A Demon's Path

End of the Dream

A secluded part of the Park – Evening

I looked at my school provided phone for the umpteenth time as I waited for the person to arrive. It had been five minutes past the appointed time when we were supposed to meet, and I was wondering whether the said person would come or not. Perhaps they had thought of this meeting as a prank and decided not to come. In any case, I waited for the person to arrive as I had nothing better to do. Also, I wanted to see one of the people who could be a little worthwhile to pay attention to in this place.

Tip. Tip.

Droplets of rain started to fall as the sky was suddenly covered by black clouds. Fortunately I had an umbrella with me as the weather forecasts had indicated a high possibility of rain in the later hours of the day. I had already finished my required number of practice sets for today and thus was allowed to leave earlier than usual. After leaving the dojo, I contacted Kamuro once again to confirm whether the person I wanted to meet had accepted or not. After confirming that they had decided to do so, I texted her the location where we should meet.

I chose one of the most isolated parts of the park lined with cherry blossom trees. The petals, having lived past their prime, were starting to fall little by little, indicating the end of the season of spring and the onset of summer. Perhaps this sudden downpour was a subtle reminder of the imminent end of this season of dreams. Indeed, in just one week, it will be the first day of May, and all of my assumptions will either be proven true or it will just fade away into obscurity. Thus, now was the time to strike, when I knew that I was going to have an advantage over the other classes. I had the element of surprise and knowledge of how the situation was in other classes, thanks to Kamuro.

According to her words, Class A was composed mostly of honour students. Impeccable performance with a strong sense of discipline and responsibility. The cases of inappropriate behaviour were few and far between. She has also told of two emerging cliques in the class spearheaded by two very contrasting-minded students. The first group followed a strong-minded individual named Kōhei Katsuragi. He had stood as the unbending wall of reliability and uniformity. I had heard how he had worked towards raising Class A's discipline standards. On the other hand, the other leader, Sakayanagi Arisu had been silent this whole time and was preferring to play the waiting game. It was an interesting thing to hear, as I could already see several scenarios that I could make of this obvious rift in ideologies to gain control over the class.

As Abraham Lincon had said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

The information about the other classes was not as detailed as her own, but that was to be given due to the limited associativity of people from different classes. Class B had been described as a strong united front with a clear leader in the student named Ichinose Honami. Kamuro had said their class to give of the feeling of a big family. It was mainly possible due to Ichinose's style of leadership. However, I knew better than how a leadership like hers leads to nothing but ruin.

On the other hand, Class C was kind of an enigma to me as Kamuro hadn't been able to gain much information about them. they had kept mostly to themselves, only socializing within themselves and others when needed. I had heard from some students that there was some sort of argument amongst the students of this enigmatic class and a student from Class D. I wondered if I could take advantage of this situation to gain two more pawns from these lower classes. Their class was supposedly led by a student named Kakeru Ryūen. From her initial impressions, Kamuro had told me he seemed to be a tyrannical type of person. That meant Class C was ruled by a tyrannical monarchy of sorts. That made things easy as if one catches the head of the snake, one could control the entire body. However, there were several factors, such as how much influence he held in his class and his strength in the number of students who followed him, as well as his other capabilities.