COTE: YEAR 2 REACTION

Chapter 6: Perfect Score

March 19th.

One day. That's all it took for my life to take a sharp turn left. I went from just an average high school boy to being the most gossiped and sought-after student in the school. Even my innocuous run to the grocery store was met with curious students barraging me question after question either about the white room or seeking professional assistance regarding my nonchalance to pain. Some even video-recorded me being tentative about which flavour of ice cream I was buying in the store. The resulting video, a 7-minute spectacle, garnered over 300 likes on the forums.

Luckily, I managed to get a good night's rest.

Following the reveal of OAA, President Nagumo Miyabi saw no reason to delay the inevitable and subdued release of the app, so he decided to allow access for all students overnight.

Now everyone can see their OAA rankings for all students including the new first years. I spent a few minutes glancing at everyone's profiles while I chomped on my breakfast sandwich.

However, I paid extra attention to 2 suspect individuals. Nanase Tsubasa and Amasawa Ichika. The likelihood that at least one if not both were from the white room was quite high.

I also couldn't rule out Hosen because several students such as Ryuen and Akito knew him from back in middle school. However, these two never actually met him in person before. In other words, there was a chance he was an imposter who had contacted the real Hosen and taken on his identity.

The only other person who came up in these videos apart was a boy by the name of Yagami Takuya. His OAA stats revealed that he was a member of Class B with an Academic score of A+.

My phone dinged a notification once every few minutes. The class chat was buzzing mostly about me and the new OAA app.

Horikita and the Ayanokouji group had been trying to reach out to me but I decided not to humour them and put my phone on silent. If everything was going to be revealed anyway, there was no point in indulging them in their impatience. Keisei in particular was upset as he didn't take it too nicely about me hiding my apparent abilities.

Haruka and Akito tried their best to straighten things out with him for a while yesterday. I didn't know what happened after, since the chat was suppressed thereupon. And as always, Airi was Airi.

⥬⦽⧬⥨

I entered the school auditorium as the second day of the viewing was about to start. To my surprise, several new faces were happily chatting and making acquaintances with each other. The first years had arrived a whole two weeks before the commencement of a new school year.

I tried connecting the faces along with the profiles from OAA I memorised this morning as I walked through the hustling crowd towards my seat before a commotion from a loud, gritty voice disrupted me.

"If it ain't the bland-fucker! Gokigenyou, Ayanokouji-paisen!" Towering me easily, stood an enormous figure of shabby blonde hair over 6 feet, and was Hosen Kazuomi. "Look here, I even brought yer favourite knife in commemoration!"

He proceeded to chuck an unsheathed spinning knife at my face, heartily laughing at the panicked looks of the bystanders. Instinctively, I thrusted my left hand and craftily grabbed it by its handle.

Ignoring the flabbergasted faces, I inspected the knife. By the looks of it, he seemed to have purchased the very same model from the stores except for the cacographic writing in red spelling 'Hosen'. How gracious of him to give me a free knife with his autograph.

How Hosen knew this information was beyond me. Did the school make them watch all the videos before coming here?

"Ya better watch yer back, senpai! Just cuz you survived my attack doesn't mean shit! I'll make you surrender and beg as if yer life depended on it! Let's play a lot for the next two years!"