was a luxury and I was left to do as little or as much as I wanted. As long as I stayed under the radar, there really wasn't any reason for anyone to ask me to do more than the minimum.
I'm allowing myself to get distracted, there's a problem here that needs to be addressed. What can I do to maximize the amount of private points I can acquire with the minimal amount of effort? The most obvious course of action is to farm points from as many students as possible.
Extortion was out of the question. Chabashira-sensei indicated that it was harshly judged and one wrong move on the wrong person could spell expulsion. If this was my only safe haven then I needed to protect it for as long as possible. Furthermore, I can't look out for Eiichiro if I'm no longer in the school.
After taking a deep breath, I got up from my bed and moved to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. As I waited for the water to boil I noticed the admission guide on my dining table that Asahina-senpai drew on for me. Inspiration struck suddenly and I quickly retrieved my phone and the admission guide. Looking at the key at the bottom of the guide, I noted every restaurant, eatery and store located outside of the central hub of Keyaki Mall.
The campus stretched over 600,000 square meters and functioned like a small city. As far as I was aware currently, there were only three dorm apartment buildings for each of the grades alone. It was possible that some of the wealthier class A students would probably spend private points to get nicer lodgings but the rest of the people on campus would be staff.
Groundskeepers, shop owners and workers all of whom would need to function within the ecosystem paying with points. As a general plan formed in my head, I leafed through the booklet and found the section that listed all of the contact information for each of the stores. It was a list not unlike the old phone books of old.
Currently, the only way for students to get points was for them to wait for the monthly stipend. What if they could earn points from their peers? If students were exposed to other food options from outside of Keyaki Mall and the convenience store would they be willing to pay a class D student to go get it for them?
I was lazy enough to part with a couple hundred points if it meant I didn't have to leave my bed, surely I wasn't the only one.
With a plan in mind, I went back to my room and took out my laptop. This was going to take a few days and if I wanted to accelerate my plans I needed time off school. It really was the perfect time to do it. The reality is that the rest of the class isn't doing much of anything at the moment and more than likely our worth would be judged as worthless by the end of the month.
With my mind made up, I picked up my phone and called Eiichiro while I set up what would be my workstation for the next few days. It was going to be a tough call to get through but it was necessary, especially now.
"Kiyo," Eiichiro greeted without even saying hello.
"Hey Eiichiro, are you still up?"
"No I'm asleep, I'm talking to you through telepathy."
"You've been really snippy with me lately, you're never like this. Is the lack of Tsubasa stressing you out?" I teased.
"I'll be honest with you because you're my best friend. I really don't like what you've become since we got here. I know we used to play and mess around whenever we were together before but I've never seen this side of you. You never knew because we didn't go to school together but I take my education seriously..." He didn't even bite at my teasing.
"I'm not doing any less than anyone else in the class."
"Is it wrong that I hold you to a higher standard than everyone else?" Eiichiro asked.
"No but you and Arisu need to stop putting me on a pedestal. I'm not any more special than anyone else, I just happen to be a little smarter than average."
I could practically feel Eiichiro's frustration through the phone as he let out an exasperated breath.
"I don't have the energy for this right now, it's been a long day. What do you want?"
I knew exactly where this was going to go and I ended up hesitating, bracing myself for the incoming storm. He was annoyed and he wasn't going to take the next revelation well.
"I won't be coming into class for the next three days. Before you get angry, I have a plan. If it wasn't time sensitive I'd do it over a longer period but this is really the only time I can do it. After this month everyone is going to knuckle down."
"...whatever, do whatever you want. I don't really care right now." He replied after a long pause.
"I'll need your help the day after tomorrow. Can you come to my dorm at around 7:00pm?"
"Will you be angry if I say I will but I don't want to?"
I was starting to get annoyed with his attitude. It was a new experience, we'd never fought or argued as friends. We always had fun and did everything together with Tsubasa so it was a new experience for me. Save for the one time Arisu figured out that I let her win in chess, I never really had anyone hostile with me since I was freed from that place.
"Eiichiro, is this what our friendship is? You ask me for something, I say no, and you hold a grudge against me? If you don't want to come, don't come. I would never force you to do something you don't want to do." I said calmly.
I was playing dirty and I knew it. I was conjuring a feeling of guilt from within by telling him I'd never do to him what he was doing to me. I've never manipulated my best friend before and ironically, while trying to bring about guilt in him, I actually ended up feeling a little guilty myself to my surprise.
"I'll be there," He finally said before cutting the call.
After getting his confirmation I went over everything that I needed to complete in the short timeframe I had. There were plenty of holes in the plan and I had contingencies in mind but in order for everything to work to the maximum capacity, plan A needed to succeed.
One of the reasons I love being lazy and hate taking anything seriously is because of what I need to do to dedicate myself to a goal. When undertaking a serious task I need to hyperfocus to an extreme degree. A mental state that I only achieved while in the White Room.
Closing my eyes I began to manifest the White Room around me. Suddenly I wasn't in my dorm anymore. The walls were all white, my furniture was white. There were no longer any textures on my keyboard or table, everything was smooth to the point that running my fingers along the surfaces didn't stimulate a feeling of touch. All sound was cut out and the temperature in the room reached equilibrium.
Going through message boards I found posts, courses and information on how to code. I was blessed with an eidetic memory, in order for me to learn all I needed to do was to read it once. If I understood it, I would never forget. Tests were meaningless for someone like me, all I needed to do was comprehend what I was reading and everything else would fall into place.
It took three hours to go through all of the basic material I could find. Introductory courses to coding through an online college would take three to six months at a time for normal people. I'd gone through six of them by the time the clock struck 11:00pm. After reading through everything once, cross referencing commonalities between the courses and skipping over the practical sections the knowledge was mine.
If ever I needed the information, anyone could ask me to recall a specific line and page number from the course and I would be able to recite the information word for word without any issues.
Stretching slightly and returning to the kitchen I grabbed some water before returning to my seat. After researching and finding all of the courses I could find on coding apps. After procuring all the course material and bookmarking links that I'd need I went to bed and lay on top of the sheets. In my mind I was still in the White Room, the temperature didn't bother me and the sheets felt as though I was resting atop cloth of the smoothest paper.
The moment I closed my eyes I was instantly asleep. Like clockwork, the second that six hours had passed my eyes opened, my body refreshed and I got ready to go to the gym. After an intense two hour workout I returned and ate a breakfast of plain oatmeal. Even the taste didn't affect me in this state, I could have been eating sand; in the white room all that matters is the goal.
From there it was nothing but pure concentration. Sixteen hours straight of reading through all of the course material, sourcing the app building software and researching how I could apply everything I already knew about psychology into the app. I hadn't left my chair the entire time sans for going to the toilet and getting water from the kitchen.
Deciding that that was enough for the day, I closed my eyes as I sat in my chair and concentrated. After breathing deeply and focusing my thoughts, I opened my eyes and watched as the room slowly started to bleed color again. An entire day of blocking out my senses took its toll and I felt myself starting to feel the strain.
The first thing that I noticed was the searing headache. As the temperature of the room felt warmer and I could feel the woodgrain of the table against my forearms again, I could feel my heartbeat throbbing in my temple like a rhythmic hammer, a metronome with a resounding thud.
Trying to ignore it I went to bed with my phone still off, not bothering to check what was probably a plethora of missed calls from Eiichiro, Arisu and most likely the school and my classmates. Hopefully I only had to enter this state one more time, then I could go back to my monotonous boring existence.
A/N; Guys just wanted to take a quick sec to thank you all for reading this. I pretty much started writing this on a whim getting an idea and didn't really have any expectations for it other than giving it my best effort. To see so many people reading and following the story after only a few days is really humbling.
Moving forward though, I can't continue to update at this pace. The only reason I've been able to upload and write this on a daily basis is because of the Easter Long weekend and once real life starts up again tomorrow, more than likely the upload schedule will probably be weekly.
Also again a big thank you to INFERNO3054 who has been basically proof reading and editing the story quite literally the moment I'm finished with the chapter, even sometimes while I'm writing. The story wouldn't be what it is at the moment without their input and they also took time to edit the cover photo which I originally just googled.
I'm not an experienced writer so I may make mistakes, but I'm grateful that you've given it a chance. This chapter is a little short but there will be an upload of an SS hopefully later today, just seemed to flow better that way.
I hope your holidays have been great and thank you for taking the time to read.