When I finally stepped onto the school bus, the familiar wave of isolation hit me all over again.
I was left completely alone, a stark contrast to Arisu, who was at this very moment being chauffeured in the plush, air-conditioned comfort of her father's private car.
Meanwhile, I was stuck here, crammed into a seat on this piece-of-shit vehicle that the school tried to pass off as a normal public bus, a cheap disguise for their twisted little games.
And just like clockwork, the whole cliché scene started to play out right in front of me.
There was Kikyou Kushida, putting on her sweet act, begging and pleading with everyone in earshot to give up their seat.
Her target was that insufferable blonde bastard, Rokusuke Koenji.
She was laying the guilt on thick, pointing at some frail-looking old woman who was having a hard time standing, and trying to morally blackmail him.
Her argument was the same tired bullshit: he was young and healthy, so he had a duty to surrender his seat.
And Koenji, the magnificent bastard, shot her down with brutal, unapologetic logic. He refuted her completely, stating plainly that his youth and his obvious value to society made him more deserving of the seat than some old woman who was, in his own cold assessment, long past her useful prime.
He didn't just reject her; he verbally burned her argument to the ground.
I've seen this exact same scenario so many times, not just in my own memories, but in countless fanfictions that love to dissect this cliché moment, that I could probably recite the whole exchange in my sleep.
Under normal circumstances, my instinct would have been simple. I'd have gotten up without a second thought, offered my seat to the grandma, and been done with it.
A simple act of basic human decency.
But this time was different.
This time, I had the truth.
As I sifted through the memories that Arisu had shared with me, a bitter, acidic taste filled my mouth.
The whole situation was a carefully constructed façade, a test orchestrated by the school.
Even the simple, fundamental act of helping another person was just another exam, another performance for us to put on for our unseen evaluators.
That sweet, helpless grandma? She was a complete fraud. A paid actor, hired by the school to stand there and judge us, to assess the so-called "moral character" of every student on this bus.
Her job was to figure out if we truly belonged in the shithole of Class D or if some mistake had been made by the school's administration. Her report could make or break a student's future before the year even properly began.
Take Kushida, for example. Every single student on this bus was labeled as Class D trash.
But if it weren't for that one, unfixable mistake she made in her past, a stain on her permanent record that the system had forever branded her with, she would have likely been a prime candidate for a higher class.
She was playing the part of the selfless saint perfectly, and under normal scrutiny, the old woman probably would have pegged her as A-Class material.
But it was all useless. The school didn't give a shit about the performance. They only cared about the cold, hard, unchangeable data.
That black mark on Kushida's history was a permanent scar, something that would forever be there for anyone with the right access to dig up and use against her.
It was a weakness, a fatal flaw in their eyes.
And in a place like this, any weakness, no matter how deeply buried, is more than enough reason to be thrown into the gutter with the rest of us in Class D.
Maybe Rokusuke Koenji was acutely aware of this. That's precisely why he showed absolutely no mercy to the grandma or to Kushida, all in the same breath.
He didn't even hesitate.
He was, at his core, another victim of this rotten system, a system built to break anyone who didn't fit its perfect little mold.
The bastard was supposed to be in Class A, standing tall as an elite among the so-called elites in this shithole of a school.
But because some pencil-pushing administrator, some nobody who assessed his performance during the entrance, took a personal dislike to his personality and arrogance, they decided to shoot him down and throw his ass into the trash heap of Class D.
Just like that, his future was re-written because he failed to kiss administrator's ass.
In the end, it's the same story everywhere. The moment you step into society, if the people sitting at the top, the ones holding all the power, decide they just don't like the look of you, they can ruin you.
They can dismantle your future simply because you failed to amuse them or stroke their ego or spend your life trying to please them.
Society has always been this kind of unpleasant place for anyone with a spine.
Luckily for me, my face and my entire presence are completely passerby-grade, utterly unremarkable.
No one paid any attention to me whatsoever as I sat there, pretending to be absorbed in my book while I secretly listened to every word of their heated argument, using their drama to pass the boring time.
Even though this was an exam handed down from the school itself, a test that could dictate my future here, I would never, ever lick their boots.
I would never even think about pleasing them for a higher grade or a better performance evaluation.
Especially not after I saw with my own eyes how they treated a guy like Koenji, how they judged him with pure bias instead of actually assessing his real, tangible worth.
How could I ever want to please someone so fickle, so fundamentally pathetic, that they decide your entire value based on whether you can suck up to them rather than on the skills you actually possess?
The very thought made me sick to my stomach.
Nah, fuck that... never in a million years.
I was gonna pass this thing on my own terms, with my dignity still somewhat intact.
Thus, with that bitter resolution settling in my gut, another utterly unremarkable and isolating day of my life began here, at the Advanced Nurturing fucking Academy, a place where only the most cunning, the most ruthless, and the smartest sonsofbitches truly thrived.
...
"Welcome to the Advanced Nurturing Academy, freshmen."
The command to assemble had echoed through the dormitories, pulling every new student into the echoing hall of the academy.
We stood now, a sea of uncertain faces, gathered to hear the orientation speech from the Council President himself.
He stood on the raised dais, a tall and imposing figure with sharp, jet-black hair and a face that was almost unnervingly handsome. His demeanor was refined, but it was a cold, polished sort of grace that couldn't hide the aura he projected, the primal, assessing gaze of a lion, a natural leader sizing up a new pride of potential rivals or subordinates.
His eyes, cool and calculating, swept over us, and you could feel the weight of that stare, judging our worth, our potential, and our weaknesses in a single, silent moment.
I had maneuvered carefully through the crowd to make sure I was standing right beside Arisu.
Now, her shoulder was so close to mine that I could feel the faint warmth of her body through our uniforms.
The delicate, familiar fragrance of her skin and hair, a scent that was uniquely and intoxicatingly her, wove its way through my senses, wrapping around me and offering a silent, wordless comfort that steadied my nerves.
Together, we stared up at the school president as he continued his speech, his voice a resonant drone in the charged air.
"For any of you who have been accepted here, congratulations. Understand that this school is built upon a foundation of pure meritocracy. Here, your merits, your hard work, and your innate talents are everything. Your family background, your past connections, and your wealth mean nothing within these walls. We…"
I stopped listening almost immediately.
My concentration shattered, my attention flying everywhere at once.
My female self, Arisu, possessed an incredible ability to focus, her posture ramrod straight and her eyes locked on the speaker, absorbing every word.
But my male self? I felt a massive, jaw-cracking yawn of sheer boredom building in my chest and I had to physically clamp my mouth shut to hold it back, my eyes watering from the effort.
Even with the struggle, my mind refused to be tethered. It wandered off on its own, drifting through a dozen different thoughts, but it always, always circled back to the beautiful girl standing beside me.
With Arisu so close, her presence was a physical ache.
All I could truly think about was the desperate, clawing need to just grab her, to pull her away from this crowd, to find some dark, private corner where I could finally pounce on her.
I wanted to peel that pristine uniform from her body, to feel her skin against mine, to hear the sounds she would make only for me. I was burning with the desire to make love to her for hours, to spend the rest of the day, hell, the rest of our lives, lost in each other, tangled together and forgetting the entire world outside.
Unfortunately, that was a delusion.
The crushing reality was that I was stuck here, trapped in this stifling hall, forced to listen to this guy yap on and on about merit and duty while every fiber of my being screamed to be somewhere else, with her.