Classroom of the elite season 2 volume 5

Chapter 1: Secret Maneuver

Introduction :

The pouring rain had gotten stronger and the fog, thicker.

It was hard to hear or see anything due to the weather, but I could feel an ominous presence approaching us from behind.

There was a deliberate, almost exaggerated sound of mud being trampled underfoot and strewn into the air.

It seemed that Nanase had immediately noticed it as well.

Looking over my shoulder, I caught sight of a student who had come to an abrupt stop behind me, her red hair swaying in the wind.

“Seems it’s gonna really start coming down, huh Sen~pai?”

It was none other than Class 1-A’s Amasawa Ichika, standing there in the rain.

While it had long-since been established that she had the same table as Nanase and I, this was by no means a mere coincidence.

There weren’t any other students nearby, and she didn’t have a backpack or tablet either.

This begged the question: How exactly did she make it all the way up here?

One possibility was that she had simply hidden her things somewhere nearby before approaching us.

Alternatively, she could’ve been tailing us for an extended period of time, empty-handed from the start.

I suppose it was also possible that someone had been tracking us with the GPS and relaying our position to her via walkie-talkie.

Nonetheless, it was probably fine to rule this out as simple coincidence.

No matter the method, her arrival was not a welcome one as far as I was concerned.

Besides, it wasn’t like Amasawa was completely empty-handed either. Clasped in her left hand was a thick wooden stick: one that was more than capable of being used as a weapon to bludgeon someone.

Was she trying to take us by surprise, only for Nanase and I to unexpectedly notice before she could do so?

But, in such bad weather, she could’ve been far quieter with her approach if she truly planned on attacking us.

“Please get behind me, Senpai.”

As I thought about the reason behind Amasawa’s sudden appearance, Nanase, despite still being exhausted from earlier, inserted herself in front of me.

From the brief look I had of her profile, her gaze was firm with a blatant sense of distrust written all over her face.

“Oh? Nanase-chan, shouldn’t you be happy to see me? How aw~fully cold you are to a dear companion from your very own group. Wait, are you perhaps nervous about this little stick friend of mine~?”

She casually tossed the wooden stick down to the ground between us in what seemed to be a show of good faith.

Even so, Nanase didn’t relax her guard whatsoever.

“You─ cannot be trusted.”

“How me~an. How could you say something like that? I’m super-duper cute~!”