Yukio led his classmates back to the dorm, where they began packing their luggage now that the special exam was over; all they had to do was wait for the announcement over the PA.
Before long the dormitory grew lively—everyone else was returning as well. After a further wait the broadcast finally ordered them to gather on the open ground beside the forest-school building.
When Yukio's class reached the clearing, they spotted Ryuen—gaunt, hollow-eyed, the dark rings under his eyes so heavy it looked as though his kidneys had been drained dry.
"Wha—heck?!" Ishizaki dashed over first. "Ryuen-san, you okay? Been, uh, solo-grinding out there? How'd you get this wiped out?"
"Scram." Ryuen smacked the back of Ishizaki's head—more a push than a slap.
Kanzaki from Ichinose's class stood beside him, just as sour-faced—as if the two had become makeshift teammates.
"What happened?" Yukio strolled over, keen to hear what fresh tricks Ryuen had pulled besides food poisoning and his "toilet war-god" stunt.
"Don't—haah… don't ask." Ryuen looked dead on his feet; mid-sentence he yawned, plainly exhausted, certain to sleep all the way back to the Advanced Nurturing School once they boarded the bus.
Seeing him dog-tired, Yukio showed a shred of mercy. "Rest if you're beat." Then he turned to Kanzaki. "Mind telling me what lunacy this guy got up to today?"
Because their trials had been separate—Yukio's side was class-based, Ryuen's strictly individual—Yukio genuinely had no idea what Ryuen had done on the last day; he only knew that on the night of Day 7 Ryuen, in toilet-war-god mode, had eliminated two people.
Kanzaki rolled his eyes and shot Ryuen a glare. "Last day? This guy spent the whole night blocking doors."
With Kanzaki's explanation everyone pieced the story together.
Ryuen had made full use of the seven days of outdoor training: every time he returned he smuggled in carefully chosen vines—plus insects, their droppings, and assorted filth.
The bugs and droppings needed no elaboration: he crushed them and smeared the mess on other teams' ingredients and rice, or secretly dumped them into finished dishes. Days of that produced the bout of mild food poisoning.
Even though high heat would neutralize most of it, if anyone ate before simmering long enough they'd get stomach trouble—which was how even Katsuragi from Sakayanagi's class got scythed down by food.
Kanzaki's tale rose and fell like a thriller, describing Ryuen's caution—slipping past watchful eyes to season food like an assassin plying poison.
The boys of Yukio's class were stirred.
"That's Ryuen-san for you! Brutal! Slipping stuff right into what people are about to eat—totally unblockable!"
"Too awesome—no one could guard against that. Anyone clueless would be a goner!"
The boys were hyped; the girls felt queasy. Even Shiina, who always wore a feather-light smile, could only force one now.
Ibuki—warrior's daughter though she was—sprouted goose-bumps. Squashing bugs underfoot didn't scare her, but picturing Ryuen squeezing them to pulp bare-handed made her scalp crawl.
That's Ryuen for you—completely ruthless.
Kanzaki sighed and, when he reached the last-day antics, glared again at Ryuen.
"And that wasn't all. He stuffed the vines under his clothes and smuggled them back.
"Then he pulled an all-nighter—tying every dorm-room door-handle to the corridor railing with those vines! Pulled tight as a bow-string so none of us could open the doors—we couldn't even step out!"
"We missed the Day 8 quiz entirely."
Everyone could picture Kanzaki's despair. Dorm doors were designed to open inward; you couldn't barricade them from outside. But if you tied the exterior handle to something solid with rope or vine, no one inside could pull the door open.
Getting out meant brute-forcing it—ripping the vines from outside.
The more Kanzaki spoke, the darker his face grew. "And just in case, Ryuen tied at least five vines to every door—layer on layer. You bastard, Ryuen!"
Now they understood why Ryuen looked half-dead: toilet war-god one night, then an all-night vine-binding spree—no sleep at all.
"Tch." Ryuen shook his head, unfazed. "So what? Those two monsters still slipped through."
"Monsters?" Yukio latched onto the word, recalling the Day-1 message from Karuizawa and Kushida. "You mean Class D's Koenji?"
Ryuen nodded and elaborated. "That guy… unbelievable. Our individual-exam dorm doors are steel, heavy as hell. He blew one off its hinges with a single kick—vines worthless."
Thinking back even Ryuen sounded impressed; that was near the upper limit of human strength. Once the door was off the frame the vine on the handle meant nothing.
"And the other?" Ishizaki scratched his head; he'd only heard of Kōenji.
Ryuen tilted his chin toward the senior group—specifically Fujimaki beside Horikita Manabu. "Third-years aren't soft. That Fujimaki kid didn't have Koenji's raw force, but he climbed out a window. I'd calculated anyone doing that would land outside the permitted zone and be eliminated.
"Didn't expect it: apparently he's a climber. Using just the lower edge of each window, he swung in mid-air—edge to edge—like a gecko, half-circled the dorm wall, and dropped at the entrance—still inside bounds."
Everyone imagined the difficulty. One slip on a sill and it was a straight drop and instant out, yet Fujimaki managed half a circuit—that said it all.
"So—how'd you get out, Kanzaki?" Yukio asked the last question; he doubted Ryuen would have spared Kanzaki's door.
"Cut a deal," Ryuen answered with a shrug. "I'm no sure thing on quiz questions, so I let him out and he handled the answers."
"Still couldn't beat Koenji and Fujimaki. In the individual results Koenji took first, Fujimaki second, Kanzaki third, me fourth."
...
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