The Odd One Out

SS. 5 - Horikita Manabu's Soliloquy

For better or for worse, I've lived my life making sure to not store anything up. Being a role model. Being exemplary. I believed that to be the right thing to do and never questioned it. As a matter of fact, until I graduate, I had already given up on taking action. I had failed to make a friend I could say I trust from the bottom of my heart. I have yet to comprehend it.

I've always been dedicated to my duty as Student Council President. There's no denying that I hold massive pride in fulfilling this role at Tokyo's most prestigious high school, the Advanced Nurturing High School. I hold my role in high regard. I've always been serious, intelligent, and athletic enough to be seen as a example for the other students. My reputation as a role model is of utmost importance to me.

I've always dreamed of leaving a legacy at this school. I want the students of this school to see me as the first of many exemplary Student Council Presidents. I want Horikita Manabu to be engraved in their minds as a role model that helped lead this school to great things.

That's why I was disgusted to see Suzune placed in Class D. Class D, the lowest class, a class of defects as the school might call them.

My reputation would be tarnished if it was discovered that Suzune was my sister. Student Council President Horikita Manabu's younger sister placed in the lowest class of the bunch. I won't tolerate it. Knowing my sister, she'll probably deny it, saying that her place in Class D wasn't her fault, and that there was some sort of mistake in her application. Nonsense, this school doesn't make any mistakes. Her anti-social nature is her weakness. She mistakes isolation for independence. If she wants to rise up to the higher classes, she will have to work much harder. Of course, she hasn't yet figured out the system, unlike her classmate Ayanokouji Kiyotaka.

Ayanokouji is a unique student. No, a unique human being. There simply is nobody like him in this world. Us upperclassmen have also heard about his background. It is said that roughly two and a half weeks before the start of the new school year, news about Ayanokouji Kiyotaka and his past in the White Room had broken out and spread all over Japan. Of course, we were inside the school, where contact with the outside world is prohibited, so we initially had no idea. However, with the arrival of the first-years, everyone became well-informed about Ayanokouji, and the White Room.

I certainly didn't believe it at first, until I saw him for the first time. I invited him to the Student Council Room to have a chat, and something about him is just seems different from the rest. There's this aura about him that I can't quite describe. His extraordinary abilities, his incomparable cleverness, his lack of human emotions, those were some of the many things we were told about Ayanokouji.

He has manipulated his entrance exam scores to score perfect 50s on every subject, and he was put in Class D, along with my sister. But Suzune will never reach the heights Ayanokouji did, not even if she was given 100 years.

A masterpiece? An artificial genius? The perfect human? A demon? I'm not even sure what I think about him. I don't think there's a single word that can sum up who Ayanokouji is. He's just that special.

Not only has he suffered in the White Room and survived, he has reached heights that no human has ever reached.

Ayanokouji expelled Nagumo the day after I met him, although using unorthodox methods that I don't support. If people knew about this incident, they would call him evil, or a sociopath. However, I think this shows that once he sets himself a goal, he will do anything to achieve it. Whether his goal is good or bad, that's for us to judge.

I decided to take him under my care and form him into a respectable future President of Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School. This is one of, if not the riskiest decision I have ever made in my life. Whether this completely backfires or not, I sadly won't be here to see it.

I don't even know why I made the decision of inviting him to join the Student Council.

Maybe I want him to became someone that not only uses his abilities to his own advantage, but someone that also uses his abilities to help out others.

There's no denying his frightening abilities. I myself am probably no match for him. If he decides to turn his back on me, then so be it. It would be nobody else's fault but mine.

But if someone like him uses his unbelievable powers for the greater good, then maybe he can help me achieve my dream of taking this school to new heights.

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Author's Notes

Hey!

Here's a little SS about Manabu. Again, not very important to the story, but a deeper dive into Manabu's perspective of things.

Next up, Chapter 3!
May 1st, study groups, midterms and... expulsions (?)

Hope you're looking forward to it!

See you then!