The next day.
Shuchiin Academy.
The second class in the morning was mathematics.
Kiyotaka sat by the window, resting his chin on one hand, his gaze falling calmly on the blackboard in front.
His expressionless, inorganic profile made him look like an honor student who was listening attentively.
But in reality, the attention he allocated to the lecture content of this class was only about fifteen percent.
The middle-aged teacher on the podium was writing furiously on the blackboard, explaining a complex final question combining logarithmic functions and calculus.
“…
Therefore, after we substitute this limit value, we can obtain this equation.”
The teacher wrote a long string of formulas on the blackboard, then stopped, habitually leaving time for the students to think.
Inside the classroom, the rustling sound of pen tips quickly rubbing against draft paper immediately sounded, interspersed with a few headache-inducing sighs.
The students of Shuchiin Academy had extremely strong self-esteem; even if they didn’t understand, very few would take the initiative to raise their hands and ask questions.
Kiyotaka’s gaze shifted slightly, falling on a boy wearing metal-framed glasses sitting front-right.
On the grade ranking list just announced yesterday, this boy’s name ranked 10th in the grade.
Here, he could definitely be considered a top-tier honor student.
However, at this moment, this honor student was staring tightly at the blackboard, his brows furrowed into a dead knot.
His lips moved slightly, as if repeatedly reciting the derivation process on the blackboard, but the confusion in his eyes did not decrease by a fraction.
It seemed the difficulty of the problem was indeed not low.
Kiyotaka looked back at the writing on the blackboard.
With just a glance, he found the crux of the problem.
The core of this problem lay in the equivalence transformation from the second step to the third step.
When deriving it, the teacher on the podium directly skipped an intermediate transition link.
Probably in his eyes, this belonged to self-evident “common sense”.
But judging from the reaction below, for this 10th-place student in the grade, it clearly didn’t constitute common sense yet.
The teacher did not realize his own leap of thought.
Therefore, that bespectacled boy would probably remain confused until the end of class.
But this was not a problem he needed to solve.
Kiyotaka withdrew his gaze, picked up a carbon pen, and casually wrote down the final result on a completely blank notebook.
The movement was smooth without any obstruction.
…
The fourth period was swimming class.
The men’s locker room was filled with the noisy chatter of boys changing clothes, mostly adolescent topics about whether they could see which girls wearing swimsuits later.
Kiyotaka stayed in front of the locker in the corner, quietly changing into the school’s unified swim trunks, perfectly blending into the background.
Walking out of the locker room and passing through the disinfection pool, the wide space of the indoor constant-temperature natatorium unfolded before his eyes.
On the other side, the girls had also entered one after another.
One by one wearing dark blue school-designated one-piece school swimsuits, their fair and slender thighs looked somewhat dazzling under the reflection of the water surface.
The girls gathered in twos and threes occasionally made crisp giggling sounds, and amidst the splashing water, it was filled with the sense of youth that ordinary students should have.
After the whistle blew, the students began to enter the water one after another.
The water temperature of the pool was naturally lower than normal body temperature.
The moment they entered the water, due to heat loss, the tactile sensation of pores contracting on the skin instantly spread throughout the body.
Around them came a few sounds of boys sucking in cold breath with a “hiss”.
Kiyotaka’s expression did not change at all, calmly letting his body submerge into the water, allowing his muscles to naturally adapt to the change in temperature.
There was also swimming training in the White Room.
But it wasn’t this form filled with laughter and cheerful voices.
There, weighted endurance training lasting several hours was conducted in an extremely low-temperature pool.
The water temperature was usually strictly controlled at around 14 degrees.
The purpose of the training was not to practice swimming skills, but to test the subjects’ body temperature maintenance ability and mental endurance when approaching the verge of death.
Someone had once lost consciousness in that training, then sank like a stone, and wasn’t fished out by the robotic arm until the countdown ended.
While reviewing past memories in his mind, Kiyotaka evenly paddled his limbs in the water, maintaining a speed in the middle of the class, neither fast nor slow.
The swimming class here had a water temperature of 28 degrees.
Extravagant.
After swimming to the other end of the pool, Kiyotaka flipped his body and floated face up on the water surface.
Today’s swimming class was just an ordinary physical fitness class, and the grades wouldn’t be counted into the final evaluation records.
Therefore, displaying cardiopulmonary function and physical performance beyond common sense in a place like this had no meaning other than attracting unnecessary gazes.
Kiyotaka closed his eyes, letting the buoyancy of the current lift his relaxed body, feeling the warmth of the sunlight filtering down from the skylight above his head.
Enjoy it briefly.
After all, this was also a part of the “freedom” exchanged through a deal.
…
After school.
The campus at dusk began to be tinged with vitality.
The hum of wind instrument playing and the shouts of sports clubs came from the club building.
Carrying his school bag, Kiyotaka walked out of the gates of Shuchiin Academy.
Because of that accidental little interlude on the overpass yesterday, he decided to change his approach today.
At roughly the same time zone as yesterday, but he came to a completely different location.
Ayanokouji walked steadily on a bustling commercial street lined with shops, his gaze sweeping calmly over the surrounding streetscape.
Just like what was learned in the tactical deduction class of that White Room, defeating the enemy didn’t necessarily require a frontal assault.
Sometimes, outflanking from the flanks or cutting off their supply lines was the optimal solution with the least casualties.
The same logic applied to contacting the target.
Before direct contact with Sakiko became uncontrollable or inefficient, there was no harm in making some “peripheral preparations” around her first.
For example, mastering in advance the puzzle pieces she would definitely need in the future.
There were quite a few female students walking in pairs on the street.
Judging from the style of their sailor uniforms, there was another girls’ school nearby.
Just as Kiyotaka was about to stop in front of the cafe at the street corner…
“Stay away from me!”
A voice full of irritation and disgust suddenly came from the mouth of the alley behind him.
Kiyotaka stopped and turned his head.
Making the sound was a black-haired girl wearing a dark sailor uniform.
At the corner of her eye was a symbolic tear mole; clearly she had a pretty face, but at this moment her entire body exuded a hedgehog-like hostility ready to bristle.
And opposite her stood two young men who weren’t wearing school uniforms, with somewhat messy dyed hair and frivolous smiles, blocking her path one on the left and one on the right.
“Don’t be so fierce, miss.”
One of the boys took a step forward, smiling with a frivolous tone, “You look so cute, what harm is there in playing with us?”