Yagami, caught red-handed, had twisted his face into such a mess that there was no trace left of the bright, sunny boy he used to pretend to be. He looked like a demon clawing its way out of hell, like he wanted nothing more than to devour someone alive.
And the uglier his expression got, the more perfectly it proved Yukio Bandai's point about him being a clown. He looked so hideous it was hard to even look at him.
"That's enough, Yagami!"
At that moment, Amasawa appeared from the stairwell behind Yukio, sharply cutting him off before he could keep spiraling.
Turns out, when Yukio abruptly got up and left after receiving Ibuki's text, Amasawa had followed after him out of concern. She wasn't stupid. Tsukishiro and Yagami had clearly decided yesterday that they were going to make their move today.
And while Yukio had been walking around the cultural festival with her earlier, he'd also gone to see Koenji—no, scratch that, to see Hōsen and then Ayanokoji. It was obvious he'd been laying some groundwork of his own.
Given all that, no matter how badly she wanted to slack off, she'd already gotten to enjoy the entire morning. She knew she couldn't just keep pretending to be oblivious.
So she followed him after all.
Only to find White Room buddy Yagami already pinned down by Ibuki.
This wasn't at all what Amasawa had imagined. She'd been expecting some big showdown between Yukio and the White Room.
Instead, it felt like a total accident. Yagami hadn't even gotten to truly begin his plan before Yukio and Ibuki caught him on the very first step and shut the whole thing down.
At first, Amasawa didn't reveal herself. She hid behind the corner and watched. It wasn't until Yagami started ranting more and more wildly, practically dumping White Room secrets out in the open, that she finally stepped in to stop him.
Part of it was because she didn't want Yukio and Ibuki learning too much. Even if Yukio had a background of his own, you couldn't be sure what kind of trouble might come from hearing that much about the White Room. Some things were better left unknown.
But another part of it was that she was worried about Yagami too. If the mission failed, then worst-case scenario, he'd just get dragged back to the White Room to keep training. That was nothing more than going back into a cage, but at least he'd still be alive.
If he kept spilling this much, though, then it wouldn't just be "mission failed" anymore. It would start looking like betrayal of the White Room itself.
And for all that Yagami looked down on everyone, he was still one of the very few people Amasawa could even call a companion after ten-plus years in that place. She couldn't just stand there and watch him throw his life away like this.
Yukio glanced back at her, while Ibuki shot her a questioning look.
Yagami, on the other hand, looked even worse. Being seen like this by Amasawa only made it feel more humiliating to him.
"Dammit! Damn it!"
"Amasawa! Hurry! Kill them! Kill them! Then we'll kill Ayanokoji too, and after that we can go back where we're supposed to go!"
Looking at Yagami now, his face like a mad demon's, Amasawa actually took a step back.
"Are you out of your mind, Yagami? You really have gone insane."
Yukio studied the two of them back and forth for a second, then didn't give them any more time to talk. A fast, precise chop landed against the side-back of Yagami's neck.
Yagami's eyes rolled up, and he dropped unconscious on the spot.
"...Whew."
Only then did Ibuki let go and start shaking out her arms hard. She'd been using all her strength just to hold him down, and he'd still nearly broken free. No wonder—if she hadn't gotten the jump on him first, this idiot underclassman probably would've been a huge pain to deal with.
After shaking out the strain in her wrists, she looked at Yukio and Amasawa, utterly baffled.
"So. Mind explaining?"
Amasawa's mood was a mess. She didn't really want to tell Ibuki too much about the White Room in the first place. Not because it mattered whether she did or didn't—Yukio already knew—but because it would depend entirely on whether Yukio wanted Ibuki to know.
Yukio simply nodded. He didn't dodge the issue, only saying he needed to make a call first.
He pulled out his phone, dialed, and the line was picked up quickly.
"Ayanokoji? Something came up."
"Find that instructor somehow. Bring him to the stairwell on the third floor, the one on the other side of the teaching building. He needs to pick someone up."
The person on the other end didn't ask any questions. Yukio hung up after that one line.
Ibuki looked even more confused, while Amasawa lifted her head in shock.
Instructor?
That had to mean a White Room instructor. Advanced Nurturing High School definitely didn't call its teachers that.
Even while Amasawa was still reeling from that realization, Yukio began explaining things to Ibuki—carefully, selectively, and with most of the actual ugliness filed off. He turned it into a story made out of the bits that were safe to tell.
"Basically, this clown here and Amasawa too, along with Ayanokoji from Class 2-D, all come from a martial arts school called the White Room."
"It's a messy situation. Ayanokoji's father opened the dojo and wanted Ayanokoji to inherit it."
"But then Ayanokoji hit his rebellious phase and had a falling-out with him. Of course, I don't know the exact details. I'm not sure how deep that father-son conflict really goes."
"From what I heard, Ayanokoji stuffed his father's electric razor into the toilet and ground it through a layer of grime, spiked his father's sleeping pills with stimulants, and even injected his father's prized liquor collection with liquid hell-pepper extract."
"Anyway, Ayanokoji didn't want to inherit the dojo, so he ran away from home. And to avoid being found by the family dojo, he enrolled at this isolated school."
"But in the end, his father's network was too wide. He found him anyway. Then, because Ayanokoji still refused to come home, his father got angry and, this semester, sent two younger disciples—Yagami and Amasawa here—to bring him back and force him to inherit the family business."
"I'm guessing that's why Yagami wanted to use you to lure Ayanokoji out. He probably figured that once they met, he'd just beat him down and drag him back."
Ibuki clicked her tongue in amazement.
"Never thought there'd be some secretive dojo like that. I've never heard a thing about it anywhere in the martial arts world."
Since her own family ran a dojo, this kind of story actually sounded pretty believable to her. If she'd gone through a rebellious phase and run away from home, her family probably would've been desperate to drag her back too.
Believable my ass...
Ibuki shot Yukio a weary look.
Did he really think she was still as naïve as she'd been last year?
After more than a year of growth, her brain wasn't nearly as slow as it used to be, thank you very much.
Leaving aside everything else, Yagami had just blurted out that the White Room taught all kinds of academic subjects and industry knowledge too. What kind of dojo taught that?
And judging by the killing intent pouring off Yagami a second ago, if Yukio tried telling her his hands had never been stained with blood, she wouldn't believe it for a second. What kind of dojo was that brutal? That reckless?
And most ridiculous of all was the so-called father-son feud. Going by Yukio's version, were those two really father and son? They sounded more like mortal enemies.
Still, she'd ask Yukio about it later. Amasawa was still right here, and it wasn't a good time to press further.
As for Amasawa, she spent the whole time just blinking.
Hell, if she weren't literally a White Room student herself and emotionally too exhausted to think straight right now, she might actually have believed Yukio's crap.
At last, she understood what "talking complete nonsense with a straight face" really meant.
Yukio was the real deal.
Seriously, men's mouths really were made for lying.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.