The entrance to the gymnasium was a sea of noise.
Hundreds of freshmen milled about the polished wooden floors, buzzing like a swarm of directionless flies as they hunted for their designated seating.
handling through the chaotic tide, Tetsu and Arisu found two adjacent empty chairs within the Class A section and settled in.
The Entrance Ceremony commenced shortly after.
Manabu, the Student Council President, stepped up to the podium.
His welcoming speech was a long, formulaic drone—a dry recitation of the academy’s glorious history, lofty expectations for the incoming cohort, and a rigid list of disciplinary mandates.
To the majority of the freshmen, it was a tedious affair.
To Tetsu, who already held the script to this entire world, it was nothing short of a lullaby.
He tuned out the speech entirely.
Instead, his gaze drifted across the sea of blazers, landing first on a dazzling figure situated in the Class B formation—Honami.
She was listening to the president with rapt attention, though a sudden shift in her posture suggested she felt the weight of his stare.
She cast a casual glance toward the Class A section, though the distance and the dense crowd kept him safely hidden from her view.
Shifting his focus, Tetsu looked toward Class C.
There, slouching in his seat with an untamed, predatory aura, was a long-haired young man yawning in open defiance.
Kakeru.
A tyrant who worshipped at the altar of violence.
Finally, Tetsu’s eyes swept to the very back row of Class D.
Tucked away in an inconspicuous corner stood a quiet, black-haired girl, her intense gaze locked unblinkingly onto the Student Council President.
Suzune.
Yet, Tetsu’s interest lay not with the icy sister, but with the boy seated beside her.
An utterly ordinary student with vacant eyes and a lethargic posture, looking as though he might doze off at any second while Manabu spoke.
Kiyotaka.
‘The ultimate masterpiece…
huh?’
A faint, cryptic smile curved Tetsu’s lips.
“What exactly are you looking at?”
Arisu’s voice drifted over from his side.
Having long since lost interest in the president’s monotonous drone, she had turned her attention to observing him instead.
“I’m looking at a few ‘hidden protagonists,'” Tetsu replied, his gaze remaining anchored on the Class D section.
“The kind who look like mere background characters, but might just bring us some unexpected surprises.”
Arisu followed his line of sight.
Her sharp eyes carefully filtered through the distant crowd before locking onto the expressionless girl in the back row.
“That female student?” she ventured, her tone carrying a hint of aristocratic appraisal.
“No, not her,” Tetsu said, shaking his head slightly.
“The one next to her.
The boy who looks completely unremarkable and utterly mediocre.”
Arisu looked again.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka?
For the first time since he had met her, genuine, undisguised astonishment fractured the calm surface of Arisu’s beautiful violet eyes.
A subtle gasp escaped her lips—a sound that betrayed a rare, microscopic distortion in her usually flawless composure.
For the proud queen of Class A, very few things in this world could trigger such a visceral emotional spike.
The name ‘Ayanokoji Kiyotaka’ just happened to be one of them.
It was more than a name; it was a ghost story.
A codename for the ultimate masterpiece of artificial genius, forged in the sterile, isolated facility her father had spoken of—the White Room.
A significant part of her motivation for enrolling in this academy was to personally bury that very masterpiece, to prove once and for all that innate, natural-born genius would always crush the sterile products of artificial nurture.
It was her deepest, most guarded obsession.
Yet here, on the very first day of school, this boy who had only just managed to pique her interest—Kaedehara Tetsu—had casually pointed out her ultimate prey from a crowd of hundreds with terrifying precision.
How was this possible?
Kiyotaka’s presence here was a closely guarded secret.
He was supposed to be perfectly camouflaged, a single drop of water dissolving into the ocean.
How had the man sitting beside her managed to pierce that veil?
Possibility one: Coincidence.
Tetsu was merely spouting nonsense, picking a random face in the crowd to sound deep.
But her instincts rejected that immediately.
Based on their brief exchange in the classroom, this man never acted without purpose; every word he dropped was a calculated move on the board.
Possibility two: He knows Kiyotaka.
Did they originate from the same facility?
No, the probability was practically zero.
The White Room was a top-secret black site, its subjects strictly monitored.
Interaction with the outside world was impossible.
Possibility three: He possessed the sheer, terrifying insight to see through Kiyotaka’s perfect disguise with just a glance.
The mere thought of this third option sent a thrilling, electric jolt racing through Arisu’s veins.
It was a rush of pure excitement she had never experienced before.
“Fufu…” A soft, airy laugh escaped her.
“Kaedehara-san’s tastes are truly unique and rather difficult to comprehend.
What exactly is it about that utterly unremarkable boy that warrants such high praise from you?”
“Sakayanagi-san, have you ever played a game called ‘Spot the Difference’?” Tetsu asked, his tone conversational.
“The objective is to find the single anomaly hidden within a picture.
Look around us.
Everyone in this gymnasium is trying their hardest to project their own ‘color,’practically screaming their existence to the world.
But that boy?
He is absolute’nothingness.’A void of gray that absorbs every emotion and expectation projected onto him without leaving a single ripple.
Tell me, don’t you think an existence capable of swallowing everything around it is the most dangerous—and the most fascinating—kind of’special’?”
“…You certainly hold him in high regard.” After a long, measured pause, Arisu spoke, her voice smooth and deliberate.
“Perhaps he is simply an unmotivated mediocrity, exactly as his dull appearance suggests.
It wouldn’t be entirely impossible for the school’s admissions system to occasionally let a defect slip through the net.”
“Sakayanagi-san, are you deceiving yourself?”
His voice was soft, barely a whisper over the ambient noise of the hall, yet it struck her chest like a physical blow.
“The very fact that you are sitting here discussing him with me, entertaining my seemingly absurd observation…
isn’t that because, deep down, you can smell his ‘abnormality’ too?”
Tetsu offered no further evidence.
He didn’t need to.
Arisu fell completely silent.
Up on the stage, Manabu’s speech droned on, washing over the drowsy and distracted student body.
But within the small pocket of space shared by Tetsu and Arisu, the atmosphere thickened, turning heavy and suffocating.
Time seemed to crawl to a halt.
Then, after a long, stretching silence, a smile bloomed across Arisu’s face.
It was entirely different from the polite, aristocratic masks she had worn thus far.
The feigned elegance melted away, leaving behind something sharp, genuine, and deeply predatory.
“Kaedehara Tetsu…” She murmured his name softly, rolling the syllables over her tongue as if carving them into the bedrock of her memory.
“You are someone…
truly worthy of my undivided attention.”
Right on cue, the grueling Entrance Ceremony finally drew to a close.
The massive crowd of students began to stir, standing up and shuffling toward the exits.
“My constitution does not handle crowded environments particularly well, so I shall take my leave now,” Arisu said, offering a slight, graceful nod in farewell.
She didn’t press him for any more details regarding Kiyotaka.
For the queen of Class A, the harvest she had reaped today was more than sufficient.
Watching her small, retreating figure handle the aisles, Tetsu finally let out a slow, quiet breath.
The tension bled from his shoulders.
Having lived the exhausting life of a corporate drone in his past, mentally sparring with a monster like Sakayanagi Arisu—even in a simple probing conversation—demanded a massive toll on his psychological stamina.
He had been forced to tread a razor-thin wire: dropping just enough bait to hook her interest, while carefully guarding the absolute secret that he was simply a Plot Prophet armed with a script.