"It's… Haruki Yamauchi, right?"
Right? Right? Right?
Horikita Suzune's voice echoed in Horikita Manabu's ears, but he couldn't understand in the slightest what his sister was talking about.
"...Who?" He frowned deeply and slowly voiced his confusion.
Almost the instant the answer left her mouth, Suzune saw her brother's expression.
And in the next moment, she understood.
She had been fooled.
Fooled. Fooled. Fooled!
There was no way her brother would ever write anything in that diary.
There was no way he would ever give her some kind of "trial."
She should have known that from the start.
And yet, she had still fallen for it.
Shame, anger, frustration…
Mixed emotions clogged her chest. Her pretty face grew burning hot in an instant, and tears of humiliation almost welled up at the corners of her eyes.
But she couldn't cry in front of her brother.
She had said she was no longer the useless person she used to be.
She had grown up!
She had to grow up!
If she cried in front of him now, wouldn't that prove she hadn't changed at all?!
"...N-No, it's nothing…" Gripping her left arm tightly with her right hand, Horikita Suzune lowered her head. "I didn't say anything."
Horikita Manabu silently watched his sister.
He didn't press her about that name.
Instead, he quietly memorized it in his heart, planning to look into it later.
Then he spoke softly.
"...I heard you were placed in Class D."
How had things ended up like this?
Why had it turned out this way?
He had originally intended to use her placement in Class D as a reason to order her to withdraw.
But when the words reached his lips, he remembered that today was only the second day of school.
Suzune didn't yet know the class ranking system.
She hadn't seen through the nature of this school.
Even with his own sister, as student council president, he wasn't allowed to leak information.
"Class D… what about it?" Suzune looked up, completely unaware.
"..." Horikita Manabu pressed his fingers against his aching temple and rubbed lightly. "No… it's nothing."
"If you have nothing to say, then let's end it here."
"I still have student council work."
If I'd known it would turn out like this, I should've made that guy stay.
…Come to think of it, I don't even know his name.
"Ah, then… I won't disturb you anymore, Brother…" Suzune said quietly, lowering her head and biting her lower lip.
"Mm." Horikita Manabu turned around, but paused before leaving.
"And also… I only bought that recorder to make him stop playing that recording."
"You had no reason to buy one yourself."
With that, he left.
Horikita Suzune froze in place.
"Eh?"
So… did that mean I did something wrong?
She watched his departing back, then reached into her pocket and took out the recorder that Asakusa Toru had practically forced on her.
The screen flickered with tiny lights.
It was currently recording.
"Click."
Without caring why the recorder he'd sold her was recording, Suzune pressed the stop button, then searched for a moment and found the delete option.
She must have pressed it by accident.
Deleting it would be fine.
…Sigh.
If only life were like this.
If only you could delete your embarrassing past so easily.
She desperately wanted to erase the memory of taking that so-called "trial" seriously and going to her brother with an answer.
She swore that from now on, no matter what she read in that diary, she would never trust it again!
The diary's author had completely lost all credibility in her eyes!
...
Asakusa Toru didn't care whether Horikita Suzune believed him or not.
He only knew one thing.
It worked.
He had mentioned it before.
The main recorder he possessed could copy recordings from its replicas.
Although the replicas had to stay within a certain range and couldn't steal recordings endlessly, in a way, that limitation was part of the filtering process.
It prevented piles of useless recordings from interfering with his collection.
So long as he stayed nearby, he could accurately copy whatever was recorded on the one recorder he had sold to Horikita Suzune.
The only problem was the risk of exposure.
His actions were actually quite flashy.
If someone inferred things based on his activity level, it wouldn't be impossible to suspect him.
But Asakusa Toru had no intention of restraining himself.
He had already given himself the nickname "Recorder Guy."
Doing crazy things fit the role perfectly, didn't it?
There were so many weirdos in Advanced Nurturing High.
One more wouldn't matter.
Even if Suzune noticed that the recorder was recording…
Without knowing its special effect, who would imagine that such a simple device could share recordings?
Even if she dismantled it, she wouldn't find any clues.
From every angle, the replica looked like a perfectly ordinary recorder.
No networking chip.
No cloud upload.
Even if—just hypothetically—her intuition went into overdrive, she noticed the recording, felt suspicious, and turned it off early…
Asakusa Toru didn't care.
The recorder was just the most convenient method.
Even if it failed, he could still probe Horikita Manabu directly.
The diary's existence couldn't be revealed to anyone.
If Suzune really was a reader, the only things she could tell her brother were about the "trial" and the "impostor."
All she could do was try to confirm the answer and hope to gain his approval.
So even though there was some risk, compared to the gains, it was negligible.
On the screen of the recorder in his hand, the latest saved recording was clearly displayed.
Asakusa Toru slid his finger, lowering the volume until it could only be heard at close range.
Then he tapped replay.
"I've already found the answer to the trial."
"It's… Haruki Yamauchi, right?"
Horikita Suzune's cool voice echoed in his ear.
"Victory!"
He had won the bet.
The first reader whose identity had been exposed…
Was Horikita Suzune.
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