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The life and activity range of an elementary school student is quite dull and narrow.
They go to school, study, eat, and sleep—and because their bodies are still developing, they get sleepy very early. Moreover, Yukinoshita's mother is strict about electronics: there are no game consoles, and they can use the computer or watch TV for less than half an hour a day. Each day feels exceptionally short and monotonous.
It's worth mentioning that the Yukinoshita family truly treats him with sincerity. Their goal is to invest in him and expect future returns, but their methods are impeccable. They treat him almost as if he were an adopted son, always preparing an identical item for him whenever they buy something for Yukino.
But he feels they are not truly family, and this becomes particularly evident at certain moments. For example, he never proactively asks the Yukinoshita family for anything; and there is always that moment of hesitation when he is introduced to outsiders visiting them. These instances clearly reveal a subtle sense of estrangement.
What should this relationship, bound by interest, be called? And how much truth and falsehood are there in the emotions derived from it?
He occasionally pondered such seemingly irrelevant questions.
At school, Kiyono easily achieved the top rank in the entire school. Having completed this simple task, he was ready to implement his own plans.
That evening, under the curious gaze of his older sister, Haruno, he borrowed a mobile phone.
The next day.
"Thank you, Kiyono-senpai…"
In the school courtyard that morning, a little girl looked up at him, her bright, watery eyes filled with gratitude and shyness. She had run too fast earlier and accidentally lost the amulet her mother had tied to her school bag. Only Kiyono had continued to help her search for it until now, even after half of first period had passed.
"Next time, remember to run slower. Be careful not to fall."
Kiyono patted her small head. Naughty children need a firm hand, but good children also deserve gentle praise!
Bidding farewell to the younger loli, he stretched and followed her into the teaching building. As for the minor matter of skipping half a class, he didn't care at all.
Just as he reached the shoe lockers, a faint metallic clink caught his attention.
He looked up and saw a girl—viewed from behind—secretly opening a shoe locker.
Kiyono narrowed his eyes. Who would be changing shoes during class? This person… seemed to be his classmate.
And the location of that shoe locker…
Natsumi Ito skillfully opened Yukino's locker, preparing to hide her shoes in a friend's. She smirked, seemingly imagining the gloomy face of the "ice queen."
"Are you stealing something?"
A sudden voice by her ear startled Natsumi Ito, making her body tremble. The shoes slipped from her hands and fell to the ground. She stiffly turned her head and saw the dark camera lens of the boy's phone pointed at her.
Meeting her gaze, Kiyono smiled faintly. "I've recorded everything."
"I—I was just looking for something…" she stammered.
"Really?"
Kiyono stepped closer. The girl instinctively closed her eyes, retreating two paces until her back hit the locker with a crisp sound.
But the imagined slap didn't come. Instead, a whisper reached her ear:
"Ito-san, if I announce over the school broadcast at noon that you stole a classmate's belongings, how do you think everyone will view you? Your parents would probably be very sad, wouldn't they?"
Natsumi Ito's eyes snapped open in horror. She imagined the scene, and tears immediately welled up. Distraught, she clutched his arm—even forgetting that she hadn't actually completed the act of stealing.
"Please, please don't tell anyone. I—I'll do anything…"
"Then tell me the names of all your accomplices. If I hear you've done anything to Yukino again…" Kiyono said calmly.
The melodic chime of the school bell echoed across campus. Yukino calmly walked to her shoe locker, her backpack filled with high school textbooks, and opened it—it was empty.
"They really don't learn their lesson, do they? Looks like I'll have to teach them another one."
The girl sighed softly, her tone not particularly cold or annoyed, just resigned.
Just then, she heard a voice from behind her.
"Are you looking for this?"
The setting sun slanted in, casting an orange glow across the boy's face. He put down his backpack and took out the shoes that had been taken from Yukino that morning. He wasn't sure if they would be hidden again if left there, so he had simply put them in his own bag.
"Mr. Pervert who steals girls' shoes?"
…Feeling Yukino's strange gaze, Kiyono quickly explained:
"Don't misunderstand! I rescued your glass slipper from other girls!"
"I know."
Yukino watched the boy bend down to put the shoes away, her gaze gradually softening. Kiyono lived under the same roof as her; if he were only interested in shoes, he would have had countless opportunities already.
She had long placed a deeper trust in the boy.
"Let's go home."
The girl put on her shoes, turned her head slightly to look at Kiyono backlit by the sunset, and fell into a daze.
—Did the little girl who was once tormented also wish for someone to protect her so steadfastly and stay by her side like this?
"Yukino has so many enemies."
Huddled in his room, Kiyono looked at the densely packed names in his notebook and sighed softly.
These past two days, he had witnessed all sorts of childish actions by elementary school students: hiding shoes, making mischief, stealing recorders. They seemed incredibly childish, but the harm they inflicted on the former little Yukino had been very real.
Although the current, more mature Yukino no longer cared about such trivial matters—she'd fight back if someone provoked her, but she couldn't be bothered with petty malice.
She didn't care, but he did.
He had seen Yukino's past, and this was the only precious opportunity to participate in it—almost like a chance granted by the gods. Therefore, he wanted to change the girl's life through his own actions.
Even if it brought only a little comfort, he wanted to do it.
"I'm not just a pure-love warrior, I'm also a transmigrator. It's time to carry on the excellent traditions of my predecessors."
Kiyono muttered to himself. He hadn't wanted to bully elementary school students, but since they were maliciously targeting others, he would retaliate twofold. It was impossible to reform bullies with love and gentleness. Besides, a transmigrator's daily mission is to bully both the old and the young!
Count the protagonists of those fantasy and xianxia transmigrator novels—their favorite pastime was beating up hundred- or thousand-year-old lonely geezers like punching bags. Anyone who stood in their way—whether a hundred-thousand-year-old grandpa or a ten-year-old child—would be beaten without mercy. Although he couldn't be as carefree as his predecessors, he also had things he could do!
First, deal with the girls.
Yukino had many female enemies; or rather, most of the girls in her class were her enemies, and even girls in other classes disliked her because of Hayama Hayato. Faced with such a large group, even he couldn't handle them all at once; he could only defeat them one by one.
Miss Natsumi, it's your turn to shine.
Kiyono tore off the first page of paper, temporarily abandoning his identity as a pure-love warrior, and began his journey to dominate elementary school.
The next day, he summoned Natsumi Ito—his tool—and with a sunny smile, showed her his phone as she trembled, then laid out the battle plan.
Natsumi casually informed her friends that this afternoon would be a "good opportunity" to target Yukino. And as they went to seize the chance to hide Yukino's personal belongings, Kiyono happened to stroll by with a group of classmates and a teacher.
After some of the hatred was diverted, he became even bolder, uniting various figures in the school to strike at his opponents. He let those with poor grades copy homework, helped those who wanted to exercise borrow equipment from the teacher, and then had Natsumi collect evidence and stir up rumors in the class. The girls' cliques descended into chaos—suspicion and infighting everywhere, everyone fearing for themselves—until they completely neglected Yukino.
After briefly dealing with the girls, Kiyono turned his attention to the boys.
Yukino didn't have many male enemies. Rather than enemies, there were only a few perverts who liked to steal things. Since she was very pretty, most boys liked her; the majority just used little stunts to attract her attention.
On the fifth day, not long after PE ended, a boy named Otani secretly snuck into the girls' changing room and took "sneakers" from "Yukino's" locker.
Because the room was dim and he was overly nervous, he didn't observe carefully. He hurriedly took the shoes and hid in a secluded corner near the teaching building.
Just as he was in a state of blissful ecstasy—
"Ah, my apologies, my apologies. What you're so blissfully sniffing right now are other boys' shoes."
Otani, squatting in the corner, looked up blankly. He saw the boy's condescending, teasing smile—followed by a dark camera lens and a pair of sturdy sneakers.
After dealing with several bullies in the same way, Kiyono threw the last few hidden "landmines" into the class. Within a few days, all the naughty children turned into good children, obediently doing whatever "Teacher Kiyono" told them to do.
The path of the emperor had been achieved!
At this moment, he was the dark cloud and shadow looming over the elementary school!
And all of this he resolved in secret. He didn't specifically inform Yukino, because, in Kiyono's opinion, bullying a group of elementary school students was really not something to be proud of…
After school, the cool, aloof girl looked at the perfectly intact recorder and other items in her drawer and tilted her head.
Why did it feel so much… quieter recently?
—
The boy who had ascended to the top of the elementary-school hierarchy returned home in a twenty-million-yen luxury car.
Although he had become the strongest—wielding lightning—at school, in the matriarchal Yukinoshita family he was undoubtedly still the lowest-ranking younger brother!
To transition quickly from a boy to an independent man and elevate his status, Kiyono dove into the library as soon as he got home.
The library was where he spent most of his time in the Yukinoshita residence. The bookshelves were neat and clean, the air rich with the scent of books, and he could find almost anything he wanted to read there.
Wooden houses in Japanese gardens tend to be damp, but the moisture control here was excellent. Activated-charcoal bamboo tubes were placed between shelves for dehumidification, and some rarely read books were even wrapped in indigo cloth. All of this was done personally by Yukinoshita's mother.
After spending a long time in the library, he had also generally figured out the different preferences and "exclusive areas" of the three women of the Yukinoshita household—for example, the fourth row of shelves in front of him was Yukinoshita's mother's collection, containing both famous classics and essays, novels, and books on self-cultivation. It seemed she also had an artistic heart.
Kiyono began taking books from the shelves one by one, grabbing five or six at a time before sitting down at the long table. In fact, he could read more if he relied on memorization, but his current focus was on accumulating literary experience, so he needed to read and ponder carefully.
He held a book and casually turned to the first page, as if waiting for something.
Two minutes later, the door was gently pushed open. Calm footsteps followed. Kiyono turned his head and saw the afternoon sunlight filtering through flowering trees, spilling into the room and scattering golden flecks across the girl and the floor.
Little Yukino set a wooden tray on the table. The tray held two steaming cups of black tea.
Unbeknownst to him, this scene had become a daily routine. After all, Yukino usually had nothing to do at home but read. Speaking of which, did this count as childhood friends?
Kiyono took a sip of tea, his hand instinctively fumbling on the table for a snack bag.
"What are you doing?" Yukino asked, puzzled.
"I was wondering if there were any snacks…"
Oh no! He'd picked up a bad habit from Yanami!
"Are you hungry?" the girl asked, concerned.
"I'm all right—it's just a sudden instinct of an elementary-school body!" Kiyono offered an excuse.
The cool girl simply said, "Oh." She didn't add anything else. She picked up her book and lowered her head to read, her bangs swaying slightly with the motion.
Kiyono discarded his extra thoughts and continued reading. For a while, only the soft rustle of turning pages filled the air.
And in that quiet, little Yukino's gaze occasionally lifted to the boy opposite her.
A glance.
Another glance.
A stolen glance.
Her gaze burned faintly, inexplicable ripples flowing in her bright pupils.
What happened at school… it must have been this guy, right?
Her mind conjured the looks other students had given her—or rather, given Kiyono—before. Their gazes had turned into pure fear, timidity, anger, and submission.
A little inquiry was enough to understand everything.
Yukino pursed her lips, imagining the scenes.
From her perspective of justice, Kiyono's methods were clearly not correct, especially when dealing with a group of elementary school students whose minds were not yet mature.
Threats, violence, darkness… in some sense, Kiyono's methods were even more brutal than theirs.
However.
Recalling the past—what had her tormented self been thinking then? She had been ostracized by nearly all the girls in her grade, plunged into a whirlpool of malice. Under that immense pressure, Hayama Hayato, her childhood friend, could do nothing but stand silently by, even though the whole incident was almost caused by him.
Therefore, she detested the distorted, corrupt environment around her, abhorred the ugly, evil human heart, and despised her own helpless weakness. She wished for the bullies to be punished, and she wished for help—these were her true and powerful inner desires.
So she wanted to change: to change herself, and to change injustices in society.
She knew Kiyono wasn't trying to help her current self, because these small tricks could no longer harm her. He was making up for her past pain and regret, as if saying: If I had been there back then, I would definitely have done this—if so, would the outcome of the story have been different?
As soon as she thought this, a surge of emotion welled up from the depths of her heart.
The girl exhaled softly and looked at Kiyono again.