The years stretched long, and the land remained at peace.
Advanced Nurturing High seemed to have changed, and yet somehow, it also felt like nothing had changed at all. Dawn broke through the night with the first pale light of morning.
It was mid-March now. Winter had passed, spring had come again, and the bitter cold was slowly retreating. New life stirred the early cherry blossoms asleep on the branches, and clusters of pale pink and white flowers bloomed in profusion, as if bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new.
The faint morning light spilled over the boys sprawled out on the basketball court, then over the thirty-odd students lying all over the athletic field in every direction.
"So it's morning already?"
Yukio pushed himself up, looked around, and couldn't help but laugh.
The night before, the members of Yukio's class had gathered on the athletic field and stayed up all night together.
Even after the snacks were gone, the drinks had run out, and everyone had already exhausted every ghost story and love story they'd prepared in advance, no one had wanted to go back to the dorms.
So they'd just sat there on the ground, chatting aimlessly, talking about graduation, talking about the future, talking about what path they wanted to choose next. Since they were guaranteed to graduate from Class A, the future was already in their hands.
Yukio smiled as he woke Shiina, Ibuki, and Sakura, asking them to help wake the girls. Today was the graduation ceremony for the third-years.
The girls were definitely going to want to head back to the dorms, wash up properly, and put on nice makeup before attending. After all, there were bound to be a ton of commemorative pictures taken today. No girl was going to be happy showing up without makeup.
After that, he wanted to wake Ishizaki and have him go wake the boys, but then he realized Ishizaki was nowhere to be found. That was when he remembered those idiots had gone to play basketball in the dark last night.
It had been the dead of night, when you could barely see your own hand in front of your face. There was no way the court lights had still been on. With visibility like that, no matter how good your touch was, you'd have had to locate the hoop by moonlight alone. What they were shooting probably wasn't basketball at that point.
It was their last bit of youth.
Yukio woke Kaneda instead and had him wake the boys, while he himself headed toward the basketball court. Sure enough, he found Ishizaki, Albert, Nomura, and the others scattered all over the place.
He couldn't help laughing.
"Up. Come on, all of you, get up."
The half-asleep boys only groaned and mumbled from where they were sprawled across the painfully hard ground, none of them willing to open their eyes.
Yukio could only put on a fake look of surprise and blurt out, "Damn, what class are those girls from? They're showing up to the graduation ceremony wearing nothing but stockings?"
"Where?! Where?! Just stockings? Black or white?!"
"No way! Someone's that bold?! What class?! Let me see!"
The effect was immediate.
With just that one line, the boys—who'd been dead to the world a second ago—sprang upright like carp leaping from water.
And once they realized there weren't any girls there at all, much less girls attending graduation in nothing but stockings, they finally came to their senses and exchanged awkward looks with each other.
Looks like their boss had fooled them again.
"Now that you're awake, go wash your faces, grab breakfast together, and then head to the ceremony."
Even Yukio's voice softened a little when he said that.
Thump, thump.
Usually the dumbest and most carefree of the bunch, Ishizaki couldn't quite manage his usual energy right now. His eyes were complicated as he patted the basketball that had rolled to his feet.
Somehow, he looked a little melancholic.
"Yukio-bro… I-I'm not going for breakfast."
"I'm gonna… play a little more ball. I'll just go straight to the ceremony after. I'm… not really hungry right now."
The boys who'd just gotten up all instinctively looked around the basketball court.
The huge court was quiet. It was just the few of them there. The lingering morning light carried the smell of spring, as if quietly telling them a brand-new page of life was about to turn.
"Yeah, Ishizaki, I'm not eating either. I'll stay and play with you. What's the point if you're playing by yourself?"
"I'm gonna go wash up, though. Hahaha, look at this monster eye booger I've got!"
Watching his classmates gradually laugh and loosen up again, Yukio simply nodded and didn't say anything more.
Every one of them knew this wasn't really about basketball.
They just couldn't bear to let go. They were trying to grab hold of the very last tail-end of their youth.
The chance to sit around together like this, joking and laughing over something as stupid as eye boogers, then play basketball together afterward…
This was probably the last time in their entire lives it would ever happen.
Next time they wanted to gather like this again, next time they wanted to play together again, who knew how many years it would take.
Yukio understood that well.
He'd been the same way in his previous life. Once he graduated, he'd never gotten together with his friends to play basketball again.
And even though the tail of youth was always going to slip away in the end, no matter how tightly you tried to grab it, wasn't the act of trying to hold on to it a kind of youth in itself?
Yukio only reminded them not to forget the time of the ceremony, then headed off first to wash up and get breakfast, waiting for today's graduation ceremony.
At the grand auditorium of Advanced Nurturing High, Chairman Sakayanagi—wearing his usual gentle expression—had resumed his post as chairman the day before. Amasawa, meanwhile, had taken over from Yukio as the new student council president and was responsible for hosting today's graduation ceremony.
Students from all three grades sat properly in their designated seats.
Only the graduating third-years had pale pink flower decorations pinned to their chests.
Chairman Sakayanagi, smiling warmly, called ten names at a time for students to come onstage and receive their graduation certificates. Acting chairman Tsukishiro had now fully transformed into an old secretary, standing at the side to assist with handing them out.
The certificate itself wasn't like the sort Yukio had back home. It wasn't a booklet, but a single diploma scroll tucked inside a vertical black case.
And so it continued swiftly onward.
After sixteen rounds, every graduate had received their certificate and taken a commemorative photo with Chairman Sakayanagi.
Throughout the ceremony, every time he presented a certificate, Chairman Sakayanagi also offered each student his own blessing, hoping every one of them would go on to have the very best future.
Yukio's class, of course, were all grinning from ear to ear at such words. Their futures were on a completely different level from those of normal students their age, and every last bit of that had come from the tremendous advantages Yukio had brought them.
The members of Sakayanagi's class still had their lingering resentment, but over the course of that final year, with Yukio acting as chairman, the fire in their hearts had long since been worn away. All they could do now was watch with envy and frustration.
Ichinose's class was even stranger.
Each member exchanged looks with the others, while Kanzaki sighed again and again. Ichinose's strategy had been a good one: scrape together points and try to send people one by one into Yukio's class so they could graduate from Class A.
But the problem was that every time they actually scraped together twenty million points, the classmate slated to be sent over would suddenly refuse to leave.
No matter what anyone said, they just wouldn't go.
Later, someone proposed sending Kanzaki to Class A instead, but Kanzaki refused too. It even turned into a whole argument. By the end of it, not a single member of Ichinose's class had ever transferred out.
And now, on graduation day, they were all laughing and crying at the same time, as if what mattered most of all was simply that they had come to this class together and stayed together until the end.
As for Class D, they'd resigned themselves to it.
This year, they simply hadn't had a chance.
"Now then~"
Even after becoming student council president, Amasawa hadn't changed her lively personality in the slightest. Smiling brightly, she waved happily at Yukio from the graduation stage.
"Please welcome our student representative!"
"My absolute faaavorite Yukio-senpai~ to deliver the graduation speech!"
Good lord.
The eyes of the entire school immediately turned toward him.
Yukio showed no sign of nervousness at all. He simply nodded lightly, utterly unburdened, and under Amasawa's dramatic introduction—while enduring the gazes of both Chairman Sakayanagi and Tsukishiro, those two father figures—walked calmly up to the stage and took the microphone from her.
Maybe it was last night's class gathering on the athletic field.
Maybe it was the way Ishizaki and the others had looked this morning when they couldn't bear to leave the basketball court.
Either way, it made the speech Yukio had originally prepared feel impossible to say.
So he thought for a moment on the spot, smiled softly, and gave his own conclusion instead.
"Whenever we talk about youth, every one of us carries a few shining, precious memories in our hearts."
"Maybe one year from now, or three years from now, or five, or ten… everyone here will realize that youth passed by in the blink of an eye, and that we can never return to where we are now."
"But even so, I hope all of you will remember that once, we walked side by side down the road of youth together."
"And someday in the future, when you run into hardship or setbacks, if you can look back on everything here today, then maybe those beautiful memories will be able to give you a little comfort… and a little strength."
Thunderous applause erupted from below the stage.
Maybe it was because his words had been sincere enough. Maybe it was because they'd struck a chord with every single graduate present.
A few girls had already started quietly wiping their eyes, whispering how much they didn't want this to end.
Even Amasawa looked touched. She waved toward backstage, and the ensemble that had long since been prepared began to play a farewell song for graduation season.
The melody was gentle, flowing, and warm.
And the third-year graduates, the boys singing at the top of their lungs and the girls singing through ugly sobbing voices, all couldn't help but join in.
"It will never change, not until the end of time."
"Let us always be friends."
"We look ahead to tomorrow with hope in our hearts."
"Walking down the road of hope, let us live beautiful lives."
"This evening, we say goodbye to each other."
"Until… the day we meet again."
End of main story. Extras to follow.
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For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.