Kushida Kikyou had sold them out. She'd leaked everything to the other classes, spreading the information freely to polish her own image, to make herself look generous and helpful to students outside their class.
To feed her insatiable need to be loved by everyone.
What a bitch.
And she wasn't alone. Yamauchi Haruki and Ike Kanji—the inseparable duo of perverted idiots—had done the same.
They'd blabbed to impress girls from other classes, desperate for attention, for validation, for any scrap of female acknowledgment. They'd traded their class's hard-earned advantage for a few giggles and empty promises.
They weren't the only ones. The investigation revealed more. A steady, disgusting stream of betrayal from within.
That was the moment Ayanokouji's hope died.
Not with a bang, but with the quiet, sickening realization that he was surrounded by people who would sell out their own for a smile, for attention, for the fleeting warmth of being liked.
And Ayanokouji Kiyotaka was, above all else, a vindictive man.
He didn't rage. He didn't confront. He didn't give them the satisfaction of seeing his disgust.
Instead, he did something far worse.
He stayed. He watched. And he worked.
From that day forward, every shred of his considerable ability was turned not toward lifting Class D up, but toward ensuring they stayed exactly where they belonged—at the bottom.
He sabotaged every useful person who could have raised the class's value.
He made sure Suzune Horikita never developed an attachment to these people, nurturing her cold individualism until she viewed them with the same contempt he did.
He ensured Sudo Ken remembered exactly how they'd abandoned him, fostering that hatred until it was bone-deep and irreversible.
Every opportunity that could have elevated Class D, he crushed.
Every moment of potential unity, he poisoned. Every private point they accumulated, he bled dry through careful, undetectable exploitation—funneling their resources into his own pockets until there was nothing left of value for them to use.
By the time he was done, Class D was hollow. A shell of what it could have been.
Exactly where they deserved to be.
Maybe there was a reason they'd been placed here after all.
By the school's own brutal hierarchy, the labels were clear: Class A was excellence, the elite. Class B was good students, solid and reliable. Class C was backup—capable, but unremarkable. And Class D?
Class D was the trash heap. The rejects. The inferior products and experimental failures that the system had given up on before they even started.
Ayanokouji understood now. The school wasn't wrong about them.
They just didn't know the half of it.
It's no wonder Sudo Ken felt that sharp pang of envy when he saw Ayanokouji with a girlfriend from Class A—and not just any girl from Class A, but their queen, their leader, the untouchable ice princess herself.
The status alone was enough to make any guy's jaw drop. In the brutal social hierarchy of this school, dating someone like that wasn't just a win; it was a conquest that bordered on the mythical.
They'd been trapped in this pressure cooker of an institution for two years now.
They'd all crossed the threshold into adulthood—eighteen years old, legally adults in every sense that mattered.
And in an environment as controlled, as suffocatingly strict as this one, where every moment was regimented and every relationship scrutinized, the hunger for physical release ran deep and constant.
Ayanokouji never held back from acknowledging his own desires.
He wasn't some ascetic monk pretending lust didn't exist.
He wanted sex.
He wanted it the way anyone with a healthy libido wanted it—frequently, intensely, without apology.
And his girlfriend?
She was perfect on paper.
Gorgeous in that delicate, almost illegal way—one of those girls who looked like a legal loli, all soft features and petite frame, yet undeniably beautiful.
Her voice when she moaned was sweet, breathy, the kind of sound that could drive a man insane with want.
But there was a catch.
A crippling, frustrating, soul-killing catch
Her heart disease.
The debuff that killed every moment before it could truly begin.
He could never go all the way with her.
Not really.
Every time things heated up, every time his pulse raced and his cock hardened with the promise of release, reality would crash down.
The fear. The caution. The knowledge that pushing too hard, going too deep, losing control—any of it could trigger something catastrophic.
Her body wasn't built for the kind of intense, animalistic sex he craved.
So they settled. Compromised. Made do with the edges of intimacy while the core remained tantalizingly out of reach.
Mostly, it was foreplay stretched into eternity.
He'd rub his aching cock against her soaked pussy, the thin barrier of her panties the only thing separating them from true union.
He'd grope her breasts, roll her nipples between his fingers, listen to her sweet, breathy moans while his shaft slid against the damp fabric, building pressure that never found its target.
Sometimes she'd use her mouth—those soft lips wrapped around him, her tongue working desperately while he fought the urge to thrust deeper, to take control, to fuck her throat the way he wanted.
Sometimes her hand, small and delicate, stroking him with careful, measured movements designed to please without exhausting her.
But penetration? Going inside? That was rare.
A special occasion. A calculated risk that always ended too soon, leaving him harder than before, more frustrated, more hollow.
On the nights when they just slept together, he'd curl around her from behind, his body molded to hers, his rigid cock pressed insistently against the curve of her ass through her pajama pants.
He'd lie there in the darkness, painfully hard, breathing in the scent of her hair, and simply... exist in that state of perpetual, unsatisfied wanting.
No release.
Just the ache.
It was that frustration—that constant, gnawing, never-quenched hunger—that drove him to Airi Sakura.
Sweet, obedient Airi. The girl with the shy smile and the hidden curves, the one who looked at him with eyes full of trust and devotion.
She never asked for much.
Never demanded.
When he came to her, desperate and pent-up, she welcomed him without judgment.
She let him take what he needed, surrendering her body to his hunger in ways his girlfriend never could.
She became his secret. His release valve. His dirty little comfort.