Just as Yukio was wrapping up his dramatic, melodramatic, White Room family soap opera, an awkward cough sounded from the stairwell.
When they turned toward the noise, they found Acting Chairman Tsukishiro walking over side by side with a burly man.
That man looked utterly stunned, clearly unable to understand how Yukio knew so much about the White Room. He was obviously one of the White Room instructors.
As for Tsukishiro, there was still a trace of awkwardness on his face. "Ahem, Yukio-kun. When it comes to other people's family matters, it's generally best not to discuss them. Don't you agree?"
Especially not when you're telling the story that wildly. Electric razor scraping toilet grime, stimulants in sleeping pills... if any of that were true, Atsuomi Ayanokoji probably wouldn't have lived to see today.
Yukio, of course, had no such reservations. He simply turned his phone volume all the way up. "Before you evaluate it, why don't you listen to this first?"
The moment he hit play, Yagami's murderous rant—along with all the White Room information he'd spilled—echoed through the stairwell.
Tsukishiro's expression froze.
The White Room instructor's turned grim.
No matter how Tsukishiro looked at it, he'd never imagined that Yagami—the one officially regarded as the best of White Room's fifth generation—would go that insane. To blurt out so much White Room information in broad daylight, and even get himself recorded doing it?
That was way beyond bad.
The instructor had originally been about to step forward and hoist the unconscious Yagami up, but after hearing that recording, he couldn't even be bothered to treat him like a person anymore. He simply grabbed Yagami by the back of the collar and hauled him up like a dead dog.
"I apologize."
"Tsukishiro-san, please allow me to take my leave first. This matter is far too serious. And Yagami has already failed completely. I'll leave things here in your hands."
"Handle everything before your dismissal takes effect. Otherwise, when he arrives later, I doubt things will go well for you."
Faced with that warning, Tsukishiro looked utterly unruffled. "Thank you for the advice. I'll take care of it."
The man gave a curt nod, ignored everyone else present, and headed downstairs with Yagami dangling from his grip, fully displaying the White Room's cold, ruthless nature.
But at this point, Ibuki had no energy left to care about White Rooms or Black Rooms or whatever. She was just glaring viciously at Tsukishiro.
She genuinely hadn't expected even the acting chairman to be one of White Room's people.
If that was the case, then their influence was way too massive. Not something ordinary students should have been able to oppose.
Amasawa was even more dazed. That man was just leaving like that?
Of course she knew who he was. He was one of the instructors who had taught her, Yagami, and even Ayanokoji in the White Room.
And yet now, he hadn't spared her so much as a glance. Which likely meant her report had already been passed on and she'd been categorized as irrelevant—a failed product the White Room had completely discarded.
Granted, Tsukishiro had already told her as much yesterday.
But actually experiencing it firsthand was still different.
For all her usual playfulness, Amasawa felt a little lost.
She and Kiyotaka were similar in that regard. The world was huge, but the only place that had ever truly given her a sense of belonging was that cramped prison called the White Room.
If the White Room had really abandoned her completely, then where would she belong now?
Even if she hated that place, hated it enough to want to escape for over ten years, and had always longed for the wide world outside—
Having that wish suddenly come true in an instant, being cut loose completely and never having to return to that endless white facility again, left her thoughts tangled into a hopeless knot.
She'd practically entered the three great philosophical questions stage.
Who am I?
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?
Yukio, meanwhile, didn't spare that minor White Room underling a second glance.
The real fish he cared about was the big one arriving at four this afternoon: Atsuomi Ayanokoji.
So letting that insignificant pawn leave was part of not alarming the real target.
For now, what mattered was dealing with the Tsukishiro in front of him.
"Well then, Acting Chairman, if there's nothing else, we'll be heading back. The cultural festival isn't over yet."
"Oh?"
Tsukishiro gave a casual little wave, once again putting on that approachable air, like a kindly old principal worrying about his students' everyday lives. "Yukio-kun, would you mind if we spoke privately for a moment?"
Hearing that all-too-familiar line, Yukio instinctively glanced around. Too bad—Stonehead Ishizaki wasn't here. And there was no way he could ask Tsukishiro to borrow Ibuki or Amasawa for a minute instead, right?
So he could only nod.
He gave Ibuki and Amasawa a look. Ibuki nodded and tugged at Amasawa, who was still standing there in a daze.
Awkwardly enough, Amasawa was spacing out so badly that Ibuki couldn't move her the first time. It took a second tug before she finally budged.
Tsukishiro first watched Ibuki and Amasawa leave with a deep, unreadable gaze, then turned back to Yukio with satisfaction.
"Yukio, from now on, I'll be leaving Ichika in your care."
"What do you mean?"
Yukio instinctively glanced toward the stairwell.
He'd assumed Tsukishiro either wanted him to delete the Yagami recording and keep everything quiet—or else continue targeting Kiyotaka Ayanokoji and persuade Yukio not to interfere.
He absolutely had not expected Tsukishiro's first line to be neither a demand for silence nor an attempt at persuasion, but instead... entrusting Amasawa to him?
What the hell kind of relationship did this old man even have with Amasawa?
Why was he suddenly talking like some dying elder handing off his kid?
Maybe Yukio's shock showed too clearly on his face, because Tsukishiro actually laughed, looking genuinely amused.
"Haha. Yukio-kun, didn't you just tell a very entertaining story a moment ago?"
"Then let me tell you one too. Though mine won't be quite as nice."
"I was born long ago in a remote region. Conditions there were harsh, nothing like the big cities. Even so, through sheer effort, I earned free admission to a prestigious private school."
"That's how I came to the city, and how I met Atsuomi Ayanokoji."
"From then on, I was completely won over by Ayanokoji-san's ability and chose to follow him, to work under him. And I've done so for decades now. Looking back, the hardships we went through together still leave me sighing."
"Haha, though those old stories don't matter much now. A young man like you probably wouldn't care to hear them anyway."
"In any case, Atsuomi Ayanokoji eventually gained the trust of those above him and established the White Room project. But the results were zero."
"The first generation of students either went mad with mental collapse or suffered cranial hemorrhaging and ended up brain dead."
"With results like that, criticism naturally came pouring in. Some even argued the White Room project should be shut down on the spot. It was only through all sorts of exchange of benefits—political and personal bargaining—that Ayanokoji-san managed to keep it alive."
"But by the time we continued with the second generation, our finances were already in dire straits. So we had no choice but to find other ways to gather students."
"Among those methods, Ayanokoji-san led by example. He personally brought his own son, Kiyotaka—barely a month old at the time—into the White Room as a fourth-generation student."
"In that situation, how could an old retainer like me remain uninvolved? So I paid a high price to acquire the genes of a female professor, then used in-vitro fertilization to contribute my own part to Ayanokoji-san's great undertaking."
"!"
In Yukio's mind, he immediately recalled Amasawa on the island describing herself as an "incomplete orphan" conceived through IVF.
Everything clicked into place.
"You're... Amasawa's father?!"
That... was one hell of a reveal.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.