Last night, after spending some time in the White Gym doing digestion exercises, and then doing some simple training using his recorder as a throwing weapon after coming out, Asakusa Tetsu went to sleep peacefully.
After pushing his body's fatigue to the limit, he could fall asleep quickly even without doing anything special.
With the membership card helping convert the energy he gained from eating into physical strength, he could wake up fully refreshed and in peak condition.
No need to stay up late.
No need to squeeze every second out of the membership card's time.
As long as he could slowly feel the changes in his body and greet each day with energy, that was enough.
After all, he was still a high school student.
A high school student should act like one.
…Besides, in this fully closed-off Advanced Nurturing High School, there wasn't much else to do anyway.
He still hadn't beaten Amazawa today.
Once again, he had been stepped on by her little foot.
One day, he would step on her instead.
But there was no need to rush.
At his current growth rate, Asakusa Tetsu felt that within a year, just two or three months' worth of time in the membership card would be enough for him to crush Amazawa.
The boost from the card was unexpectedly powerful. Even when he was getting beaten up in the White Gym, his mind felt much clearer.
It really lived up to being an S-rank reward.
Yesterday's room card couldn't even compare.
After all, there was a three-rank gap between S and C.
After his routine energy replenishment, Asakusa Tetsu headed back to the Class B classroom.
Almost the moment he entered, he felt the gazes of his classmates fall on him, and the chatter instantly dropped in volume.
Small movements and mutual nudges quickly ended. Then, before class began, someone walked up to him.
It was a boy with a subtle, slightly androgynous look—hard to tell his gender at first glance—but still clearly male, wearing a bright and cheerful smile.
"Good morning, Asakusa."
Shibata Hayate.
A fair-skinned boy with good potential, apparently from the soccer club. He had excellent athletic ability—the type who didn't look muscular on the surface but was surprisingly strong.
"I want to be friends with you," he said.
...
Ichinose Honami had taken the initiative to talk to Asakusa Tetsu before, but that wasn't a reason for everyone else to stop approaching him.
They could easily imagine how isolated someone felt if they failed to integrate into the class from the start.
Ichinose's care wouldn't stay focused on him forever.
Besides, no one wanted Ichinose to always be with Asakusa.
—Honami belongs to everyone!
So…
[Became friends with "Shibata Hayate"][Became friends with "Shiranami Chihiro"][Exchanged contact information with all classmates]
Asakusa Tetsu didn't have much desire to socialize actively, but he wasn't resistant to interacting with others either.
They said you don't hit someone who smiles at you.
Not to mention classmates who approached him out of concern for his social life and sincerely wanted to be friends.
Friends could be unexpectedly useful sometimes.
For example, when you're in danger, you can sacrifice them… No, when you're broke, you can shamelessly say, "Aren't we friends?" and morally pressure them.
…Sorry, that was a bit too much.
Anyway, building social connections wasn't a bad thing.
He wasn't worried about friends hijacking his free time, nor about being morally pressured into lending money.
First, Class B students weren't that terrible. If this were Class D, he probably wouldn't dare.
Second… he didn't even have morals. How could they blackmail him with them?
Third, "friends" were the best sources of information. True or false, you could always pick up fragments from their idle chatter.
Like right now.
"Tell me more."
Dragging over a chair, Asakusa Tetsu smoothly joined the group chatting nearby.
Then, he roughly pieced everything together.
"..."
He fell silent.
…Wait, seriously? I wrote my diary in such an obviously male tone, and she still targeted Xiao Mei?!
Sure, Sakayanagi Arisu had a pretty bad track record, but at least in the setting, she was supposed to be a genius, right?
She is a genius, right? She is, right?
Then why did she confidently reach a completely wrong conclusion without realizing it at all?
Does being love-brained really affect your intelligence that much?
Asakusa Tetsu couldn't understand.
Still, this counted as good news.
After Horikita Suzune, the second person to openly react to the diary was Sakayanagi Arisu.
…Of course, it could also be Kamuro Masumi.
But thinking carefully, with Miss Kamuro's brain, she probably couldn't come up with a scheme to push her master to the front as a decoy.
More importantly, decoys were usually disposable people. Who used their own boss as a shield?
If Kamuro really had a diary copy, there didn't seem to be much dark history she could expose.
Other than being a skilled thief, there wasn't much.
If he had to say something… she might be a bit masochistic.
Or rather, she liked the feeling of being threatened with leverage.
But personal preferences were free. Even if that were written in the diary, it wouldn't be that special.
So yeah.
Sakayanagi Arisu was definitely more fun.
A pure, overly serious academic like Horikita, and a high-spec, arrogant love-brain like Sakayanagi—no matter how he thought about it, messing with them was more interesting than dealing with others.
But he wouldn't mock her in tonight's diary just yet.
He'd let her hold onto her "answer," raise her proud neck, and feel smug for a while longer.
Then he'd laugh at her properly later.
…Alright, he admitted it.
The real reason he wasn't planning to mock her yet was because today's story index was terrible.
Yes.
Today's story index was even worse than yesterday's.
"E."
He admitted that the third day of school had basically no plot. In the original story, aside from the first two days and the first swimming class, the first month was mostly skipped with "dreamlike daily life."
But an E? Wasn't that too much?
Asakusa Tetsu had reason to suspect that he had offended capital.
I'm working this hard, wracking my brain every day to write my diary…
And this is all I get?
Capital, you win.
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