Bang! Bang! Bang!
On the rooftop, the dull, heavy rhythm of wooden swords clashing rang out in an endless cadence.
"Watch your timing! Control your breathing!"
Even as Amasawa Ichika was busy threatening Karuizawa Kei down below, Chris sensed the moment had arrived. His wrist snapped sharply — and in a single fluid motion, he unleashed nine strikes in nine simultaneous directions.
"Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu — Kuzu Ryuha!"
"—?!"
Ichinose Honami was caught completely flat-footed by the sudden shift in technique.
Even with the Combat Suit's enhancements boosting her body, the sheer, crushing gap in experience was too much — she failed to block in the chaos.
Zzzt —
The tip of the wooden sword grazed Ichinose's wrist with surgical precision. With a soft crack, the blue metallic ring fastened around her wrist shattered.
Ichinose immediately called for a stop and stepped back twice.
"Senpai, hold on a second! Something feels off!"
She looked down, staring blankly at her wrist.
From the broken ring, a blue liquid was slowly seeping out, glowing with a faint and eerie luminescence. It trickled down along her black bodysuit and dripped onto the ground.
As the liquid drained away, she could feel it clearly — the surging, all-filling power that had coursed through her entire body was noticeably diminished compared to just moments before.
Chris lowered his wooden sword, perfectly calm.
"The liquid inside those rings appears to be the key to the Combat Suit's physical enhancement.
"I tested it before — once you puncture all of them and let the liquid drain completely, the suit loses its enhancement effect entirely."
Ichinose Honami's face went pale. She immediately pressed him:
"Eh? Then — then what do we do after that?!"
"Relax," Chris said, his tone reassuring. "When the next exam starts, the Combat Suit resets automatically. The old one disappears, and the Black Sphere just issues a brand new one straight to me."
"...?"
The tension in Ichinose's chest eased all at once. She let out a long, slow breath, as if a thousand-pound weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
"That's such a relief... I thought I'd been careless and damaged the Combat Suit that everyone worked so hard to earn..."
Chris shook his head.
"Makes sense when you think about it. The X-GUN and Y-GUN hand out new ones every exam cycle too. If something you spent S-Points to redeem turned out to be a single-use consumable, the pricing would just be straight-up robbery."
Reassured by the explanation, Ichinose nodded earnestly and filed the important information away.
She wiped the light sheen of sweat from her forehead, and as if something from the training session had just crossed her mind, she couldn't help but ask:
"By the way, Senpai... why does it feel like your swordsmanship keeps getting faster? And on top of that..."
"Each strike is stronger than the last!"
Chris kept his expression perfectly neutral.
He flicked a sidelong glance at his equipment panel — visible only to him — where the stacks of Heart of Steel had already climbed to nearly two hundred layers.
Mm. HP steadily rising.
Chris gave a quiet, deliberate cough.
"That... is the marvel of meditation."
"When you reach a state of absolute focus, a person can enter a state of total immersion — what some call 'flow.' In that realm, you become acutely aware of everything around you. Your body's full potential is unlocked. You start spotting openings in your opponent that would otherwise be invisible."
He continued with an air of deep, measured conviction:
"Take the Kuzu Ryuha I just used. At its core, it's simply nine rapid strikes launched across nine different directions. I used that same move on you earlier, and you blocked it without much trouble. But this time, you couldn't evade it.
"That's the tangible, real-world difference that comes from a gap in realm."
Swept along by Chris's confident lecture, Ichinose tilted her head to one side, looking dazed.
Is... is that really how it works?
He's not pulling my leg, is he?
But she had felt the change in the force behind his strikes.
From the very start, when each blow felt like little more than a tickle — something she only needed to half-pay-attention to — all the way to later, when the strikes genuinely hurt, and she had to block with everything she had.
All of that had happened within just the last hour or two.
The human body really is that incredible?
Or... am I getting this nagging feeling that this is all just... numbers? That he was literally just... farming on me this whole time?
Looking at Ichinose's blank, slightly glassy expression, Chris couldn't help feeling quietly amused.
"Depending on natural aptitude, not everyone grasps it right away. But the state of flow is very real."
He tilted his head back, gazing at the sunset stretching over the rooftop, his eyes distant.
"As for me... the moment I awakened to this realm was at Koshien, back in the summer of last year..."
"Um, Senpai."
Ichinose Honami finally couldn't help but cut in.
"I heard from Kushida-san that you're a transfer student from Huaxia — you only came to study in Japan this year, right?"
"And if I remember correctly... Koshien is a baseball tournament for Japanese-native high school students, isn't it...?"
"Don't mind those details," Chris said, face completely unchanged.
"It's way too out of place to ignore, Senpai!" Ichinose fired back, unable to keep her complaint to herself.
"Alright, you caught me." Chris conceded with a helpless sigh. "Anyway — just keep up the practice after you head back down. When you meditate, try to recall the mindset you had during that past exam — the moment you knocked Goto out cold with a single punch."
Ichinose Honami's easy smile faded, just slightly.
But before the sorrow and bitterness lurking deep inside her heart could rise back to the surface, Chris had already steered the conversation away.
"Let's call it here for today.
"I'm not sure what format tomorrow's preliminary test and main exam will take. Save your energy."
Ichinose came back to herself. With quiet care, she buried the desolation in her eyes, and simply nodded — the motion small and soft, as if surrendering to something she couldn't quite name.
"Speaking of tomorrow's exam..."
She hesitated a moment. "I was originally thinking of pooling the class's points to buy some intel from Hoshimiya-sensei. But she told me she doesn't really know much herself — apparently this all came from the school's higher-ups."
Chris wasn't surprised.
In the original school, using shopping points to buy information from teachers and upperclassmen made sense — those points were equivalent to yen, with real purchasing power within the school.
But now, setting aside the question of why any teacher would even have access to Black Sphere insider information in the first place —
The value of these points simply couldn't be equated with Black Sphere intelligence.
Ichinose let out a quiet sigh.
"Right now... I just hope tomorrow's test won't go too far..."
"Alright."
Chris stretched lazily, tossed the wooden sword into the corner by the wall, and turned to leave with a casual wave.
"Some things, you just do your best with.
"The result might not turn out the way we'd hoped. But as long as you gave it everything you had, no one is going to blame you."
He glanced back at her sidelong. "If you keep shouldering all of this pressure on your own like you're doing right now... it's only going to crush you in the end."
"I'm heading out. If you still want to practice, stay up here a while. And take what I just said as idle rambling — don't let it weigh on you."
The metal door swung open — and then clicked shut.
On the rooftop, only the gentle wind remained.
Ichinose Honami quietly bent down and picked up the gym jacket she'd left lying to one side.
She gazed in the direction Chris had gone. Her eyes grew faintly wet, and she murmured softly under her breath:
"Crushed..."
"But I... I just want to become the person everyone hopes for. Someone who can protect everyone...
"...The person I want to be."
---
Outside the rooftop door, at the stairwell landing connecting to the top-floor hallway.
Amasawa Ichika had departed with a light, gleeful step — exactly like a cat that had just gotten away with stealing something.
Karuizawa Kei slumped against the wall, her hands balling into tight fists before slowly uncurling again, her entire body rigid from the effort of holding herself together.
In the brief interval after they'd parted ways, she had already texted Kushida Kikyo on her phone. The answer confirmed it: yes, there was a red-haired, twin-tails transfer student in Class B — Ichinose's class — and yes, she had apparently skipped up directly from middle school.
But Karuizawa Kei could not understand it at all.
Why was that girl targeting her?!
Whether or not this transfer student even knows about the Black Sphere, the last thing anyone should be doing right now is cornering people in empty hallways!
This is completely insane!
"That little brat..."
Karuizawa bit down on her lip, hard enough to taste a faint trace of blood, and seethed inwardly:
Just you wait. Once I finish my plan and find myself some proper backing... I'm going to sell you out so fast your head spins.
After all — she had already thrown caution to the wind.
She'd already taken that step. She'd already been backed into a corner. And even if it meant risking the exposure of her past weakness — for the sake of protecting herself, for the sake of surviving in this brutal school...
She was willing to sacrifice her youth. To surrender what little dignity she had left.
Just as she steeled herself and prepared to take a deep breath and compose her expression —
Chris, coming down the stairs after pushing open the rooftop door, happened to catch the sound of Karuizawa's gritted, barely-audible muttering.
He paused mid-step. Looking down at the blonde gyaru lurking in the shadows, he casually asked:
"Sell out? Sell what, exactly?"
"Hiyah?!"
Karuizawa Kei flinched violently, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
She turned her head with a stiff jerk, stared up at the suddenly-present Chris, and felt her brain crash completely. She stammered:
"I — I — I..."
"Alright."
Chris took one look at her — braced for the worst yet desperately trying to play it cool — and cut her off with a wave of his hand.
"Given how you've been stationed right outside this door, you could only be here for me."
He checked the time.
"Ichinose is still inside getting changed. You've got three minutes. Say what you need to say. Make it quick."
Karuizawa Kei was struck dumb. Her expression went completely blank.
Ichinose... getting changed?!
Two people, alone together. What in the world were you doing up on that rooftop?!
Is that how you train swordsmanship?! You need to take your clothes off for it?!
A cascade of heavily pixelated, very colorful mental images swirled through Karuizawa's head — but the moment she noticed Chris staring at his phone with the cold, detached air of someone who was genuinely counting down, she forced herself to focus.
This was her last chance.
"Um..."
The girl squeezed her eyes shut, like someone throwing herself off a ledge, and declared:
"Please — allow me to become yours."
Chris blinked. He studied her with genuine surprise.
"Do you actually understand what you're saying?"
"Of course I do!"
Karuizawa kept her head down.
"It's because I know how brutal the Black Sphere exams ahead of us are — that's why I have to do this!"
"I act like a tough, assertive gyaru most of the time, but that's all a performance!"
"I was badly bullied in middle school. I didn't want to go through that again in high school — I didn't want to be pushed around — so I built up this front..."
Perhaps fearing Chris wouldn't believe her, Karuizawa Kei gritted her teeth.
She reached down and pulled up the hem of her school uniform, exposing her midriff.
Across what should have been smooth, pale skin, a raw and ugly scar cut a stark, unmistakable line.
It was the secret she refused to show to anyone. No matter what.
"So..."
Karuizawa Kei looked up, eyes fixed hard on Chris. Every layer of pretense and forced arrogance stripped completely away, leaving nothing but raw vulnerability.
"Can I... trade becoming your girlfriend — or your possession — in exchange for your protection during the Black Sphere exams?"
She rushed to add her bargaining chips:
"I've never been in a relationship, but I can learn! And I promise — if you teach me — I won't be any worse than the Ichinose in there!"
Chris rubbed his temple.
"I think you're misreading the situation. Ichinose and I aren't at the stage you're imagining. Not yet."
"But if you're looking for protection... then I have to say, you're seriously underestimating your own worth."
His tone grew noticeably more serious.
"Under the Black Sphere's joint-responsibility rules, every one of you outsiders is precious. Your lives matter — literally. If it's within my power, I have no desire whatsoever to see any of you fall, because every casualty costs me points."
Hearing such a near-clinical, almost official-sounding answer, Karuizawa Kei panicked.
She grabbed his wrist, her fingertips white from the force of her grip.
"I know you're strong, and I know you're willing to protect everyone!"
"But I want... I want to be the special exception! If you ever face a moment where you have to abandon someone — I don't want to be the one left behind!"
The tears finally broke free.
"Because I'm actually... I'm s-scared...!"
Chris studied the girl in front of him — completely unguarded, every wall demolished.
He furrowed his brow slightly, observing her in silence for a long moment.
In the end, he didn't refuse.
"Since you've laid everything out this honestly... I suppose I don't have much grounds to say no."
"That said — I'll say it one more time — there is genuinely nothing going on between Ichinose and me. Don't go around saying things that would damage her reputation."
Though that was what he said —
Chris turned it over in his mind.
Compared to Karuizawa, who was purely seeking self-preservation... Ichinose was probably the one most likely to get jealous. Most likely to spiral.
Before Chris could think it through any further, Karuizawa — having received her answer — seemed to come alive again.
She grabbed his hand tight, as if clutching the entire world.
"I'll make you satisfied!"
"Whatever you want from me — I'll do it. Anything."
Chris smoothly put forward his terms:
"Then go get into Tokyo University — actually, scratch that. That might be a little far off for now.
"Try to unite the girls in Class D. Become someone they actually listen to — their leader among the female students.
"At minimum — in a crisis — make sure they don't get in my way."
Karuizawa Kei accepted without a moment's hesitation.
"I'll do it."
"That's all for now. I'll reach out when there's more."
With that, Chris moved to pull his hand back.
However.
Karuizawa Kei bit her lip — and instead of letting go, she tightened her grip on his hand and pressed it firmly, deliberately, against her own chest.
In Chris's slightly widened eyes —
Karuizawa Kei, the very instigator of this entire scene, had a faint blush spreading steadily across her cheeks.
The flush crept from her face all the way to the tips of her ears, and even the pale skin of her neck had grown subtly warm.
She fought back the burning embarrassment and tilted her face upward, just slightly.
"As a down payment..."
"At least... let your handprint stay on my clothes.
"A mark that belongs to you."
____
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