Classroom of the Elite: Free Will

V10.5: Chapter 6 - Nobody Knows

Ayanokouji Kiyotaka POV

Spring break was finally here, and the students forgot all about competing with each other and welcomed the short break. Although current students obviously weren't allowed to leave the campus, they didn't feel particularly inconvenienced by that, largely due to the presence of Keyaki Mall.

The mall was an essential amenity not just to students, but to everyone affiliated with the school. I'm sure I don't need to explain this in detail at this point, but it had everything you needed, from cafes to electronics stores, karaoke, and so on. If there was something else you really wanted, you could get it via mail order after putting in a request and getting permission. You were free to live life according to your own whims, as long as it was within what your stock of Private Points would allow.

At any rate, spring break had only just begun. I slipped into my casual clothes and got ready to head out.

It must have been because April was just around the corner, but the temperature was gradually getting warmer. It was now just after nine-thirty in the morning. Although it was sunny and clear outside right now, the weather forecast called for heavy rain just past noon, so we decided to have our meeting time early in the day and be done by noon.

There was still some time before we were to meet. I casually left my room to wait for Nao at the entrance of the dorms. I hit the button for the elevator. As the doors opened, I happened to bump into a girl I knew from my grade level. She was on the elevator that I had just called.

"...Hey..." she huffed.

The girl, who addressed me in such a displeased tone and then put some distance between us, was a student of first-year Class D. Ibuki Mio. For some reason, I found myself imagining what Ibuki had been doing during the long break. I was sure she was wondering the same of me.

Anyway, since we were in an elevator together, you could say that we were in a private space.

"We're on break. It's not that strange for us to bump into each other now and again, is it?" I told her.

"Well, no, but... I just don't want to have anything to do with you right now."

"Why? Are you planning something?"

She looked away. "That's none of your business."

It seemed like she wasn't too pleased with the encounter. I didn't really have the choice of not getting on the elevator, so I got on with Ibuki.

"It's not going to break down again, is it...?"

"Now that you mention it, that did happen before, didn't it?"

It happened during summer vacation, if I recall. Ibuki and I had gotten stuck in an elevator along with a few friends. Although we were both wary about it happening again, that was obviously too much of a coincidence. The elevator reached the first-floor lobby and Ibuki immediately got off.

Like me, she stayed in the lobby.

"Aren't you leaving?" she pressed.

"I'm waiting for Nao," I said.

"Shit," she muttered under her breath.

"Are you also waiting for someone?"

"That's none of your business," she replied angrily.

It seemed that right now, she hated being around me. So, that got me even more curious to know who she was waiting for.

In the end, we just stayed standing there in the lobby next to each other.

"Congratulations on your victory on the exam, by the way."