Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e - Volume 18 - Chapter Ep2

E.2

“Is Tsubaki alone at the meeting place?”

I thought so for a moment, but it seemed that Utomiya was talking to someone a little farther away. He was only looking at us.

“Is there something you're having trouble communicating over the phone?”

“Well, the first-year students are in a bit of a mess right now. There was an unexpected expulsion at the school festival.”

“Expelled? That's a very disturbing story.”

Someone else was involved in this school expulsion fiasco. That was Tsubaki Sakurako, who was in front of me then.

“I'm satisfied with the result, which is more than I imagined…Ayanokōji-senpai.”

Tsubaki made a circle with her finger as if to say, “you passed.”

“It seems you’ve successfully extracted information from Satō-senpai and drove Yagami-kun out of school. I am very grateful.”

“I didn't extract the information. You contacted Satō repeatedly and gradually drove her into a corner. And then, when she couldn't take it anymore, you coordinated and threatened her, pushing her to spit everything out and confide in someone.”

Tsubaki, right here in front of me, was the person who approached Satō without my knowledge.

“I don't know what that means. What a surprise.”

Satō was apparently approached by Tsubaki near the women's restroom at Keyaki Mall. There, she flashed some bait that would turn things around for her, including a turnaround between my relationship with Kei, which tickled her curiosity. 

“It seems you called Satō to your room and made cheap threats, but it wasn't a serious attempt to manipulate her into ruining our relationship. It was because you wanted to push her to act, or deal with the problem in front of her, by indirectly letting her know that we were getting close and confronting us.”

Tsubaki listened silently, staring at me without denial.

“When I asked her about the details, the abnormality of the situation was immediately brought to light. As soon as you saw that Satō wouldn’t accept your invitation, you contacted her again as if to follow up and made similar comments and provoked her. When you saw that Satō didn’t seem to have consulted anyone, you gradually intensified your threats and hounded her. This was in order for her to eventually go and consult someone. That being me.”

The goal was not to cage Satō, but to wait for her to ask me for help.

“Then, you most likely told Satō that it was Yagami who was behind the threats, not you.”

The mentally-exhausted Satō probably didn't have time to think about whether that was true or not. I came up with the idea of using this one incident for personal use and decided to call up Kei during my discussion with Satō and had her confide in her about the abuse and almost everything that had led up to that point in her past. The fact that Satō didn’t choose to go back to Tsubaki afterwards convinced me that she would be on my side. As a result, she and Kei elevated their relationship from friends to best friends in the truest sense of the word. That was on November 1.

“Yagami-kun is a bad guy, isn't he?”

“You don't need cheap theatrics. Yagami had nothing to do with this. He's not involved.”

“You don't think it was actually Yagami-kun's order?”

“If Yagami was using Tsubaki to contact Satō, there's no need to bother naming him.”

The only people who know about Karuizawa's past are those who are connected with the White Room. Others can't easily imitate him in a way that wouldn’t have made it difficult for me to see through their disguise.

“Then isn't it the other way around, you found out that I was trying to frame Yagami-kun, didn't you? And yet you did nothing against me and even expelled Yagami-kun, who might be innocent. Isn't that contradictory? There was no indication that Ayanokōji-senpai was looking into it in detail.”

“Ah. I didn't investigate Tsubaki or Yagami. No need for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm sorry, but I don't feel like talking any more.”

I was convinced that I had said enough. It wasn’t even Tsubaki who was manipulating everything. Furthermore, the person lurking in the background was the one who painted this picture.

“Utomiya-kun, can you come here for a minute?”

Tsubaki beckoned to Utomiya, who was on the phone, and instructed him to hand his cell phone to me.

“Go ahead...” Wary, Utomiya handed me the phone while it was still connected. 

“Yagami had some of Tsubaki’s and Utomiya’s classmates expelled. That's why those two worked together with me.”

I'm pretty sure that was the voice of the man I spoke to last year on the phone and in front of my room.

“You left him alone because you knew you could take him down at any time if you moved directly on him. But as a result, there were expulsions from the first year. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for his nuisance.”

“I don't deny it.”

“The only way to avoid further unnecessary sacrifices was to have him expelled. But even if you knew that, it isn’t easy to defeat Yagami. I know he is no ordinary high school student.”

“That's why you wanted to use me.”

He made this decision because he understood the white room student's purpose and obsession.

“I guess you got my message,” he said.

“Eventually, you’ll get in touch with someone close to me. And when that happens, there will be expulsions, right?”

“That's right. But to drive Yagami into a corner and expel him all at once? That was a little out of the calculations. Did you not take into account the possibility that Yagami was unrelated?”

“It was up to Yagami's choice whether or not he wanted to be expelled. It wasn't me who decided whether it was black or white. He was playing with fire here and there, just like when he expelled a student from 1st year C. He contacted Kushida Kikyo, pretending to be her former junior, and he used the information he was given to control and manipulate her. He provoked unrelated students on a deserted island by inflicting serious injuries to them. He also checked the contents of a love letter for another person, thinking it was a trap. I don't know why Horikita and Ibuki were there, but I think it was also because he was playing with fire.”

Normally, people don't steal other people's love letters. And even if they did, they wouldn't notice the anagrams that were sprinkled throughout.

“So it was all connected.”

“Even if there was no clear evidence left behind, the more tricks you play, the more traces you will always leave behind. That guy didn't realize he was strangling himself with cotton wool.”

“Surely if Yagami hadn't done anything, he wouldn't have been expelled at this stage.”

“I agree.”

The accumulated fire and games had led to this outcome.

If Yagami hadn't offended the man on the phone, I wouldn't have messed with him, and if he hadn't contacted Kushida or seriously injured those guys on the deserted island, he wouldn't have faced the penalty of expulsion.

If he hadn’t seen the contents of the love letter, he would not have been put in a situation where he could be questioned.

“The only reason he was expelled was because Yagami admitted to himself that he was black.”

I merely set up the stage for a test. If he was completely white, there would’ve been no fuss in the first place. He only went to the student council room because he knew me and because he was smart.

“You seem to be as good as the rumors say you are.”

“By the way, just to confirm, remember what you told me before? You told me that if I didn’t get rid of the people who were in my way, I wouldn't expect peace and quiet to return. That was a bluff, wasn't it? You wanted to create a sense of urgency that if I didn't take care of the problem soon, it would become even more difficult.”

In order to make me move, he had made a move to get Yagami expelled from the school from that stage.

“Ayanokōji-sensei was right to choose this school.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's just as you believe, I'm going to enjoy my school life, and as long as we don't bump into each other during the first and second years squabbles, I'll let our relationship end here.”

He said what I wanted to say and the call was hung up. A sneak peek at the cell phone screen revealed that the call was deliberately blocked.

This was done because they didn't want Utomiya to realize from their address or phone number that they were registered to an address.

“Have you figured it out?”

“Yeah.”

“When my classmate was expelled from school, at first I thought Hōsen-kun was involved, but recently I was told that it was Yagami-kun.”

Yagami's potential may be impeccably high, but he’d been caught flat-footed by his own mistakes. He was only concerned about me and didn’t see his rivals standing on the same stage. It seemed that Yagami was not a welcome presence in the first-year students' battle.

“Don't quit just because you've defeated your enemy, Tsubaki.”

“I know. To be honest, I wasn't attached to this school at first, but that's changed a bit. This school is surprisingly fun.”

Looking at the exchange just now, it was clear that there were a lot of mixed feelings other than simply taking revenge on an enemy.

“So, we're leaving.”

“Senpai.” Utomiya, who was forcing himself to pull out the honorific, returned to the dormitory with Tsubaki.

“I should get back to class too.”