Amasawa happily lifted the little plastic bag in her hand, watching the goldfish inside swim lazy circles and blow bubbles, her eyes curved into crescents.
"Senpai~ Are you planning to get involved in that?"
Yukio had thought she was about to say how cute her goldfish was, but instead she was asking about what he'd just discussed with Hosen.
On second thought, that made sense.
After all, it had been Amasawa who told Yukio that there might be a White Room clash during today's cultural festival.
"Yeah."
It was just a light, simple answer, but it made Yukio's intentions clear.
Amasawa froze for a second, then lowered her gaze to the goldfish again.
She wasn't sure whether she should try to persuade Yukio not to get involved in White Room matters. If the wrong people noticed him, the trouble could become endless.
But then she remembered that even Tsukishiro, with White Room resources backing him, hadn't been able to uncover Yukio's background. Someone like her wasn't going to talk him out of anything.
In the end, she pushed those thoughts aside and turned her attention back to the festival.
"Then, Senpai~ where are we going next?"
"Do you like sweets?" Yukio tilted his chin toward the front. "If you do, let's go take a look at Honami's class."
Not far ahead, there was a stall set up by Ichinose's class. The reason he recognized it was because Kanzaki was personally standing there, handling the outside guests.
Amasawa's eyes rolled mischievously, and she smiled in a way that was almost indecently suggestive.
"Oho~ sweets? If Senpai feeds me, then I like them. If you don't feed me, then I don't~"
"Then I'll feed you a tube of deoxyribose."
Yukio slammed the car door shut and drove straight through the joke, leaving Amasawa completely unable to respond.
While they were bantering, they had already reached Kanzaki's stall.
Kanzaki tensed up the moment he saw Yukio, but quickly forced himself to relax again.
"Yukio-kun? Want something?"
Ichinose's class theme was all kinds of sweets. Not only did their classroom offer guests the chance to make desserts themselves, but the class members had also prepared desserts to sell outside.
The stall Kanzaki was tending sold the pastries and sweets made by members of Ichinose's class.
Yukio gestured toward Amasawa, letting her pick.
Amasawa happily started looking through them one by one.
While she did, Kanzaki seemed to be thinking about something. After a moment, he finally spoke.
"During the All Unanimous Special Exam..."
"When our class was taking it, you were watching too, weren't you?"
"?"
Yukio didn't say anything, only gave him a look.
Kanzaki began explaining on his own.
"Everyone knows that near the end of D-Class's special exam, you came and took Sakura away."
"So before D-Class's unanimous exam ended... since your class finished the fastest, and even the homeroom teachers said so, then before D-Class finished, you were either outside Arisu's class or outside ours, weren't you?"
Reasonable logic. Convincing too.
As expected of Ichinose's right-hand man.
Yukio acknowledged the guess, though he still didn't know what Kanzaki was getting at.
"So?"
"So..." Kanzaki's expression tightened with bitterness. After a pause, he finally voiced the question that had been weighing on him most. "I've already accepted Honami's strategy of taking care of our classmates and letting them transfer into your class one by one."
"But... call it unwillingness to let go, I guess. I still want to ask you—if things had gone according to my plan that day, if our class had reached unanimity and sacrificed me, would our class's future really have been better?"
That was the last trace of unwillingness left in Kanzaki's heart.
He was lost too. He couldn't see the future clearly either.
But Kanzaki believed Yukio could see farther and more clearly than anyone else.
That was why he asked.
"It wouldn't have."
Yukio's answer came down like a blade.
As if he'd already glimpsed the river of fate in advance, he cut off the very root of Kanzaki's lingering unwillingness.
Kanzaki was stunned.
Was his way of thinking really that flawed? Yukio had rejected it without even hesitating?
Did that mean there was some detail he had completely missed?
To be fair, after spending over a year watching every class repeatedly get burned by Yukio, even someone as intelligent as Kanzaki instinctively reacted that way. The moment Yukio denied his idea, his first thought was to reflect on his own mistake—not to wonder whether Yukio's judgment might be wrong.
Of course, there was no twist here. Yukio's conclusion was simply based on his understanding of Ichinose's class—or more precisely, Ichinose herself.
"You don't need to overthink it. Just think carefully about Honami's personality."
"Even if you'd forcibly dragged everyone into opening the expulsion-vote branch, what would the result have been? Sacrificing yourself? I don't know the rest of your classmates that well, but there's one thing I do know—Honami would absolutely, absolutely never have voted in favor."
"!"
Kanzaki's body went rigid.
That was it.
That was the missing piece.
He finally understood the fatal flaw in what he had tried to do during the All Unanimous exam.
No matter what the rest of the class did, Ichinose—as Yukio had just said—would never have abandoned a classmate.
If Ichinose hadn't come up with the transfer strategy and persuaded him, then maybe their class would've ended just like D-Class—deadlocked until time ran out, failing the exam outright.
At that thought, cold sweat nearly broke out across Kanzaki's back.
Now all he could do was be grateful that Ichinose had convinced him back then and prevented the worst-case ending.
"Senpai~ I want this one, and this one, oh, and this one too!"
While the two of them were talking, Amasawa had already picked out three different sweets.
That jolted Kanzaki back to the present. He hurriedly packed them up, then handed them over without even asking for points.
"This one's on me. No need to pay."
"Thanks."
Yukio didn't bother refusing out of politeness. He simply gestured for Amasawa to take them.
Amasawa was delighted. Once they left with the sweets, she couldn't stop praising him.
"You're amazing, Senpai~ I wish I could be like you. Just walking around with that face and getting free stuff everywhere."
As she said that, she gave the little bag of goldfish and the dessert box a tiny shake.
As she pointed out, it really had all happened because of Yukio's face—whether it was the goldfish or the sweets, they hadn't paid for a thing.
Yukio narrowed his eyes.
"I won those through sheer ability, thank you very much. How did you twist it into me just freeloading off my looks?"
Amasawa hooked the goldfish bag around her left pinky and cradled the dessert box in her left palm, then used a tiny fork in her right hand to spear a chestnut dumpling.
"Hehe, because you're handsome, Senpai~ Here. Open up."
Yukio accepted the feed-me play without a shred of embarrassment.
And honestly, the chestnut was pretty sweet. Ichinose's class really did have some talented people.
It looked like they'd all picked up quite a bit back when they handled the food district during the workplace training exam.
"Senpai, Senpai~"
While Yukio's thoughts started drifting, Amasawa got annoyed.
"My turn. It's my turn now~"
As she spoke, she handed him the dessert box and opened her mouth, waiting expectantly to be fed.
That made Yukio smile again.
In the end, he speared a little cake roll and fed it to her.
It was sweet enough to keep Amasawa laughing all the way down the path, her voice ringing out like soft wind chimes.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.