Hikaru Naruse tilted his head back slightly, his gaze sweeping past the school gate—so grand it bordered on excessive—before settling on the school’s name engraved across the lintel.
Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School.
He had long known that the campus was astonishingly vast, but only after seeing it with his own eyes did he grasp just how absurd it truly was.
Calling this place a high school felt inadequate; it was more like a university town.
Drawing his eyes back, Naruse let out a soft sigh.
His features were exceptionally handsome.
A pair of long, narrow phoenix eyes turned up slightly at the corners, their irises a rare shade of ink-black.
His skin was fair without looking sickly, his jawline clean and sharp, and his short black hair was combed lightly backward, revealing a smooth, full forehead.
Dressed in the school’s wine-red uniform, he cut an unusually tall and crisp figure.
Even amid a crowd packed with new students, Naruse effortlessly drew the eyes of those around him.
Yet his brows were faintly knitted, the corners of his mouth pressed downward, and a glint of displeasure lingered in his eyes.
What a pain.
Hikaru Naruse was no ordinary middle school graduate.
To put it precisely, he was a man who had lived two lives.
The memories of his past life were like a long, blurry old film, already branded completely into his mind back when he was still an infant.
All that knowledge, experience, and the works he’d once enjoyed from another world were stored clearly and distinctly in the depths of his memory.
And among those memories, the title of one particular work surfaced in his mind with almost perfect appropriateness.
“Classroom of the Elite.”
COTE for short.
Naruse had once been a huge fan of this series—but liking it was one thing, and it certainly didn’t mean he actually wanted to be part of it.
“Seriously…”
He muttered under his breath, unfolding the acceptance letter in his hand for another look.
The paper had an excellent texture, his name, class, and enrollment date all printed on it in elegant typeface.
In this life, Naruse had been born in Kagoshima Prefecture of the island nation—his family couldn’t be called wealthy, but they got by well enough.
In such an environment, the first fifteen years of his life passed without a ripple.
He’d assumed his life would go on like this, plain and steady, forever.
But before he graduated from middle school, the principal arranged for him to take a special entrance examination—one that even included an interview stage.
As a former exam-grinding warrior from his old world, he naturally cleared both stages with ease.
And so, he ended up here.
Because he knew the original story, Naruse understood exactly how this school selected its students.
Whether Class A or Class D, every single student was a carefully handpicked specimen chosen by the school.
Being selected as a specimen was one thing—but did he really have to go and fight it out with that bunch of monsters?
“Forget it.
Now that I’m here, I might as well make the best of it.
There’s no point overthinking it now.”
He drew a deep breath, took a stride forward, and headed toward the school gate.
“At the very least, I was assigned to Class A.
That should count as decent news.”
In the original work, Class A was a very special class.
Its peculiarity lay in the fact that, almost from the very first day of the first year, two utterly opposed camps had already formed within it.
One was the strategist faction, centered around Arisu Sakayanagi; the other was the pragmatist faction, led by Kohei Katsuragi.
These two camps had guarded against and competed with each other from the very start, which meant that although Class A was nominally the top-ranked class, its internal cohesion was actually weaker than that of the other classes.
For the Hikaru Naruse of the present, the most pressing question was…
how could he land somewhere safe and stable?
Class A might be the class closest to a perfect graduation, but this particular cohort had far too many “special students.” If he simply drifted along with the current, he might not actually get what he wanted.
Since he had come here, he naturally had to put his own future first.
Arriving at the doorway of the first-year Class A classroom, Naruse heard the chatter of quite a few students.
“I’m Hashimoto—looking forward to getting along with everyone from now on!”
“I hear this school has a one hundred percent advancement rate, and the employment prospects for graduates are excellent.”
“Now that’s something to look forward to.”
After Naruse stepped into the classroom, his gaze immediately swept across the entire area, quickly assessing the state and position of every person present.
It was a habit he’d formed in his past life, one he still retained in this one…
upon entering an unfamiliar environment, the first thing to do was observe.
About twenty-odd students were already seated in the classroom, split evenly between boys and girls.
Most of them were quietly organizing their belongings or leafing through the enrollment materials, with a few here and there talking in low voices.
The overall atmosphere in the room was relatively calm.
After all, it was the first day of school, and everyone was still in the stage of feeling one another out.
But Naruse’s attention wasn’t on these ordinary students.
His gaze passed over the crowd and landed precisely on a figure seated by the window in the front row of the classroom.
It was a beautiful silver-haired girl.
She sat quietly in her seat, one hand propping up her chin while the other idly turned the pages of a rather thick-looking book.
The girl was petite and slender, her skin fair, and her pair of purple eyes were like two meticulously polished amethysts.
Combined with her delicate, adorable face, she looked like someone straight out of a fairy-tale world.
But the most eye-catching thing of all was the cane standing beside her.
Arisu Sakayanagi.
One of the two core figures of Class A.
A congenital heart condition made walking difficult for her, forcing her to rely on a cane—yet from the very first day of school she had already gathered a great many devoted followers.
She was a girl who knew how to play with people’s hearts.
Naruse recalled a bit of the original plot and couldn’t help shaking his head, then found his own seat and sat down.
“What a shame.
In the end, didn’t she still lose?”
It was at that very moment that a virtual screen of light suddenly appeared before his eyes, while a burst of synthesized electronic sound rang out in his ears at the same time.
[The Life Comeback System has been bound!]
[System Description: This system is designed to assist the host in achieving a comeback in life.
Based on the host’s actions and choices, it will provide corresponding rewards.]
[Host: Hikaru Naruse]
[Age: 36]
[At 36, one day while sorting through old belongings, you happened upon a high school graduation photo—and caught sight of the gentle deskmate from your high school days.]
[After graduating high school, you and the people from school gradually drifted apart, which fills you with a certain nostalgia.]
[So make up for the regret—it’s never too late!]
[Emotional Comeback Task issued: Reconnect with Honami Ichinose.
Reward: Emotion Perception +3.]
“?”
After clearly reading the words on the screen of light, Hikaru Naruse was utterly dumbfounded.
What is the meaning of this?
What do you mean, make up for a regret, reconnect with Honami Ichinose?
I don’t even know her yet!
And besides, isn’t Honami Ichinose supposed to be in Class B…?
How did she become my deskmate?
Good news: the cheat has arrived!
Bad news: the cheat seems to be a little off.